Industry committee  I'm afraid we don't have that kind of debt. There have been some academic studies of this kind of thing. For a lot of our members, the small businesses, it's whether they can afford any dollars right now to make these kinds of investments. It is very challenging for many of them

Industry committee  Again, it's difficult to generalize for the entire small business population. There are sectors of the economy that are absolutely seeing the benefits of this very early. By adopting these kinds of technologies, they're able to make that money back and to benefit from it for the

Industry committee  We welcome any competition to this business whatsoever. The PayPal fees, to be fair, sound good on the surface, but a plain-Jane VISA fee for our small members could be around 1.7%. There are additional fees built in. If you're using an Amex card, then PayPal is a pretty good dea

Industry committee  There has been a lot of progress made. But there is a huge road still to go on that front. Briefly, on your question about deposit fees, virtually every institution has deposit fees for businesses. If they receive it from Visa, MasterCard, or their processor, or from PayPal, the

Industry committee  It's huge. Broadband—and I think other presenters have said this—is fundamental to making any of this work. We need to make sure that if you're at a gas station, you're not going to have somebody dialing up on some sort of connection to check whether or not your payment is valid.

Industry committee  We're hearing lots. We did a fairly intensive survey to prepare for the payments task force. One of the smartest things that's happened is when Minister Flaherty put together that group to look at the future of the payments industry as a whole. It was very timely. But you're quit

Industry committee  Thanks. I know that my colleague, Corinne Pohlmann, shared with you the views and surveys that CFIB has done on this important subject over the last couple of years. There are a couple of other points I would note. First, governments are still trying to get their heads around

Finance committee  I think we can certainly agree with the first half of your comment—

Finance committee  —that it would have been far preferable had EI dollars not been taken out of the fund and transferred into general revenue for many years, and the problems that we're experiencing with employment insurance today would be far fewer if that had not been allowed to happen. There wou

Finance committee  Actually, on that front you're quite right. The employment insurance numbers do factor into the overall books of the Government of Canada, but we have strong assurance that the government is not taking those dollars and transferring them into general revenue. Of that part, we're

Finance committee  Sure. The premiums on employment insurance are going to be going up, and they're going to be going up big time.

Finance committee  The maximum allowable increase, this year or any year, is 15¢ per $100 in payroll for employees and 21¢ per $100 in payroll for employers, because employers pay 60% of the cost of the program, while employees pay 40%.

Finance committee  That was set for January 1 of this coming year. We mounted a fairly significant political action campaign, and the government did limit the increase to 5¢ per $100 for employees and 7¢ per $100 for employers. There still is a payroll tax increase coming on January 1, and many of

Finance committee  I will add that right now about half of the spending in EI is not for benefits for the unemployed. It pays for all sorts of other things. Some have great value and are good societal goals, including maternity and parental leave benefits, fishermen's benefits, and a whole variety

Finance committee  There's a variety of ways that can happen. I have to say, to start, that we are quite concerned that Minister Flaherty has opened the door to increasing Canada Pension Plan premiums, together with Minister Duncan in Ontario. That is a huge concern to our membership. We've ratch