Small businesses are by far the largest job creators in Canada. Investing in them means they have the tools and resources to continue to create jobs and strengthen the middle class. By lowering the small business tax rate from 11% to 9%, we are ensuring that small businesses have a better opportunity to grow and succeed.

Some of the steps we’ve taken to help small businesses succeed include:

• Lowering the small business tax rate from 11% to 9%. This new rate will be by far the lowest in the G7, and will save small businesses in Canada up to $7,500 a year. This means small business owners will have extra funds to go ahead with those much-needed capital upgrades, or hire extra staff.
• Investing in local companies across Canada so that we can make immediate inroads into emerging global markets. Hundreds of local companies in Burnaby North-Seymour have received funding
• Making more venture capital available for promising startups with an investment of $400 million in the Venture Capital Catalyst Initiative.
• Providing $1.4 billion in loans for women entrepreneurs through the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) over the next 3 years.

A balanced job creation strategy in Canada requires attracting investment and creating a pro-business climate. As a government, we are focused on showcasing Canada’s strengths as one of the largest, fastest growing, most investment-friendly economies in the world.

How we are working to attract investment and grow our economy:

• Providing STEMCELL Technologies with $45 million in funding to develop a new facility here in Burnaby that will bring 3,000 good-paying jobs to our community. This is a major piece of positive news for Burnaby North-Seymour, as STEMCELL is one of the fastest growing and most successful biotech companies on the planet. Attracting top tier investment, and making sure our community serves as a hub for innovation is one of my top priorities.
• Creating Canada’s new investment hub. This $218 million investment is making it simpler and more attractive for international employers like Amazon to invest here in Canada. Investment in our economy accounts for 12% of all Canadian jobs and 30% of all manufacturing jobs.
• Attracting investments from Amazon to create another 3,000 jobs in Vancouver, which will bring their total up to 9,000 employees in Canada. These are good, middle class jobs that are coming here as a result of the innovation-driven, pro-business environment we have built in the Lower Mainland.

When families have more money, they have more resources to contribute to our local economy. Our approach understands that in addition to investing in businesses, we must focus on growing and empowering middle class families. By allowing families to invest in themselves, we are creating more opportunities for the next generation, and new customers for local businesses.

Some of the steps we’ve taken include:

• Introducing the new Canada Child Benefit that’s helping 7,730 (nine out of ten) families in Burnaby North-Seymour receive more money every month for groceries, school supplies, and extracurriculars like playing soccer with the North Shore Girls Soccer Club, or taking music lessons at Staccato Music Studios. Families in our community on average received $5,880 during the first benefit year, tax-free. This program is lifting 300,000 kids out of poverty nationwide, which represents the single largest reduction in child poverty in Canadian history.
• Boosting the Canada Child Benefit to match rising costs of living. Annual increases started July 2018— two years ahead of schedule. For a single parent making $35,000, a stronger CCB will mean $560 more in 2019-20, tax-free. Annual inflationary increases will occur moving forward.
• Cutting taxes for nine million middle-class Canadians, which will result in significant savings for people in Burnaby and North Vancouver.
• Providing families with affordable housing through the $40 billion National Housing Strategy (NHS). The NHS will reduce chronic homelessness by 50%, remove over 530,000 Canadians from housing need, create 100,000 new housing units, repair and renew more than 300,000 housing units, and, starting in 2020, offset rental costs by an average of $2,500 per year with the new Canada Housing Benefit. The NHS prioritizes local investments to solve unique challenges that exist in communities like ours. We’ve already been actively investing in local housing support, including a $150,000 investment in the British Columbia Housing Management Commission.

We are investing heavily in Canadian innovation, including in cleantech, digital technology, and renewable energy. In order to establish ourselves as global leaders in emerging industries and capitalize on the massive potential for job growth, it is essential that we provide businesses and researchers with the resources they need to commercialize and market their innovative products.

Some of the steps we’ve taken include:

• Modernizing the Build in Canada Innovation Program (BCIP), which helps Canadian companies of all sizes move their state-of-the-art goods and services from the laboratory to the marketplace. The BCIP has had an economic impact estimated at $278 million, which equates to over 1,300 jobs created. It has also helped by cutting in half the time it takes from receipt of an application to finding a buyer and awarding a contract.
• Investing $2.2 billion, on a cash basis, to support clean technology research, development, demonstration and
  adoption – as well as to accelerate the growth of clean technology companies. This has greatly benefitted local
  companies like Burnaby’s General Fusion, who received a $49 million investment to develop technology that targets
  the lowest cost path to commercial fusion power, and D-Wave Systems Inc, who received a $10 million investment
  to help develop quantum computing systems that are more energy-efficient and help reduce emissions from high performance computing.
• Providing over $31 million for student grants and scholarships at Simon Fraser University to help support and
  encourage the next generation of innovative business leaders.