March is fraud awareness month, and small business owners are being educated about the problem. Canadian Federation of Independent Business provincial affairs director Elliot Sims outlines the statistics.

"For the first time ever, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business asked our membership about how fraud affects them. The reality is that there has really been no research work done on how fraud impacts small businesses in Canada. From that research what we found is that 20% of small businesses have been impacted by fraud in the most recent years."

He outlines the most common forms of fraud against small businesses.

"That could either be through credit card fraud, it could be through phishing scams online, and a number of other matters. What CFIB is trying to do is help educate small business owners and their employees on how they can protect themselves against fraud during this fraud awareness month that's being put on by the Competition Bureau of Canada."

Sims notes the efforts being made to help educate business owners and employees.

"CFIB is going to be doing a number webinars as well as news releases for small business owners to give them all the information they need to know about how to detect fraud and to make sure they don't get caught in that trap. Part of it is through webinars that'll be happening next week, on March 8th and 10th in English, as well as in French on March 9th. And it'll be through releases put forth through the rest of the month."