Human Resources committee  I think that speaks to our last recommendation, which is to ensure that they're publicly accounted for. Right now we don't have a very good method of tracing where the $2 billion goes. We know that it goes to the provinces, and we know it goes to programs. But it's measuring the

Human Resources committee  Is it the Canada job grant, you're speaking to? I think it's important that SMEs get a chance to, as you say, speak to some of the initiatives available to them. We are cautiously optimistic about that program. I think as long as the grant is easy to administer, has low red tape—

Human Resources committee  As a country, we do so much to negotiate free trade agreements externally and to smooth barriers to do that, but we don't do enough of that internally. It's a long-standing problem in this country. Internal mobility is a problem for a variety of reasons. I don't want to expand to

Human Resources committee  To the why for.... I'm not sure I follow the distinction between the Atlantic and your example.

Human Resources committee  I think I catch your drift. To speak to the seasonal component in particular, we carefully monitored the announcements made on changes to EI. I believe they were announced over a year and a half ago or so now. We were waiting to hear from our members. We expected a significant

Human Resources committee  We did get a few, but out of 109,000 members—

Human Resources committee  —we didn't get as many as we had anticipated getting.

Human Resources committee  There are 109,000 across the country, I believe. Atlantic is...I want to say, 10,000 to 15,000 members, if you add all of the provinces together. I'll have to verify it. I can get those numbers for you, though.

Human Resources committee  Certainly. We do know there are job vacancy rates and shortages of qualified labour all across the country. From our business owners we are hearing that they are struggling to find workers in all regions. It's not just the typical western Canada success stories that we're hearin

Human Resources committee  I could spend all day speaking to that, per sector. I think generally it is the kind of training that is involved in orientation. It can be very specific training depending on the sector or the kind of business that you're in. It can be also the kind of investment involved with

Human Resources committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. As many of the members know, CFIB is a not-for-profit, non-partisan organization representing more than 109,000 small and medium-sized businesses across Canada that collectively employ more than 1.25 million Canadians and account for $75 billion, or nearly

Finance committee  Thank you. I want to highlight from our presentation that small businesses do train youth. They are very involved in youth hiring and they do an incredible amount of on-the-job formal training that needs to be recognized by government. They can be assisted in that by consideri

Finance committee  I certainly can send the old report, yes.

Finance committee  We do have a piece of research called WageWatch that we're updating this year with the new StatsCan data, which showed that at the federal public service level, I believe.... I could be wrong and it might be the whole public service, but I think it's just the federal level. When

Finance committee  Briefly, we see this as a valuable way to incent employers to continue to grow their employee base. Payroll taxes are a significant barrier to employers at the small business level, to hiring. They're essentially revenue neutral. You have to pay them whether you make any money or