THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON NATIONAL FINANCE
EVIDENCE
SAINT JOHN, New Brunswick, Thursday, November 23, 2017
The Standing Senate Committee on National Finance met this day at 9:03 a.m. to study the Minister of Finance’s proposed changes to the Income Tax Act respecting the taxation of private corporations and the tax planning strategies involve.
Senator Percy Mockler (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: Honourable senators, I welcome you to this meeting of the Standing Senate Committee on National Finance. My name is Percy Mockler, a senator from New Brunswick and chair of the committee. At this time, I would like to ask senators to introduce themselves, starting on my left, please.
Senator Cools: Senator Anne Cools from Toronto, Ontario.
Senator Oh: Senator Oh, from Ontario, Toronto.
Senator Marshall: Senator Elizabeth Marshall from Newfoundland and Labrador.
Senator Eaton: Nicky Eaton from Ontario.
The Chair: Today, in Saint John, New Brunswick, our committee continues its special study on the proposed changes to the Income Tax Act.
The committee received this mandate, order of reference, on September 26, 2017, and is planning on submitting a report to the Senate of Canada on December 15.
The mandate that we received from the Senate of Canada is that the Standing Senate Committee on National Finance be authorized to examine and report on the Minister of Finance’s proposed changes to the Income Tax Act respecting the taxation of private corporations and the tax planning strategies involved, in particular, income sprinkling, holding passive investment inside a private corporation and converting income into capital gains; that the committee take particular note of the impact of the government’s proposed changes on incorporated small businesses and professionals, economic growth and government finances, the fairness of the taxation of different types of income and other related matters as per the order of reference; and that the committee submit its final report to the Senate no later than December 15, 2017, and retain all powers necessary to publicize its findings for 180 days after presenting the final report.
This morning marks our twenty-seventh public meeting dealing with this subject matter. We are completing today, here in Saint John, the public meetings from coast to coast. Other meetings will continue on November 28, next Tuesday, in Ottawa.
I see that we’ve been joined by Senator Neufeld. Senator, for the record, can I ask you to introduce yourself?
Senator Neufeld: Sorry, chair. Richard Neufeld, British Columbia.
The Chair: This morning, we welcome the following witnesses to this panel: Dr. Amy Schneider, a doctor of veterinary medicine; Mr. James Crosby, President of Crosby Molasses; and Jill Green, Chief Executive Officer of Green Imaging Technologies Limited.
To my left is the clerk of the committee, Ms. Gaëtane Lemay, and to my right is our chief analyst, Sylvain Fleury.
I would like to thank the witnesses for accepting our invitation. I have been informed by the clerk that the presentations will be made in the following order: Dr. Schneider, to be followed by Mr. Crosby and Ms. Green. So at this point, doctor, would you please make your presentation? The floor is yours.
Dr. Amy Schneider, Doctor of Veterinary Medicine, as an individual: Good morning. First, I want to state that I’m quite far outside of my comfort zone doing this today. I’m not a tax expert, but I am a small business owner. I put my name forward because my sister, Jill Green, over here, encouraged me to do so, and I do feel this is a really important matter for our country.
I’m Amy Schneider. I’m a mother of two children. I’m married. I live in Fredericton, New Brunswick, which is my hometown. I’m also a veterinarian and a farmer.
I am a Canadian, but I’m also an American. My father’s an American citizen so I had dual citizenship. About five or six years ago, I gave up my U.S. citizenship because at that point I was 10 years into owning a business in Canada and had no intention of moving to the U.S. and starting a business there. I bring this up, however, because the changes in the tax law in Canada, or the proposed changes, make me look backwards at that decision and wonder if it was the right one. Perhaps opening a business in the U.S. is the right decision at this time if we go forward with these changes.
I believe, perhaps, the reason I was called to speak at this committee is I’m a long-term business owner in my hometown of Fredericton. I own a veterinary hospital there that I bought in 2001, which was two years after graduating from veterinary school. It was a decision out of necessity at the time. My boss passed away. I had a decision to make whether I was going to move away or buy that practice, and I chose to buy the practice.
About five years ago, I got together with a business partner and we opened a practice in Newfoundland, so I have an active veterinary hospital in Conception Bay South, Newfoundland, and that has been a great venture for me, very exciting. We also now are in the process of opening another one right in Saint John’s, Newfoundland, and I believe perhaps my perspective of having a business in two different provinces is the reason I was asked to speak with you today.
I want to share a little bit the trend in veterinary medicine, and that is that most new graduates coming out of veterinary school are not interested in owning a practice. There are so many barriers and not so much benefit to owning a practice. An example of that is with my two children, I didn’t get maternity leave. I had to fund it myself and I got very little time. I had two months with my son and six months with my daughter.
There are programs trying to encourage young veterinarians to own their own practices and, therefore, encourage small business within Canada, but the trend across the country is that large corporations are buying up small individual practices. A lot of those corporations are actually U.S. based so, if this trend continues, most veterinary practices within Canada will be owned by big American corporations, and my concern is that these changes going forward will perpetuate that trend.
Regardless of the tax changes themselves, I feel that the way it was done left something to be desired. There was no notice, done during the busy season, the divisive nature of the wording around it, no time to look at the responses or the proposal and the consultation period being declined. All of these things I don’t think represented the magnitude of this in the proper way. Also, it is pitting employees against employers and kind of making business owners look like whiny, loophole-seeking people when really we’re the hardworking, backbone of the country. We employ about three quarters of the Canadian workforce.
I do want to address a couple of the things that specifically will affect my business. Income splitting is one of them that definitely concerns me. All shareholders who receive dividends from private companies are taxed on this income. There is no avoidance of tax. Kind of as a reminder, income splitting is already allowed with no issue from the government between Canadians receiving pensions, and the people who benefit from this the most are the high-pension earners.
It would be extremely difficult to assign a reasonable tax for a shareholder who has signed joint personal guarantees on family assets, like my husband, who advises on business plans and strategies daily, like my husband, and who is such an integral support resource for the management of a business, again, like my husband. I believe that all business should maintain the ability to declare dividends to shareholders in whatever manner they choose.
The second one that I’m just going to speak on briefly is the passive investment income. Why should business owners be penalized for trying to build a rainy day fund for their business to be supported in the event of an economic downturn or build a retirement portfolio without the help of an employer-contributed pension?
