Finance Committee on May 31st, 2012

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

I'm sorry to interrupt, but my specific question was about how the Retail Council feels about the fact that we didn't move the same-day exemption. That was the more clear question. Sorry, I may have contextually gotten lost there.

[Diane Brisebois]

Thank you for clarifying. There are two answers to that question. One, we were somewhat relieved. Two, there was a concern. It has become a very popular issue, and there's a concern because most retailers believe it doesn't matter how much people spend on same-day trips; rarely are consumers stopped and asked to pay duties or taxes.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

You can correct me if I'm wrong, but I presume when the Canadian dollar was 65¢ and the U.S. had these exemptions for its own travellers, the Retail Council certainly wasn't concerned about that particular situation. I think they're only raising the issue now because the reality is it's the currency value that drives whether people shop in the United States. It's not the duty exemption that's driving cross-border shopping.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

One minute.

[Diane Brisebois]

I don't think people were arguing that either. It's important to understand the position of the council. It's not a question of building walls so that consumers can't shop where they want and when they want. It's a question of making sure there is a level playing field. All we are suggesting, sir, is that the government can play an important role in looking at, for example, import duties or import tariffs on finished goods. That plays a big role, especially if you look at the example of sporting equipment. Most of that equipment is purchased from the same factories in Asia, as much as we may not like that. When they're landed here, they're already 18% more expensive for a retailer. All we're asking is to make sure that we eliminate those tariffs so that we can create a level playing field for retailers.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you.

Mr. Mai, you have the floor.

[Hoang Mai, NDP, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Stanford, when we hear the government talk about all the net new jobs created...you mentioned the quality of the jobs. You said that a lot of them are for temporary foreign workers, so they are not permanent; some of them are not full-time jobs.

Can you expand a bit on that, or give us some details?

[Jim Stanford]

Certainly, and I'd be prepared to provide additional empirical evidence for that, because I am not prepared with that right now.

The dimensions of the quality of work would include part-time work, especially for those who desire full-time work. The table I put out indicates there are hundreds of thousands of full-time equivalent positions of unutilized labour supply of people who want to work full time but are limited to part-time employment.

There is the issue of temporary contract positions and other precarious types of positions. That's harder to track in the data, but Statistics Canada has done a better job in recent years of trying to develop more information on that. That is another dimension that is increasing.

Another issue is self-employment. Some self-employment obviously reflects a positive choice by someone with an idea to start a business. Some of it reflects that a person hasn't been able to find a regular paying job so they have to do something. On average, both the pay and the security of self-employment tends to be lower than in paid jobs.

With regard to the temporary foreign workers you mentioned, the increase in the temporary foreign worker program between the end of 2007 and the end of 2011 was 100,000 positions, which represents something between a quarter and a third of all the net new positions created in the whole labour market.

[Hoang Mai, NDP, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

It's not very surprising that the quality of jobs is not important, when it comes from the Minister of Finance, who said, “There is no bad job. The only bad job is not having a job.”

Ms. Rothman, in my riding there are a lot of people who have jobs—not very good quality jobs—but they are now relying on food banks. There are a lot of issues regarding poverty. You said that with this bill, with the changes to OAS, it does not address the issue of poverty.

Could you elaborate on that?

[Laurel Rothman]

Certainly. I will say, in a positive tone, that I think we now know more about what's needed to address poverty reduction and eradication in Canada. You'll all remember that the HUMA committee studied it for two and half years, and all parties endorsed that report in principle.

We would suggest that we need an overall plan, just as we have or we may have for other major issues on our agenda. That would include building on the research that's been done both by government and NGOs. It includes important improvements and initiatives in the labour market, as well as public policies for children, for OAS, GIS, and for that large group of working-age adults for whom I think the issues may be even more complex.

[Hoang Mai, NDP, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

One of the unfortunate things is that we've heard for so long about poverty and having to address that issue, and we even heard that during pre-budget consultations.

Are you saying there is no plan in this budget regarding fighting poverty?

[Laurel Rothman]

Not that I am aware of.

[Hoang Mai, NDP, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Not that we are aware of either.

Ms. Griffin Cohen, you mentioned there will be some issues with women and also visible minority problems regarding this budget. Can you expand more on that, please?

[Marjorie Griffin Cohen]

Thank you.

What we don't often understand or look at is how various portions of the budget will interact with each other. For example, when you change the OAS and you then change the employment insurance, you're going to see that older people who are over 65 are probably going to be doing part-time and temporary work; they're not going to be able to qualify for a pension, nor are they going to be able to qualify for EI, if they aren't employed. We may be pushing a lot of people in specific kinds of groups into positions of poverty and relying on social assistance, and the provinces, which probably will not be able to cope with that as well.

