The Blueprint: Canada's Conservative Podcast - Supporting Family Farm Businesses

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome once again to The Blueprint. This is Canada's Conservative Podcast. I'm your host,

00:00:04.940 Jamie Schmael, Member of Parliament for Halliburton, Thor with the likes of Rock. Thank you so much for

00:00:08.800 joining us here today. We have new content every single Tuesday, 1.30 p.m. Eastern Time. We ask

00:00:14.720 that you'd like, subscribe, comment, share this program, help us push back against the ever-moving

00:00:19.880 Liberal agenda. And I know it is summer, but we do need people to hear the Conservative message,

00:00:24.440 something they might not be getting from the mainstream media, because we want to ensure

00:00:27.960 that Justin Trudeau is limited to this power that he has had in Ottawa, and that Erin O'Toole is the

00:00:34.540 next Prime Minister of Canada. Of course, if you can't watch the program all in its entirety,

00:00:40.160 right the second you download it, later on, on platforms like CastBox, iTunes, Google Play,

00:00:44.620 Spotify, you name it, it is out there. And together we can do this. And with the new content,

00:00:50.180 as I mentioned, we have Larry McGuire, the first time on the program, Member of Parliament for

00:00:54.780 Brandon Suras, to talk about his bill, the Private Members Bill, C-208, that has passed,

00:01:01.520 that will have a profound impact on how small businesses and the transfer of those businesses,

00:01:08.620 whether it be a farm or, say, a retail establishment, whatever, is transferred for the ability to have

00:01:14.980 it transferred with less of a tax impact than it would be previous to family members. Welcome,

00:01:20.820 Larry McGuire. Hi, Jamie. It's a pleasure to be here. And thank you very much for having me on your

00:01:26.620 podcast to talk about C-208. Well, you have a better voice than I, so I will try to get through

00:01:35.380 as best I can. Let's talk about your Private Members Bill. So for those joining, Private Members

00:01:41.540 Bills can be very difficult to get through the House of Commons and through the Senate and get Royal

00:01:46.380 Ascent. It's not an easy task. And when you get a Private Members Bill, you're kind of slot at the

00:01:52.360 beginning. It's almost like winning the lottery. It pretty much is winning the lottery. A lot of

00:01:56.340 people don't actually get a chance to do that. So tell us a bit about your bill and what it does

00:02:00.920 for small businesses and why it is so amazing that you have done this.

00:02:07.060 Well, thanks, Jamie. It is an amazing feat to actually get a Private Members Bill through the

00:02:11.180 House. First of all, you have to be lucky enough, as you say, to be drawn in the early tranches,

00:02:15.120 particularly in a minority government. So I was drawn number 17 in this group of first 20 or so

00:02:21.720 Private Members Bills that were going to be up in the House. I brought it forward a year ago,

00:02:26.280 February, as first reading. And this is the same bill that the interim leader of the NDP,

00:02:31.960 Guy Caron, brought forward back in 2017, and the Liberals defeated it then. But we had all

00:02:38.020 opposition party strength and support for it at that time. And so I brought Bill C-208 forward

00:02:44.660 again, because this is a huge impact. And it's been worked on for at least a couple of decades

00:02:50.620 to try and get a bill like this through Parliament, to make it law in Canada to help small businesses.

00:02:56.100 And the way this bill helps, it helps farmers, fishers and other small business qualifying

00:03:01.580 small businesses. And by qualifying, I mean, a company being sold directly to your child or

00:03:09.060 grandchild. And this is the only impact that this bill has. The reason it was required is because

00:03:15.680 if you sell your small business to a complete stranger right now, you get to use the capital

00:03:21.160 gains exemption, which is a very low tax rate by comparison to having it deemed to be a dividend

00:03:26.980 if you sold to your own child or grandchild. It can mean about a $300,000 difference, even more in

00:03:34.060 some cases, up over $400,000 on that first million of sale of those small businesses. And as we know,

00:03:41.080 most small businesses, the entrepreneurs that build them, put everything they have and all their

00:03:46.000 earnings back into those businesses. And so it's basically helps them with the retirement package.

00:03:52.140 So why is this bill important? It's because it levels the playing field. It does not create

00:03:57.180 loopholes for the wealthy, as Prime Minister has said, and even the other Liberals in the House of Commons,

00:04:03.800 when we were debating it, they said, well, we can't be authorizing loopholes for the wealthy.