Those are two of my concerns with the tax reform. I can’t speak specifically how it will affect me if it rolls out because it’s been changed several times, so it’s too hard to speak to that, but I’m here because I believe it’s extremely important. I believe the whole process needs to be slowed down. I would really like this country to be a place where entrepreneurs seek to come here to start a business because businesses flourished here. If you Google where should I start a business globally, Canada pops up as one of the tops ones because the taxes allow for businesses to flourish, and that’s what I would like to come out of this process. I would like us to be the place for small businesses to be.
The Chair: Thank you for accepting our invitation, I guess through your sister, but I think that had we not received what I’ve just heard, we would have missed something, so thank you for being here this morning.
Mr. Crosby, please.
James Crosby, President, Crosby Molasses Company Limited: Good morning. My name is James Crosby. I’m the fifth-generation family member to serve as president of Crosby Molasses Company. My great-great-grandfather founded Crosby’s in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia in 1879. Less than 1 per cent of business make it this far. I’m very proud of our history and the opportunity to work with my father and brother every day.
The Atlantic provinces have a disproportionate number of multi-generational family businesses. These entrepreneurial success stories are the backbone and saving grace of our region. These proposals are causing our family to explore alternatives that would be devastating to our community. Would we be better off selling our business to a multinational or a foreign-owned entity? Yes. The treatment of passive income already puts us at a competitive disadvantage relative to public companies, and these changes will make it worse. Who would find a 73 per cent tax rate fair? I fear for what Atlantic Canada would look like if family businesses like ours were made uncompetitive or to disappear.
These proposed tax changes are a disaster. They will hurt our ability to grow, to create jobs and to invest in our communities, like we have proudly been doing for the past 138 years.
When my father was a young man, he witnessed a prolonged and messy feud between his father and uncle that nearly destroyed our business. My grandfather was forced to remortgage his house and borrow money wherever he could to avoid seeing his brothers’ shares fall into the hands of an American company. Shortly after gaining control of the business, my grandfather lost his battle with cancer. My father became president at age 28. For 40 years, my father has successfully led our business through very challenging times. He’s been a steady operator who has helped hundreds of people provide for their families. Crosby Molasses has been his life’s work and now, at age 68, he would like to begin transferring the business to my brother and me. As of July, our succession plan has become way more complicated and way more expensive to implement.
How does taking more and more money from my family help us create jobs? The vast majority of my family’s wealth is sitting in new equipment, an upgraded plant and inventories. What keeps our family going is the dream of building something larger than ourselves, and that vision has enabled us to take a long-term view. For generations, we have been operating with a sense of stewardship and a desire to leave our business in better shape than we found it.
We love our community, we love the people that we work with and we love investing our time and energy in our business and watching it grow. Today, my great-great-grandfather would be proud that we are operating a diversified food business employing 85 people here in Saint John, with sales in excess of $29 million.
Four years ago, an opportunity presented itself, and my father took a big risk. We decided to invest $8 million to expand our facility to co-manufacture for one of the world’s largest food companies. We were two weeks away from startup on a Sunday morning when I received a phone call. A broken water line completely flooded our building. My father had risked the work of four generations to grow our business, and the timing could not have been worse. It took us the better part of a year and thousands of hours of collective effort to get our equipment operating smoothly and rebuild our offices. We have excellent people, and Atlantic Canadians don’t quit. Today, we are a reliable co-manufacturer, and we are proud that this expansion created 35 additional full-time jobs.
If another big opportunity to expand our business presented itself tomorrow, what would you do? Would you put four generations of capital at risk? With all this government-created uncertainty, the risks outweigh the reward. We would have to say no.
As entrepreneurs, we carry the weight of our business on our shoulders at all times. It’s our appetite for risk that drives growth and creates jobs. Manufacturing jobs like the ones that we create are absolutely critical to our region because of the spinoff effects. In the last 12 months, our total wages and benefits were $5.4 million. We spent $13.5 million with other Canadian entities, including $6.5 million right here in the Maritimes. This spending has a multiplier effect, which benefits citizens well beyond our community, and these benefits will disappear forever if we are unable to survive.
The best policy is one that leaves more money in the hands of entrepreneurs so we can continue to deploy our capital as we see fit.
These changes are riddled with unintended consequences that will alter the course of history, leaving government fighting over pieces of a smaller and smaller pie.
We are not against tax reform done the right way. We need to start over, and we need to include all stakeholders, with the goal of simplifying the tax code to ensure a level playing field and the long-term success of private business in our region and our country.
Thank you for this opportunity to share our story.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Crosby.
Now the chair will recognize Ms. Green.
Jill Green, Chief Executive Officer, Green Imaging Technologies Inc.: Thank you, Senator Mockler, and thank you to the members of the committee for the opportunity to speak to you today.
I come before you not as a tax expert. I am an individual citizen and a business owner that wants to share with you how concerned I am not only about the proposals the way they stand and how they were introduced, but the haste with which the government is trying to enact them.
I’m a proud Canadian that grew up in Fredericton, New Brunswick. I went to school at UNB. I married my childhood sweetheart, but he had educated himself out of the job market in Canada and we moved to the States. We built a lovely life for ourselves in the States. We had our children, we had great jobs, and we thought that was it and we were going to be in the U.S. for the rest of our lives and just come home to visit.
But then they were doing some really cool things at the University of New Brunswick and created some technology that was ready for commercialization, so they contacted us in the U.S. and said, “Do you want to come home?” It was a very difficult decision for us. We had things going very well down there, but we decided to take the risk and we moved back to Canada to start our company, Green Imaging Technologies.
That was 10 years ago. We have grown that company into a global exporter. Ninety-nine per cent of our products and services are sold around the world and not in Canada, so all the money we bring into our company is fresh money for Canada. We employ 10 highly educated individuals that otherwise might not have stayed in Canada, at least New Brunswick or Atlantic Canada, and we’re a very successful company.
Let me say that when they first presented the tax proposals, I didn’t even listen. It was in the middle of the summer, and lots of things were going on. Usually, when the government does things, it’s a long period of time, and so I wasn’t too concerned. But then I started to hear rumblings that this might affect small business, so I sat down with my accountant to talk about the proposed changes and try to understand what it actually meant. I can tell you I left that meeting feeling really scared because there were effects on my family and my extended family, as well. At that point, I learned the consultation period was almost over. Not all the draft legislation had even been written so that it could be reviewed, but it was going to be put in place by January 1.
