Finance Committee on Oct. 6th, 2006

[Massimo Pacetti, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

This brings me to my other question, which I'd like to ask of Mr. Axworthy.

You believe we should be investing in the aboriginal community, which has a high dropout rate in high school. In Quebec we have a CEGEP system. I don't know what it would be in other provinces. But in Quebec there's a junior college, an in-between step. If they drop out of high school, it's too late for the university to do anything. Isn't this a problem with the high schools? How are universities going to benefit from implementing any type of plan?

[Lloyd Axworthy]

I agree with that analysis, and that's why I think the universities and colleges have to be much more involved in a coherent strategy. We provide the resources to make public education work from K to 12. We provide the teachers, the research resources, the support systems.

My own university right now is actively engaged with kids from the inner city—six, seven, and eight years old. We are beginning to teach them science and environmental management, because that's a targeted need. We want to provide two things: first, a skills set that the public school systems are finding difficult to supply; second, an awareness that university and college are possible. Those are the two things we can do. If we stay in the silos—K to 12 here, colleges and universities there—it's not going to be a success.

[Massimo Pacetti, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

Wouldn't there be a way that the university could recruit and better fulfill that part of their need?

[Lloyd Axworthy]

As a public institution, part of our mandate is to ensure that the recruitment load is equally shared. It really is a form of prevention strategy.

In the cities and towns of Manitoba and Saskatchewan, if we don't provide an effective educational transmission, then we will have serious breakdowns, economically and socially. it's about as serious as that.

[Dr. Emõke Szathmáry]

On the same issue, let me give you this example. The access programs are a way for adults to come to university. We apply the same criteria for admission as we would for any mature student—in our case it's people over the age of 21. The important thing is that it involves no change of standards and no stigmatization.

As to the inner city programs that Dr. Axworthy mentioned, we have done this with particular reserve communities at our own expense: 85 workshops last year. Next year, in grades 9 through 12, we expect to have 90. It's an open invitation to all the aboriginal high schools across the province, of which there are many, some in remote communities.

We need money to be able to fulfill the double-barrelled mandate.

[Massimo Pacetti, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

That's what I want to hear.

[Dr. Louis Visentin]

You're talking to the wrong people about the right thing—access. The critical periods are zero to 6 and K to 5. It's not K to 12. If you're a follower of Fraser Mustard, and you have children, and you've been on the reserve, pick up on those age groups. We need university input to develop programs for zero to 6 years. That's where the real literacy and numeracy problems lie. You're talking to the wrong people about the right thing.

[The Chair, Conservative, Brian Pallister]

Thank you, sir.

We'll move now to Mr. Del Mastro. It's over to you.

We're going to go with four-minute rounds, ladies and gentlemen, so we allow everyone who wants a question to get one.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

I have to put five minutes into four minutes, so everybody's going to answer really quickly for me.

Mr. Sprague, do you believe that creating a hotter business environment is mutually exclusive of investing in education?

[Trevor Sprague]

Certainly not. In fact, I think the two go very much together.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

By making a better business climate, governments often raise--in fact virtually always raise--total tax revenues, don't they?

[Trevor Sprague]

Absolutely.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

A lower tax rate does not mean lower government revenues. Thank you.

The 2006 budget was titled “Focusing on Priorities”, and one of the things we put in there was education. We did talk about a dedicated transfer and we also talked about development of skilled trades.

I want to go back to Mr. Axworthy because I believe he has a very interesting proposal. This year the Department of Indian Affairs is going to spend about $9 billion. You came forward with a fairly modest $60 million program for education. Is it your opinion that this would work nationwide, for this kind of an investment?

[Lloyd Axworthy]

I go back to the issue. Because the country is so diverse, being able to have the flexibility to target in on the special needs region by region or province by province really makes sense, but there has to be management on that. I did talk about setting goals, because when you get the different parts and pieces together, you can then say that we've been able to increase enrolment of, say, aboriginal students by another 5,000 this year. Right now there's a gap of 30,000 students compared to the non-aboriginal population.

That's where the federal government can have a real role, but it has to be tailored to very specific areas, and that's where the cooperation with the provincial and municipal governments comes in.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

Thank you.

Ms. Szathmáry, when we listen to student groups, when they talk about the dedicated transfer, they're talking about it in terms of reducing tuition fees, reducing their costs. When we talk to universities, they're talking about investment in infrastructure and research and being able to provide much better programming for them and better education. Is there a balance here, or is it one or the other?

[Dr. Emõke Szathmáry]

I think it's very important for parliamentarians to realize that CFS, which is the largest voice across the country, actually would like to see the elimination of tuition fees altogether.

My own view is that the individual benefits from a university education directly, and there's lots of evidence to bear on that, as does society. I'm not a supporter of the view that students should not bear some of the costs of their own education, which is going to be directly to their personal benefit.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

Agreed on that. I know if I hadn't made an investment in it, I probably wouldn't have appreciated it.

Mr. Visentin, you also spoke about infrastructure.

[Dr. Louis Visentin]

I think there's balance. The students are paying a tuition rate that's about the same as it was in the 1990s.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

So you actually feel that it should be more towards the infrastructure then, that universities or colleges should actually be given the money to deal with as they see fit.

[Dr. Emõke Szathmáry]

Remember that institutions set their own tuition fees. In our province right now, tuition is at the 1999 level, at provincial request. The national statistics are not accurate. There are large differences across provinces. I'll give you an example. If we could charge the same tuition fee as does the University of Saskatchewan, we'd have $28 million more in our budget annually.

[Lloyd Axworthy]

Could I make one observation on tuition? What I would ask the committee to look at is a shift from the increasing burden of the loan system to more targeted grant programs, so that you begin to target the students who really have needs. I think that's where the objectives should be.

[The Chair, Conservative, Brian Pallister]

I'm sorry, we have to move on.

I'm just going to insert a quick anecdote and say that if I hadn't had to pay tuition, room and board, and travel costs to go to Brandon University, I never would have been forced to take a job refereeing basketball, which prepared me for this.

We move on to Monsieur St-Cyr.

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

Thank you.

My question will be for Mr. Starmer, from the Manitoba Chambers of Commerce.

I've read your brief, and I also listened to Dean's comment that if we lower taxes, we don't necessarily always lower the income of the government. I think this Conservative theory comes from the Reagan years in the United States. In fact, it's just that--a theory. In reality, it didn't work. It was miserable, both a social and economic failure. The middle class was very badly hurt economically, and the deficit of the American government just exploded during those years.

So I wonder how we can still bring this argument to the table.

I've seen your brief. For example, you suggest raising to $150,000 le seuil, the moment at which you pay the maximum rate of income tax. Now, I wonder how this could improve our economy. We know that if we give tax breaks to lower-income people, most of it will go into consumption, because their budget is so tight that if they have more money in their pocket they will spend it. When we give those same tax breaks to wealthier persons, most of the time it goes into épargnes, savings and stuff like that.

So isn't it just basically a way to put more money in the pockets of the richest ones, without really impacting our productivity?

[Graham Starmer]

I think you'll find that if you change that--and as you see, it's a $0.3 billion change--the money that goes into those pockets will in fact turn around in investments, because you'll find that a lot of our senior corporation managers, the CEOs, reinvest into other businesses, and the economy goes around.

What we've suggested is that when you look at trying to decrease certain taxes, you need to look at what impact that will have on jobs. We've met with the finance minister in Manitoba and tried to make him aware that if you have job-killing taxes, you don't expand.

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

Well, I agree with that. Then would it be more useful to take this $300 million and, instead of lowering it for the richest person, just have investment measures that are more interesting, like amortissement--how do you say that?