Small-business owners have a new advocate who will lobby governments on their behalf.
Mike Klassen, who has long been a tenacious critic of Vancouver city hall, will be the new director of provincial affairs at the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, B.C. region. The position has been vacant since November when Shachi Kurl ended a stint in the post of just under two years and left CFIB to become Vision Critical's director of communications.
"Mike's background as a community leader, his strong presence in social media and his network in business and politics will help the cause of our 10,000 members across B.C.," said CFIB executive vice-president Laura Jones.
Klassen told Business in Vancouver that CFIB has surveyed its B.C. members and found that some of the top priorities are:
- having governments balance budgets;
- reducing overall red tape; and
- getting the provincial government to ensure that the transition to a PST and GST tax system is simple and straightforward.
"Our members are business people who know to balance their budgets. They have to in order to continue to succeed and survive," Klassen said.
"At the municipal level we're seeing a growing concern because year-over-year [governments are] continuing to increase their spending disproportionate to the growth in population or the inflation rate."
