Scribble Live
Published
Last updated
0 comments
Live from The Globe's Small Business Summit
Updates from a day-long series of sessions designed to help entrepreneurs grow their businesses
- 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
- You can also add your comments please at our site: live.theglobeandmail.com
- try that again
live.theglobeandmail.com - We're now getting some introductions from some of the participants. A little sampling of who is in attendance
- Sean Stanleigh welcomes participants at the Small Business Summit youtu.be
Opening remarks
- 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
Maxime Bernier speaks
- 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
Bernier on profit
- 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
Bernier on why there's no difference between corporate and personal income taxes
- 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 ...
