Finance Committee on Oct. 5th, 2006

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Conservative, Brian Pallister]

We continue now with five minutes to Mr. Savage.

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

Thank you. I'll resist a comment on that.

First of all, just very quickly, I want a clarification from the FCM. It's not in the brief, but did you indicate support for the millennium goals in international development? Is that a position of the FCM?

[Gord Steeves]

I believe it was, yes.

[James Knight]

We have been involved in sharing our urban development skills and municipal skills with the developing world for quite a long time, twenty years. We believe practical service delivery occurs at the municipal level. That's where your millennium development goals are going to be achieved, and we think we can make a contribution.

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

Do you support the 0.7% of GNI?

[James Knight]

Of course, yes.

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

That's interesting. My father was on the FCM some twenty years ago, as the mayor of Dartmouth, and he'd be delighted to hear that.

I want to talk to Dr. Smadu, if I could.

We've had a lot of briefs in our travels, but the one you submitted is, in my view, brilliant, in part because it's well written and hits important topics, but also because it gets to something that's very important to me.

When I got elected, I joined the health committee to try to talk about the social determinants of health, the risk factors, chronic disease, populations at risk through literacy, education, housing, and all these sorts of things. You've done a very good job on putting those in play. When we talk about health, so often we're really talking about illness and intervention as opposed to talking about health, and I think you've talked about health.

You mentioned that the Public Health Agency of Canada groups disparities into four main areas: income, aboriginal status, geographic location, and gender. In my view, persons with disabilities would be a fifth group. I know they're all interlinked by income, but I would suggest that persons with disabilities would be in there as well.

How do we focus the discussion in the country on health? I think more and more people are talking about how we keep Canada healthy. You've put forward a specific notion of $10 million to establish an action-oriented, pan-Canadian program. There is a population health institute as part of the Public Health Agency of Canada that's being set up, and it would seem to me that it might be a place to do some of that work.

We've had people come before our committee recently talking about the tax credit on physical fitness, which I think is a good thing, but it's a small piece. In fact, we heard Mr. Knight talk about recreation facilities and keeping our children active and strong. In my community, we have some very good health clubs, but the best investment the government has made was to build a good walking trail around the lakes, for example. That actually gets people out and walking, and it doesn't require a membership card or doesn't cost $39, $49, or $69 a month.

Overall, though, I don't think we've done a good job of putting money and resources into the health of Canadians. We're still very much focused on interventions, hospitals, and those sorts of things.

So my question after that lengthy preamble is how we do that. Are we going to get there as a nation? Some other countries are doing it much better than we are. We do know the social determinants of health cause the risk factors, cause chronic disease, cost us lots and lots of money, and cost us interventions. Where are we in actually getting Canada as a nation to accept that reality?

[The Chair, Conservative, Brian Pallister]

You have about thirty seconds to respond.

[Dr. Marlene Smadu]

I'm an optimist, and we're going to get there. I think it takes the tremendous will of all politicians, because it's very easy to respond to what hits the front page of the media, which tends to be acute care and institutional-based issues. We need to have a concerted effort.

Early in my career I worked in Papua, New Guinea, when the Alma-Ata Declaration was declared in 1978, and they are doing it, they are focusing on social determinants of health. Maybe our richness has put blinders on us in terms of being able to invest in the high-end technology in acute-care settings, but we will. All of these people have talked about it in some fashion. We have committed Canadians. We will do it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Brian Pallister]

Merci.

I will encourage all members to preamble less and allow witnesses to respond more. As we move now to a rapid round of questions of four minutes each, I want to accommodate all committee members who have expressed a desire to ask questions.

The next questioner will be Mr. St-Cyr. You have four minutes.

[Thierry St-Cyr, Bloc, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to put questions to the representative from Canada West Equipment Dealers Association, Mr. Schmeiser.

I like your brief. It is short, well done and well summarized. I also appreciated the comparison, at the end of your brief between 1906 rules for harnesses and sleds and 2006 rules for high tech tractors. Don't worry, you are not the only ones getting the impression that the government still thinks we are in 1906.

I also liked the fact that your measures were quite specific and well targeted. The Bloc québécois supports decreasing the tax burden, especially when we know it can be effective and encourage investments in equipment, for instance.

The only problem for government is that these measures are not very popular. The government often favours scattered measures to please as many people as possible, although, in our opinion, that is less effective.

What do you think should be our role as elected representatives? Should we make popular cuts or effective tax cuts which meet our goals?

