Finance committee  Mr. Chair, as many members of the committee know, CFIB is a not-for-profit, non-partisan organization representing more than 109,000 small and medium-sized businesses across Canada who collectively employ more than 1.25 million Canadians and account for $75 billion, or nearly hal

Finance committee  Not at all. Overall, the point of that slide is to show that the economy is still acting sluggishly. To help get us through this sluggishness, we believe governments need to address the issues of greatest concern to small businesses so that they in turn can focus their attenti

Finance committee  Starting a business in Canada is certainly a challenge. It can be complicated. Our entrepreneurs tell us that they will do it if they have a good idea and if there is a demand. That is why there are about two million businesses in Canada, and 109,000 of them belong to our organiz

Finance committee  The jobs on the seventh slide are full-time. This matches a lot of other data that I cannot provide you with today, but that will be available in the next few weeks. I could send that report to the committee, if you are interested. These are jobs in small and medium-sized busine

Finance committee  Sure. I'll speak to that. Some of the research that we have demonstrated shows that the most effective way to help a business is to give them a relief on payroll tax. What we would suggest and what we have promoted in the past is such things as the EI hiring credit, whereby the

Finance committee  Briefly, we see this as a valuable way to incent employers to continue to grow their employee base. Payroll taxes are a significant barrier to employers at the small business level, to hiring. They're essentially revenue neutral. You have to pay them whether you make any money or

Finance committee  Absolutely. I think small businesses support the intent and the principle behind the Canada job grant as long as it's administered in a way that is cognizant of the realities of the small business level. We'll be seeing the details now as they shake out provincially, of course, b

Finance committee  We do have a piece of research called WageWatch that we're updating this year with the new StatsCan data, which showed that at the federal public service level, I believe.... I could be wrong and it might be the whole public service, but I think it's just the federal level. When

Finance committee  I certainly can send the old report, yes.

Finance committee  Thank you. I want to highlight from our presentation that small businesses do train youth. They are very involved in youth hiring and they do an incredible amount of on-the-job formal training that needs to be recognized by government. They can be assisted in that by consideri

Human Resources committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. As many of the members know, CFIB is a not-for-profit, non-partisan organization representing more than 109,000 small and medium-sized businesses across Canada that collectively employ more than 1.25 million Canadians and account for $75 billion, or nearly

Human Resources committee  Certainly. We do know there are job vacancy rates and shortages of qualified labour all across the country. From our business owners we are hearing that they are struggling to find workers in all regions. It's not just the typical western Canada success stories that we're hearin

Human Resources committee  I could spend all day speaking to that, per sector. I think generally it is the kind of training that is involved in orientation. It can be very specific training depending on the sector or the kind of business that you're in. It can be also the kind of investment involved with

Human Resources committee  To the why for.... I'm not sure I follow the distinction between the Atlantic and your example.

Human Resources committee  I think I catch your drift. To speak to the seasonal component in particular, we carefully monitored the announcements made on changes to EI. I believe they were announced over a year and a half ago or so now. We were waiting to hear from our members. We expected a significant