We're seeing a great many measures in this budget that have not been looked at beforehand; that is, the implications of what it will mean for people have not been looked at beforehand.

I was speaking specifically of employment insurance and what it will mean for women, because that hasn't been discussed very much. Obviously it has a big effect on seasonal work. A lot of the work that women do is seasonal, but even more significant is that a lot of it is temporary. A great deal of our labour force has been structured on the notion that people are available for temporary work.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Mai.

We'll go to Mr. Hoback, please.

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

Thank you, Chair, and thanks to all the witnesses for being here this afternoon and this morning. It has been very interesting to talk and listen to you.

Ms. Brisebois, you were on television last night, and I actually did watch some of your Senate hearing last night on television. CBC had a report on some of the things you talked about with regard to the price differentials, especially in hockey equipment, from across the border. I have started playing hockey again, so I watched that very closely.

I think it's very important to note, when we look at our budget and we actually look at what's going on in this budget, that it's got a single focus, which is jobs. That's getting an economy that creates jobs. When you create jobs, you actually get the spinoffs that actually impact what Mrs. Rothman talks about, and that's dealing with poverty and issues with poverty and with kids in poverty and that spectrum. Once you have a job, you start to build yourself a family, you start to build a house, you start to actually take away from the social network, and you're paying taxes, so you're putting back into the social network at the same time.

But if nobody is working, you end up with a situation like they have in Greece, where it's just unsustainable.

This is where I go in my questioning with you—the importance of trade. Free trade agreements are trade agreements. I don't like the words “free trade agreements”; I call them “balanced trade agreements”, because there are a lot of things in there between governments that make these trade agreements work for each country. They're not situations where we're exploiting them or they are exploiting us. It is actually creating partnerships with other countries to be more efficient—and this is probably a better word—partners together, or trading partners.

If you look through our government, and if you look at what's in this budget, we've got a very active trade agenda. What do you think the impact of that trade agenda will be as far as the creation of jobs and growth is concerned, and how will it affect your sector?

[Diane Brisebois]

Certainly, generally, as the brief indicated, we are very supportive of that agenda. We believe it is extremely important to work closely and to try to harmonize—we're talking about regulations—with the United States.

This is not a question of a sector believing that there should not be free trade and that it should not be easier in fact to be able to do business with each other. We're suggesting that while we do that, we need to make sure that internally we have the right policies and regulations to level the playing field. We gave an example of tariffs.

So this is not going against wanting to trade, but this is an important issue to make sure that the sector in Canada is more competitive, because it contributes, as you know, largely to the health and well-being of communities.

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

I think you make a good point there. The point I would make back to you is there seems to be the mindset that you do the trade agreement and then you walk away and everything is happy-go-lucky. In reality, you do a trade agreement and then you work with the business sector and realize there are other hurdles that show up. You've got to keep dealing with those countries that you have trade agreements with to keep removing those hurdles.

I have to give Mr. Fast and Mr. Ritz credit, because they have been around the world doing that. I'll use the example in the beef sector. Two years ago our beef sector was horrible. They were selling bred cows for $200 to $300 a head.

Minister Ritz went out on a very massive agenda trying to open up all these little markets for different types of cattle product, stuff that we don't eat here in Canada, and he was very successful in doing that. Now, in just two years, these bred cows are going for record amounts of $1,800. It just shows you how important trade is to one part of the sector.

But there's that spinoff again. Those cattlemen are now buying new tractors, which are buying engines from different manufacturers. You can just see how it dominoes back into it through the whole sector.

Mr. Stanford, how do you see the importance of trade and trade agreements and job creation in Canada? If we didn't have these trade agreements, where would we be?

[Jim Stanford]

I believe fervently in trade as a source of job creation. The exports of Canada's economy are essential to the jobs that are supported in them. Unfortunately, the trade agreements have not actually promoted our trade. Exports as a share of our GDP have declined substantially over the last decade from over 40% of GDP to just 31% of GDP today.

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

The share of our GDP exports in what?

[Jim Stanford]

Everything. All goods and services, including resources—

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

But our trade is going up and up all the time.

[Jim Stanford]

No, it isn't. I'll show you the data. Our trade is falling. Actually, in absolute terms, our trade is lower in quantity than it was five years ago, and as a share of GDP it's significantly—

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

I'd like to have a look at that data, and I'd like some other people to look at it.

I go back to my riding and to Saskatchewan or Alberta. You talk about the amount of exports we're doing, and when we talk to our manufacturers like MacDon Industries, out of Winnipeg, or Morris Industries, out of Saskatoon, their trade is going up substantially. So I would appreciate seeing that documentation.

[Jim Stanford]

I'd be glad to submit that to the clerk following the meeting.