00:04:08.980 Well, these are not wealthy people. These are people who have run small businesses all their

00:04:12.840 lives and want to be able to transfer them down to the next generation. And there's a lot of pride

00:04:17.600 involved in that as well. But this is a particular circumstance, because it was a real penalty to sell

00:04:26.240 to your own children. And that's what this nullifies. This just levels the playing field

00:04:30.060 with being able to sell to your children, as opposed to a, you know, an arm's length person.

00:04:36.740 It seems common sense.

00:04:38.200 Non-arm's length, pardon me. Non-arm's length to, you know, to a complete stranger.

00:04:42.560 But that kind of seems common sense to me that you'd want to have the option, or at least the

00:04:47.760 option that levels the playing field in terms of whether you want to sell it to a family member or

00:04:52.320 a complete stranger, whether it be a corporation or otherwise. But you had some trouble getting this

00:04:58.520 through the House. It was the Liberals who pushed back against this quite heavily.

00:05:02.840 Yeah, we did. And it came up again for second reading in the fall, actually on November the 25th,

00:05:07.860 the day I was elected in 2013 in a by-election as a coincidence. But, and it went through second

00:05:14.520 reading and was passed there by all of the opposition, including the Green Party and many

00:05:21.000 of the independents as well. And the Block, the NDP, and of course our Conservatives. And then we

00:05:30.240 were able to bring it forward again this spring at committee. And again, it passed at third reading.

00:05:37.960 Now, when it passed the House in second reading, there were only two Liberals voted for it. And I know

00:05:44.080 that the chair of the Finance Committee and the Liberal Party wanted to, he knew how important

00:05:48.880 this was for small business. I don't know if he had any impact on it, but there was 19 Liberals

00:05:54.600 voted for it at third reading. So they were starting to see that they all have small businesses in their

00:06:00.040 constituencies as well. But the PMO or the Prime Minister's office, the cabinet of the Liberal Party

00:06:09.240 did not want this to pass because they thought it was helping, as I said earlier, the wealthy,

00:06:17.580 I guess, if you want to put it that way, when there are restrictions within the definition of

00:06:21.520 a small business, and there are safeguards in the bill that are quite important as well.

00:06:26.000 Didn't the Prime Minister try to get his hands into this as well?

00:06:30.140 Well, that was, I believe, solely because cabinet doesn't vote for it. That was certainly

00:06:35.260 an indication. And from the remarks of the Liberals in the House at that time, it's very clear that

00:06:41.740 they didn't want it except for one that spoke out quite heavily at it, a third reading, in support of

00:06:49.520 it. And so when it got to the Senate, then it did pass the House and it was referred to the Senate.

00:06:57.280 Senator Griffin from Prince Edward Island, the chair of the Agriculture Committee of the House of Commons,

00:07:01.480 took it forward in the Senate. We got first and second reading, moved it to committee.

00:07:07.060 Witnesses came to see it there as well. I mean, there was also witnesses, tax experts and

00:07:11.460 Revenue Canada, Taxation Canada people in the taxation department spoke for and against it at

00:07:19.640 committee in the House, but it still passed. And the same thing happened in the Senate.

00:07:24.080 So it did pass there. But there were senators fairly, I've had some senators say that there was

00:07:31.440 more controversy around this bill passing in the Senate than any opposition bill they've ever seen.

00:07:37.960 That seems very strange. I guess to some on the left, this would be something they would see as a

00:07:45.020 hindrance, right? You have all these small businesses out there creating jobs and opportunity

00:07:49.960 and wealth in their communities. But those that really subscribe to the view that big government

00:07:55.820 is boss, don't mind only a few, a handful of corporations doing business. It's a lot easier

00:08:04.980 for those in big government to deal with those. It's easy for government, the bureaucrats, what have you.

00:08:12.240 Whereas small businesses, those that do the hard work in our communities, should be able to have

00:08:19.060 that opportunity to at least transfer that farm or transfer that business to their son or daughter

00:08:26.840 and keep that wealth into the family and keep that opportunity, those jobs, local in the community.

