Finance committee  Thank you, got it. I've been laughing at all the reporters and now I'm doing it myself. It is an incredibly difficult job that you have to try to get the balance right between dealing with the health care emergency and dealing with the economic emergency that COVID-19 has create

Finance committee  I think a preferred metric ideally is not to have that 30% test. When I looked there were 20 EU countries with similar wage subsidies in both amount and structure to Canada's. It's a mix of those that have a sales or gross revenue decline and those that have kept it really clean

Finance committee  Yes, we absolutely do. There are many businesses that draw dividends from their firms and not a salary and, therefore, their personal income will not be covered by the wage subsidy, whereas if they paid themselves a wage, it would be covered. Therefore, I think there should be th

Finance committee  Yes, I do think that does hold some concern, but I don't think that's the only uncertainty with the program. What we're hearing from so many businesses is their fear of the uncertainty around the 30% test and whether they're going to meet it. For some, it's whether or not their s

Finance committee  As I'm sure everyone knows, these have been incredibly difficult times for small and medium-sized firms across the country. I've spent 26 years working with and for small businesses and have never seen anything like this. This challenge started with small and medium-sized firms.

Finance committee  Absolutely. That is a terrific suggestion. We have followed that program closely. It is very similar to the recommendation we made to government to consider something called an “introduction to Canada visa”. It would build on the temporary foreign worker program, but it would s

Finance committee  Thank you very much for your question, Mr. Poilievre. We've certainly had this kind of conversation by trading emails back and forth a few times. CFIB has always been and will always remain a non-partisan organization working with all political parties. Our spirit of criticizing

Finance committee  We haven't done any aggregation of the overall costs to the economy, but we believe the audit season will start to parse some of that out, and that's not too far away. There will be another round of anger and heat at government as a result of these changes when a lot of small bus

Finance committee  Sure, let me talk on that front. I can understand from an employee perspective why one might suggest that it's not a tax but in fact the deferring of your income for your benefit later. From a business perspective, however, it is a tax. It is a hit to the payroll budget of the

Finance committee  We have not set out a specific plan. We did ask our members, and we gave them the example of starting at $100,000. There was broad-based support. Slide 5 of our deck shows that 82% of our members supported the idea of a full year deductibility with the example of $100,000. Ther

Finance committee  We in fact are kind of middling. Some months it's not bad and other months it's pretty terrible. We've seen this bouncing up and down.

Finance committee  It hasn't.

Finance committee  You're absolutely right. The cost pressures on small and medium-sized firms are going through the roof right now. Some of them are natural, in that they're competing for labour and having to raise wages for that reason; others are government-imposed. I don't think right now that

Finance committee  The benefit increases get phased in over 40 years and the premium increases get phased in over five to seven years. That is going to take its toll on the Canadian economy. Again, EI will insulate a little of that in 2019; about a third of the cost increase will be covered by the

Finance committee  Our concern—and this is noted in my National Post piece today—is really on the practicalities of the new rules that have been put in place. We do not deny for a second that some small businesses were taking liberties with the tax system and doing everything they could to avoid ta