Mr. Speaker, the motion we are debating here today is very important.
The NDP plans to lower the small business tax rate from 11% to 9% in order to better support this sector of our economy, which is responsible for creating nearly half of all new jobs in Canada. We will begin with an immediate decrease from 11% to 10%, which will inject nearly $600 million into Canada's small businesses. We will then further lower the tax rate to 9%, as we indicated during our last campaign, as soon as the financial situation allows. Once that measure is fully implemented, taxes for small businesses will be reduced by nearly 20%. That is significant.
I would like to quote Martine Hébert, senior vice-president of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business:
Cutting the small business tax rate by nearly 20% will provide a big boot to business owners across the country and will help them create jobs.
Small businesses account for nearly 40% of Canada’s GDP and employ more than 7.7 million Canadians. They account for 78% of the new private sector jobs created over the last decade. Although small businesses are the engine of job creation in this country, rather than help them, the Conservative government has chosen to offer tens of billions of dollars to the most profitable corporations. Since 2006, the Conservatives have lowered the tax rate on big corporations from 22% to 15%, but they have reduced the tax rate on small businesses by only 1%, when they are the real job creators.
I have met with many business owners in my Quebec City constituency. I am also a member of three chambers of commerce. These business owners are unanimous: reducing taxes on small businesses will give them the leeway they need to hire and expand their business. A survey I did of companies in Quebec City revealed that our plan to reinvest nearly $1.2 billion in small businesses was the right one to help the business owners in my region. That is why we are calling on the House to give our motion firm support and immediately take measures to stimulate job creation and economic growth. The NDP has a plan and New Democrats are moving forward with concrete measures.
We want to reduce the small business tax rate from 11% to 9%, extend the accelerated capital cost allowance and introduce an innovation tax credit to support the manufacturing sector, which is an important sector for Quebec and Ontario. These measures can be introduced immediately. They will support the economic core of my region and show investors that a New Democratic government will usher in a new era of stability for small businesses.
It is important to take the pulse of small businesses right now as an indicator of the country's economic situation. This is from an article I was reading about all of the austerity measures that have been implemented:
Business and consumer confidence is probably the best indicator of how they perceive their economic and political context, and government decisions are part of that context.
Nobody needs a Ph.D. in economics to see that, when families are worried about the future, as they are now, when they buy less, and when companies do not make plans to invest or hire people, the economic outlook for the short and medium terms is anything but encouraging.
When I see this Conservative government investing absolutely everything in oil, it is a problem. We can see that. They are not coming up with a budget. Here we are in February, with March approaching, and they will evidently not have a budget before April. They are incapable of saying whether the deficit will drop to zero and they do not know how they are going to plan things.
Why? It is because they put all their eggs in one basket. That is beyond me, because we all have a mother who told us not to put all our eggs in one basket. However, that is exactly what is happening right now. They forgot to diversify our economy. Now that they are stuck, they can get out by investing in small and medium-sized businesses and in diversity.
In Quebec City, investing in our small businesses and diversifying our economy is precisely what we did when the cold wind hit during the recession of 2008-09. That is how we created a situation where everybody won.