Industry committee  As we said, the rate change will affect 2,600 companies that are considered large businesses under the scientific research and experimental development, the SR&ED, program. That is why the person at the end of the table said there was not much impact on the rate reduction. Hi

Industry committee  You can argue that the Jenkins panel was a consultation. We did submit at the time, along with many others. We saw a bit of a disconnect between what we as an organization, and a lot of other associations, expressed and what we saw in the report. That being said, we didn't write

Industry committee  I wasn't at CME at the time, but I am familiar with the study.

Industry committee  Not specifically, no.

Industry committee  Do you mean consulted about SR and ED?

Industry committee  I've never asked our members about this particular proposal, but we did participate in the British Columbia tax panel consultation that was going on during the summer. We did express our opposition to the way they view the carbon tax over there. As a general philosophy, we believ

Industry committee  Yes.

Industry committee  It's very important. The corporate income tax rate reduction is important because it increases the after-tax cashflow of businesses. Why is after-tax cashflow important? It's important because it's the main driver of business investment in either knowledge technology, people, or

Industry committee  Again, the employment insurance contributions are in the form of a tax. For companies, it's a spending. It's a tool that you can use to make companies invest more in skills and in the training of their employees. We've been arguing that you should have a system in which you rew

Industry committee  From a methodological standpoint, I would just like to say that that comparison takes repayment of investment into consideration. For every dollar that a large company spends on R&D—we did not look at the situation of small companies—how much money is returned to the tax syst

Industry committee  That is a big problem. I believe we have already discussed that here, with other witnesses, in the past. We need to expand our businesses further. With regard to R&D tax credits, the OECD and other, Canadian observers have said that, in Canada, even if we take into account t

Industry committee  There is a kind of trend. Many companies may not be multinationals, like Magna International Inc., with 80 R&D centres in 18 countries. Many Canadian companies are of medium size. They will open production plants in other countries and then see whether they can try to establi

Industry committee  I believe that the Jenkins report contained two recommendations on this matter. The first really focused on capital expenditures. According to the Jenkins report, it must be considered that the elimination of capital expenditures, which it characterizes as a labour-based approach

Industry committee  In our report, we recommended that the legislative changes included in Bill C-45 be set out in a separate bill. In our opinion, this is a fundamental change to the tax treatment of R&D and it should be treated as such. I imagine that, in a private member's bill, it would have

Industry committee  You are correct. Of all Canadian industries, our sector is probably the one that has faced the most international competition. The emergence of countries where labour costs are lower has hurt, but the fact that it is combined with a rising dollar has made things even more difficu