Thank you very much, Chair and members of the committee. It's great to be with you again.

I want to share with you some new data from CFIB—we just put some out this morning. Of course we also have a few recommendations for you.

A deck was sent around in English and French. You should have that, members of the committee. I wanted to walk you through that.

Businesses in Canada remain really shut down. On average across Canada, only 51% of businesses are fully open at this stage. The number is lowest in Ontario, while some provinces, particularly Atlantic Canada and some of the prairie provinces, are doing better than that.

On the staffing side, only about 40% of businesses are at normal levels of staffing, meaning 60% of them have fewer staff than is normal for them at this time of the year. Most concerning of all, only 25% of business have normal or better revenues than they usually do at this stage in the game.

Small businesses are deeply concerned about the economic repercussions of COVID. Of course, this started out as a health care emergency and quickly morphed into an economic emergency, but there are a great many worries on the part of small business owners, such as economic repercussions, consumer spending concerns even following COVID, the sluggish vaccine rollout, their business cash flow, debt and stress. These are some of the things small business owners are telling us.

I want to flag some brand new data that I mentioned we just put out today. One thing the committee should be very concerned about is the amount of COVID-related debt small businesses have incurred since the start of the pandemic. Right now, across Canada, it is $170,000 on average for a small firm in new COVID-related debt directly attributable to the pandemic. Bankers will tell you it's not that businesses have been rushing out and borrowing a whole bunch more money. It's typically unpaid bills that are the largest chunk of the debt. A lot of that is due to landlords, in part due to some of the failures of earlier rent relief programs. I agree with the previous speaker that the new rent support program is a much better version, but it's still not delivering in sufficient quantity to businesses that are being affected. That's $170,000 in debt, on average, across Canada.

Our estimate at CFIB, based on our member data, is that one in six businesses across Canada is at significant risk of closing. That means there could be 181,000 fewer small, independently owned and operated businesses across the country that go bankrupt or wind down permanently, directly as a result of COVID and the damage they sustained over the course of the emergency. That would represent 2.4 million Canadian private sector jobs being taken out at the same time.

Data from StatsCan will tell you that in fact business bankruptcies to date are actually lower than is normal. They too have been affected by the COVID emergency. Many firms are existing right now on government subsidies, and as those subsidies start to be taken out of the economy—and we all hope one day we can replace subsidies with sales—many business owners are worried they're not going to make it, especially, as I shared previously, due to the amount of debt they've gained over the course of the pandemic. That's one in six businesses, or 181,000, on top of the 60,000 Canadian businesses that have already gone bankrupt over the last little while. That means there could be a full wipeout of 20% of Canada's small and medium-sized businesses.

The government has created a number of very helpful programs, and I credit the finance committee and the government itself—with opposition parties, of course, contributing to this as well—for the creation of many of these programs. It was slow. It was incomplete. There remain hundreds and hundreds of different exemptions and rules that have made tens of thousands of business owners slip through the cracks of the program, but many have been helped. Sixty-five per cent of our members have used the CEBA bank account, which has now been topped up to $60,000 loans. Fifty-nine per cent of our members have used the wage subsidy—the CEWS program.

The Canada emergency response benefit—CERB—or the new one under EI has been used by entrepreneurs themselves. Twenty-eight per cent of business owners have used those programs. However, even now only 26% of small businesses are able to use the rent support program, because there remain a number of significant gaps.

We've put forward six major recommendations. We've presented these to Finance. Let me just run through them quickly.

We're asking the government to extend and expand COVID support until the entire economy can recover, including reopening Canada's borders. Really, the sign that government can start to scale back subsidies is when federal and provincial governments can stop telling Canadians to stay at home. Until we're at that point, we would not advise ratcheting back the subsidies that are provided to businesses to keep them alive, because so many businesses need that face-to-face interaction with a customer in order to make a living.

We're asking you—we're pleading with you—to put a moratorium on any new taxes and costs to small businesses. We just can't handle them. We're unhappy that CPP premiums went up at the beginning of this year, in the middle of this terrible time. We're asking you to delay further increases in CPP and the increases planned for the carbon tax—or at least to provide a full rebate to the businesses that are affected by it—and to freeze the liquor tax escalation.

We really think that forgiving more small business debt is a chunk of the solution here, and there are pathways in existing programs. One-third of CEBA is now forgivable if you repay the balance. Something similar to that could be adopted with the new HASCAP program, which we think has some potential.

A hiring incentive would be a good idea as we transition from a shut-down economy to a reopened one. Cutting red tape should be made a priority, as should holding off on any consumer stimulus. I'm really worried that the government may embark upon a big consumer stimulus measure. While that might be helpful to some, if we do that too early, businesses that rely on face-to-face transactions, which have been the ones that have been hardest hit, will not benefit from it, because of course that money will be going to the parts of the economy that have remained open.

As I close, I also just want to commend the finance committee on the great recommendations in its recent report. Many of the all-party recommendations, as well as some that were put forward by the parties, make a lot of sense.

One of the ones I want to highlight, which we love, is making good on the Liberal party promise to small business owners to eliminate credit card processing fees on sales taxes. That, we believe, would save small businesses $500,000 a year. It was a promise in the 2019 Liberal party platform, but we've seen no signs of that proceeding and we urge the committee to keep the pressure up.

We strongly support Bill C-208, which the Conservatives have put forward. That would allow for the same tax benefits for parents selling their farm or small business to a child or family member. That's a great move and would be welcomed by farmers and business people across the country. We have listed a few others there as well, but I know we're tight on time.

Thank you, again, committee. A lot of good work has been done, and I'm happy to take any questions at the appropriate time.

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