Finance Committee on Oct. 6th, 2006

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

Thank you.

Mr. Ledohowski—you have not contradicted yourself, but just to help out a little bit—when you arrived from Boston there was only one customs agent. But then you turn around and say that when you're applying for government programs, there is too much bureaucracy. On one hand we're saying there is not enough bureaucracy, and on the other hand there is too much bureaucracy when applying for a program. Do we need to get these people out of the office and in uniform in other fields? What typical programs are you having difficulty with?

[Leo Ledohowski]

The situation in Ottawa.... I don't think they are contradictory at all. I think we need better border service, plain and simple. Obviously security and safety and all these issues come into play. We need just more bodies on a long weekend when people are crossing the border, rather than fewer.

The specific bureaucracy I was talking about here is the pay equity group. We take that position very seriously in our firm, and just the sheer amount of time and effort it takes to get it done tells me that some of the principles of efficiency you're espousing should be—

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

Isn't it just one time, where you determine whether there is pay equity in your organization?

[Leo Ledohowski]

All I can tell you is that this has taken a tonne of time. They've been compassionate in the sense of being understanding of the amount of time and giving us extensions, but it should be much simpler than that.

There was another program, an energy program, that we just basically bowed out of. We put thousands of hours into it. You know what? Keep the grants. I can't devote this much of corporate resources. They're both very great ideas, but somehow in the execution it just seems to go on and on.

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

Thank you. I understand.

Ms. Riddell, in your brief you were talking about child care and perhaps increasing funding or continuing the funding. My question is specifically this. You seem to be one of those advocates for rural child care, and everything we've heard is that it's not plausible because of the fact that the rural communities are too far and there is no way you can have a decent child care or day care or early learning setup, because the rural communities are too far apart.

[Donna Riddell]

There are samplings of rural communities across Canada that work. Central Manitoba has great child care programs in their rural communities; however, the system needs time to grow. It needs a commitment to funding and it needs a little bit of structure to help those communities grow across Canada. The model is there. It needs the capital, the funding to be able to spread.

[The Chair, Conservative, Brian Pallister]

Thank you very much, Mr. Pacetti. Your time is up.

Mr. St-Cyr, would you like to continue?

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

Yes, thank you.

Thank you to all of you for having come here today.

Throughout the trip, Brian said that we would keep the best for last: Portage. I would tend to agree with him. I would say that we have just heard one of the best witness panels ever. With respect to the child care services we need and in which we have to invest large amounts, I have to say that everyone who dealt with the issue here today was very favourable to that approach. This leads me to say that, if Brian was elected, it was certainly because his personal attributes were much more appealing than his political party affiliation. I can see no other explanation for it.

Ms. Prentice, I liked your fire-fighting example. I hope you don't mind if I use it frequently in future arguments. My Conservative colleagues will not be too pleased with you for having given me this very good example.

Nonetheless, after looking at your recommendations, I must concede that I cannot agree with your second, third or fourth recommendations. You are asking the federal government to impose health legislation and standards, and to link funding to conditions and principles. You are asking the federal government to make the provinces accountable, and so on.

But in Quebec, as you know, people object to that approach. We have established our own child care services, and we believe that we can manage it best.

Do you have any objection to a province—Quebec, for example—opting out of the regulations, or the standards? In other words, the province would opt out to some extent, yet receives a full funding?

[Dr. Susan Prentice]

Thank you very much for your question. I'm glad to know my examples may live on.

You're a member from the only province in Canada with which I would have sympathy for the question, because Quebec is such an inspiration to the rest of Canada for the steps that have been made.

I'm sympathetic to the suggestion that Quebec is exceptionalist, the national question for Quebec, and the need to do it. At other moments in time I would have said yes, unquestionably. I'm now very much concerned at the way it's opportunistically taken up by other provinces--Alberta, for example, which proposes spending federal dollars, not even necessarily on regulated care. My preference would be to work very much with colleagues in Quebec to find a piece of legislation that both responds to Quebec's particularities and yet provides a national framework.

