International Trade committee  I'll go first. They don't. They really don't. A number of times over the years we've asked about awareness of these bigger services, and a very small number of people have any idea that they exist. As I mentioned in my remarks, even if they do know, many of them feel as though they're just too small to be seen as being important enough for the government to want to invest any time and energy in them.

International Trade committee  Access to capital is a problem regardless of whether you're exporting or not, especially as you grow beyond the start-up stage. I think that for start-ups there is a variety of different formats now from which people can potentially get funding. It's still tough, but at least there are some programs out there.

International Trade committee  Thanks for the opportunity to be here today to share CFIB's perspective on exporting among SMEs and recent announcements that aim to assist them in that process. First, though, CFIB is a not-for-profit, non-partisan organization representing more than 109,000 small and medium-sized businesses right across Canada that collectively employ more than 1.25 million Canadians and account for $75 billion in GDP.

Finance committee  From a small business perspective internal trade is critical. We are also pushing very strongly right now to bring down those barriers, given that CETA is coming into place and it may be easier now for some European countries to get bids on certain—

Finance committee  Again, the European free trade agreement in particular and the agreement with the United States for sure have been very important.

Finance committee  This would be anecdotal, but from our evidence from our membership they are not spending any more. These cards are being distributed to anybody who wants them, in our opinion. We see them all over the marketplace. It really doesn't matter what level of income somebody has, it's about how much they spend.

Finance committee  Raising the minimum wage is always a challenge because, ultimately, the issue is about putting money back into the pockets of people and we don't believe that raising the minimum wage is the way to do that. We believe that you need to increase your basic exemption and make sure that you're not taxing people more.

Finance committee  Just to be clear, we were not asking for the government to put in 20%. We were asking to move it to a 50-50 split. It once was 40-40-20.

Finance committee  Yes. There was a time when employers and employees paid the same. Today we see the opportunity to move it to 50-50, given that a bigger and bigger proportion of the EI benefits is actually special benefits paid out, which benefits society, and perhaps the worker should be paying a bit more of a fair share in EI costs.

Finance committee  We believe so, yes. The total tax burden is the number one issue our members face. When we ask them what they will do with lower taxes, small businesses always want to reinvest it back into their businesses, whether through employees, in hiring more employees, increasing salaries and compensation, as well as investing in infrastructure in their business.

Finance committee  We have 109,000.

Finance committee  Yes, we do.

Finance committee  We think so.

Finance committee  Yes, they absolutely are, and in fact, in the more recent surveys I would say that the greater proportion is skilled labour, but there's definitely a growing concern with unskilled labour as well. I have to say, with the change in the temporary foreign worker program, that is becoming even more apparent.

Finance committee  Yes, we would like to test that. We know the apprenticeship tax credit and the apprenticeship grant are well liked by our membership as well.