Evidence of meeting #20 for Finance in the 39th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was program.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:10 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Brian Pallister
We're recommencing our pre-budget consultative process. I will invite our witnesses to come forward and to take their places at the end of this table. We look forward to your presentations.
Please proceed.
12:10 p.m.
Trevor Lewis Chair, National Association of Indigenous Institutes of Higher Learning
Thank you.
Good afternoon, honourable members of Parliament. I'd like to thank you for giving me the opportunity to address the committee today.
I'll start off by introducing myself. My name is Trevor Lewis, and I'm here representing the National Association of Indigenous Institutes of Higher Learning. That's an advocacy organization made up of members from indigenous-controlled post-secondary and training institutes across Canada. I'm the chair of that organization.
Perhaps I can give you just a little bit of personal information. I come from a place called Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory, which is about two and a half hours southwest of here, between Belleville and Kingston. I work there at an organization called the First Nations Technical Institute, which is itself an aboriginal-controlled post-secondary and training institute. It has been offering educational opportunities for over 21 years. Further to that, provincially we have an organization in Ontario called the Aboriginal Institutes' Consortium, of which I'm also the chair. So I'm a both provincial and national chair for these organizations that are moving issues forward for aboriginal-controlled post-secondary and training institutes.
In the interest of time, I'll give you just some brief background. Nationally we have institutes in Ontario that, as I said, have been in existence for over 20 years. There are institutes in Alberta; right now there's an institute celebrating its twentieth anniversary, and some older ones exist there. In B.C. a number of institutes are doing similar things in education and training, and they have been in existence for quite some time. Of course, everybody has probably heard of First Nations University in Saskatchewan, formerly the SIFC, provincially recognized in Saskatchewan in partnership with the University of Regina.
Our institutes exist to provide learning opportunities to aboriginal people and first nations communities by being in the communities, by being community-based, close to the learners, implementing alternative delivery scenarios, creating unique cultural learning environments, and making content relevant to the culture, history, and lived experiences of the learners. Our primary business is to create educational opportunities for first nations and aboriginal learners. It's not simply an outreach program for our institutes; they are actual, real post-secondary educational organizations. We specialize in providing successful opportunities for aboriginal people, and should not be considered an add-on or a stepping stone to mainstream.
When it comes to some of our struggles, if I had a lot more time I could go on and on about them. The federal government has taken the position that support for post-secondary education is a matter of social policy rather than legal responsibility. As a consequence, federal support has not evolved with the reality of the growth of our institutes or the growth of our student population.
I understand that the Assembly of First Nations made a presentation to you last week noting that the INAC education budget has essentially been frozen since 1996, subject to an annual 2% cap. That creates a major gap when our young population and students wish to go on to post-secondary. The number is growing, but the funding to allow the students to go has been frozen.
The lack of evolution in federal policy and funding has meant a lack of the government operating and capital grants normally accessible to the mainstream, to colleges and universities, and therefore a lack of security for our institutes, which are doing basically the same thing. A lack of recognition for the granting of diplomas, degrees, and certificates means that our institutes are faced with establishing partnerships with the mainstream to issue the academic credentials. Often these are economically unjust, because the mainstream partners are able to get operating costs, using the normal way of getting funding for student grants, for our students, since our students are registered in their programs. Our organizations then have to find funding elsewhere to pay for a program's operating costs.
12:10 p.m.
Conservative
12:10 p.m.
Chair, National Association of Indigenous Institutes of Higher Learning
I'll get right to the recommendations then.
What we would like to see immediately is a cost-volume adjustment to the overall PSE program, which can be funnelled through our institutes, to ensure that the spending power is consistent with 1996 levels. I would also like to encourage the standing committee to accept the policy recommendations of the Chignecto/Katenies report from A New Approach to support and recognize indigenous institutes of higher learning. That can be done now. Over the course of the next year, I'd like to see the standing committee work in cooperation with the Assembly of First Nations and the Association of Indigenous Institutes of Higher Learning on the implementation of that Chignecto/Katenies report and establish a process to recognize and legitimize our institutes and the role they fulfill in post-secondary education. The report I'm referring to is within the information that was submitted.
12:15 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Brian Pallister
Thank you very much, Mr. Lewis.
To all witnesses, we will review the materials that you've provided us with, of course, as well.
Thank you, Mr. Lewis.
We'll continue with Nathalie Bull, executive director of the Heritage Canada Foundation.
Welcome. You have five minutes.
12:15 p.m.
