Hyer’s Business Breakfast a Success
Thunder Bay-Superior North MP Bruce Hyer Hosts Successful Business Breakfast
Business owners and managers network and bring ideas forward to Hyer.
THUNDER BAY, ON – Thursday, July 22nd Northwestern Ontario business people were invited to the Prince Arthur Hotel to bring their concerns, questions and feedback forward to host Thunder Bay-Superior North MP Bruce Hyer.
The theme for the complimentary breakfast was how would small business owners answer the question “How can government help Canada’s small businesses thrive?”. Local, regional and national topics were brought up, everything from a level playing field for small businesses on border shipping issues, to federal small business support programs, to the Employment Insurance Premium increases at the end of the year (a big one), to how to foster small business start-ups, and the impact of the HST on small business. Bruce also mentioned the New Democrat Small Business Task Force that has been struck, and outlined some of the policies that were being worked on though receiving input from small business owners remained Hyer’s primary goal at the breakfast.
Bill Nnew and John Nistico networking at Hyer's business breakfast.
Among the policies the NDP Small Business Task Force is working on which Hyer outlined are:
• Reducing the small business income tax rate. This has been done successfully in Manitoba, resulting in a boon for their economy even during tough economic times.
• Minimizing Employment Insurance rate increases. Payroll taxes have a bigger impact on business growth than just about any other government measure. So the expected maximum E.I. premium rate increase starting at the end of this year (and going up by the maximum every year after that) is going to cost 200,000 jobs a year, according to the Canadian Federation of Independent Businesses. This has got to be mitigated by a temporary injection of general revenues into the E.I. fund. Aside from the moral obligation to pay back the $57 billion surplus accumulated (paid by businesses and their employees into the fund, but taken out by the government for “general revenue”), few measures could be as effective in holding back business and reducing employment than an E.I. rate hike.
• Regulating the excessive merchant fees imposed by credit card companies. The fees merchants pay to the credit card company on each retail transaction have been unilaterally raised in the last couple of years to exorbitant levels, with no recourse, transparency and virtually no industry regulation. (NB: Party Policy. Resolution 1-01-09 passed at Hfx‘09, now NDP policy. Senate investigation: need gov’t action). Government has got to show more leadership to ensure an environment conducive to business. Instead of binding rules for credit card companies, they’ve come up with a voluntary code of conduct instead – but not everyone is on board yet. If a voluntary code of conduct cannot be endorsed by all the large banks and credit card companies, Hyer intends to introduce legislation to regulate excessive merchant and transaction fees.
• Provide HST vendor compensation. The HST came into effect on July 1st. It’s a federally-administered tax made possible by an agreement between the federal and provincial governments, and implemented by this year’s federal budget. Lots of people fear that it will shift some business underground, and some south of the border. The Canadian Federation of Independent Businesses estimates that the HST will cost the average small business about $3800 to fully implement it. But on top of imposing it without consulting small business, the federal government apparently expects businesses to act as unpaid tax collectors. While there was some compensation offered for collecting taxes under the GST, extending compensation for the collection of the new HST is the most direct way to alleviate the burden of transition costs to the new tax.
• Facilitating access to investment capital from financial institutions and government agencies. If you’ve ever tried to get money for expansion, or for export, or for anything from the federal government’s agencies like the Business Development Bank, or Export Development Canada, you know it can be a monumental headache. Lots of rules and red tape. Many are forced to abandon worthy ideas. Financial and technical support for business development through agencies like the BDC, EDC, the Community Futures Development Corporation (CFDC) and the like must be improved. Likewise, improving access to private capital is key to stimulating business growth and innovation.
• Tax deductions for travel and accommodations. Many trades people and apprentices need to travel more than 80km for work. It makes no sense for trades people to be out of work in one area of the country while another region suffers from temporary skilled labour shortages simply because the cost of traveling is high. (NDP Bill C-227 mandates these tax deductions and will alleviate these costs and facilitate labour mobility.)
• Clarifying tax laws and succession rules to make it simpler for small and medium-sized businesses to fulfill tax obligations
• Providing incentives to promote value-added processing and innovation in emerging sectors
Hyer has expressed that, after the success of this week’s business breakfast, he hopes to host similar meetings like this in the future.
Attendees of the Small Business has Breakfast with Bruce meeting.
**All photos courtesy of Andy Blair
