Finance Committee on Oct. 4th, 2006

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

Thank you.

My next question is to Indira. It is on your points about investing in access to education.

One of the things the recent Statistics Canada yearbook indicated was that despite the fact that education has tripled over the last eleven years with respect to post-secondary costs, the increase in attendance in the country has been phenomenal. I wonder if you could comment on that. Cost is obviously a factor, but at the same time we're seeing a tremendous growth in the numbers of those attending post-secondary education.

[Dr. Indira Samarasekera]

I think it's a reflection of the understanding that post-secondary education certainly provides opportunities they wouldn't otherwise have, because the number of jobs that now require post-secondary education is growing much faster than the number of jobs that do not. I think that's the reflection of it.

I think the other thing it reflects is that a lot of young people don't necessarily know, when they're going to university, what subject they want to take. They see a university education as equipping them with the skills to acquire perhaps the knowledge they may need later on throughout their lives or even at a later stage in their education. It is giving them that flexibility. I think it's also the flexibility that the university degree offers that makes it more attractive.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

You mentioned that we need to focus on investing where we have an advantage in the world. I wonder if you could highlight for us--or for me in particular--those areas in which you believe Canada is at the cutting edge, areas we should be investing in.

[Dr. Indira Samarasekera]

Sitting here in Fort McMurray, I'd have to say energy. As you know, in a recent speech the Prime Minister said that Canada can be an energy superpower. We have the resource, but we are not necessarily at the cutting edge in terms of the technologies needed, not only to extract the energy economically but to extract the energy in an environmentally friendly way. We could be a purveyor of environmentally friendly technologies related to energy.

The second one is that we have a wonderful public health care system in which we invest large amounts of dollars in order to deliver quality health care, but we don't reap the benefits of that investment in the form of innovation when there are new medical products and so on. The fact that we can do that requires some thinking, and again, converting some of those investments into outcomes would be a good one. Those are two areas.

I think the other area, really, is our education itself. Education is becoming a multi-billion-dollar, world-class business. Canadian universities are great institutions, yet the number of international students we attract is pretty meagre compared to the U.K., Australia, and so on.

There's a double advantage in that the students who come not only provide revenue and, in a sense, business income, but they enrich the climate for others.

Those are three examples of areas in which Canada could make some investments.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

Thank you.

Mr. Allen, the growth of business in Fort McMurray has obviously been phenomenal. From small business to large, how many businesses are in Fort McMurray? Would you hazard a guess?

[Mike Allen]

I can only speak on behalf of my membership. We also work with three other business organizations, which include the aboriginal business association, NABA; the construction association; and the Wood Buffalo Builders' Association. We currently have membership of over 1,100. That includes industry as well. Our guesstimates are that we probably have somewhere in the neighbourhood of 1,600 to 1,800 businesses just in the Fort McMurray region itself.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

On a percentage basis, would you suggest that your chamber here has been...? That's over 50%, obviously. Is it considered to be pretty successful, from a chamber of commerce perspective, that you have that many businesses engaged in your community in a chamber?

[Mike Allen]

I believe so. But in working in partnership with everybody else we've adopted some policies of working together and have come up with a program, an online system, for working with industry for local work opportunities that were never present before. This has certainly stirred up a lot of interest in becoming part of the membership.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

I have two quick questions, and I don't know how much time I have, so I'll ask them both.

Was the chamber in favour of the corporate tax cuts that were included in the recent budget, and supportive of them?

The second is, you commented on the employment insurance potential of making it an employee-employer relationship versus one that would include the federal government. How could we actually engage in moving in that direction and see it be positive?

[Mike Allen]

What we were doing was supporting the Canadian chamber's perspective, in their paper that was presented to the committee, to eventually have the employer portion reduced to where it was matching the employee portion, rather than being at 1.4 times that, where it currently sits. We believe that in an environment where unemployment is at an all-time low, that would support it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Brian Pallister]

We're continuing with Madam Wasylycia-Leis. It's your round, Madam Wasylycia, for seven minutes.

[Judy Wasylycia-Leis, NDP, Winnipeg North, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chairperson. Thank all of you for your presentations.

I want to start with Mr. Allen. We just had a fine presentation from your Mayor Blake. I would assume the chamber is involved in trying to solve some of the problems that were enunciated. I wonder how you work with the city in dealing with some of these problems, what your view is of the cry for some public investment in areas such as housing and health care, and whether or not you think—given that over the next twenty years, as I understand it from the presenters, at $30 a barrel, about $70 billion in royalties will be going from the oil sands and Fort McMurray to the federal government, and it's likely double that, given that the price of oil a barrel is going up rapidly—some of that money should come back to this community to assist in some of those problems.

[Mike Allen]

Thank you for that. Absolutely, we're in support of that.

Really, it's just a matter of the growth never having been anticipated. Our federal, provincial, and municipal levels of government unfortunately were not able to develop a plan. The chamber is working very closely with the municipality and with the provincial government, as well as with our local member of Parliament, to help develop a sustainability action plan for the long term, recognizing that if we were to invest in this community, it would be better for the province and in fact the country in general.

[Judy Wasylycia-Leis, NDP, Winnipeg North, MB]

Thank you.

I would like to ask Indira Samarasekera this, related to the issues we heard about Fort McMurray and to the whole issues of science and technology. Maybe Mr. Peters would answer as well.

