Part 1
Steve: Now, I'm talking this morning with Laura Jones, who is the president-or, perhaps you should tell us-but, I'm at the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, and I do know that Laura is new, because I met your predecessor, but I think I may have your title wrong. Laura: Well, I'm actually the Vice President for British Columbia and Yukon, for the Canadian Federation of Independent Business. That's right, I recently joined the CFIB about a year and a half ago, and I'm delighted to represent our ten thousand small business members in British Columbia. It's a great job. Steve: Now, we have an interview in our program here with Darcy Rezak, who is the Managing Director of the Board of Trade. What is the difference between the Board of Trade and the Canadian Federation of Independent Business?
Laura: Well, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business represents-really only focuses on small business representation, and so we do a number of things for our small business members. We lobby on their behalf-that's one of the most important things we do, is represent the opinions of our members to all levels of government: federal, provincial, and municipal. In order to do that effectively, we do a lot of surveying of our members, and that's quite unique. We also personally visit each member once a year to renew the membership, and so we're very grass-roots, very in-touch with the needs of our members, so that we can represent them effectively. We also have a member services function, where if people have specific concerns or problems that they're trying to get resolved with governments, or sometimes even with other businesses, we can try and help them with that. Steve: Now, when you say "small business," what is the definition of small business? Laura: Good question. There are different definitions of small business, and if you look at Statistics Canada, they often say "any business with fewer than fifty employees." Now, the reality is that actually most businesses, about three-quarters of businesses in this country, have fewer than five employees, and so that would be kind of the typical small business. As far as CFIB is concerned, any business can be a member, as long as they're independently owned and operated, so anything that's not publicly traded-any business that's not publicly traded-is eligible for CFIB membership. Steve: Okay, so that's very interesting. So that companies that are publicly traded, publicly owned corporations are not members, so then we're talking about a lot of family-owned-typically family-owned-companies. Now, I would imagine that there are a lot of family-owned companies here in BC, that are owned by people who immigrated here in the last ten, fifteen, twenty years. So do you have a lot of members who are from the what we call the sort of minority/ethnic communities?
Laura: We're certainly trying to make in-roads with some of those businesses, and in fact, we have a member in the Chinese community, who's anxious to help us get more members from that community, because of course, joining CFIB is an excellent way to be represented within-to Canadian government at all levels, so this gives businesses a voice, and it's important for any Canadian business to have a voice in those debates. So we certainly are anxious to make sure that we have members and representation within those communities.
Steve: I know it's very easy to complain about things and to think that your own little voice has very little effect. I know that we are regularly visited by your representatives, and we get the surveys that we hopefully try to fill, so that we can lend our support to the various campaigns that you are undertaking. What are some of the major issues that the CFIB is concerned with at the present time?
Laura: Well, provincially, some of the issues that we're really concerned about: the upcoming budget on February 15, and we have made a submission to the Finance Minister based on survey results from our members, asking for things like some further tax relief and debt reduction. These are things that are very important to our members. Then a little further down the road, of course, we've got a provincial election coming up on May 17. CFIB is non-partisan, but what we will do for our members is we will interview and survey, actually, the leaders, and get their responses on issues that are important to small business, and we'll make those responses available on the website, so that small business owners can have some good information to help them with their voting decisions.
