Mr. Speaker, small businesses are the economic drivers of job creation and wealth in this country and we should be supporting them.
The member is absolutely right that the government has reduced the corporate tax rate for the big corporations to a very low rate. It is much lower even than the rate in the United States.
The idea behind lowering taxes is that corporations would make money and then reinvest that into new businesses and create new jobs. However, the big corporations and friends of the Conservatives have not done that. There is over $500 billion of dead money sitting in corporate balance sheets that has not come back to create more jobs. Rather, as the member has pointed out, it is dead money.
We should be providing small business with incentives like the one we had advocated for, a hiring tax credit that would provide them additional incentives to hire more young people, youth, and students. We know that the youth unemployment rate is high and that small businesses could provide them with jobs, but time after time the Conservatives have failed to provide these incentives.