Finance Committee on April 1st, 2014

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you.

I'm going to take the next round.

I wanted to start with Mr. Smith. Mr. Smith, you have a series of very substantive recommendations with respect to what the government ought to do or what this committee ought to look at.

Do you have any recommendations for industry, and from your perspective, how is industry doing in terms of actually coming to the table and investing themselves in terms of training and in terms of looking seriously at ensuring that people with disabilities have opportunities?

[Frank Smith]

Yes, well, I think I told you that we've had actually nearly 30 transition from school to work events right across Canada and we've had representatives from many private sector companies right across the spectrum of the employment market speak to students with disabilities and career counsellors who work on the campuses and all that.

I think that many employers are making an effort but generally the representation of people with disabilities in most parts of the private sector is pretty low. It's pretty low in the federal government too. I think it's around 3% or something, so the federal government needs to do a much better job when it comes to equity hiring.

There are all sorts of industries that are doing innovative things. They have special training programs and they have.... If you look at the financial services sector, for example, if you get a job in a bank, you may be more likely to get disability supports or sign language interpretation if you need it, for example, on the job.

On the other hand, I've heard a lot of people say—one person said it at an employment meeting of disability organizations organized by HRSDC—that the banks don't have a hiring problem; they have a retention problem.

Sometimes what happens in that sector, but in other sectors as well, is that people with disabilities—in many cases with university education—are being hired and put into call centres, for example, where the demand may be. Depending on somebody's disability, if you put them into a call centre environment, you may be setting them up for failure. A call centre is basically how many calls you can make in a certain period of time, how many widgets can you produce, that sort of thing.

In some cases it's thinking differently about how you're staffing positions among people with disabilities. So people with certain types of disabilities may not be very good when it comes to call centre jobs. Somebody with a communication issue because they have CP, for example, can't do telephone soliciting, but maybe that person has a commerce degree and you should be giving them a business-related job. It could be a teller position or it could be something higher than that.

I think that there are lots of efforts and I think there's funding from the federal government through various programs and the provinces as well to help support employers in their efforts to recruit and retain people with disabilities. There's also an issue with hiring managers too. I think it starts and ends with hiring managers. So a company can have a great employment equity policy, but if the people who are doing the hiring are not interested in hiring somebody in a wheelchair, then it starts and ends right there.

So I think that generally the private sector is doing a better job working with the disability community and hiring people with disabilities but there's a lot of—

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Would they be even less than the 3% of the federal government—

[Frank Smith]

What's that?

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Would they be even less than the 3%—

[Frank Smith]

Yes, I'm not sure about....I don't have the exact...and I'm not actually sure about the figure with the federal government, either. That was the most recent one I read, which was probably a couple of years back in the employment equity report. But I know a number of other crown corporations and big private sector companies probably have similar percentages when it comes to people with disabilities.

They're really huge issues for people who have chronic health conditions, for example, mental health conditions in terms of stigma, accommodations, the flexibility within the workforce, for example, when people need to either work from home or work part-time or whatever. There are a lot of people who are not unionized who will lose their jobs in circumstances like that; even unionized employees will.

I think the level of chronic health conditions and mental health conditions is exploding and it's having a serious impact on how employers are adapting to very talented people who come into the employment situation with some complex accommodation issues.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Okay and I appreciate that. I have about a minute left.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

You have well under a quarter. Take a hold of that one.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

I just tell colleagues the time to be helpful, but obviously, they don't appreciate that.

I have a question to our two student representatives and I had the same question in terms of the 1,000%, because I didn't quite see the number. What percentage of the cost of an education ought a student to pay? What should we be looking at?

[Tierry Morel-Laforce]

I think the question is not well put and perhaps we should ask ourselves how much students can afford. When we see their debt, we realize that they are already paying too much.

In Quebec, funding is between 17% and 20%, and it is going down. Actually, the government has stopped funding universities. It even tried to increase student contributions. The question that should be asked is how much can we ask students to pay, given that they are already going into debt and putting off their life plans.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

I'll give you a chance to answer, Mr. Farrington, but I want to preface that there's a cost. Professors and buildings and everything have a cost. There is a benefit at the end, obviously, according to most studies. People who get a post-secondary education earn more over their lifetime than those who do not. Given that, can you give us a certain per cent as to what a student ought to pay?