As I listened to more and more of the government’s response to what the small business concerns were, I heard language about us, inflammatory language, like we’re cheats and we use loopholes and take advantage of loopholes in the tax system, like we were doing something wrong, and I felt I needed to speak up. I thank you for the opportunity to be heard, even as an individual. I read some of the transcripts from some of the other hearing, and I can’t speak like some of those tax experts can talk and I hope I don’t get asked any questions about it.
Before I get into some specifics about the proposed tax changes, I first want to be very clear that I am fine making changes to the tax system. Things can always be made better and, if there’s a clear problem, we need to fix it, but I also believe that any changes to the fundamental taxation system of a great country like ours should be done in an open and consultative way, that every voice should be heard, any concerns should be carefully considered and then the changes made after a reasonable period of time.
When the finance department presented the proposed changes, they did not provide details on all the proposed changes so there wasn’t draft legislation on all of it. They had a very brief consultation period and then, based on those consultations, they have made some commitments to change. They are good changes that they have committed to, but we still have not seen draft legislation so we don’t actually know how they intend to implement it.
During the consultation period, or just after it, the government received 21,000 written responses, and I question, is it possible that they can read and carefully consider those and still put everything in place in the next few months? Some of it they postponed in putting in the budget, but that’s still very, very fast, and I’m sure some of them were very long, at least 21,000 pages of documents.
You’re probably interested in how some of the tax proposals might affect me. Again, I’m not a tax expert, but I am a very concerned small business owner. They’ve stepped back on some of the more controversial things about the capital gains exemptions and passing things on to other generations of business. On the income sprinkling side, my family invested in my company when I moved back to Canada. They invested in me. They took a risk on me and became shareholders in my company. By doing that, it allowed us to get our company to a spot where we could attract more investments so that we could grow our company. Without it, we would not have our successful enterprise that we do now and I wouldn’t be here talking to you today. Under the proposed tax changes, when we issue dividends to our shareholders, my family would be taxed at the highest tax bracket because they are not actively contributing to my company. They’re my parents and my brothers and sisters. It just doesn’t seem like that is fair.
Second, my husband and I both work in our business. I’m concerned, what if one of us has a health issue and must take an extended period off work? We would no longer be considered actively working in the business? If we needed to bring income into our family, we would do that through dividends, and then we would be paying that at the highest tax bracket at the time when we could least afford to do that. This also does not seem fair.
The other issue I’m really worried about is the passive income within a corporation. My company’s in the oil and gas sector. We all know that’s very cyclical, and we’ve experienced a downturn for a long period of time. As a prudent CEO, I retain cash within my company, I invest it conservatively, and I earn income on that. Is it fair that that passive income will be taxed differently? I know they’ve introduced an income threshold of $50,000 and they’ve said that any passive investments I currently hold won’t be affected, but first, where did $50,000 come from? Why isn’t it indexed to the size of my company or the market I’m in? And then what happens to my current investments? If I sell a stock and then reinvest those proceeds, would that be considered new investment and would the income on that be part of the new tax calculations or the old tax calculations? And then I have to track all this stuff, too, what I own now and what I buy. So those things are all a big concern to me.
The thought that I want to leave you with is the speed at which this is happening leaves me deeply concerned that our finance department has not carefully considered what may happen to small business and individuals. Small business is the backbone of our economy and, without it, I believe we would fail as a country. I recommend that the finance department consider slowing down and take adequate time to consult, consider and make fair and objective changes to our tax system. There are many things that need to be considered, and it will take much longer than a few months to do this properly. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Ms. Green.
We will now turn to questions from the senators.
Senator Marshall: Thank you to the witnesses for being here this morning.
I find with the hearings that there is a common thread from all of our witnesses, but I must say that in each panel, something a little bit different comes out. This morning you spoke about the possibility of your business being bought up by larger firms. I think Dr. Schneider mentioned it in particular, and Mr. Crosby, you mentioned it in your opening remarks, and even Ms. Green, you talked about you were in the U.S. and you’ve come back. This issue was raised. We’ve had cross-country hearings, and it was raised in Alberta, and the witness at the time didn’t think that it was such a big issue, but I think it is, and obviously it is because you’ve raised it here this morning.
I want to make sure that it gets into the record. Could you elaborate on this possibility of your companies being bought up by larger companies, whether they’re Canadian companies or American companies or whatever? I’d like for you all to talk about that risk, because that is a concern if we start to lose our small businesses.
Dr. Schneider: That is a real concern in veterinary medicine, absolutely. Large corporations, both American and Canadian, are buying up clinics at a rapid rate. In fact, in Moncton as an example, every clinic in Moncton is owned by a large Canadian corporation with the exception of two. That has not happened in Fredericton yet, but it’s definitely moving across the country, and the largest companies buying up clinics actually are from the U.S. Pet Smart would be an example, Banfield would be an example, and there’s another company called VCA, which are kind of the top three that are buying clinics. They are able to do so, because they have very deep pockets, at a much higher price than the individual entrepreneur. That makes it very attractive to a small business owner actually to sell to a corporation and is driving up the price of veterinary hospitals.
Any tax law that makes it harder for an individual owner to own a clinic makes that more likely to happen. It makes the individual Canadian veterinarian less likely to take the risk to buy a business. It drives down the price of them to do so while driving up the price of the corporate entities to buy practices. It definitely will make a difference. It’s already happening now, but I believe it will escalate it.
Senator Marshall: Okay, but you’re saying there is a trend line there already?
Dr. Schneider: There is. We need to encourage entrepreneurs.
Senator Marshall: So based on these proposed tax changes, when you’re looking at the changes, you can see that this increases the opportunity for that trend line to continue at an accelerated rate?
Dr. Schneider: Yes. We need to encourage our young veterinarians to want to buy their own practices. Anything that does the opposite will be a detriment to small business in our country and keeping that income in our country.
Senator Marshall: Thank you. Mr. Crosby?
Mr. Crosby: We have a family business, so our shareholders are our family members. Not all of our family members are active in the business. With income splitting, for example, all of a sudden my sister, who’s a teacher, my other sister who works at a university, are in lower tax brackets, so now any dividends that go to them are going to be taxed at that highest rate.
The other thing is transferring a business within a family takes time, and when it takes time, there are business failure risks that could happen. The way that our structure is set up, my father could sell our business tomorrow and we would have capital gains exemptions for all six of our shareholders, so we would have $4.8 million in the bank, no tax. That’s the benefit of selling our business. It’s instant, there’s no risk, and there’s no time period, whereas the big issue with the proposals as they read is that we have to keep running our business and every dollar that we try to transfer to other family members is being taxed at a much higher rate.
