Mr. Speaker, the member's comments are indeed appreciated. It is very gratifying to see that no matter which side of the House we are on we recognize the attributes of others.
Concerning the opening statement made by the Leader of the Opposition when we first came to Ottawa, I too said “I am not here to oppose for the sake of opposition. If they come with good legislation I will support it. If it is not as good as it could be I will try to offer constructive alternatives”. That is what we are here to do.
I would also like to address the comments made by the hon. member for Kamloops, Thompson and Highland Valleys, comments which must seem at first to anyone viewing this debate as a paradox. Here we have on the one side members of the Reform Party, people who are clearly on the side, amongst others, of small business, the engines of the economy of our great country, and on the other side we have a representative of the socialist workers' paradise party speaking out on behalf of business.
We would be hard-pressed to understand where he was coming from if we did not realize that he holds the only socialist seat in the interior of British Columbia. Every other seat in the interior of British Columbia, a vast province, is held by the Reform Party. He is the last holdout so, naturally, he has to align himself with those who would support Reform in his own riding because his strongest and best competition is going to come from the Reform Party.
I certainly want to address the comments made by the hon. member for Kamloops, Thompson and Highland Valleys, as well as the comments made by the hon. member for Broadview—Greenwood as to why we think, although we strongly support small business in particular, there is a problem with this bill and the whole approach that was taken to it.
Do we support small businesses having better access to money? Of course we do. We just question whether they should have access to their own money that is being taxed away from them in a variety of different ways or whether they should have to go to the bank to borrow money to pay the taxes that the Liberal government has imposed upon them.
I would like to give one specific example. I have done it before in a different context, but I would like to do it today for the edification of these members and others who might be listening to this debate.
Before I was elected to parliament I was a small business operator. When the CPP tax adjustment, the most incredible tax grab this country has ever seen, was brought in, I tried to make a comparison. How would that have impacted on me had I still been in business? I was, I think, a fairly typical small business operator.
I operated a small residential construction company. I had some people who worked for me full time. I had some people who worked for me part time, on an as need basis, as the various components of the house construction came due. I sat down and analyzed it and I decided that, realistically, I had approximately 10 full time equivalents between my full time people and the number of hours that were put in by the various part time people. Ten full time jobs. The Canadian pension plan tax increase works out to about $600 a year per worker. As the employer I have to pay my side of that, which is $600 for me. That is $6,000.
I used to build about 10 houses a year. My profit for house building was about $6,000 a house. If I built 10 houses, my profit was $60,000. Of course, I had expenses. This tax adjustment increased my costs by $6,000. It represented my profit on one of those houses. Actually, it was not even 10 houses. I built eight houses a year. It has been so long since I have told this story about the CPP tax adjustment that my business has grown, although I have not been there. It was eight houses a year. One of my eight houses I would have to build for the Liberal government. It was profit out of my pocket.
Then came the workers' side. I know my workers very well and I know that under these circumstances, had they still been working for me, they would have come to me and said “Listen, we know that the economy is not right, that you cannot give us a big raise, that you are not raising your prices to customers because, if you do, we simply will not be selling houses and we will not be working. But we cannot afford another cut in pay. So we need enough of a pay raise to cover the $600 increase in this payroll tax”.
If I did that, which I certainly would try to do for those workers, it would mean $600 per worker, multiplied by 10, which would equal $6,000. That is my second house. That is 25% of my gross profit just to pay the increase in one payroll tax. It is not even to pay the whole payroll tax, the entire CPP, it is just to pay the increase. It would cost me 25% of my gross income.
Why do we oppose this bill? Because this bill, instead of addressing those very serious problems, says to small business “Yes, we have overtaxed you on your employment insurance premiums. We are hiking Canada pension plan premiums. We are doing all kinds of other things, but we are going to save the day. We are going to come up with legislation that will make it easier for you to borrow money to pay us”. That is why we oppose this provision of the bill and in fact the whole approach the government has taken to the bill.
Should it be easier for small businesses to get access to funds they need? Yes, it should be. Any bill that does that in a realistic manner should be seriously looked at and considered. But we have to approach it with the concept of why they are borrowing the money in the first place.
If I have lost, as one small businessman, 25% of my gross income because of the increase in a single payroll tax hike, then we have a different problem. The solution to that problem is not to make it easier for me to borrow money to pay my taxes.
I hope the hon. member will consider it from that point of view. It is said to him and to all other people in the House and beyond in the most sincere manner. We have a problem in this country. Small business has a problem. Helping them to get further into debt to deal with this problem is not the way to solve it.
I hope that he will work with us in a very non-partisan way to deal seriously with the real problems that small business has and to find a realistic way out of it.
As he knows by the debt crisis the country faced and is starting to find ways out of, the way to solve our problem as a nation and as a government in whole is not to foist it on someone else, it is so that we can all do better together.
I know the hon. member is grateful for the information he has just received. I know the member has other points of view that will counter. We can go off on tangents all over the place and say this does not agree with that. We need a starting point. Today we are debating government's helping access for small business to borrow money. That is the point of view we have to start from. That is the point of view we have to stay on today. I hope all Liberals will reconsider their position in light of the facts that have just come out.