Mr. Speaker, in hindsight, small business owners, the hard-working, middle-class Canadians who just want to earn a living for their families and create jobs for our communities, should have seen this coming. I am talking about the coffee shop down the street, the person who cuts hair, and the mechanic who fixes cars. Instead of working hard running their local businesses, I guess they should have been keeping a closer eye on what the government was trying to sneak in, because the Liberal red flags were all there.
The Liberals had broken their promise to reduce the small business tax rate to nine per cent at that point, which they have now flip-flopped on so many times businesses are not quite sure where the actual rate stands. The Liberals had put in place new payroll taxes on small business by increasing CPP and EI premiums. Of course, do not forget the carbon tax on everything that will make the cost of doing business exponentially higher. They also cancelled the small business hiring credit. On top of all this, the Liberals are actually saying that some businesses are too small to be a small businesses. I know it sounds astounding, but it is a fact. That is what they are saying.
Active versus passive income rules, which the Liberal government issued a new interpretation of, adversely affect many small businesses, such as campgrounds, mini self-storages, and other small operations, by arbitrarily assigning them as passive income, when the amount of work involved is absolutely anything but passive.
If that was not enough, the finance minister then went after small business owners by labelling them greedy tax cheats to justify new tax changes to help cover some of the costly out-of-control Liberal deficits. What is worse, these changes were subject to an extremely short consultation period during the dog days of summer. These are changes that will make it harder for Canadians to find a family doctor and will make wait times longer; changes that will raise taxes on job creators and entrepreneurs, making it harder for people to find jobs; and changes that will make it harder for small businesses to save for a rainy day, retirement, or maternity leave.
Why are the Liberals so dead set on putting job-creating entrepreneurs out of business, and when will this attack on small businesses end?