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

I should point out something which may not have been brought to your attention: in my view, the current federal tax system actually discourages provinces from doing what Quebec has done.

When parents in Quebec complete their federal tax returns, they get a somewhat smaller tax rebate than parents in the rest of Canada do, because they actually pay less for child care services. They pay the rest of it through their taxes. As a result, every year the federal government takes in $250 million at the expense of Quebec parents who have chosen to go with a public child care system.

If we truly wanted to encourage provinces who wish to establish similar child care systems, would it not be better to make a commitment to reimburse the funding the federal government saves when a public child care system is established? Would that not be better than establishing regulations?

[The Chair, Conservative, Brian Pallister]

You have approximately 20 seconds.

[Dr. Susan Prentice]

No.

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

Should we at least give it back to the provinces that do have a national system?

[Dr. Susan Prentice]

Yes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Brian Pallister]

Thank you.

Mr. Del Mastro, the floor is yours.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm going to start with Dr. Frankel.

I have couple of questions for you, Dr. Frankel. You compared Canada's productivity to OECD nations. I have some problems with that calculation and I'll tell you why. As a resource-based nation, there's no question our productivity is skewed. In fact, most of the people who measure productivity even say that Canada's productivity is skewed. When we look at the auto sector, even the softwood sector, which survived a horrible system or tariffs, they are amongst--in fact, in the auto sector they are--the most productive in the nation. How do you reconcile that with your statement?

[Dr. Sid Frankel]

So you're questioning the World Economic Forum's index then?

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

I'm questioning that we're comparing apples to oranges.

[Dr. Sid Frankel]

I would agree it's complex. There are many factors that contribute to competitiveness. You mentioned some factors. Any global comparison is difficult.

The point we're making--and I think it's a good point--is that it's not accidental that countries that spend higher percentages of their GDP in human capital and social capital are higher in competitiveness. For example, a country with the kind of economic power of the U.S. is lower than the Nordic countries, so I would accept that this is not a simple comparison. I think there's a reasonably clear message, and the chief economist of the World Economic Forum underlined that message.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

Okay. Thank you.

I'll ask this very quickly because I only have five minutes. You were talking about the cuts that the government made on the basis of effectiveness, efficiency, and accountability. We are spending $81 million on literacy this year. We have cut $19 million from the fund. How do you reconcile these “effective” programs with the fact that adult literacy is declining?

[Dr. Sid Frankel]

Again, I think there's a lot of complexity here, and the case we're making is not to defend particular programs but to defend solid spending in those areas. So we would have loved to see a process whereby the government consulted broadly and found ways to use those funds more effectively, but we think--

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

We are working on that. Thank you. I appreciate your answer.

I guess I'll go to Ms. Prentice.

You spoke about the fact that you couldn't build a health care system if you were to give money to everybody equitably. But everybody has access to the health care system. Everybody doesn't have access to a day care centre. In fact in Quebec one in five--35,000 people--are on a waiting list.

My riding, for example, is going to get $7.8 million from our program. We were slated to get only $2 million under the former government program. Isn't that discriminatory funding? Don't my taxpayers deserve the same benefit?

[Dr. Susan Prentice]

The argument I had made, that we don't fund the health care system by just giving all citizens their share of a health care budget, was to make the point that we actually need services. We need hospitals. We need doctors. We need infrastructure, and it's available for all Canadians who want to use it.

The long-term vision of a child care system in Canada, a well-developed system of early learning and care, is a system of integrated services in all communities--rural, northern, remote, aboriginal--that respond to the needs of those communities so that they are available to parents and children when and as they need them.

I'll point out that this is required not only because parents work or because parents are in the labour force. It's a part of child development, early learning, human capital investments, and a host of other very positive outcomes for all Canadians and their children.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

Ms. Ohlson, would 1% of GDP by 2020 fund that?

[Karen Ohlson]

It would be well on its way, using those figures.