Nathalie Bull Executive Director, Heritage Canada Foundation
Thank you.
Mr. Chair, members of the committee, thank you for this opportunity to appear. The Heritage Canada Foundation is an independent charitable organization with a public mandate created to promote the rehabilitation and sustainable use of historic buildings. I'm sure you would all agree that historic places fundamentally define the character of our country. If you think about places in your own ridings, the streets and shops in Quebec City, grain elevators on the prairies, early office buildings in Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg's exchange district, rural and agricultural buildings across the country, they really are public art. They create our identity. They're the icons that we use to sell ourselves to cultural tourists. They are the containers for our businesses, our leisure activities, and our lives, yet every day historic buildings are demolished all across this country and bulldozed into landfill sites.
Why is this happening despite all of our talk about sustainable development and reducing, reusing, and recycling? It's because there are lots of sticks out there that control how we deal with our buildings--the National Building Code, property standards, bylaws--but there are really very few fiscal incentives to encourage or incite use of these buildings.
Among G8 countries, Canada alone lacks a system of funding, policies, and programs to preserve its historic infrastructure. By contrast, in the United States developers are actively seeking out heritage buildings to invest in them, and there are architecture firms, engineering firms, and construction companies that exist solely to deal with historic buildings. There are heritage training programs in every state. It's a booming industry, and that booming industry exists because thirty years ago the U.S. established a 20% tax credit for rehabilitation. The entire country has benefited from that program.
The U.S. tax credit program is internationally recognized for its success in preserving buildings, stimulating private investment--to the tune of $25 billion over the last 25 years--and revitalizing communities.
In Canada, by contrast, current federal tax policy does not encourage investment and rehabilitation, even though it provides significant incentives in many other industries, and I'm sure you're aware of those. The provinces and the municipalities are doing their part. They all have protective legislation and a range of tax incentives, tax forgiveness measures, and grant programs in recognition of the role that historic places play in their economy and in Canadian identity. But that's not enough, and the federal government is long overdue to show leadership and commitment in this area.
So we bring two recommendations to you today. The first is to establish a federal tax incentive to encourage investment in the rehabilitation of revenue-producing buildings. The tools are already in place to administer such a program. The historic places initiative, an extraordinary example of cooperative federalism, created a register of historic places and standards and guidelines to assess the quality of work for which we are promoting a tax incentive.
There is a commercial heritage property incentive fund that you may be aware of. The contribution program ends in 2007. It's been very successful, but it's not enough. Really for the commercial sector, a tax incentive is much more predictable and less administratively burdensome to administer and really helps ensure that projects will move forward successfully. So that's our first recommendation.
Our second is that you introduce direct funding to assist in the preservation of historic places owned by non-profit organizations, registered charities, institutions, and individuals. We need to recognize that approximately 70% of heritage buildings in Canada would not benefit from a tax measure because they are not used for commercial or revenue-generating purposes. These include places of worship, farm buildings, city halls, residences, and other historic places.
Both of the recommendations we've brought before you will stimulate investment in Canadian projects, infrastructure and communities, create new employment in the construction trades and professions, enhance cultural tourism, which is a huge source of revenue for our country, and keep historic buildings, some of our largest consumer goods, out of landfill sites.
If we do nothing, the rate of loss will continue. We have lost 20% of our historic buildings to demolition over the last thirty years, and that's not acceptable.
Thank you very much for your time.
12:20 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Brian Pallister
Thank you very much for an excellent presentation.
We'll proceed now with the representative from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, Ellen Russell. Welcome. It is nice to see you again.
Please proceed. You have five minutes.
12:20 p.m.
Ellen Russell Economist, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives
Good morning.
The committee faces some new challenges at the moment.
Your first challenge: you don't know the state of the finances. As of budget 2006, the Harper government spent the great majority of all budget surpluses that we can expect in upcoming years, so there is precious little money to fund new tax cuts or spending. This was confirmed in a TD Bank report entitled “The Status Quo Federal Fiscal Outlook: Not Much Room Here”, which indicated there's very little fiscal capacity for several years into the future.
At the moment there's great speculation about whether there is a little more or a little less fiscal room than was projected, but we really just don't know. We don't have any up-to-date outlook from the finance department, and your committee is undergoing no independent forecasting exercise that would give you some independent perspective on this. So you have no choice but to assume there is very little money to work with.
