Finance committee  I agree with you, and I said it in my commentary. But that was the same case when it wasn't a separate fund, because the surplus—as the government of the day and the government before it said—was gone, so if we were ever going to go into a deficit the option was to increase premi

Finance committee  I don't know if we can do that. I don't know if we can transfer it, because I don't think our members will support now going into a deficit situation to put $15 billion back into the account. However, in a—

Finance committee  It's done, but at the same time as the surplus builds up, some of that surplus money should go into the fund or the government should guarantee with a zero interest loan to make sure it doesn't go into a deficit situation.

Finance committee  I wouldn't, but I have a concern, and this is where I would like to work with the committee, because I don't have the full answer. But we have worked with workers compensation boards before, and there will be a bias by the board to increase premiums not to reduce them, because if

Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. On behalf of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business and the 105,000 business owners we represent from every sector and every region of the country, I want to thank the committee for inviting us to provide comments on Bill C-50. Small and medium

Human Resources committee  Well, you can also argue that it went to tax reduction and to debt reduction, but the fact was that it went to general revenues. We were outraged. We told Finance Minister Martin several times when we were outraged, and he knew. Recently we've told Minister Flaherty we are outrag

Human Resources committee  I would agree with that. Having had experience with workers' compensation boards across the country, you see different models. One is a purely political model, where you just put people in there as political appointments, and then all of a sudden that will influence the rate-sett

Human Resources committee  You don't want that to happen.

Human Resources committee  You don't want that to happen.

Human Resources committee  I could do that, if you want.

Human Resources committee  Thanks. I just wanted to debunk some myths. First off, as I said in my testimony, we are looking at this in a holistic manner, at both immigration policy and training, and we're doing a major training survey. As far as the difference between our two groups is concerned, in our

Human Resources committee  We represent the non-stock-market economy. You have to own your own business to be a member. We have 105,000 business owners in every sector in every region across the country. We work on the principle of one member, one vote. We visit every member, all 105,000, at least once a y

Human Resources committee  Yes.

Human Resources committee  We represent small and medium-sized enterprises, which are businesses with fewer than 500 employees. Our average member would have 10 employees. We have members with one employee and members with no employees. To become a member, a person has to own his own business. That's our d

Human Resources committee  I wouldn't have a handle on that. Lots of times, we have found that employees are on contract at their request. Right now, we're finding with this market that the employers have to be as flexible as possible to accommodate the employee, which is a good thing.