Evidence of meeting #54 for Finance in the 40th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was research.
4:05 p.m.
Liberal
John McCallum Liberal Markham—Unionville, ON
Okay. Thank you very much.
Ms. Gulliver, I am a strong supporter of income averaging. I don't know why they did away with it in 1982.
Yes, it was a Liberal government.
4:05 p.m.
Voices
Oh, oh!
4:05 p.m.
Liberal
John McCallum Liberal Markham—Unionville, ON
Well, I could just see the calculators going over there.
I would think it should be applied to all of the self-employed, not just artists. I assume you wouldn't object to that, would you?
4:05 p.m.
President, Professional Writers Association of Canada
We wouldn't object to it. I think artists specifically face a bit of a challenge, especially writers. We might write an article today and submit it, and it might not get published for six months or a year. Then we might not get paid for it for 30, 60, 90 days after publication.
4:05 p.m.
Liberal
John McCallum Liberal Markham—Unionville, ON
There are other people who have volatile incomes. It just seems to me as a general principle that income smoothing ought to apply to all the self-employed, artists or not--apart from the fact that it's hard to define exactly what an artist is.
That would be a lot simpler and fairer, it seems to me.
4:05 p.m.
President, Professional Writers Association of Canada
And we would absolutely support that.
4:05 p.m.
Liberal
John McCallum Liberal Markham—Unionville, ON
Okay.
About the green car thing, I have a problem with the clunkers thing applied in Canada. I'm not sure if it applies to your proposal, but approximately 80% of all the cars Canadians buy are imported and approximately 80% of the cars that we produce are exported.
Let's forget for a moment about the environmental side and assume that the object is to get more jobs for people making cars and related products. When we put a dollar in there, 80¢ of the benefit goes to the U.S., where 80% of the cars that we buy are produced. Canada gets way more benefit from the Obama clunkers program than we would from a Canadian program, because we export 80% of what we produce to the United States. So we might as well be free riders.
I don't know why we want to have a government program where 80% of the benefit goes to the United States. It's extraordinarily fiscally inefficient, other than for dealers. There is some benefit for dealers, and I don't minimize that. But in terms of jobs in manufacturing and related spinoff jobs, I would argue that this is extraordinarily inefficient.
4:10 p.m.
Executive Director, Green Vehicle Exchange Program
I had actually preconceived that this would be the next question, if it came up.
I want to turn you around on your ear on that. Four of the seven bestsellers in Canada are built in Canada. The Civic has been first for 10 years, and the Corolla is number two. The Sierra kicks in once in a while from Oshawa, and the Caravan manages to kick in around seven. The top 10 sellers in Canada sell at a rate of five to ten times that of all other models.
So you have 80 or 90 other models that are selling 4,000 or 8,000 or 10,000 units, and you have the Civic selling 100,000 and the Sierra selling 40,000 or 50,000.
4:10 p.m.
Liberal
John McCallum Liberal Markham—Unionville, ON
It's still the case that a very high percentage of the cars that Canadians buy are imported, and a very high percentage of the cars Canadians produce are exported, which therefore makes the program inefficient.
4:10 p.m.
Executive Director, Green Vehicle Exchange Program
By the same token, if you look at the Canadian content levels of American-built cars, where Canadian parts have been shipped and put into American-built cars, these cars are also coming back after being produced and sold in this system. Anything that levers towards a better U.S. economy will lever towards a better Canadian economy. We have no doubt about that. Eighty percent of our exports go to the U.S. It's our number one export market.
4:10 p.m.
Liberal
4:10 p.m.
Conservative
Bob Dechert Conservative Mississauga—Erindale, ON
It's been a good day for me here. Both my alma maters have presented today: McMaster University this morning and the University of Toronto this afternoon.
I'm pleased not only as a graduate of the University of Toronto but also as a representative of Mississauga and the GTA to see that the University of Toronto received $155 million in the knowledge infrastructure program, including a $70-million building in Mississauga. It's unfortunate Mr. Pacetti had to leave a little early, because I wanted to point out to him that this building is well under construction. I was at the ground-breaking a few weeks ago, and there's a lot of work proceeding there. I hope the same is true in the buildings in Scarborough and downtown.
I was interested to see your presentation on post-doctoral scholarships. What percentage of international post-doctoral fellows remain in Canada after their term at university is finished? Attracting these people to Canada is one of the things that drives future development in our economy.
Maybe you could comment on that.
4:10 p.m.
Vice-President, University Relations, University of Toronto
I thank you for the comment. The UTM building is doing well. We're very pleased with it.
I don't have the number, but I can get it for you; most of the folks who come here to do work stay on. One of my responsibilities is the international relationships with the University of Toronto. I would say I'm just as happy if they don't remain, because we need the international connections they can offer.
4:10 p.m.
Vice-President, University Relations, University of Toronto
So for every student we bring in here who goes back and creates work, we see it day after day that those connections, those research connections and markets, are going to be driven not by keeping people in here but by getting them out.
4:10 p.m.
Conservative
Bob Dechert Conservative Mississauga—Erindale, ON
I take it international students are generally good for Canada, but I have heard from other universities that a high percentage of the doctoral students and post-graduate students stay in Canada.
4:10 p.m.
Vice-President, University Relations, University of Toronto
Oh, they do. And I want our students to go there and I want their students to come here. That's how we will—
4:15 p.m.
Conservative
Bob Dechert Conservative Mississauga—Erindale, ON
With respect to your suggestion that we double the discovery accelerator supplements grants, what is the cost of that?
4:15 p.m.
Vice-President, University Relations, University of Toronto
I'm sorry; I don't have the specifics, but I can get them to you.
4:15 p.m.
Conservative
Bob Dechert Conservative Mississauga—Erindale, ON
Fair enough. Thank you for your suggestions.
I have a quick question for Ms. Pearl-Weinberg. I found your presentation on income splitting to be quite interesting. What cost to the government would you suggest for your RRIF suggestion, making pension splitting available to RRIF holders?
4:15 p.m.
Chair, Taxation Working Group, Investment Funds Institute of Canada
We don't have that information available, but we can try to get it to you.
4:15 p.m.
Conservative
Bob Dechert Conservative Mississauga—Erindale, ON
Certainly if it's in a reasonable ballpark, it's something that I think would be worthwhile suggesting, so I'd appreciate it if you could give us some guidance on that. That would be helpful.