My father wants to retire. He needs money to retire. We can’t unlock the value that’s in our business on our balance sheet and get it into his hands and the hands of our other family members effectively without giving more and more money to the government. The pie is only so big and, when the government takes larger and larger slices, well, that leaves less pie for us to share with our employees and to reinvest in our business and that’s why selling the business is more attractive under these proposals.
Senator Marshall: I would think that the proposed changes with regard to passive income would also impact your decision as to whether you continue to operate or whether you sell the business? Is that also a consideration?
Mr. Crosby: Well, yes. First of all, $1 million for a business like ours, like, $50,000 wouldn’t even pay for our roof repair that we did last year. It’s just inadequate, and it encourages business like ours to stay small. We need to be encouraging business like ours to take risks and to grow.
Senator Marshall: Thank you.
Ms. Green, I know your situation is a little bit different because you went to the States and then you came back, so perhaps you can just work that into your answer. I’m interested in your perspective because a lot of witnesses have said that they’re considering moving jurisdictions.
Ms. Green: Well, yes, we were in the States and working, and I owned a business in the States, so I feel comfortable with the tax system down there. But I also mentioned that we’re an exporter and we export almost 99 per cent of everything we do. The biggest concentration of our customers is in Houston, so it would make more sense for my company to be in Houston than it is here, but I choose to be here, one, for the quality of life and because my family are here, because I’m proud to be a Canadian and because we have a relationship with the University of New Brunswick and they do research that is very important to our company so it makes sense to be close to them. But when I look at the changes that are being proposed and the risks that I’m taking as a business, and it’s riskier to be in Canada because I’m away from my customers, the risks are higher and higher and higher and it is so easy to go and take my company somewhere else. I have great people here. I would hope they would all come with me. But, you know, it could happen. Like, I could do it. I don’t want to do it.
Senator Marshall: You are mobile, is what you’re saying?
Ms. Green: We’re a mobile company, yes. We’re here because we choose to be here. Also, we’re in the oil and gas sector. You were asking about selling to big business. That is what happens there. The big companies buy the little companies and that’s how they grow and how they become more innovative, so there’s always that opportunity for us as well. But we have great shareholders here and we are a happy Atlantic Canadian company, and it’s just the changes are frightening.
Senator Marshall: And you are mobile?
Ms. Green: And I’m mobile.
Senator Marshall: I wanted to ask a question specific to passive income because we had quite a lengthy discussion on that yesterday in one of our panels. My question is just really simple and direct. I know all the details haven’t been fleshed out and we won’t get that until Budget 2018, but if the passive income proposal was in place, would your companies be as successful today compared to if this passive income proposal went in 10 years ago? What would the difference be? I know it’s hypothetical.
Ms. Green: I can tell you because we just started our company 10 years ago. We’re in the oil and gas sector. We’re in hard times right now in the oil and gas sector. I put money aside in case of hard times so I would have cash flow available to be able to pay my employees and do my work and to continue on through the rough periods. If I wasn’t able to save the money that I was in my company, I might not exist right now. I’m telling you a $1 million isn’t very much money when you’re trying to do business. If you’re thinking you’re earning 5 per cent on it, that’s your $50,000. My company might not exist if they had that place 10 years ago.
Senator Marshall: Thank you.
Dr. Schneider: That doesn’t apply to me as much being a smaller business and starting with very little capital. That would affect me more in the future in my retirement years. So that question doesn’t apply in that way.
Senator Marshall: So you think 10 years down the road you wouldn’t be in as good a position?
Dr. Schneider: Right. Absolutely. Again, it pushes me into a situation where I have to look at the buyer with the biggest purse for my business, right? The U.S. corporate buyer? Because I need to maximize my retirement income, especially if this passive income reform goes through.
Mr. Crosby: Passive income is very important. It’s important to get money out of your operating company and into a holding company for creditor reasons. If you can’t accumulate cash outside of your business, then future business expansion becomes problematic and acquiring other businesses becomes problematic. Just the whole limit is very arbitrary. Why are we encouraging businesses to stay small and why are we putting restrictions on how they can deploy their capital? Publically traded companies can have passive investments and get taxed at a rate of 26.5 per cent. We’re currently being taxed at a rate of 52 per cent on our passive income and these changes are going to push it to 73 per cent. How can we compete with that?
Senator Eaton: Good morning. Mr. Trudeau and Minister Morneau have said that these new tax regulations are to help the middle class. Do you consider yourselves part of the 1 per cent, the very rich, or do you consider yourselves part of the working middle class?
Dr. Schneider: I’m part of the working middle class.
Mr. Crosby: Yes. I live in a bungalow. I drive a 10-year-old car, and I have never had a tax return over $150,000. I’m doing this for the hope of one day becoming wealthy, but I certainly am not now. The best thing that we can do for the middle class is to give them a job, and these changes hurt our ability to create jobs.
Ms. Green: I’m definitely part of the working middle class after 16 hours of work yesterday.
Senator Eaton: Only 16 hours?
Ms. Green: Only 16 yesterday.
Senator Eaton: I would like to follow up on Senator Marshall’s questions. On the $50,000 passive income, what kind of a pension would you like to see? What kind of pension do you think you’re going to be able to retire on with this limit of a $1 million, which has to do, as Mr. Crosby says, expansion for you, expansion perhaps for you again, downturns, Mr. Crosby, and maternity leave for you two ladies if you decide to have more children. I wonder because I keep thinking of our civil servants and our members of unions whose pensions are very safe and solid and are not taxed. What kind of pensions do you think you’ll all retire on?
Dr. Schneider: The reason I’m taking all the risk in opening additional businesses is so that someday I can retire hopefully on a reasonable income so I can have at least the quality of life that I’m having now, and that amount does not allow for that given that I plan to live to be at least 95.
Mr. Crosby: The real issue is that $1 million in passive investment is not enough to retire on.
Senator Eaton: Well, especially if you have to deal with expansion, downturns, repairs to your roof, maternity leave.
Mr. Crosby: Absolutely. I guess the bigger question is, why put a limit on it anyway? I think there are better ways of encouraging businesses to deploy their capital and invest than setting some kind of arbitrary limit.
Senator Eaton: So your father is really caught in that bind, isn’t he?
Mr. Crosby: He is, yes.
Ms. Green: I’m in the enviable or unenviable position of being in business with my husband, so then we have no pension at all.
Senator Eaton: I haven’t understood whether $50,000 includes both you and your husband or do you each have $50,000?