00:08:33.360 Well, that's absolutely true. And when I talk about a tax saving here, this is money in the family's

00:08:42.380 pockets as opposed to going to Revenue Canada for general revenue to be dispersed back out in other

00:08:48.120 forms, I suppose, if that's the way you want to look at government spending. But what they really

00:08:53.920 fail to realize in the Senate and in the Liberal Party is that this money stays within, stays with the

00:08:59.280 parents. It's part of their retirement package. It means that the children don't have to use double taxed money

00:09:08.240 to pay for the corporation that they're buying. And the safeguard is that they have to hold those shares of that

00:09:15.860 company that they're purchasing for at least five years, or else that reverts back and the parents

00:09:21.440 would have to pay the dividends or pay the taxes as if it was a dividend anyway. So that's the

00:09:26.480 safeguard that's going to, and that's a longer period of time than most businesses have to follow

00:09:31.460 the tax codes to make sure that there's no filibustering or no monkey business, I guess you could

00:09:37.460 say with this particular act. And so I think that's one of the big keys. The discussion in the Senate

00:09:45.840 was around a lot of extraneous things, but it's certainly in several of the cases against it,

00:09:51.460 looked like the discussion papers that were written were written by the tax department and

00:09:56.180 the individuals there who, sort of the bureaucracy that didn't want to see this pass.

00:10:01.580 But this is a benefit. I've had a chartered accountant firm phone me yesterday and say

00:10:07.260 that this bill will do more for small businesses in Canada than has been done in the last 20 years

00:10:11.580 through the tax department. And so I'm very appreciative of that. I wouldn't allow myself

00:10:17.240 to think we'd get ahead of ourselves until it actually got third reading in the Senate, which it did

00:10:21.420 back in late June here on the 22nd of June. And so that's, it's a real feeling of

00:10:31.340 pride and accomplishment actually for getting a bill like this through the Senate. But I must say,

00:10:38.860 Jamie here as well, I have to give several of my colleagues credit as well. First of all,

00:10:44.180 I want to thank all of them that voted for it in no matter what party they were in and in the Senate

00:10:49.160 for making sure that they did pass because there was an amendment that I'll talk about in a minute

00:10:52.980 that they tried to kill it, to kill the bill. But I have to give credit to three of my colleagues,

00:10:58.400 Kevin Waugh from Saskatoon, Randy Hoback from Prince Albert and Andrew Scheer from Regina Coppell,

00:11:05.660 because without them allowing me to move my bill forward again, each time it comes up in the house,

00:11:12.420 it drops to the bottom and you have to be able to bring it back up. And they were able to allow me

00:11:16.780 to do this so that we could get it passed before the end of June here. And that's very important

00:11:20.680 because if there is an election call, you know, all bills die on the order paper. And this would have

00:11:25.680 had to have been started all over for the fourth time, actually, that it's been tried to come

00:11:31.000 forward. So that's why it was so important. Yeah, Larry, this is amazing that you were able

00:11:38.900 to do that and the help of our colleagues to ensure that gets done. And I think that also goes to the

00:11:44.580 fact that in agriculture, and you're a farmer yourself, you know this, the demographics aren't

00:11:50.180 getting any younger. And we need to have the ability to feed our country, feed our population

00:11:54.260 and then export it to help feed others around the world. But if there was a barrier that prevented

00:12:00.880 a family from passing on that farm, that operation to their, their son, their daughter, whatever,

00:12:10.220 that is a hindrance to getting more young people into agriculture into that part of our economy,

00:12:16.180 instead of these big, big, you know, these farms getting bigger and corporations holding these

00:12:21.480 farms, it really does impact the local level at a very, it has a major impact at the local level.

00:12:30.920 Yeah, no, it certainly does. And, and to have those dollars stay in the community, because those

00:12:36.080 parents don't really go very far away. There was concern by some of the senators and even in the house

00:12:41.320 that oh, well, this bill doesn't stop the parents from still being involved in the farm.

00:12:45.740 I would hope not, I would hope that's correct, because you want to have the continuity of

00:12:52.680 transfer to be there officially, as to the ownership of the corporation and pass it down in case something

00:13:01.140 was to happen to the seniors who want to pass it. But at the same time, you've got a big, you know,

00:13:07.220 that money will stay in that community, because they're not going very far. And they can,

00:13:11.020 they can help operate the operation. My own father drove a tractor for a lot of years after

00:13:16.680 he'd sold the farm to me. And, you know, back in those days, and, but, you know, the irony of it is

00:13:24.800 a lot of these small farms, our small businesses are incorporated, because of the tax act that was put

00:13:30.980 in place in the 70s by this prime minister's father. And now this one, this Trudeau was trying

00:13:36.680 to dismantle it. And I find that as a really sad irony. And that many, when we talk about farming

00:13:44.480 corporations or fishing corporations, it's no different than a shoe store or mom and pop shop

00:13:50.580 on a, on a grocery store on the corner store, or a dress shop, shoe repair, whatever it is, jewelry

