Finance Committee on Feb. 18th, 2016

[Robert-Falcon Ouellette, Liberal, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I appreciate all the guests coming today. I thank you very much for all the information you brought.

I'd like to go back to the guaranteed income. This is an idea that's been around for a century at least. It's been promoted by conservatives, socialists, neo-liberals, liberals, and even with Social Credit members. Even a former premier of Alberta, William Aberhart, talked about this. I've heard that Hugh Segal was in favour of this at one point. A poll in 2013, in November, found that 46% of Canadians were in favour of this and that 42% were opposed. It's an idea. Perhaps its time has come to be studied a bit more.

In the 2015 election I was in the working-class neighbourhood of Weston in Winnipeg centre, which is technically a Conservative area. I came across a retired lady. She told me she usually votes Conservative, but she also told me about Mincome and the impact it has had on her life. She was a young mother with no education, from Dauphin, where one of the project sites was. She used that income to get an education. She didn't become super rich. She's still working class, but she has three sons who all have families. One is an engineer with a master's degree, one works for the city and has a master's degree in urban planning, and the third one has his own business and is very successful. They all support their families, they are all great citizens, and they provide income to the state through their taxes.

I was wondering what would have happened if this experiment had continued on for a longer period of time.

[Dr. Evelyn Forget]

That's an interesting question, certainly among the researchers. When this project was introduced in 1974 there was a belief that Mincome was a pilot project that would be rolled out across the country by the end of the decade. It was seen as very much like Medicare, and a lot of the conversation I'm hearing now about guaranteed annual income is much like the old conversation about Medicare. It's something whose time has come. We need to think about it a bit.

In terms of how this affected people's lives, I have all kinds of anecdotes. When we interviewed people and we went to talk to participants in the study.... I have two favourite stories. One involves a small business. It was a family farm and they relied on a truck to take their material to the farmers' market to sell their vegetables. When Mincome came along it supported small business people as well. It was available to everybody in the community. It depended solely on the amount of income coming into the community. When the truck broke down, they were out of business. Mincome didn't have the kind of asset tests that provincial welfare had at the time, so they were able to use that money to invest in an asset that allowed them to get back on their feet.

My other story involves a librarian, and very much like your example she was a single mother with two daughters. She was on mother's allowance, on provincial social assistance, when Mincome came along. She had always been treated respectfully by the welfare system, but she was frustrated because she wanted to undertake job training and her case worker kept saying, “You go home and take care of your kids and we'll take care of you.” When Mincome came along she transferred to the program, engaged in some job training, and got a part-time job that turned into a full-time job. When I talked to her she had just retired after a 25-year career as a librarian and was incredibly proud of having modelled a different kind of life for her daughters. She had graduation pictures on the walls and the daughters had both become quite independent on their own.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Thank you.

Robert, we have about a minute for a question and an answer. Go ahead.

[Robert-Falcon Ouellette, Liberal, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

One of the things people often think is that people are going to stop working, but the way the Mincome was set up, every time you earned a dollar you would see a reduction in 50% of the income received from the state. Is that correct?

[Dr. Evelyn Forget]

That's right.

[Robert-Falcon Ouellette, Liberal, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Okay. I guess at the end of the day if you're on social assistance you wouldn't see a benefit, but it might give you more incentive to go out and start working.

[Dr. Evelyn Forget]

That was the intention, and among primary earners there was little reduction in terms the number of hours worked. The reductions were among teenagers and women who reduced the number of hours they worked in a specific way associated with childbirth.

[Robert-Falcon Ouellette, Liberal, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Thank You.

Ms. Raitt.

[Lisa Raitt, Conservative, Milton, ON]

Thank you very much.

While you have the microphone, Professor, on the guaranteed annual.... My colleague is right; Senator Hugh Segal is a big proponent of guaranteed annual income.

But from the other side of the ledger could you say that in the study, in the pilot projects there would be room for us to analyze the effect on simplification of processes within the bureaucratic system? Is that something that could also be looked at?

[Dr. Evelyn Forget]

It would certainly be possible with a new pilot. It wouldn't be possible given the information that was collected—

[Lisa Raitt, Conservative, Milton, ON]

Agreed. But the new pilot going forward, if you were to be successful—

[Dr. Evelyn Forget]

The new pilot, absolutely.

[Lisa Raitt, Conservative, Milton, ON]

—we'd be able to take a look at efficiencies in the market as well.

[Dr. Evelyn Forget]

Absolutely. That's a big potential benefit.

[Lisa Raitt, Conservative, Milton, ON]

Great.

I've always supported studying the issue so I hope that they're listening on the other side, and I hope you get somewhere with it.

[Dr. Evelyn Forget]

Thank you.

[Lisa Raitt, Conservative, Milton, ON]

For Mr. Kingston from the Business Council of Canada, The Globe and Mail is reporting today that the government is considering raising the excise tax on gasoline and diesel. You talked a little bit about taxes. What's your point of view on moving in that direction?

[Brian Kingston]

Thank you for the question.

Specifically on raising the excise tax on gasoline, we don't have a view on that yet. What I will say, related to my comments around tax reform, is that we've surveyed our members. We survey them every year to see the number of taxes that they pay, and on average, a large Canadian company is taxed at 56 different points. This is looking at municipal, provincial, and federal levels. They're spending about $4 million and employing 20 full-time employees just to comply with these taxes.

The point I would make is that we need to look at all of the various taxes that companies are exposed to and find a way to streamline them because this is extremely costly and it's inefficient for the economy.

[Lisa Raitt, Conservative, Milton, ON]

Very good. Thank you.

Ms. Baldwin out in Halifax, I know that you mentioned the privatization, but I just want to be clear. What we're talking about is a 42-year lease to manage a golf course in the Cape Breton Highlands National Park. You're not suggesting that the previous government actually privatized Cape Breton Highlands National Park, because we both know that's not true.

[Jeannie Baldwin]

You can call it contracting out or a 42-year lease, but it was privatized. It was a private company that got that, and the workers were not protected. So yes, your government did privatize the Highland Links.

[Lisa Raitt, Conservative, Milton, ON]

And that's a golf course.

[Jeannie Baldwin]

That land was taken away, expropriated from the community, and the community was guaranteed good-paying jobs, which has not happened.

[Lisa Raitt, Conservative, Milton, ON]

I just want to be very clear so that the viewing public understands what you're saying.

You are saying that the golf course and spa are going to be operated by a private company from Ontario. That is the fact. We have not seen a privatization of a national park, which is what you're alluding to in your presentation. Can we be very clear on that?

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Ms. Baldwin.