Finance committee  Thank you. I'm very pleased to appear before you today, for the first time, on behalf of Restaurants Canada. As Chair Rajotte mentioned, I've represented the industry many times before this committee with the Canadian Restaurant and Foodservices Association,or CRFA, and we're v

Finance committee  What I'm referring to concerning the youth hires program is very similar to what was in place for the small business EI credit. If you were to hire additional employees and you were under a certain size of business and in the next year you increased your payroll over that of the

Finance committee  We have a real variety of jobs in our industry. We have a lot of entry-level jobs, as I've already mentioned, and we have semi-skilled to highly skilled jobs, so it's going to be used by different members in different ways. We provide a lot of on-the-job training. It's not going

Finance committee  As I mentioned in my remarks, payroll taxes have been job killers in our sector, and we have concerns about increasing payroll taxes. Yes, I understand that it is a contribution to retirement funds for the individual, but for the labour-intensive business, there's a significant c

Finance committee  Temporary foreign workers represent less than 2% of our 1.1 million workers. The most critical needs, those critical labour shortages, tend to be in western Canada, specifically in northern Alberta. There are pockets throughout the country, but our stress areas are in western Can

Finance committee  Again, because we have such a diverse industry, it depends on the position. For most entry-level positions, no, we do not. Part-time employees, students who are saving for and contributing to their education, they're not interested in paying into a pension plan. Some of them—

Finance committee  —who are hired have the intention of really only working while they're in school in the industry.

Finance committee  We think there are alternatives to expanding the CPP that will achieve the same purposes, and we would like to see some of the provinces get on board with the voluntary structure that was put in place a couple of years ago. One of the things—I didn't finish responding to Mr. Bri

Finance committee  My understanding is that the real pressure point concerning future payouts of CPP is for the middle- and higher-income workers who are not going to have saved enough. It's not so much for the lower-income workers. I think the real risk in CPP premium increases is what it will do

Finance committee  Yes.

Human Resources committee  Thank you. I'm pleased to appear before you today on behalf of Restaurants Canada, formerly the Canadian Restaurant and Foodservices Association, or CRFA. Restaurant Canada represents one of the largest sectors of the Canadian economy, with $68 billion in sales and almost 1.2 m

Human Resources committee  I skipped a lot.

Human Resources committee  I think we need to have better communication and better accountability about the offerings the provinces have. There's a huge amount of unawareness right now and there has to be much tighter communication among the program providers and businesses and employees.

Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm also delighted to be back in Ottawa again. I'm here representing the $68 billion, 1.1 million employee restaurant industry. We have lots of ideas on how Canada's taxation and regulatory regimes could be improved, but given the five-minute limit, I'm goi

Finance committee  Well, as everybody knows, we have a very mixed labour market here in Canada. We have red-hot Alberta, where our members are actually having to reduce hours of operation. They're having to close down parts of their business. The burnout rate of the owners, operators, and staff onc