Ms. Green: I’m not really sure, but we have two children, many things going on. If it’s $50,000 each and then you get taxed at whatever percentage above that, that’s not a lot of money if you want to have a nice standard of living going forward with no pension. I guess we might get CPP, but we have no EI, no pension, no maternity benefits and no health plan.
Senator Eaton: And after a 16-hour day, you should have lots of time to go get another job.
Ms. Green: Absolutely. Spend lots of money.
Senator Eaton: Thank you.
Senator Neufeld: Thank you, all three of you, for your presentations. They were excellent.
As Senator Marshall said, we always learn something a little bit different from each presentation, but I can tell you that the general drift is all the same. It doesn’t matter who you’re talking to, the generalities of how this negatively affects small business in a huge way is much similar regardless of whether you’re in Western Canada, in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan or Manitoba or here in Eastern Canada or even Quebec and Ontario. We’ve had lots of people come and testify to us.
I just want to read to you, as I do to most people, a little excerpt of what the Minister of Finance told this committee when he was questioned about these same things. The Minister of Finance told the committee that the government recognizes the need to retain funds within a corporation for business purposes. It’d be nice if actually that’s what they thought, but that’s what he says. But it wants to discourage using private corporations to save for retirement.
Now, to my knowledge, what I’ve heard for a long time and what I try to instill in my children is you need to look after your retirement. At some point in time, you’re going to retire, so you have to look after it. You hear that from government all the time also. Canadians aren’t saving enough for retirement. Then you have a finance minister, a wealthy guy who apparently doesn’t have to worry about his retirement too much, come out and say that business shouldn’t be able to retain funds for retirement. I find that so unacceptable. I just wonder how you folks feel about that and how you think about retirement. You’re younger, but it’s going to come whether you like it or not, guaranteed. I’m finding that. Just tell me a little bit, each one of you, about how you feel about a finance minister in Canada that would say you shouldn’t save for retirement.
Dr. Schneider: To me, that’s the benefit of owning a business. There are lots of non-benefits to owning a business, like getting up in the middle of the night, signing away your life’s work, et cetera, et cetera, but that is the benefit. That’s the reason. So taking that away is taking away basically the reason for all of the stress and responsibility. I also find it unacceptable.
Mr. Crosby: The finance minister has absolutely no credibility on the topic of retirement. He can’t even be counted on to properly understand financial disclosure requirements, let alone run our economy. You kind of have to look at what his background is. His family business is in the pension business, so no wonder he doesn’t want businesses like ours accumulating money. He wants to direct us to buy products like Morneau Shepell supply. He’s done so much damage to the trust that we, all small business owners, have in our government.
Senator Neufeld: Further to that, your father is retiring, you told us.
Mr. Crosby: My father would like to retire, but these changes very much put that in jeopardy.
Senator Neufeld: Okay. Thank you.
Ms. Green: I think it’s everybody’s goal to retire someday, have a nice pension, maybe go to Florida for six months a year like a lot of people do, but this puts that in jeopardy for all of us because we can only save so much money and have so much passive income. The government wants to limit how much we can have when we retire, so it pushes our retirement out farther and farther. Someday I would like to transition out of my company. In a perfect world, it would be worth lots of money when it’s time to retire and I could gain that way as well. But that’s not a given. We’re in a really risky business. It could all go away shortly, and the only thing I would have remaining would be maybe some passive income in a holding company to help get me through a really hard time. Somebody telling me that I can only have a certain amount in there is very concerning for me.
Senator Neufeld: Ms. Green, you say you’re in the oil and gas industry and you export most of what you do, I guess around the world, or is that within Canada also? I come from an oil and gas background, so I’m just a little bit interested in where the market is.
Ms. Green: About 1 per cent of my business is in Canada and the rest of it is global. I have a concentration of customers in Houston, but I’m in Russia, Japan, Australia, Europe and South America. I sell all over the world.
Senator Neufeld: So you could transfer your business to any one of those countries?
Ms. Green: Oh, absolutely, yes.
Senator Oh: I have a question for the two sisters. Would you agree that this proposed tax change will be especially detrimental to women who own small businesses, like both of you? Can you comment on that?
Ms. Green: I would. Yes, we’re women. Many of us have children. We want to take time after we have children, we want to have a maternity leave, and we put money away within our companies so that we can fund ourselves on our own maternity leave. If we begin requiring that only certain amount of monies be kept away, then that could hurt our ability to spend time with our children and our families. We don’t have a safety net. We don’t have EI that can help keep our family going when we do something like maternity leave, so it’s very concerning.
Dr. Schneider: Very similar to that, in veterinary medicine, it’s young women. Eighty per cent of new veterinarians or more are young women, and those women are reluctant to buy and own their own businesses and, yes, this makes that worse. As an example, with maternity leave, the young women don’t necessarily want to buy a business before they have their children because then they have to bear the financial burden of all of that. So, yes, I agree.
Mr. Crosby: I don’t own any shares in my business today, but these changes also completely ignore the contributions of my spouse. I’m on the road a lot. I probably talk to her for a couple hours a day about the challenges I have at work. She helped me with my speech last night. I’d like to be able to recognize her contributions. We have two young kids at home, age four and two. I’d like to be able to recognize those contributions by paying her dividends in the future.
Senator Oh: Yes. Would the three of you all agree that passive income and investment are critical for small or medium-sized businesses, like your business? It’s important because your passive investment or income will be used when bad times come. You use it to pay your employees and to keep the business going until you can turn around when the economy picks up and so on? Would you agree on that?
Ms. Green: Yes. When I gave my presentation, I said that we are in the oil and gas sector, and I did put money away within my active company but got passive income on that, and that’s carried us through the downturn. That’s helped us at times when somebody didn’t pay their bill or we didn’t get the customer that month. That helped pay my employees. Also, the passive income in a holding company that we would have from our dividends is going to get us through, because we don’t get a pension and we don’t get EI so that’s our safety net. It’s a safety net for our active company and it’s a safety net for our family going forward as well.
Mr. Crosby: Without the ability to accumulate larger quantities of passive income, you have to rely on debt, and I don’t think we want to be encouraging Canadians to take on more and more and more debt because that’s way riskier. Our dollars are best kept in our own hands and deployed as we see fit. We don’t need limits on those things.
Dr. Schneider: Yes, one of the benefits of having money put away is to help during a difficult time. Also, that money can be used to grow and expand your own company. I’ve done some of that in the last five years by opening two new veterinary hospitals, so yes.
