Government Operations committee  The price hikes have been rather significant. I think that for most small businesses it hasn't gone past the point of looking at Canada Post as at least an option, but it does hasten the move to.... In some situations, the price gap between a private courier option and Canada Post is not as significant as it used to be.

Government Operations committee  I think so. We've not had any direct experience, to my knowledge, with the Canada Post ombudsman, but we have with other public utilities. Regulatory bodies to look at rates are not uncommon, and we use them regularly. One of the our key recommendations in our submission is that letter mail rate hikes and package delivery rate hikes have been pretty significant and are pinching hard, thus reducing small business use of Canada Post, and they need to be reconsidered.

Government Operations committee  Postal banking has come up before. We talked to CUPW about that years ago. We weren't philosophically opposed to it, but we surveyed our members, and they didn't think it was a particularly great idea. If there are services that fit and can be operated out of a rural mail centre, I don't think anybody would be opposed to that, but I think it would have to be economically justified.

Government Operations committee  I do. I think that Canada Post's mandate is not dead but is changing. I think the corporation has been making some changes along the way, but others are necessary. I believe that if Canada Post were to shift to alternate-day delivery, it would potentially create some opportunities for it to then offer services where it doesn't right now, and that might be expanded hours for package delivery.

Government Operations committee  Thank you very much. Just as a quick reminder, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, which I represent, is made up of 109,000 small and medium-sized firms, all of them independently owned and operated and based across the country. Obviously, they have a very important stake in the discussions about the future of Canada Post, and we congratulate the committee for its work.

Finance committee  This is a tricky issue for us. We are very keen as an organization to work cooperatively with the new government on a variety of fronts, and that stands today. There were two measures in the Liberal party platform that we celebrated and were cheerleaders for during the election campaign, and they were the Liberal party promise to reduce the small business rate to 9%, and the LIberal party promise to give small firms an entire EI holiday for hiring young people for 2016, 2017, and 2018.

Finance committee  Okay.

Finance committee  The Canada summer jobs program is a good program. Our members do use it. They support the concept, and we've not had any major criticism of it. When I was answering Ms. O'Connell's question, I was speaking about the fact that there appears to be a large rejection rate for applications from small firms.

Finance committee  There are many roads to Rome. We are supportive of the Canada summer jobs program. We're supportive of the reduction in the rate for small business. We're supportive of the EI holiday that had been proposed for small firms. I will say, though, just to be clear, that our comments about the Canada summer jobs program have not changed from your government to the new government.

Finance committee  I am thrilled with this question. This is exactly the kind of focus that I would love the finance committee to take on to analyze some of these very important areas of public policy. We did have better provisions in the past for transferring businesses from one generation to the next, but those were wound down.

Finance committee  Yes, and just quickly on that front, if you look at slide 10 in my presentation, you're absolutely right that those numbers for the EI rates for employers and employees will be falling starting in 2017. However, the previous government implemented something called the small business job credit, which essentially meant that small firms received a 15% reduction in their EI rates back in 2015.

Finance committee  We have debated Jack Mintz on many occasions. He operates from the assumption that the small business rate traps firms and keeps them small and doesn't allow them to grow to become medium-sized entities. Obviously you can imagine that, as a group representing small and medium-sized firms, we respectfully disagree with Mr.

Finance committee  I think most of the research that has been done on the underground economy shows that as tax rates rise, the more punitive the tax rate is regarded by businesses or by average citizens, the more propensity there is for some tax revenue to basically be foregone because things go underground.

Finance committee  You'd be in a much better position than I would be to answer that question. I will say that when we raised this with the officials, they've said that it's been cancelled.

Finance committee  That's good advice.