Your second big challenge: the big pressure you will be under to institute more tax cuts. The Harper government promised one further point reduction in GST, which the government cannot afford without chopping something somewhere else. As well, there is intense lobbying for corporate or personal income tax cuts, which of course we can't afford either, so they will be trying to persuade you that tax cuts will enhance competitiveness. They will tell you that corporations will be more likely to invest in Canada if we reduce corporate taxes.
This is a huge leap of faith. Corporations invest for a host of reasons, only one of which is tax considerations. We have been cutting corporate taxes for some time now, and this has not produced any upswing in investment. In fact, fixed capital investment is virtually stagnant.
Corporations have been given tax cuts for some time now. They have been enjoying record corporate profitability. They have plenty of cash to invest if they wish to, but their investment record has been very poor for some time. Why would we cut taxes now based on no proof that it actually stimulates the investment that is supposed to increase our competitiveness? It is irresponsible to empty the treasury for a tax cut agenda that can't prove it will deliver the desired results.
If you give in to tax cut pressure, you are setting the stage for big spending cuts, or else the government will fall into deficit, quite likely, and as the Conservative election platform indicated, we should expect $22.5 billion in spending cuts over the next five years in order to pay for Harper's election promises. If government spending is cut on this scale, we won't be able to do the things that actually would help competitiveness--
12:25 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Brian Pallister
I am hesitant to recognize a point of order during the presentation, but if you would hold that thought, we'll let her finish her time. Madam Russell has only about two minutes to go, and then I'll entertain the point of order after the presentation.
12:25 p.m.
Economist, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives
If you are to give in to the tax cut pressure, you are setting the stage for big spending cuts later, or else the government will fall into deficit, quite likely. As the Conservative election platform indicates, we should expect $22.5 billion in spending cuts over the next five years in order to pay for Harper's election promises. If government spending is cut on this scale, we will not be able to do the things that actually would help competitiveness--making investments in infrastructure, post-secondary education, safeguarding the health care system, and so forth.
The alternative federal budget that my organization puts out sets forth the priorities we would like the government to follow. You can access this online, if you would like to see our more detailed plans. But the bottom line here is that, at minimum, you must resist the pressure to cut taxes further. If you give in to the tax cut lobby, it is game over for any constructive policy response to competitiveness.
Thank you.
12:25 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Brian Pallister
Thank you, Madam Russell.
Before we move on to the next presentation, Mr. Turner, you had a point of order.
12:25 p.m.
Conservative
Garth Turner Conservative Halton, ON
Simply, Mr. Chair, I would very much like it if you would remind the witnesses to refer to the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition, or the leader of any party with the respect that their office really dictates. I think in talking about the Harper government tax cuts we should be referring to the Prime Minister with respect equal to that we provide to any member around this table. We're not here to pursue a political agenda; we're here in the Houses of Parliament, and I think it is appropriate that we refer to people by their proper titles.
12:25 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Brian Pallister
Thank you, Mr. Turner, for that point. The witnesses are not subject to the same rules of conduct as the members of this committee.
Madam Wasylycia-Leis.
12:25 p.m.
NDP
Judy Wasylycia-Leis NDP Winnipeg North, MB
On a point of order, Mr. Chairperson, I think it's worth pointing out for the record that in fact the witness was quoting from sources--
12:25 p.m.
Conservative
12:25 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Brian Pallister
Order.
Madam Wasylycia-Leis, you don't have a point of order. I'm going to move on with the presentations.
I'd like to move to the Community Foundations of Canada and welcome Monica Patten, president and CEO.
Ms. Patten, you have five minutes. I will give you an indication when you have one minute remaining.
12:25 p.m.
Monica Patten President and Chief Executive Officer, Community Foundations of Canada
I hope you won't need to do that, but we'll see.
It's a pleasure to be back here and to see some familiar faces, and to engage, I hope, with some people I haven't met yet.
I'm here today on behalf of community foundations across the country. They have asked me to present an idea or a recommendation that we think plays to the strengths of governments and to the strengths of communities, of community foundations, and of not-for-profits.
Let me start by reminding you very quickly about community foundations. There are over 150 of us across the country. We reach about 89% of the Canadian population. We exist in numerous very small communities and of course in our largest urban areas. I dare say that every one of you has a community foundation in your neighbourhood.
We have three roles. First, we build permanent endowed funds for our communities. We also gather those funds from many donors, individuals, and businesses, and we invest those funds very wisely and turn the investment earnings back into the community in the form of grants, for a very wide range of priorities identified by those communities. The third thing we do is provide community leadership along with many others, working in partnership with other organizations, and with governments, as a matter of fact.
