Finance Committee on Sept. 30th, 2014

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Please, let's not go there.

[Chief Roberta Jamieson]

And one can go on....

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Okay.

You mentioned just now that in the 2013 budget the Government of Canada gave $10 million and that you were in the process of matching it. To date, $6.2 million has been raised.

[Chief Roberta Jamieson]

Yes.

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Am I to understand that if you don't succeed you will not manage to acquire those federal funds?

[Chief Roberta Jamieson]

Oh, I'm not even contemplating that.

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

When is the deadline for doing so?

[Chief Roberta Jamieson]

It's March 2015. We raised $5 million before last May. In the first year alone, we raised half.

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Thank you very much.

I'd like to go to Ms. Decter, please.

You are obviously very knowledgeable about the child care programs in Canada, and in Quebec there's the example you spoke of. How does our experience stack up with OECD or G-8 countries? Are we in a situation that's similar to comparable economies elsewhere?

[Ann Decter]

I don't know those as well, and you will have Martha Friendly on the next panel, who is very well versed on this. My recollection is that we are down near the bottom. I think we are ahead of the United States, but other than that I think we are the lowest in the amount spent on child care and early learning—in the OECD for sure.

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

At the tail end of your remarks, you talked about income splitting. You said that you didn't think it helped vulnerable communities. Could you expand on that?

[Ann Decter]

Actually, I said “vulnerable families”. From what I understand and from what I have read—and you have both the Fraser Institute and the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives saying that this is not a helpful policy—you basically must have one high-income earner to get a good benefit out of it. Most vulnerable families do not have a high-income earner at all. There's no benefit to shifting taxable income back and forth if you're below the taxable income. It's set up for people who are paying big taxes.

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

I want to ask Mr. Carr a question.

First, it's not clear to me how Mitacs is funded. Could you just elaborate?

[Dr. Graham Carr]

Yes. Mitacs receives funding from Industry Canada, and from provincial governments across the country, and through a fund that the tri-councils have set aside specifically for training.

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

In your third recommendation, you say that we should identify innovative companies to support. How would you propose we go about doing that?

[Dr. Graham Carr]

Again, I think that's a question that's best referred to Mitacs itself. I'm here as the academic representative.

I know from our researchers' perspectives that in some cases we're working with companies with whom we already have a relationship, but in other cases the great benefit to universities of the relationship with Mitacs is that Mitacs has a truly national network. They're well plugged into innovation agendas across the country, and they help to make connections that universities might not otherwise be able to do.

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you, Mr. Rankin.

We'll go to Mr. Van Kesteren, please.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you all for coming here. It's been a great experience. We've certainly heard some interesting testimony.

Mr. Carr, you presented quite an astounding statistic. You said, “A recent U.S. study found that the fastest growing 1% of businesses are responsible for 40% of job creation, while the fastest growing 5% of U.S. firms account for nearly 70% of all...new jobs.” That's an incredible statistic. It would certainly be of interest, I think, for us to maybe further investigate that and maybe dig down on those numbers, because they certainly do say something.

My question—some have alluded to this as well—is do you suggest that we should possibly be targeting those companies, and governments should maybe assist those in funding, if they are indeed the ones that are doing the hiring?

[Dr. Graham Carr]

Again, on the specific targeting, Mitacs is best positioned to answer that. But I would say that one of the major successes that Mitacs has had is in targeting the small and medium enterprises, many of which are large job creators within the country who previously hadn't had much experience working with the academic community. That's an important constituency that Mitacs internships reach out to. It creates great opportunities for universities to link in to small and medium enterprises as well.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

Thank you.

Our Minister of Employment has investigated, and has taken a trip to Germany. I think you're aware of that too.

Are we at the stage of, or should we start to investigate, possibly a new direction in how we coordinate and cooperate with industries as to where some of our students should be studying and what they should be studying?

[Dr. Graham Carr]

Speaking from a university perspective, I think one of the attractions of the Mitacs program as it currently exists is the diversity of opportunities it creates. Mitacs internships are really placed across the spectrum of industry, and increasingly in not-for-profit organizations.

You mentioned the minister's trip overseas. There's another dimension to that which is relevant to Mitacs and relevant to the universities. I spoke today about Accelerate, which is the flagship program, but as I'm sure many of you are aware, Mitacs runs a suite of different types of programs. One of them is the Globalinks program, which effectively recruits students away from targeted countries to come to work in the Canadian context, to study in Canadian universities, to have internship opportunities in Canadian universities.

One of the other great successes of Mitacs, just in terms of developing highly trained personnel for the Canadian R and D economy, is that more than 90% of Mitacs' interns in the Accelerate program end up staying in Canada and working in Canada. I think that's another benefit that's not a negligible one.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

Ms. Jamieson, I want to talk to you very quickly. Maybe you could clarify something. You were talking about first nations opportunities. We've heard about the enormous opportunities as well. Can you maybe tell this committee again, if I heard it correctly, how many of those jobs are going back into the community as opposed to going to private industry?

[Chief Roberta Jamieson]

The vast majority are working to give back to indigenous communities. Now those may be urban or rural, or they may be working for a first nations corporation. There are many, many dimensions to that answer.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

Are you a little bit concerned about that? Normally a healthy ratio for the public and the private sector is approximately 20% of something. Are you concerned that maybe more indigenous people are not moving into the private sector?