Parties clamour for lobby group’s approval
NDP and Conservatives claim to have the support of body representing small businesses
Call it a bizarre love triangle.
At least that’s what it looked like last week when Prime Minister Stephen Harper and NDP Leader Tom Mulcair squared off in the House of Commons over the Canadian Federation of Independent Business and its president and CEO, Dan Kelly.
Using different examples to support their cases, both Mulcair and Harper argued over which political party the CFIB favours more.
It’s not the first time the business lobby group’s opinion has been at the centre of debate during question period and, as an election looms, probably not the last.
Kelly admitted he likes the attention.
“Any day you have political parties vying for the attention of small business or the CFIB specifically, that’s a good day for us. We like that a great deal,’’ Kelly said in a recent interview.
Last week’s exchange in the House is just one small example of how the CFIB’s influence — with all parties — has grown substantially, particularly the NDP, one expert said.
“The political parties are looking at the CFIB as the only credible organization that deals with small- and medium-sized businesses. That’s an approach the NDP has been taking in the past few years,’’ said Gilles LeVasseur, a business and law professor with the Telfer School of Business in Ottawa.
“They’ve been dealing with unions. So now they (the NDP) are shifting toward business people because they see that they’ve missed out on that opportunity.
“You have to understand that the NDP is doing that because they have to show they can govern the country, and by governing the country you also need to have business on your side,’’ said LeVasseur, who was a member of the CFIB for a year about a decade ago.
But the organization has itself evolved from one that exclusively courted the Conservative party to one that strives for a broader appeal with all the main parties in Ottawa, LeVasseur argues.
Kelly says that given there are 2.5 million Canadian entrepreneurs who are self-employed or operating small- or medium-sized businesses and that there are “very few’’ large companies in Canada, politicians and the public at large are beginning to recognize that Canada is “a country of small-business owners.’’
As a result, the three main political parties are eager to curry favour with the CFIB, as this week’s debate in Ottawa shows, Kelly says.
Kelly says his organization, a Toronto-headquartered, federally registered, not-for-profit entity that began in 1971, is “strictly non-partisan.’’
Its members support what they view as good ideas and strongly oppose the ideas they feel are bad — whichever party they originate from.
The war of words in the House Tuesday began with Mulcair.
“Why don’t we quote Dan Kelly, the head of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business: ‘good on the NDP leader for proposing a cut in the small-business corporate tax rate,’ Mulcair said, referring to a comment Kelly made last week.
Kelly was referring to the fact the NDP supports lowering that rate from 11 per cent to 9 per cent, an approach the federation favours.
“I don’t know who the prime minister speaks to at the CFIB, but Dan Kelly speaks for the CFIB. What we’re seeing is a loss of jobs that reflects the failure of this government to protect the middle class,’’ Mulcair said, criticizing the government’s economic policies, as the NDP caucus applauded heartily. Harper then stood and fired back: “Mr. Speaker, speaking of Mr. Kelly, of course, he (Kelly) complimented the fact the government (has) already cut small-business taxes, something the NDP actually opposed. So Mr. Speaker, it’s not surprising he would compliment the NDP when it actually embraces Conservative policy after the fact,” Harper said sarcastically.
“But what he did say about the NDP’s unique policies is that they were stupid, dumb and anti-small business,’’ Harper said, smiling as the Tories roared their approval.
The two continued to go back and forth using the same quotes from the CFIB, and Harper repeated the “dumb policies’’ remark.
One political pundit tweeted during the debate that “apparently’’ Dan Kelly is the most “influential person on Canada’s fiscal policy.’’
Kelly says both leaders were correct in their statements in the House, but were “selectively quoting’’ him and his group’s positions on different policy matters.
“We did in fact provide the NDP with a positive quote, commending (Mulcair) and the party for supporting a reduction in the small-business corporate tax rate, CFIB’s No.1 priority for the 2015 budget,’’ Kelly said.
But Kelly says the “dumb policies’’ remark Harper mentioned related to a comment Kelly made last summer about a specific policy — the NDP’s proposal to hike the minimum wage to $15 per hour for federally regulated employees.
This would not directly affect most minimum-wage workers — employees in restaurants, retail, etc., as they are provincially regulated, but CFIB’s “fear’’ is that the provinces would follow the federal government’s lead should the increase be adopted, Kelly says.
“I referred to that (proposal) as a dumb idea,’’ Kelly said, hastening to add that those remarks weren’t an overall assessment of the NDP’s economic platform.
“To be fair, I’ve also said the Tory government’s new anti-spam legislation they put in place in 2014 was dumb. I’ve also said the evisceration of the temporary foreign worker program in 2014 was one of the worst moves the Conservatives have made since they took office,’’ Kelly said.
The CFIB works with all parties, Kelly argued. Yes, he was there with Finance Minister Joe Oliver complimenting the government’s “wisdom’’ for reducing EI rates for small firms, but the organization had a very good relationship with former Liberal prime minister Paul Martin, according to Kelly.
“There were dozens and dozens of very positive policies he put in place, ones we were at podiums with him endorsing,’’ such as employment insurance premium reductions, opposition to bank mergers and reductions in government red tape, Kelly points out.
In a followup email, Kelly said “while I know some out there suggest that we are “tied” to the Tories, this perception exists because they have been in power for a long time now. I have to tell you that this perception existed about the CFIB and the federal Liberals when they were in power,’’ Kelly added.
This week, the CFIB sent a letter to Liberal MP Ted Hsu endorsing his private member’s bill calling for the resurrection of the long-form census. The bill was later voted down on second reading in the House this week, but Kelly says data collected from the long-form census is useful for all sorts of comparisons and analyses that can benefit small-business owners.
The Conservatives killed the longform census in 2010, arguing among other things that it contained questions that were too intrusive.
As for the NDP, when the party held a strategy session a few weeks ago, Kelly was invited to attend and make a presentation, and he provided advice on “more effective strategies’’ to reach out to small-business owners.
LeVasseur, the business and law professor from Telfer, argues there’s a strong desire emanating from within the CFIB to have a broad appeal with all the main parties in Ottawa.
One factor driving that desire is membership fees, LeVasseur says.
The fees range from a minimum of $250 a year to $3,500 a year, depending on the size of the business, a CFIB spokesperson said.
LeVasseur says those fees mean members are keen to get the best bang for their buck, influence wise, with all the main political parties.
Members don’t want to see the organization hitching its wagon to only one party, LeVasseur says.