Finance committee  We have 109,000.

Finance committee  I believe the number of staff people that our members represent is around two million.

Finance committee  No. In fact, we were fairly active in opposing your government's plans to increase employment insurance premiums. We had a “stop the tax grab” campaign targeted at the Conservative Party and the Conservative government on that very measure.

Finance committee  Yes.

Finance committee  It doesn't. As a strictly non-partisan organization we call them as we see them. Regardless of what government or political party intends to increase taxation, we take it very seriously and raise concerns in the exact same way.

Finance committee  Yes, Mr. Brison, we have heard from some of our members in seasonal industries. In fact, the data I've provided does show that about a third of our members are in seasonal industries themselves; it's higher in Atlantic Canada than elsewhere. We've heard some concern from some o

Finance committee  Okay. There have been some recent changes to the temporary foreign worker program, which was referenced in the budget itself. Most of the changes are positive. We like the direction they're heading in, but most of the changes do apply to immigrants with higher skills. They do not

Finance committee  Thanks very much to the committee. I did provide a short deck of some slides about the 2012 budget for your attention. I want to say at the very beginning that we are very grateful to government for finally moving on marketing freedom for Canadian wheat and barley growers. Our

Industry committee  Yes, but there are many capital hurdles for small businesses to get into lots of games. I don't want to overplay the difficulty for small businesses to get into making electronic payments. Many quality acquirers out there provide that kind of service to small businesses right no

Industry committee  There is one other quick point that government can do something about. Obviously collection of provincial sales taxes is not your jurisdiction, but every merchant in Canada pays a merchant fee to Visa, MasterCard, and the banks for collecting the HST. That's something you can d

Industry committee  Since your colleague asked that question, I haven't come up with any brilliant solutions to that either. This is a challenge, no question, and hopefully technologies will advance to bypass some of this in the near future. We're not there yet, but there's no question you're right.

Industry committee  Terrific. Thank you. On the first part of the question, with respect to the merchant fees, there are a couple of conflicting trends. One is that the only major change in credit card fees, after the adoption of the code of conduct, was MasterCard's issuance of even higher mercha

Industry committee  To the second part of that, we need to ensure that the payments task force reports quickly, and that any provisions related to mobile technologies are embedded in the code of conduct quickly. Those would be helpful measures, from our perspective. Ensuring that the game is not ent

Industry committee  There are a few things we have publicly asked Minister Flaherty for. One is to ensure that the issues under review by the Competition Bureau are codified. The Competition Bureau is asking to allow firms to refuse to accept certain cards if they don't like the price. It will also

Industry committee  I'm afraid I don't have any easier answers than that. I do know that a variety of provinces are at the table as well, and that they are trying to do something similar to what the federal government has done to incent this kind of development. Almost 40% of our members say that t