Human Resources committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and thank you of course for the invitation to speak to this very important study on poverty reduction. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Canadian Taxpayers Federation—although I hope this committee is familiar by now—we are a federally incorporated not-for-profit citizens group with more than 90,000 supporters nationwide.

Finance committee  Yes, I echo some of his comments. I would disagree with some of them. I think that when we talk about stimulus, we do have to be conscious of the fact that the impact of fiscal stimulus is greatly mitigated in small, open economies with a flexible exchange rate. The other thing to bear in mind is that we have seen this movie before, and it's usually in instances, as with the previous government, where there is, in fact, a recession.

Finance committee  Yes, whether it is temporary or not is obviously going to have an impact. As hard as we were on the last government for going into deficit, we gave them credit for getting out. That is our concern with the new government: they have signalled they're going into deficit, but we have yet to see a plan to get out.

Finance committee  Good afternoon. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you for the invitation to appear before the committee today. My name is Aaron Wudrick, and I'm the federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. For those of you who aren't familiar with it, the CTF is a federally incorporated, not-for-profit citizen's group that has over 429,000 supporters nationwide.

Human Resources committee  It is a big challenge. We hear of these anecdotal situations. My Atlantic colleague, Kevin Lacey, wrote about this recently. There was a fish processing plant, I believe in New Brunswick, and they actually had to start throwing fish out. It was rotting because they couldn't get workers, even though they had advertised widely for them.

Human Resources committee  Good afternoon. My name is Aaron Wudrick, and I am the federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. I would like to thank the committee for inviting me here today to discuss the changes to employment insurance. As I previously said, the CTF is a federally incorporated not-for-profit citizens' group, with over 89,000 supporters nationwide.

Human Resources committee  In our view there's a spectrum between privacy and accountability. When one receives the benefit of public funds, I think that tilts the demand, the threshold, more towards transparency than towards privacy. If privacy is a paramount concern, you should be willing to forgo special tax treatment, which is exactly what our organization does.

Human Resources committee  I would say on Bill 377, and the issue which seems to centre around the granularity and detail of disclosure, could we not simply move toward a level that would put people at ease in terms of the information not being so commercially sensitive?

Human Resources committee  No, in fact, we haven't even undertaken it for unions. We were simply asked to appear at committee on several occasions.

Human Resources committee  It's not an assumption anymore than it is when I say that we call on MPs and senators to scan and post their receipts online. It doesn't mean that everything that MPs and senators spend money on is illegal or wrong, but it makes it more likely that it will be detected sooner, because the public can see it.

Human Resources committee  I'm not sure if I meant unlawful so much as that the purpose of the dues be known to the person paying. That's my concern. It's that if you're paying union dues and your understanding is that they're going towards the management of the union, but in fact they're going towards political advocacy or activism, for example, as the person paying those dues, I would want to be aware of that.

Human Resources committee  I think the difference is quite obvious. Much like taxes, dues are mandatory. You cannot opt out of them. In fact, unions are unique in that sense, in that they have essentially the power to tax in the way that governments do. That is also the reason why we draw a similar analogy when we talk about why transparency requirements incumbent upon governments should also be imposed on unions: because they have a special power that no businesses—which obviously must get customers in order to generate revenue—or charities, or non-profits have.

Human Resources committee  I think they should be consistent in defining their principles, but we're one of the few groups that seems to do that.

Human Resources committee  I would say that if the organizations are in fact receiving a tax benefit that is comparable, yes, I would absolutely think so.

Human Resources committee  For us, the trigger for transparency flows from the benefit that one receives from the taxpayer subsidy. If that same benefit is also received by another organization, we would apply the same principle, so yes.