Conservative leader Scheer decries 'irony' of small business tax plan

Conservative Party leader Andrew Scheer spoke to small business owners in Waterloo region on Friday at conference centres in Cambridge and Kitchener-Waterloo, describing what he sees as 'irony' over Bill Morneau's proposed tax reforms for small business.

Meanwhile across town, federal Finance Minister Bill Morneau was also pitching small business tax reform to a different small business group.

Business leaders focused questions to Scheer on the Liberal tax reform for small business and what the Conservative party could do for business owners if they were in power.

"My message is that we're still not done the fight with tax changes the Liberals have proposed in the summer," he told CBC.

"It's only in the past few days that they've backed down a little bit," he said.

Scheer said that as recently as a "couple of weeks ago," the government was ignoring "all the things that Chambers [of Commerce] and opposition parties were warning could happen."

Greg Durocher, president and CEO of the Cambridge Chamber of Commerce, welcomed the opportunity to question Scheer's plan for small business tax reform.

"This is an organized mechanism for business owners to be heard," he said.

He added that business owners are frustrated and upset with how the government has been treating small business owners.

'Irony'

"It's not just on the business owners," Scheer said, "there's about 1.4 million small business owners across the country, but there's millions more that work for them."

"The irony is that the Liberals said this was all about finding people who used loopholes to avoid paying their fair share of taxes or using fancy accounting schemes to lower their tax liability. All the while it turns out that we have a prime minister and a finance minister that used their own accounting schemes and accounting measures to avoid paying higher taxes."

"That's the irony here."