[Brent Farrington]

Absolutely.

First, thanks for pointing out that 1,000% tuition fee. I will get heckled for that when I get back to my office. I should have said it quadrupled and then I should have asked, have wages quadrupled? So I apologize for that one. But it's still pretty severe when you think about it. That's a substantial increase over time and it's something that's happened very recently.

In terms of the amount or the shared cost, as people like to say, of post-secondary education, I think it's really important that we ask that question in its inverse. We say what's the benefit to society of a highly educated workforce and the answer is that its benefits are far greater than the actual individual. In fact, the OECD has published a series of studies on this area that show that the return on every dollar invested in post-secondary education was more than double that.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

I agree with you on that completely, but I'm not really hearing a....

[Brent Farrington]

The answer that I would say is that I believe post-secondary education benefits society more than it does the individual. Therefore, that should be the prioritization when we think about what the budget should be and how we invest in it.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Okay, all right. Thank you.

I'll go to Mr. Brison, now, please.

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Smith, you're familiar with the disability tax credit. Should we be making that refundable, such that it would benefit low-income Canadians who currently, in many cases, don't qualify for it?

[Frank Smith]

Yes, and I think there are a lot of benefits on the tax side, in terms of the disability tax credit, the disability support deduction, and medical expenses. Students can, for example, claim a lot of their expenses related to their disability that are not supported by a grant, for example, through a tax credit. But that doesn't help.

I have students who contact me who are not able to pay for their education with sufficient loans and grants and the answer would be that they can get a disability tax credit for a lot of their expenses. Well, that doesn't help somebody pay for it up at the beginning. That doesn't help them get in the door if they can't pay for it to begin with.

It's an issue of tax credits and those are really great. They should continue. But as I mentioned before, we also have an issue with the attachment of disability supports and funding and social assistance and employment. So if somebody is receiving disability supports or disability benefits, which are partly funded by the federal government through the Canada health and social transfer, then they may not be able to work while they're in school. After they graduate, a lot of graduates with disabilities who are highly educated have a really serious decision to make, particularly if they have a serious disability that requires attendant care and all sorts of medical expenses.

Do they take a job that may pay them very little when they leave and lose their benefits or have their benefits clawed back?

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

A lot of times we focus on inclusion efforts, for instance with Canadians or people with disabilities, as a social policy as opposed to as an economic policy. The reality of whenever we squander the human potential of anyone or any group is that there's an economic cost.

Should we be looking at some of what the Obama administration has been doing, In terms of raising the profile of issues around people with disabilities and trying to create more opportunities within government?

[Frank Smith]

Yes, definitely.

You're talking about within the federal public service?

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

Yes.

[Frank Smith]

Well, of course....

As I mentioned earlier, I'm not sure if I got the statistic exactly right, the level of employment of persons with disabilities is very low in the federal public service. It's very low in a lot of very big private sector companies too. I think a lot of that has to do with....

We talked earlier about the Canada summer employment program. If you increase opportunities for people with disabilities to get summer employment and hopefully summer jobs within the federal government, that can lead to all sorts of career opportunities either in the federal public service or in the private sector with that kind of experience.

I think when you talk about the social factor, there's the social benefit and everything. People with disabilities are very good employees. It's been proven time and again in many studies and also the private sector companies have said the same thing. They work extra hard and they're productive. I think the perception in the private sector amongst employers who aren't willing to hire people with disabilities is that they'll be less productive, that the cost of their accommodations is too high, and they don't want to take the chance. But that is not the case in the majority of instances.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

A very brief question....

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

The TD study was helpful, but the CIBC economic study was also good.

Finally there's another CIBC study that also talked about how, over the next 10 years, 50% of the small businesses in Canada will be sold. There's going to be a huge transfer of wealth. Maybe we ought to be seeking ways to encourage young Canadians to become the entrepreneurs and help them finance the acquisition of some of those small businesses.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

A brief comment from one person....

[Brent Farrington]

I would just say that one of the largest impacts of debt right now is that it's discouraging entrepreneurship, and absolutely that's something that needs to be incentivized.

Innovation is dropping—the OECD is tracking it; the World Economic Forum is tracking it—and a lot of it is because people aren't going to take on additional risk when they are carrying these massive debt loads.