Collectively, we hold more than $2.3 billion under investments across the country. I expect it will be $2.6 billion by the end of this year. We return to our communities over $120 million through grants every year. Our huge financial success has been in large part--not only, but in part--because of the government's generous capital gains tax measures first introduced in 1997. I think you are all very well aware of the story that ended very happily and with great appreciation by our organization, and of course by many in the sector.
Community foundations are local, we're flexible, we're efficient, and we know our communities deeply and broadly. We're able to make very effective grants based on what the community thinks is important. Our ability to do that is actually second to none. Community foundations have repeatedly demonstrated their ability to work in partnerships. Their funds are permanent; they are there forever for the benefit of the community.
Let me go right to working in partnership. A platform commitment of Canada's new government really caught our eye because of our significant experience in the area of funding programs for children and youth. In fact, community foundations give over $8 million every year to programs for children and youth. Keeping in mind that over a third of Canada's population fits in this age group of children and youth, and that this is the population that Canada will count on for our future workforce, for our leadership, for our reputation, we think the recommendation we bring to you is very important.
We know that fewer than half of Canada's children and youth meet the minimum physical activity requirements for healthy growth and development. The commitment to spend 1% of federal health funding on fitness and well-being goes some way to address that issue and that need. We laud that, and we know that there are actions already under way. But we come with a different proposal.
We come with a proposal to leverage this commitment through bringing private donors in local communities to direct their charitable dollars to this issue. The proposal we put before you has been tested with members of the new Government of Canada, with those members in other parties, and with others working in the sector and organizations serving children and youth. It has been universally well received and encouraged.
In its very simplest form, it is this: an opportunity for community foundations to raise money for permanent funds that will then be matched by funds from the Government of Canada as part of the commitment to improve the fitness and well-being of youth and children. The investment earnings will be turned over to grants to registered charities working on fitness and health and on sport and recreation, especially for those families for whom it is difficult because they're newcomers or are poor, or for a variety of reasons.
If the Government of Canada puts $100 million on the table, we will match that penny for penny. Our communities will then have over $200 million in new dollars. Our local organizations will be able then to put $15 million to $20 million a year into grants right across this country. The grants will be efficient. They will be close to the ground so that we will be able to be accountable and monitor those grants.
To get the program rolling and to demonstrate that this is a win-win for everyone, we ask that an amount of $15 million be made available for immediate granting. It would not be endowed; the other funds would be endowed.
This partnership between the Government of Canada and community foundations will help prepare Canada's children and youth for the future. Investing in our children and youth is the wisest investment we can make. Community foundations offer an effective, accountable, locally led, efficient, and very simple way to move that investment forward.
Thank you.
12:30 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Brian Pallister
Thank you, Ms. Patten.
We'll continue with a representative from the Canadian Centre for Emergency Preparedness, Adrian Gordon. Welcome, sir. You have five minutes.
12:30 p.m.
Adrian Gordon President, Canadian Centre for Emergency Preparedness
Good afternoon, Mr. Chair, members of the committee. I will be brief.
Canadian communities are increasingly at risk from both natural and human-induced disasters, and we recommend that the Government of Canada must support the ongoing development of disaster-resilient communities by providing funding for disaster mitigation programs and activities.
International studies have shown that a federal investment in mitigation programs saves federal funds in the long term. Stakeholders are looking for federal leadership, and successive governments have committed publicly to developing a national disaster mitigation strategy. In 2005, the federal-provincial-territorial ministers' eight-point action plan highlighted national disaster mitigation as a priority.
In the United States, the Multihazard Mitigation Council released an independent study to assess the future savings from mitigation activities. This study concluded that mitigation activities and programs have benefited society by reducing direct property damage, direct business interruption, indirect business interruption, non-market damage, human losses, and the cost of emergency response.
In the United States it is estimated that a dollar spent on mitigation saves society an average of four dollars. Despite its apparent value, however, mitigation remains the least developed component of Canadian disaster management policy. Fortunately, mitigation is widely accepted within Canada's disaster management policy community, and there has been strong endorsement by academics, public officials, and private sector actors. There has already been extensive consultation with stakeholders and interested parties, and these have revealed a broad base of support for a national disaster mitigation strategy.
The Government of Canada is positioned to play a pivotal role in promoting, coordinating, and supporting disaster mitigation.
