Welcome to The Globe and Mail's Small Business Summit
My name is Terry Brodie and I am an editor with The Globe's Report on Small Business. I'll be here to moderate the day
The room is starting to settle in. I understand we expect about 250 people today.
We have about a dozen sessions lined up, with a list of many speakers. First up with be Maxime Bernier, minister of state for small business and tourism
We welcome your comments today. If you are using Twitter, please remember to use our hashtag #globesbs11
We await an intro and should get started in just a few minutes.
About to start in a minute or two
We have opening remarks from Sean Stanleigh
So why is The Globe holding this event?
"We want to talk with you, not at you today. Help deliver information to help your companies grow"
Good morning everyone. Sol Chrom, for the Globe and Mail. I'll be helping Sean and Terry liveblog today's Small Business Summit.
Its part of our mandate to help small businesses!!
Today we'll have a dozen workshops, with experts and successful small businesses who know and have overcome the challenges
If you're tweeting from any part of this event, the hashtag, as Terry says, is #globeSBS11. We'll be able to include your tweets in this livestream.
We'd like your comments and feedback here. So feel free to jump in pls. And as Solsaid, #globesbs11 is our hashtag
We're now getting some introductions from some of the participants. A little sampling of who is in attendance
Sean is now introducing Maxime Bernier
Being with so many entrepreneurs s different than being in Ottawa, Mr. Bernier says
Bernier: The state of public finance in many countries is atrocious.
Governments have lived beyond their means, Mr. Bernier says.
Got deeper into debt and now we all see the result
Governments n many countries have been able to get away with bad management for a very long time. But Canada, he said, is in a league of its own. Least affected by financial crisis
368,000 jobs created last year; one of best performance of countries
one reason we need sound finances is to be able to keep taxes low, and even reduce them
corporate income tax going down to 15 per cent next year. lowest among major industrialized countries
Bernier: A business is simply a collection of contracts. Taxes just add to the cost of doing business and interfere with the creation of wealth and jobs ...
taxes add to cost of doing business
what is important to understand is that the burden is always passed on to individuals because biz must be profitable
speaking about profitability as a politican can be seen as unpopular, he says
but profits are driving force of a free market economy
"I'm not afraid to say that businesses should make as much profit as they can"
pursuit of profit and serving people are one and the same
when biz taxed it passes that cost on to individuals...consumers, shareholders, workers
we are all consumers, investors and workers, so we are the ones paying the tax..there is therefore no distinction between corporate and individual taxes
lower taxes lower burden for entrepreneurs...
taxes only part of burden for entrepreneurs
also red tape burdens for entrepreneurs..cost cdn. bizzes over $30 billion a year
talking about gov't initiatives to reduce paperwork
along with reduced taxes and paperwork, need to also create more opportunity to trade and innovate, he says
talking values of entrepreneurs
Bernier ties entrepreneurial values to his background growing up in the Beauce ...