It seems to me that hardly anybody is really talking in this community about pollution and the greenhouse gas emissions. Reading from the articles, it seems as though Suncor is one of the only oil companies actually looking at some way to put a cap on carbons and make carbon-neutral oil sands production.

What can the university do to force something at this level? And is there any connection here with the whole science centre development?

[Dr. Indira Samarasekera]

On a number of fronts the university is already working with the oil sands companies. Certainly we've had a lot of work with Suncor and Imperial Oil and so on. This would include the universities of Calgary and Lethbridge. A number of the technologies we're working to develop are actually towards improving the environmental impacts: reducing the amount of water that's being used, reducing the amount of energy that's being used to generate the oil. All of these things are currently going on.

Obviously our role is to generate the knowledge and have the people go in to the companies who can then push for further development. That's sort of what we're aware of.

[Judy Wasylycia-Leis, NDP, Winnipeg North, MB]

Do you have anything to add, Mr. Peters?

[Bill Peters]

I would add that we've consulted very broadly with Albertans about what they want to see in their science centre in Calgary in the future. Certainly the environment and sustainability is on everyone's mind. They've urged us to make our future facility really exemplary of best practice in sustainability, a low ecological footprint, because there is a growing public passion to see how to do that and insist that it be done, not just for science centres but across all sectors.

[Judy Wasylycia-Leis, NDP, Winnipeg North, MB]

Thank you.

Beverley, nice to meet you after all these years of receiving your emails.

My colleagues will probably say I'm on the rampage all the time. Now I'm really on the rampage after listening to your presentation, but I will try to calm down and say that I think there is room for a debate among all of us around how to recognize all work in our society, including what is now considered unpaid work in the home. I think the whole question of how we define the GDP is important.

I appreciate some of the groundbreaking stuff you've done. I have problems, though, with some of what I would consider very erroneous information you present. I'll just refer to one example, because I don't think it's helpful to the debate, and that is your reference that Sweden has disastrous results.

I just read in the Guardian Weekly the following facts: that Sweden has a GDP per capita of $27,310, which is high by European standards and our standards; Sweden has a current account surplus of $10 billion; it has a lower inflation rate than the U.K., higher global competitiveness, and a higher ranking for business creativity and research. On top of it, in terms of human welfare, there is no competition according to the quality of life measure published by The Economist, which is not a social democratic publication by any means. Using the human development index, Sweden ranks third in the world. It has the world's third-highest life expectancy. I could go on.

What I'm trying to say is that when we're trying to pursue public policies that allow everyone choice, you can do that by providing the necessary supports to make those choices, without bankrupting the country. In fact, it actually adds to competitiveness and higher productivity, which is something we're all trying to find and achieve.

I don't know if you would like to make a comment on any of that. I would certainly appreciate it.

[Beverley Smith]

Your citing all the advantages of Sweden is exactly what I'm talking about—all of them are about money. Sweden has the highest suicide rate in the world.

[Judy Wasylycia-Leis, NDP, Winnipeg North, MB]

I just gave you the overall human—

[Beverley Smith]

By The Economist? What point of view do they have? Money.

[Judy Wasylycia-Leis, NDP, Winnipeg North, MB]

Most reputable organizations in the country and in the world don't dismiss the research that has gone into assessing quality of life. It's worthwhile taking into account the fact that it has a very high quality of life and is very competitive economically on the international front.

[Beverley Smith]

I'm in contact with a group there. Bo Pettersson is the head of it. He made a complaint at the United Nations that Sweden's tax laws are so offensive...actually they've taken the world “family” out of their laws. They encourage women to be out of the home. There are huge penalties for being in the home. He thinks Canada is moving in that direction.

Just before the election, I said, “How do you think it's going to go?” He said, “I don't think people have the courage to vote out this government, because there are so many tax breaks to leaving your kids, and people like the tax breaks, too.” They voted them out anyway. People voted with their heart. We should be aware of that.

Maybe we're on the same page trying for women's rights. I think the NDP is missing something you could really think about for policy, which is a universal benefit program, because when you guys endorse universal day care, you're alienating most parents.

[The Chair, Conservative, Brian Pallister]

Thank you, Madam Wasylycia-Leis.

To accommodate everyone, folks, we're going to go with four-minute rounds here. We'll go with Mike Savage.

You have four minutes, sir.

[Michael Savage, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Okay.

Ms. Samarasekera, I had the pleasure of chairing the Liberal committee on post-secondary for the last couple of years, first in government and now in opposition. I've gone to a lot of the country. I didn't get to your university, but I certainly appreciated your comments, and there's nothing in your brief that I would disagree with.

I want to ask you a follow-up to a question that Mr. McCallum and Mr. Dykstra started. You mentioned that enrollment has actually gone up. Does this indicate that maybe tuitions aren't too high? There are two parts to that. First, student debt has gone up exponentially. Second, enrollment has not gone up among low-income Canadians, aboriginal Canadians, and persons with disabilities. It seems the real issue in access is, how do we get those people to university?

You cited a lot of this excess in the research investments that came about since 1998. I think some $13 billion has gone in and stemmed the brain drain. I'm sure your university, like universities you read about in the paper, is repatriating researchers. That was a direct federal investment to the university. Last year, in the economic update, we brought forward a plan for large amounts of money, $2.2 billion for low- and middle-income Canadians to be able to get to university.

What is the best way to ensure that Canadians, who don't have access to post-secondary education because of money, get there?