Senator Oh: Would you agree the money put aside for passive income, investment, is not government so-called dead money? That is the lifeline for future of the company or the family.
Ms. Green: Absolutely. Both ways. It is our safety net. We need a safety net, and that’s our safety net.
Mr. Crosby: There’s no such thing as dead money. I don’t know where that even comes from.
Ms. Green: I agree.
Senator Cools: I would like to thank you three witnesses for your excellent testimony. I listened very carefully to the two sisters. I’m going call this the two sister panel. Also, Mr. Crosby, you wouldn’t know this, but you reminded me of a lot of my childhood. For centuries, Canada and the Caribbean had profound and excellent trade in molasses, sugar and salted cod. They just call it cod fish or salt fish. Your testimony, Mr. Crosby, reminded me of my own childhood.
My mother owned a sugar plantation and knew a lot about the varieties of sugarcane and which sugarcane was the best. I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but Barbados developed the sugar plantation concept as a total self-sufficient unit and also excelled in developing the best varieties of sugarcane itself. I used to hear all of this when I was a very little girl, and I remember going to those sugar factories and the huge big noises and the big equipment, and you would see these huge tools lift up the sugarcane and carry it over. I have very vivid memories of the molasses and sugarcane businesses.
As you were speaking to us, Mr. Crosby, I kept thinking what a shame it would be if you could not carry on your business successfully and what a loss it would be to the people who rely on you.
I have found with these hearings that I feel I should be able to do more for you, because these proposals have been so poorly conceptualized and so poorly actuated. I just wish that we can do better. Perhaps our report can succeed in putting these points before the government and before the public. I’m more or less making a statement rather than asking questions, but I wonder if I could ask you, Mr. Crosby, if you can see a solution out of this dilemma that you could help us with?
Mr. Crosby: I think the solution starts with hitting the reset button. It would be nice to get an apology as well. In Ottawa right now, there’s no meaningful debate on this topic. You watch Question Period and you wonder why people are so upset with politicians. Questions are asked and talking points is all that you get.
I wrote 40 emails to the Liberal MPs in Atlantic Canada expressing my concerns over these changes, and I received four responses and they were all the same canned talking points. This topic is extremely complicated, and it really concerns me that people are making decisions and toeing party lines opposed to really understanding what it is they’re voting on. I don’t feel that they’re representing the interests of their constituents. I think this is a purely political thinking about an election cycle, and they feel, oh, there are fewer rich people out there, fewer wealthy people, let’s drive a wedge and really stick it to the rich. Well, that has consequences, right? People are going to leave; people are going to change their behaviours.
So I really think that the government needs to stop and apologize. It’s not their words that are going to rebuild trust; it’s their actions. We need all the right stakeholders at the table and we need to take the time to get this right. The tax code is like 35,000 pages long. It’s full of deductions and exceptions, and it’s just way too complicated. We can do better.
Senator Cools: I’m just wondering, many, many individuals have been suggesting to us that we recommend to the government that they constitute what we call an inquiry, a commission of inquiry, properly called Royal Commissions, and they are authorized pursuant to the Inquiries Act. Do you have any thoughts on that notion?
Mr. Crosby: I would absolutely support a Royal Inquiry. The unintended consequences of doing this incorrectly could set us back for generations.
Senator Cools: For generations.
Mr. Crosby: Right? We’ve got to think beyond the election cycle. We’ve got to think about where we want our country to be 40 years from now, and we’ve got to get a tax code that makes us competitive on a global scale, and this is not it.
Senator Cools: Okay. It’s lovely to be in the Maritimes. When I come to the Maritimes, I feel close to the British Caribbean. Every time.
Senator Marshall: I want to speak to Mr. Crosby’s comment on the talking points and also some of the information you were relaying to us.
There was no impact assessment on these tax changes. They were just rolled out. Minister Morneau did appear before the finance committee. I asked him if there was an economic impact assessment. I got talking points also. I didn’t get an answer. My only conclusion was that if there had been one, he would’ve confessed there was one, but he didn’t so I’m going on the understanding that there was no economic impact assessment or how this is going to impact small business or taxpayers.
I sort of did it backwards today, but usually one of my first questions is just to ask the witnesses to give us a flavour for the environment in which they operate now. We’re talking about the tax changes, but that’s only one factor, especially for business in Atlantic Canada. There are a lot of challenges, and I’m just thinking about things like NAFTA, which will have an impact on some businesses. It must be a struggle in Atlantic Canada. Interest rates are on the rise. I met with a gentleman this summer who had conducted a study on corporate debt. Consumer debt is on the rise, but corporate debt is also on the rise, so interest rates are a concern.
The economy has been pretty good so far, but now we’re seeing signs of an economic slowdown, and so it’s not just the proposed tax chances but a lot of other things. There are a lot of other pressures on your businesses. Could you just give us an idea as to the environment in which each of your businesses operate and some of those other impacts that are really putting pressure on you? Set the stage for us. It’s not just the proposed tax changes. That’s going to be a really big smack on your companies, but there are other things too, so just give us an overview of other impacts.
Ms. Green: Well, I’m an export company. I operate in U.S. dollars, so I have currency problems. My closest business partners are in the U.K. They’re in the middle of getting out of the European Union.
Senator Marshall: Brexit.
Ms. Green: NAFTA. Many of my customers are in the U.S. I have to deal with trade relations with South America. The TPP is a problem because I do trade over the Pacific Ocean. The currency thing is always huge for me because I do all my business in U.S. dollars.
I’m doing trade with all these countries around the world. As a business owner in Atlantic Canada, I have to figure out all these rules and regulations with all these countries I’m doing trade with. I do trade with nations that have sanctions against them so I have to understand what is okay to do with them and what’s not okay to do with them. I have to understand just how to ship packages around the world. There are so many things a business owner needs to know when they’re doing business and exporting out of Canada, but we’re doing exactly what they want us to do. We’re bringing in new money from globally into Canada, so we’re not even reusing dollars. We’re starting fresh with our dollars and disbursing them into our economy. We’re figuring it all out as we go along, but the one thing we were sure of is, okay, this is our tax system and this is kind of what we’re operating under and we get it, but everything else is changing around us all the time, and now that’s been pulled out from underneath us as well.