The Canadian Centre for Emergency Preparedness, after extensive consultation and research into this subject matter, makes the following two recommendations, which are consistent with the Multihazard Mitigation Council study. The recommendations are that the federal government first financially invest in mitigation activities and programs as a matter of policy on an ongoing basis, both before a disaster occurs and through federally funded disaster recovery and rebuilding activities and programs; and secondly, financially support mitigation activities and programs that will increase the resilience of communities by increasing knowledge and promoting institutional commitments to mitigation at the local level.
In closing, I'd like to quote from the late President John F. Kennedy:
There are risks and costs to a program of action. But they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction.
Thank you for the opportunity to present.
12:35 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Brian Pallister
Thank you very much, Mr. Gordon.
We continue now with a representative from Citizens for Public Justice, Mr. Greg deGroot-Maggetti, for five minutes.
12:35 p.m.
Greg deGroot-Maggetti Analyst, Socio-Economic Policy, Citizens for Public Justice
Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee.
I'm glad to be here representing Citizens for Public Justice. We're a national organization primarily of Christians concerned about promoting public justice in Canadian public life. In my presentation I'll briefly summarize the main recommendations, and then I'd like to focus on one facet: our call for the need for a Canadian poverty reduction strategy. Then I'll welcome questions from committee members on why we need a poverty reduction strategy and more details about what that needs to be.
Let me start by telling you some of the key recommendations we see. Canada's poverty reduction strategy needs to include several things. It needs to include timelines and targets for reducing poverty in Canada. It needs to include specific measures of progress. We have many different measures of low income in Canada. We just need to decide on one or another by which we're going to measure our progress in reducing poverty.
We need to produce social forecasts and social audits, as well as our fiscal and economic forecast and audits. The strategy has to be an integrated strategy across departments of the federal government and across levels of government. The strategy also needs to include some focused strategies to address the causes of poverty among groups most affected by poverty--aboriginal people, recent immigrants, lone-parent families, people with disabilities, women, single adults, and young families with children.
In addition to an overall poverty reduction strategy, there are some things that can be done immediately to help reduce poverty in Canada: raising the maximum Canada child tax benefit to $5,000 per year to reduce the rate of debt of family and child poverty; investing in early learning and child care to create spaces, to increase the number and skills and remuneration of early childhood educators, and to reduce the cost to parents of early childhood education; increase investments in affordable housing programs; make employment insurance more accessible and create ways for workers and business to tap into employment insurance during periods of training to upgrade skills. Raising the minimum wage to $10 an hour and indexing it to inflation would be another step to help reduce poverty in Canada. The last recommendation is to split the Canada social transfer into a Canada post-secondary education transfer and a Canada social transfer, with increases in both, including strong principles for the Canada social transfer to ensure social assistance and disability programs that provide an adequate income.
Recently in the news I've seen a couple of headlines about poverty reduction strategies. The other day, the Toronto Star had a front-page story saying that the poor need a strategy to reduce poverty. That's true. People living in poverty in Canada need a strategy to help reduce poverty and get them out of poverty. There was another interesting headline in my own local paper. I live in Kitchener, Ontario. The Kitchener Record the other day printed a speech that the president of the University of Waterloo, David Johnston, gave to the Kitchener-Waterloo Chamber of Commerce.
As I look around the room, I notice a number of people have BlackBerrys. I would just remind you that BlackBerrys are a product of Research In Motion, one of the most innovative and competitive of Canada's businesses, which is a product of the University of Waterloo. The founders of the organization, and many of its employees, came from the University of Waterloo.
The other day the president of the University of Waterloo, David Johnston, laid out a blueprint for greatness for the Waterloo region. It's good to have local people laying out ambitious programs for their own communities. In this program he set forth an agenda to make the Waterloo region the knowledge capital of Canada. He laid out ten goals....
I see I have one minute left, so I'll look forward to lots of questions.
Goal number 8 is to reduce poverty in their region. He points out that even though the Waterloo region has one of the lowest rates of poverty, it still means 50,000 people in the region are living below the poverty line. It's deeper now than ever. Then he points out that the irony is that this region has the lowest rate of unemployment in the country. So we need to help working poor with support services, affordable housing, and access to training.
The insight Mr. Johnston has is that in order for the local community to achieve greatness and success, and in order for Canada to achieve greatness and success, we need a strategy to reduce poverty as well. One specific facet of that is to address this problem of the high number of low-wage jobs. We've managed to reduce unemployment, but a lot of folks are working in low-wage, low-productivity jobs, and it is not really helping them to exit poverty and it's impeding the success of Canadian businesses.
I'll just draw the committee's attention to two articles in a recent issue of--