Madam Chair, good morning, and thank you to the committee for the invitation. My name is Aaron Wudrick, and I am the federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. We are a non-profit, non-partisan advocacy group with over 140,000 supporters across Canada. Our advocacy is centred on three areas: lower taxes, less waste and government accountability.
I'm very pleased to appear today with respect to Bill C-369 regarding the proposal to make National Indigenous Peoples Day a statutory holiday. I think it is worth saying at the start that it goes without saying that the objectives underlying this bill, which are the recognition of the historical wrongs endured Canada's indigenous peoples and the need for reconciliation with all Canadians, are not controversial. I think that the idea enjoys wide support across the political spectrum and with all Canadians.
The fundamental question, though, is whether creating a new statutory holiday is either necessary or desirable in advancing this goal, and we should consider some of the costs that it will impose.
Simply put, statutory holidays are not free. They come at a cost to the economy, to employers and to taxpayers. The size of that cost will, of course, depend on who is affected. I know that certain estimates on this bill have mentioned it impacting 6% of the labour force. The Canadian Federation of Independent Businesses has put forward a figure of $3.6 billion in lost productivity. We had a member of Parliament who suggested that the cost to taxpayers would be just under $200 million. That is a day's worth of federal payroll.
Now, this does not mean we never have any statutory holidays, but it is an obvious reason that we don't have an unlimited number of them.
I think another important point worth considering with respect to whether or not a holiday is the best way to advance the social goal at hand here is to look at Remembrance Day as a useful analogy. While it is a holiday in some provinces and for federal workplaces, it is not in others, including, importantly, for schools. Indeed, many veterans themselves expressed concern that if Remembrance Day were to become a school holiday, it would actually deprive children of a very important opportunity to reflect and learn about something that is very important.
I think you can make a similar argument with respect to National Indigenous Peoples Day. The important thing about this day would be that Canadians take time to learn, reflect upon and understand the history and cultures of our indigenous peoples. That may not necessarily be best achieved by creating a holiday. I can tell you that as a young person, I didn't take very much time during the May long weekend to learn about Queen Victoria.
That said, if the committee does feel the need to have a statutory holiday to mark this day, I would suggest that it consider repurposing an existing holiday, one that is already recognized in most of the country, and of course I am thinking of the civic holiday in August. It would imbue that day with a particular meaning and purpose, but would also avoid the additional costs to businesses and taxpayers that a new holiday would incur.
That's all I have. Thank you.