00:13:56.980 store insurance agency, you know, these are the kinds of, I think sometimes the government fails to

00:14:03.480 realize that 82% of the private jobs created in Canada are created by small businesses. And that's the

00:14:09.520 big issue here, you want to provide people with an opportunity, not as an incentive in Bill 208, but to

00:14:17.540 level the playing field. So they're not penalized to be able to do this and the continuity of being

00:14:22.560 able to have the experience to pass it down to the next generation. I think I used the example in the

00:14:27.640 Senate that my father got a lot of cheap labor out of me before I was, you know, because I loved the

00:14:32.880 job and I wanted to do it. And there was an opportunity to take it over someday. So when I bought it from

00:14:38.760 him, I, you know, certainly it's the same with every generation of small business out there, they want to

00:14:45.400 be able to be involved and stay involved. They're not going to go very far away from their

00:14:48.640 grandchildren. So I think it's a great community builder. And that was very much recognized by the

00:14:54.840 senators that did pass this. All right, Larry, we're pretty much out of time, but I always give

00:14:59.480 the guests the last word. Is there anything else you want to add? I know we covered a lot. I do

00:15:03.880 appreciate it. I'd just like to cover that amendment that I talked about, Jamie, the senators, the

00:15:09.320 old liberal senators, I guess you could say, call them whatever sector they were, tried to put an

00:15:15.700 amendment forward, which would have killed the bill, because it would have had to gone back to the

00:15:18.780 House, and there wouldn't have been time to pass it. The amendment was to basically not allow third

00:15:23.600 reading of C208, and to take out all small businesses from the from the bill, except farmers and

00:15:30.260 fishers, which are only about three or 4% of the bill. So this is extremely important to all of our small

00:15:37.920 businesses in across Canada, I think they use the number 1.6 some million of them. And it doesn't

00:15:44.620 cost the Treasury that much, because not everybody's going to want to do this. Just because there's that

00:15:48.700 many businesses out there doesn't mean they're all going to transfer to their family. Some families,

00:15:53.400 children go on to education and other areas and maybe don't, you know, see other opportunities and

00:15:59.180 don't want to take over the business. And in those cases, while they're free to sell to whoever they

00:16:05.140 wish. But that amendment told a lot about what the Liberals think of small business. And I know

00:16:11.260 many of those senators, it was defeated 45 to 31. And so it was allowed to, that's what allowed the

00:16:16.640 bill to be put forward and voted on division without even a final vote on it, it passed the Senate.

00:16:22.140 And so anyway, to all our small business people out there, I want to let you know how much I

00:16:26.940 appreciate having been one most of my life. And we had support from this bill from the Canadian

00:16:33.820 Chamber of Commerce, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, the Canadian Taxpayers

00:16:37.340 Federation, the Board of Trade in Montreal, every farm organization in Canada, including the Canadian

00:16:43.040 Federation of Agriculture, and on and on the Insurance Brokers Association of Canada, the Canadian

00:16:47.500 Life Underwriters Association, Jamie, and there's just a plethora of organizations who have fought all

00:16:52.880 their lives to be able to get this kind of a motion or of a bill passed to level the playing field for

00:17:00.080 those who are selling their small businesses to their own family.

00:17:03.600 Choice, options, and freedom. Well done, Larry Maguire on Bill C-208. It is quite the accomplishment

00:17:08.940 to get a private member's bill through the House, through the Senate. Well done. This will have a

00:17:13.080 lasting legacy. We're very proud of you and our colleagues that helped to make that happen.

00:17:17.380 So, Larry Maguire, member of Parliament for Brandon Suros in the beautiful province of

00:17:21.380 Manitoba, his first time on the show. Well done, Larry Maguire.

00:17:24.880 You're laying on a great blueprint.

00:17:25.920 We're going to have to have you on again. Absolutely. Thank you very much for joining

00:17:30.380 us again. New content every single Tuesday, 1.30 p.m. Eastern Time. We ask that you like,

00:17:35.620 subscribe, share this program, help us push back against the ever-moving liberal agenda.

00:17:40.240 If you can't watch it all right this second, you can download it, listen to it later on on platforms

00:17:44.480 like CastBox, iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, you name it. It is out there. Together, we can push back

00:17:49.680 against that ever-moving liberal agenda. We will see you next week. And as always, remember,

00:17:54.660 low taxes, less government, more freedom. That is the blueprint.

The Blueprint: Canada's Conservative Podcast - July 08, 2021

Supporting Family Farm Businesses

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript