Finance committee  Thank you very much for your question. I think that's absolutely critical. The defining variable of our economic well-being will be our ability to export and sell into the global economy. Our domestic economy has been weakening. Canadians continue to borrow and spend, and that h

Finance committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair and honourable members. Thanks so much for having us. It's an honour and a pleasure to be with you today. We really appreciate the opportunity to provide input, because the federal budget is of vital importance to our network of 200,000 businesses

Finance committee  Canada is very good at research and development. We have incredible universities. We're really good at R and D. Our challenge is that we don't commercialize enough products, so it's to have those incentives to have big businesses creating products here in Canada. That's why we re

Finance committee  I think the challenge is that we'd be looking at how to improve productivity and growth of Canada. As Craig alluded to, it's not just a Canadian problem. The OECD is looking at all the rich countries and saying we're sort of stuck in a low-growth trap. How do we get out of that?

Finance committee  Frankly, it's the biggest issue for our members. It's a little bit difficult to cite specific ones. In the video game industry in Montreal, where they're trying to bring in highly skilled workers, they have to prove a labour market impact assessment to say there is nobody in Can

Finance committee  Thank you for the question. That's Canada's biggest challenge. There are 1.3 million unemployed people. How can we help them enter the labour market? I think a very important component of it is certainly in the training. One of the things that we'd really like to emphasize is w

Finance committee  Back to the apprenticeships and working and learning, as we talked about.

Finance committee  Thank you so much, Mr. Chair, and honourable members. It's a pleasure to be here with you today. The year 2016 has been tough for the economy so far. Zeroing in on exports, if you take the first seven months of this year compared to the first seven months of last year, exports

Finance committee  We have resolutions passed by two-thirds of our members from across the country. Usually the key things, our positions, say, on the Canada Pension Plan or on deficits and debts, are debated at our annual general meeting and then a resolution is passed.

Finance committee  Yes, the majority of our members are small businesses.

Finance committee  That's been the challenge for Canada. We have amazing universities and incredible research. The challenge is getting those new products to market. That's why we've said that we want to build more venture capital in Canada. We have a booming venture capital market, but we want mor

Finance committee  There was a lot of debate and discussion at our last annual general meeting about how important deficits versus balanced budgets are. I think business buys the argument that we have to borrow to stimulate the economy, to create growth. Now with the deficits, they're hoping we see

Finance committee  No, we asked about it, but we had heard the budget says it's a deferral so it's not a cancellation of these tax credits. We never got an indication of when or if those tax rates would happen.

Finance committee  I can start. We are thinking about a complete overhaul of the entire tax system in Canada since there are so many tax credits. An expert panel or a royal commission of inquiry could look into the effectiveness of all the tax credits and determine which ones are effective and whi

Finance committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair and committee members. It's such a pleasure to be here with you today on behalf of the Chamber of Commerce, a network of 200,000 businesses across the country that have a lot of interest in the budget and a lot of questions about it. I think busin