Because I’ve been doing this hearing, I have all kinds of people I know that own businesses are talking to me about what their concerns are now. My physiotherapist was going to expand his business. He had all the agreements in place to take over a bigger piece of the building he’s in, and he stopped because he’s really scared about what this means to him. A friend of mine’s a contractor. He has a family-owned business, they have everything set up for retirement, he’s getting on in years, and now he’s looking at what’s happening and he’s scared to death because he thinks he’s losing all his retirement savings and he thinks he’s going to have to work many more years. It is so far reaching. It’s just scary.
Senator Marshall: Because you’re connected to all these other small businesses.
Ms. Green: I am, yes.
Senator Marshall: Thank you. That’s helpful.
Dr. Schneider: Part of it is my business in Fredericton, and the situation for me there is really it’s a very competitive market and so it’s a very difficult market to grow my business in. The other factors affecting me are the interest rates and the increase in wages. The increase in wages is putting pressure on my business. The competition is keeping the prices down, the increased wages is putting my costs up, and that’s a difficult business to run within Fredericton.
Looking forward to a future, the ability to retire at some point, the ability for my husband to retire, it’s kind of one of the driving factors of me opening the business in Newfoundland, and there are different issues there. One of the big one is labour shortages. I need a very skilled staff at my hospitals, and a veterinarian and a veterinarian technician both need to leave the island in order to get their training. A lot of them leave and don’t go back to Newfoundland or disperse among Canada and the U.S., so it’s hard to find those people and bring them back. The economic downturn in Newfoundland makes it more difficult.
Senator Marshall: Yes, that’s right.
Dr. Schneider: Wages are higher there, and the cost of services and supplies and all the things my business needs is higher because it’s a closed market. It’s just everything costs more in Newfoundland.
Senator Marshall: So would you have trained in P.E.I.?
Dr. Schneider: I did, yes.
Senator Marshall: Where do the veterinary technicians train?
Dr. Schneider: Nova Scotia and Moncton are the two closest places for them to train, and that’s actually the shortest. Getting a veterinary technician is the most difficult for a veterinary hospital.
Senator Marshall: For a veterinary hospital, that’s one of your biggest challenges?
Dr. Schneider: That’s harder than veterinarians, yeah. It’s hard to get veterinarians as well, but veterinary technicians are extremely difficult.
Senator Marshall: Right. And what’s happening to the minimum wage in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia? Ontario is increasing their minimum wage. Did you say that was one of your pressures also?
Dr. Schneider: It has. Well, it has increased, and I hear whisperings that it’s going to happen again. Even if you don’t have minimum wage employees, it puts all the employees’ wages up. Again, it takes money out of the pie and impacts the business and makes it harder to run a business. So there are a lot of things affecting it.
Mr. Crosby: We have concerns about NAFTA, the transportation rates, distance to markets, fuel prices, currency fluctuations, consolidation in the grocery business, Health Canada putting warning labels on food, demographic changes, shifts to ready-to-eat meals and prepared foods, interest rate changes and Workers’ Comp premiums. We pay better than minimum wage, but that puts pressure on our labour costs. Benefits, urbanization of our population, and then you get automation, artificial intelligence, robotics, all this stuff. We’ve got enough on our plate as it is and, on top of that, our government doesn’t understand entrepreneurs, they don’t appreciate entrepreneurs and they don’t have our backs. So instead of worrying about all this other stuff, I’ve been obsessing about tax.
Senator Marshall: Yes. You said “urbanization.” How would that impact your business?
Mr. Crosby: Well, our core product is molasses. The most traditional use for molasses is in home baking. Generally speaking, as more and more people move to city centres, they’re losing these traditions.
Senator Marshall: Your product.
Mr. Crosby: Absolutely. Our average customer is not 35 years old.
Senator Marshall: It’s more my age group.
Mr. Crosby: So we have a lot of challenges.
Senator Neufeld: I’d just like you to comment a bit. I’ll just relay to you a bit of the testimony that we heard yesterday but have heard from doctors across the country, doctors and professionals. If these changes go through, the health professions are going to be dramatically affected and may cause some of them to move, may cause some of them to retire or just get out of the practice altogether. I’d like to know how that would affect your businesses if, in fact, they survive.
Also, I spent a good part of my life in the B.C. legislature and also in governments under the premiership of Gordon Campbell. His theory to us as cabinet ministers all the time was put more money back in the pockets of people, business and individuals, and let them decide how they best want to spend it rather than government taking it and spending it. We seem to have a different philosophy in Ottawa right now where government thinks they can spend your money better than you can, and that’s relayed through higher taxes. I mean, if you don’t invest your money back in your business, we’re going to tax it at 73 per cent because we think we’re so smart and we know how to spend it.
Describe to me a little bit about both of those scenarios that would affect you, or do you agree with me that money in your pocket is better than it is in the pockets of government?
Mr. Crosby: I don’t want to speak ill against the economic development agencies because they are helpful and there’s a lot of honourable people that work in them, but I would much rather the money in my own pocket and deploy it as I see fit. To me, it’s common sense. I don’t know when anyone ever said, “We have a major problem; let’s call the government to come fix it.”
Senator Neufeld: Yes. That’s a good quote. I’m from Ottawa and I’m here to help.
Senator Marshall: From the government, Canada Revenue Agency.
Ms. Green: I have two stories. One, when we were looking to grow our business globally, and I’ve told you we’ve had a partnership with a company in the U.K., we needed to expand our relations in a lot of the big oil countries, and we needed assistance doing that because they don’t always speak our language and we don’t understand the customs, so there’s this fantastic program that the U.K. trade and investment group has where they will help you expand into other countries. They’ll go in and do a study of the country and look at what possible customers you have there, and then they’ll set up matchmaking and come with you to meet all these potential customers, but you pay them to do that. It’s a service they provide. We got to decide which countries we wanted to go into. We paid them the money, and they went and found the customers for us and then got us out in front of the customers and helped us with the language and the culture and all those things. But we decided which countries, we decided what we wanted to pay for and what services we wanted to pay for, and it was fantastic for growing our business. I think if we just ask the government to do that for us, they wouldn’t know who our customers are and what to do, so we worked in partnership with the government but it was our money that was funding what was happening. I think that is a really important type of program and it can be helpful, but you still need the business owners to direct it and use their money to do it. You know, put your money where your mouth is.
