Government Operations Committee on March 1st, 2011

[Bill Pentney]

I can't speak for the Conservative Party of Canada.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Well, I don't ask you to.

I have many other questions and very little time.

Public Works is requesting an additional $251 million for vote 5 capital projects. That's a 48% increase. First of all, why has that planned level of spending increased so much since the fall of 2010? And second, how can you spend that much money in the last seven weeks of the fiscal year?

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

There's very little time left to answer the question.

[Alex Lakroni]

Thank you for the question.

There are two reasons for the increase in the capital vote. Reason number one is the purchase of the Nortel building, which we talked about. The second reason is that Public Works is managing the economic action plan, $200 million in this fiscal year. That explains the increase in capital votes.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

What's surprising about the economic action plan? What's the surprise that meant it needed more spending? You didn't explain that.

[Alex Lakroni]

It is a program over two years. It means an influx into the PWGSC budget of $200 million for 2009-10 and 2010-11.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Vincent, go ahead for five minutes.

[Robert Vincent, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

I see in the Human Resources and Skills Development Canada portfolio summary that there are reductions of $211 million in guaranteed income supplement payments and $356 million in old age security payments.

Unless I'm mistaken, there are fewer seniors and the government is therefore saving $550 million. Is that correct? Who can answer? My question is for all of you. Could someone answer it?

[Marcia Santiago]

Just to clarify, you're referring to the figures that are shown under the explanations of funds available.

[Robert Vincent, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

With regard to the reductions—

[Marcia Santiago]

Yes.

[Robert Vincent, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

—at Human Resources and Skills Development Canada.

[Marcia Santiago]

That's correct. Our explanation states that these reductions are for something called re-profiling. As I started to explain earlier, sometimes departments--just because of the uptake in the program or the level of interest in the program, or for example the timing of negotiating and signing agreements with provinces or with non-government organizations--cannot always use the funds in the same fiscal year they are given. We have an exercise called re-profiling, le report de fonds. It's like a transfer of funding authority from one year to another, and that's what's being shown here. For certain programs, there are moneys that won't be spent in 2010-11, but because they have been re-profiled, they will be made available to the department again in the following year. We are not actually reducing the programs as a permanent cut. Instead we're changing the way the timing of the flow of funding will work.

[Robert Vincent, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

The documents state: "Reduced guaranteed income supplement benefit payments based on updated population and average monthly rate forecasts." We're talking about the number of claimants. There will be a reduction of $211 million here. Unless I'm mistaken, there will be fewer claimants. There are fewer seniors; isn't that correct?

Look, we won't go any further on this subject. It seems complicated, and I only have five minutes.

[Marcia Santiago]

I'm sorry, I misunderstood the question.

[Robert Vincent, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

In any case, you at Resources and Skills Development Canada will be saving about $567 million.

Are you going to take that money and increase the guaranteed income supplement by $110 a month for seniors? We know they're living under the poverty line. Do you believe there's another $560 million increase in the guaranteed income supplement?

[A voice]

No.

[Robert Vincent, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

I'm going to let my colleague have the rest of my time.

[Diane Bourgeois, Bloc, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

I want to go back to Human Resources and Skills Development. I'd like you to provide the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates with written answers to the following questions. What criteria do you use to grant student loans? What criteria do you use to determine whether student loan-related debt is not recoverable? Do you assess the risks when you lend to students? If so, how do you do that? In view of the fact that the value of student loans is $2,419, on what basis do you say that those $2,500 loans are unrecoverable? Since students pay low interest rates, have you considered any other solutions?

And since I don't have much time left, I would like to go back to Mr. Lakroni.

A few years ago, Public Works and Government Services Canada sold some beautiful federal government buildings to Larco Investments. The sale was criticized because some of those buildings could have been used by National Defence.

Now that you've bought the Carling Campus from Nortel, another private business, I would like to know whether you've developed a strategic plan at Public Works and Government Services Canada for the federal departments to occupy and use those premises. If you have one, can we see in that strategic plan why you are selling, why you are buying and what premises you intend to occupy?

Could you submit those answers here, to the committee? That would spare us having to ask too many questions about the reasons for the sale of good premises when we could have occupied them. Now they're charging a few million dollars to use other premises.

For my final question, you sell—

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

You have 20 seconds. If you want an answer, you might want to—

[Diane Bourgeois, Bloc, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

No, I don't want oral answers; I want them to submit that information to the committee. They're looking for the answers. They can't give them to us and we're wasting time.

So I'm asking questions and I want them to submit the answers to the committee.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

Your time is up, so you'd want to either complete the request.... I just wanted to make sure that you didn't want an answer.

[Diane Bourgeois, Bloc, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

Thank you. I'll go back to my final question.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

Merci.

Our next questioner is Mr. Calandra.

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

Thank you.

Thank you all for coming.

I know the opposition is a bit stressed because of the success of the economic action plan.

I know my good friend Mr. Holder was trying to source a question with respect to standing up for the 98% of people who actually pay off their student loans on time and to make sure that of the 2% who do not, that there isn't a concerted effort by some not to pay their loans because they think they can get away with it.

Something that we've seen constantly at this committee is the official opposition standing up for the rights of people who don't play by the rules, as opposed to those who do play by the rules. I guess it's something that will continue to permeate this Parliament until the next election.

With respect to the economic action plan, I like everything that's been happening. I noted in my riding that when we had an event with respect to the economic action plan items and investments that were made, I was pleased to be joined by the member for Markham—Unionville, Mr. McCallum, a Liberal member, who participated and was very happy with some of the investments we made in his riding. He was very happy to see some of the signs that were put out there, some of the advertisements.

I know when I'm in my riding people are quite excited by some of the tax changes that are made and some of the benefits they now have access to and they look forward to some of those tax savings. Last week I was at an arena built in my riding.... There were two good events last week: an arena built in my riding where hundreds of craftsmen were at work, men and women, finishing off an arena; a million rivets in the roof, 10 kilometres of piping underneath the ground, replacing a 70-year-old arena. So people were very excited.

I was at the completion of a social housing project, a cooperation among CMHC, the province, and the municipality. There were 257 families celebrating affordable housing in the riding of Markham—Unionville, which is the Liberal-held riding of John McCallum.

So there are a lot of things happening. We're all very excited. Again, I take every opportunity to say I believe the public service has done spectacular work over the last couple of years. I know the opposition might not necessarily feel that way because it's been so successful, but I think you've done tremendous work, be it the G-8, G-20, or the economic action plan. I hear it from my mayors and I hear it from people about the speed at which things were done, how quickly it was done. The fact that you can announce a project, see it completed and open the project all in the span of two years is something that is completely remarkable.

I'd like to talk about AECL and how it's possible that a previous government could have signed an agreement that will allow a project to be so over budget, but I'm not going to. I'll leave that with the natural resources committee to investigate.

I want to go into the Nortel campus a little bit. I think, Mr. Lakroni, you mentioned a third-party independent analysis. What is that and what does it entail?