Finance committee  I'll just say in addition that the pandemic's impacts are still here; it's not over for many small businesses, so you need to make sure that when policy is being discussed or created, that lens is still there about what impact this will have on small companies. Please don't do an

Finance committee  I don't know if I was the one who said that. I think that was Norma. Perhaps you'd want to turn to her, because I'm not very familiar with that fund.

Finance committee  That's not an easy question, first of all because I may not be as familiar with some of those programs as others. If you're talking outside of the COVID sphere, I'm not really familiar with all of the programs because many of them are very specific to specific industries, specifi

Finance committee  I'll take that first. Jasmin, you may want to add something afterwards. Carbon taxes for small businesses, as Jasmin pointed out earlier, have been very unfair at the federal government level. As we've talked about, half of those revenues come from small businesses. A little bit

Finance committee  It's hard to say, because it would depend on the sector you're in. Certain sectors are much more energy intensive, and therefore the impacts are much greater. Jasmin, maybe you could speak a bit to the agriculture side and some of the impacts there. That's probably more where we

Finance committee  There are a couple of things that could be done. One is creating a pathway to permanent residency for temporary foreign workers. That certainly is not a straight path right now. There are some sort of convoluted paths that you can take through the provincial nominee programs, f

Finance committee  I think it's a bit too early to tell right now. I'm a little worried that it's a bit convoluted in terms of the application process and getting advisers and all that kind of thing. We just had a call earlier today with some of the folks who oversee that to find out what the take-

Finance committee  That is definitely an area that still needs to be addressed. We're still pressing for this and hoping that the federal government will move forward with reductions in the credit card fees as promised in both this budget that just passed and also in the previous one. We're going t

Finance committee  Yes, it's definitely a program that is well used by small companies. We actually make an effort every January to remind them to apply, because it always feels like the application period is quite early and short and many people get upset when they miss it. It was a welcome additi

Finance committee  The most recent changes to the temporary foreign worker program are very welcome for our members. When we asked our members how many have used the temporary foreign worker program, it was only about 16%. However, those who used it found it to be super-helpful in dealing with the

Finance committee  Jasmin, do you want to take this question?

Finance committee  That's the question that I have. I'm assuming no, because CRA does not tend to administer those taxes that are not yet passed in legislation. I'm assuming that it will not be at this point. I suppose if there's another act coming and it's in there before the end of the year, it

Finance committee  It wouldn't be a massive number, but there's definitely a significant proportion. I can't give you an exact number. Good examples are farm implement dealers, and sometimes car dealerships that are smaller in scale but have lots of inventory worth a lot of money, although they the

Finance committee  Yes. As I mentioned, about two-thirds have pandemic debt. That will vary, obviously. We also know that one in five or one in six are looking to close their doors. Close to 16% to 18% of businesses are in that sort of category. It's probably somewhere in the middle. It's definitel

Finance committee  I'm going to turn it over to my colleague Jasmin. Would you like to answer that question, Jasmin?