You mentioned doctors, and I have a very good friend that is a specialist. She’s probably the top specialist in the world, and she happens to be in Fredericton, New Brunswick. She’s not from there, but she chooses to be there because of the quality of living and they have a wonderful friend group around them. She’s being wooed all over Canada, very strongly out in Alberta, and they are putting offers in front of her like you wouldn’t believe to try to get her to go to their centres to practice. She went to our health authority and said, “This is what’s happening. This is the offer I have.” And what they had to offer her was to encourage her to create a private corporation and pay her that way. And interestingly, she decided to do that. She was committed to stay. She loves her practice, she loves what she’s doing, and she put the private corporation in place. I was a signatory on it, so I was with her and her husband. We walked out of the lawyer’s office and we looked at Twitter and the government announced those changes. It was that day that she had started that private corporation. She’s just been spinning ever since because she turned down a fantastic opportunity out West to stay and now she’s looking at this uncertainty. I can tell you there’s not much else she’s thinking about, and we’d rather she practise her specialty. There’s just the uncertainty this has created, and in one part they’re encouraging us to do one thing and the other they’re taking it away from us. It’s just not right.
Dr. Schneider: My comments on the doctors really are we all need health care. I have watched my doctor work over the last 30 years. He just retired before this happened, actually. It has nothing to do with this. They don’t have it easy. They work really, really hard, and taking things away from them does not make sense. We need to allow them to flourish in our country and take care of our health.
My response to the other part of that is back to my stance at the end of my presentation. This country needs to allow entrepreneurs to grow and flourish, and keeping money in their pockets is what will allow that to happen.
Mr. Crosby: Some people don’t have a lot of sympathy for doctors because they’re higher income earners, but if you kind of model it out over the course of their working careers, these changes are going to drastically reduce the amount of money that they can have in their retirement. I don’t know how it can be good public policy to cut a doctor’s ability to save for retirement by 40 per cent or 50 per cent in an environment where right next door there are doctor shortages and they can get paid a ton more money. It completely ignores market forces. It’s a horrible policy.
Senator Marshall: I was so moved by the story that Ms. Green was telling, but I’ve regained my composure, so I’m fine. Thank you.
Senator Oh: Today is our last day on the nationwide tour on fact-finding and listening to working Canadians, from two sisters to families and to all the SMEs. I think it’s important that the government did not hear clearly the voice of the nation. They spoke out and they want the government to know they need help and don’t take away something they have for the rainy day. They need it.
My question for you is simple. If the minister was here today, what would you tell him? They can still ram it through if they want to do it. What would you tell him today if he were here in the room?
Dr. Schneider: I like Mr. Crosby’s answer about hitting the reset button and going back and looking at this tax reform, but looking at it again from the angle of helping entrepreneurs grow and flourish. So, yes, we’re going to change the tax system and simplify it, but our look at it is to help entrepreneurs grow and flourish, not to take things away from them and make it more difficult for them to own and run a business.
Mr. Crosby: I would say the sign of an effective leader is sometimes admitting you’re wrong. I think the minister definitely needs to admit that he was wrong and hit the reset button. He needs to engage all stakeholders, and we need to take the time to deeply understand this issue and the implications that it might have and study it. To move forward with something like this without properly understanding what the consequences might be is just reckless.
Ms. Green: I think one of the problems is there’s been trust that’s been eroded in the government because of the way this was rolled out and the way they continue to push forward with it even through they’re hearing a huge backlash.
It’s kind of annoying that I have to be here today to talk to you instead of running by business. They need me at my office. There are things I’m missing doing because I’m here, but I feel very passionately about this, and I think if we use our voices, that maybe somebody will listen.
I completely agree with James. We need to reset. We need all the stakeholders at the table. We need the entrepreneurs there talking about what we’re struggling with and what we could do. We’re all really pretty smart people. We can come up with some innovative things that we could do within our tax system that might make us the best place in the world to do business, and that’s really what I would like. I would like Canada to be the best place in the world to own a business, and I want immigrants coming in from all over starting businesses and growing our country. We have the space, so let’s use for building businesses in a really great economy.
Senator Oh: Last question: Do any of you own a family trust or some kind of trust? Yes or no?
Ms. Green: No. My children are American. I can’t.
Mr. Crosby: The way that our company is structured, yes, we do have a trust.
Dr. Schneider: After I made the decision to renounce my American citizenship, which I now regret, I opened a family trust, yes.
The Chair: Before we close, Ms. Green, could you, for the record, give us a description of your product, please?
Ms. Green: It’s a little complicated. I’ll give you the elevator pitch.
We use MRI technology, the same technology you would use in health care but a much smaller version, to image rocks that you extract from the ground during the exploration process. We write the software to make the NMR instrument do the measurements and turn the information into useful petro physical information for the oil and gas companies. Using our software and our products in the laboratory, we can help them understand how much oil and gas is in the ground and the best way to get it out. We sell software and hardware to oil and gas companies and service companies. We also do rock core testing in our laboratory in Fredericton, so they will send us rocks from all over the world and we do testing. It’s to understand how the fluids move within the rock under the ground and what forces are acting upon them.
The Chair: Thank you.
Mr. Crosby, you touched on the threshold for passive income. What’s your thought on, rather than looking at the threshold of $50,000, looking at a percentage of the assets accumulated?
Mr. Crosby: All I would ask for is that we get treated fairly relative to our publically traded competitors. Publically traded companies have no threshold and no percentage, so why should private business?
The Chair: Very good point.
Are there any other comments? Ms. Green and Dr. Schneider? No?
I’ll ask you this question: Do you have any comments on the Panama Papers the Paradise Papers and how the CRA should be looking into that matter?
Mr. Crosby: No one’s breaking any laws with the Panama Papers. This is all an example of a tax code that is way too complicated. People are moving money offshore because keeping it here is punitive. All these changes are going to do is encourage more of that kind of behaviour.
The Chair: Do any you have closing comments to make for the record?
Dr. Schneider: Thank you for allowing me to speak today, and I hope that taking this day out of my business and my family life makes a difference and that you listened to what we’ve all had to say today. Thank you.
Mr. Crosby: I’m also very grateful for this opportunity, and I just hope that our Liberal government is able to get the message that they need to hit the reset button and take the time to study this issue effectively, because there are still loads and loads of unintended consequences.
Ms. Green: I am grateful for the opportunity to be heard. I feel like I’m speaking for all the small business owners, and it’s hard to do what we do, but we love doing it. We really love doing it, and we want it to be easier to do rather than harder, so I am hopeful that the government listens and slows down.
The Chair: Thank you. If you feel, as we move towards tabling our Senate report, that you want to add something, please do not hesitate to contact our clerk. You have until we table the report on December 15. We want to thank each of you for appearing here today. Your testimony has been enlightening and educational.
(The committee adjourned.)