Finance committee  Again, I would be speaking not as a representative of the National Council of Women, but from my own experience in business. As you say, it's the small and medium-sized businesses that are the engine to our economy, and anything you can do to help create the employment rate in those businesses is going to benefit the Canadian economy very much.

Finance committee  A couple of items are very important. One is to make sure that seniors have access to information about programs they are eligible for. One reason that we are most proud of our government is that you actually came forward and said, “Look, we have all these programs, and you don't seem to be aware of them”.

Finance committee  I'd like to comment from my background in international business. I was involved in helping to implement business deals between Alberta and Mexico in the 1990s. It seems to me that one of the most important jobs we have as Canadians in business is to make potential investors aware of how great it is to do business in Canada.

Finance committee  We were thinking that especially in the case of small and medium-sized businesses, which are the engine of our Canadian economy, this would go a long way in helping a lot of these companies to be much more competitive in the world market and to get more people into better jobs.

Finance committee  Yes. There may be some misunderstanding of what I was trying to get at. In talking about upgrading training, I'm talking about not taking people out of high school and saying, “Okay, now take this little module of training so you can get this job”. We're talking about people who are looking for a job that....

Finance committee  Are you asking me specifically whether corporate tax cuts benefit the poor?

Finance committee  In general, they do not. For the most part, corporate tax cuts benefit the people in the executive suite. We have seen that over and over again in Canada. What we need in Canada to benefit the poor and the lower middle class is various means to get money into their hands. One of the means I have suggested is to raise the basic exemption from income tax.

Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you very much for this opportunity to address you. When we heard about the opportunity to write a brief on what we would like to see in the coming budget, we looked at all our current policies and what would be the most important.

Finance committee  One minute? Okay. Look at fairer taxes. If you look at our tax situation in the last couple of decades, you'll see that our basic exemption has not kept pace with inflation. We would ask you to look at this possibility: simply raising the exemption would put more money in the hands of lower- and middle-income groups, and their spending in Canada would also bolster the Canadian economy.