Canada's Minister of Small Business and Export Promotion will meet with small business owners across the country
January 18, 2019 – Ottawa, Ontario
Small businesses make up 98% of all Canadian businesses, employing 8 million hard-working Canadians from coast to coast to coast. They are the backbone of our economy and critical to the middle class.
To highlight the Government's new lowered small business tax rate of 9%, the Honourable Mary Ng, Minister of Small Business and Export Promotion, will be travelling across Canada from January 22 to 25. The Minister will meet with small business owners and entrepreneurs to share how the Government of Canada is making it easier for small businesses to start up, scale up, access new markets, and remain competitive and profitable.
Minister Ng will begin her tour in Winnipeg, Manitoba, where she will participate in a town hall hosted by the World Trade Centre Winnipeg and join local Indigenous business leaders for a roundtable with the Aboriginal Chamber of Commerce. She will also meet with Chinese Canadian business leaders.
The following day, the Minister will travel to the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) to participate in events with local entrepreneurs and small business owners, including members of the Filipino small business community.
Later in the week, the Minister will be in Halifax to announce a federal investment to help small businesses leverage e-commerce for exporting. The Minister will also participate in a panel hosted by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business on reducing red tape. Later, she will attend a roundtable hosted by the Black Business Initiative and then meet with women entrepreneurs at the Centre for Women in Business.
Finally, Minister Ng will travel back to the GTA to hear from members of the Mississauga Board of Trade and the Vaughan Chamber of Commerce. She will discuss the Government's support for entrepreneurs with the Tamil Entrepreneurs Organization.
When meeting with small business owners, Minister Ng will highlight the Government's many initiatives that are making it easier for small businesses to do business like:
- lowering the small business tax rate to 9%, one of the lowest rates in the world;
- getting credit card companies to lower the fees they charge businesses when their customers use credit cards;
- providing access to over a billion and a half new customers through trade deals like the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) and the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement, commonly called the new NAFTA;
- allowing businesses to immediately write off the full cost of machinery and equipment used for the manufacturing and processing of goods;
- allowing businesses to immediately write off the full cost of specified clean energy equipment;
- introducing the Accelerated Investment Incentive that will allow businesses of all sizes in all sectors of the economy to write off a larger share of the cost of newly acquired assets in the year the investment is made;
- investing $2 billion to help double the number of women-owned businesses by 2025; and
- reducing over 450 federal rules that impose an administrative burden on business.
"This is a small business–friendly government that is working hard to reduce red tape and make it easier for Canadian small business owners to start up, scale up and access new markets. When small businesses in communities across the country succeed, our economy grows and middle-class jobs are created."
– The Honourable Mary Ng, Minister of Small Business and Export Promotion
