Mr. Speaker, one of the challenges small-business people have in this country is that they are expected to wear many hats. When a small-business person, a man or woman, starts a business, he or she needs to be part HR, part finance, part marketing, part administrator, and operator.
What we heard from people across the country was this. I remember sitting around the table, and it was the same thing, whether it was in Ontario or B.C. It was what they are required to provide. Sometimes there is duplication. Sometimes it is like they are being asked the same thing two or three times, whereas if they just talked internally, they would actually have what they need.
In larger companies, there are finance people and accounting departments that will handle some of those things. I think of what happens when a company goes public. One of the biggest things that happens when a company goes public is that its accounting department swells by two, three, four, or five times because of the amount of compliance it is required to have when it is publicly traded. We get that.
What we are talking about are the small-business people who have to do multiple things. Maybe they have to pull a shift, because someone called in sick, or maybe they have to figure out how they are going to hire someone and put ads in the paper, et cetera.
We are looking at not affecting the safety and security of Canadians. We are trying to remove some of the duplication. We are trying to ensure, as I mentioned in my speech, that we take a small-business lens approach, which is absolutely key if we are going to look at it from a small-business point of view. Yes, we still require these things, but how can we make it easier for small-business men or women to provide all these things and still run their businesses successfully and create the jobs we need as Canadians?