[John Schmeiser]

The reality of our industry is that we're in a global marketplace. There are five manufacturers of farm equipment right now. Two are headquartered in Italy, the other three are in the United States. We are very encouraged by the government's theme of Canada's place in a competitive world.

Through our association with the North American Equipment Dealers Association, we can see some changes that the U.S. government is making. Really, the focus of our request to the committee is our first recommendation—increasing the CCA—because what we're fearing is that our members may face equipment shortages solely because the United States has been very aggressive in the depreciation rates in the last five years. Currently agricultural equipment is at seven years and construction equipment is at five in the United States, and my colleagues in the United States are fairly confident the agricultural equipment is going to be moved to five—and that's fully depreciated.

So we see ourselves as caught in a situation in which we might not be able to service our customers with the equipment they need unless changes are made in that specific area.

[Thierry St-Cyr, Bloc, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

I am going to interrupt you because I have other matters I wanted to discuss with the representatives from the Canadian Fertilizer Institute.

Mr. Graham, in your five main recommendations I noticed that there was one regarding reducing the tax burden and two others which would involve expenditures. You also mentioned a national energy strategy and labour shortfall.

If you had to chose between these investments and decreasing the tax burden, what would you chose?

[The Chair, Conservative, Brian Pallister]

There are thirty seconds to respond, Mr. Graham.

[Clyde Graham]

I think the government could do many things at the same time.

[Thierry St-Cyr, Bloc, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

But if it couldn't...?

If it cannot. If we had to make a choice.

[Clyde Graham]

If I looked at the priorities of the public and the government in terms of the importance of the environment right now, measures that encourage business to make investments that will improve environmental outcomes have to be a very high priority for this government, and for business as well.

No one should assume that business—our business or other businesses—does not want to improve environmental performance. But there are limitations on what people can do, based on the capital they have, the chemistry they're dealing with, and in terms of production and things like that, and providing a positive investment climate for that is very important.

[The Chair, Conservative, Brian Pallister]

Thank you very much, sir.

We continue now with Mr. Del Mastro.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Smadu, I enjoyed your presentation as well. One recommendation that you made was the establishment of personal electronic health records for all Canadians. Could you expand on that a little bit, and on what type of benefit that would be to health care in Canada?

[Dr. Marlene Smadu]

I think citizens in Canada feel their care is often disjointed right now, because the information about them is not where it needs to be when it's needed. They need to repeat. They have their history taken ten times, every time they go through the health system. The electronic health record serves that purpose: all the information is in one place and it's owned by the citizen, which is important.

It also has tremendous benefits for safety and quality in the health care system. We already have demonstrated proof that by having all of the providers using electronic health records based on that person's information, you decrease medication errors. The systems that support electronic health records don't let physicians prescribe drugs that are contraindicated. So I think there are huge safety and quality issues as well.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

I couldn't agree with you more. Both my in-laws are nurses, and they talk about that as being a very positive step that they'd like to see.

Mr. Steeves, you mentioned a couple of things. I get very concerned when we talk about a direct federal government relationship with municipalities. It's not that we shouldn't be prepared to help, but I'm concerned about the jurisdictional problems that we might create. At one point there was a very well-understood flow of funding from governments to governments, but I think that's less understood now. In fact, I think what we've done is respond to a problem that emanated from the mid-nineties that led to the buck being passed down the line, with the municipalities suffering the most.

When we're looking at things like the fiscal imbalance and so forth, and moving toward a fiscal balance, as we intend to do, personally I would like to see that done in the form of dedicated transfers, but not directly to municipalities. And I don't oppose the gas tax deal, by the way.

Maybe you'd like to comment on that a little bit. I'm just concerned about your jurisdictional problems.

[Gord Steeves]

Those have been concerns for a long time, and obviously they are a huge issue.

Part of the problem, from our perspective in municipalities, is that when the money flows from the federal government to provinces, there can be all sorts of problems in terms of provincial offsets of revenues that are received. If the proper agreements don't exist in certain provinces, it becomes hugely controversial. For example, we had years of virtually no funding to Quebec municipalities by virtue of that simple provincial agreement, and it was a real disadvantage to Quebec cities, communities, and municipalities. We have had examples of provincial governments that have directly offset municipal funding by clawing back on revenues at the exact rate at which municipalities were receiving the money.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

So your concern is that giving it to the provinces does not necessarily mean it will come to the municipalities at all.

[Gord Steeves]

That's exactly the concern.