Evidence of meeting #32 for Finance in the 39th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was industry.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:50 p.m.
Conservative
Garth Turner Conservative Halton, ON
If we were to double the amount from RRSPs to $40,000 per individual, would you be in agreement with the existing strategy that allows couples to double the amount they're withdrawing? In other words, you would have $80,000 coming from RRSPs together.
12:50 p.m.
President, Lumber and Building Materials Association of Ontario, Canadian Retail Building Supply Council
That would be for a family.
12:50 p.m.
President, Lumber and Building Materials Association of Ontario, Canadian Retail Building Supply Council
A husband and wife combined, for $40,000?
12:50 p.m.
Conservative
Garth Turner Conservative Halton, ON
So you would support taking $80,000 out of RRSPs? All right.
Secondly, you were also saying let seniors take money out of RRSPs in order to renovate.
12:50 p.m.
President, Lumber and Building Materials Association of Ontario, Canadian Retail Building Supply Council
Not seniors. We're suggesting that homeowners who wish to have their parents stay with them rather than having them go into an institution have the opportunity to withdraw from their own RRSPs to modify their homes, put in wheelchair accessibility or infrastructure such as that to support them.
12:50 p.m.
Conservative
Garth Turner Conservative Halton, ON
What I'm getting at is that I'm a bit concerned we're getting way too real-estate heavy in this society of ours, and that by allowing people to withdraw such vast new sums of money from RRSPs, which are traditionally financial assets to give people some diversification, we're now taking all of this and dumping more of it into real estate. We're far too over-valued right now in that asset.
Does that bother you at all? It could come to backfire on your industry, couldn't it?
12:50 p.m.
President, Lumber and Building Materials Association of Ontario, Canadian Retail Building Supply Council
I think, obviously, the infrastructure would have to be put in place to ensure those funds are replaced in the RRSPs; that is essential. I absolutely agree that those funds have to be paid back into the RRSPs before those people retire.
12:50 p.m.
Conservative
Garth Turner Conservative Halton, ON
Mr. Jones, you guys want to raid RRSPs to go and have babies, right?
12:50 p.m.
Director, Corporate and Government Relations, Canadian Dental Association
I wouldn't quite put it in that wording.
One of our big challenges is the self-employed and parental leave. We are recommending that there be a mechanism put in place to help out the self-employed and self-employed dentists fund a parental leave, and we're looking at using the RRSP situation for that, yes.
12:50 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Brian Pallister
Thank you very much, Mr. Turner.
Just for clarification, Mr. Campbell, did you mean to say $80,000 combined for the couple?
12:50 p.m.
President, Lumber and Building Materials Association of Ontario, Canadian Retail Building Supply Council
No, it was $40,000 combined—
12:50 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Brian Pallister
For the couple, per family.
Thank you, sir.
We'll conclude with Mr. McKay now, for four minutes.
12:50 p.m.
Liberal
John McKay Liberal Scarborough—Guildwood, ON
Thank you, Chair.
Mr. Campbell, you seem somewhat more definitive than Mr. Woolford on your seventh recommendation, which says, “Reduction of the GST/HST should not occur at the expense of other tax reductions urged in this submission”.
12:50 p.m.
President, Lumber and Building Materials Association of Ontario, Canadian Retail Building Supply Council
Let me emphasize that all tax reductions are favoured by the CRBSC. We certainly suggest that the personal income tax provides more money in everybody's pocket; the corporate certainly provides opportunities for businesses to reinvest in capital expenditures and employing people; and another reduction in the HST or GST would certainly be welcome.
12:50 p.m.
Liberal
John McKay Liberal Scarborough—Guildwood, ON
In the world of choices, however, you have to rank choices. I take it from your submission that you would rank corporate tax relief ahead of GST. You'd rank PIT relief ahead of GST. You'd rank CCA relief ahead of GST. In fact, if you had to put in a ranking, you'd probably put the GST close to the bottom.
12:55 p.m.
President, Lumber and Building Materials Association of Ontario, Canadian Retail Building Supply Council
Our members would certainly enjoy stronger small business corporate reductions so that they could reinvest into their businesses and employ more people.
12:55 p.m.
Liberal
John McKay Liberal Scarborough—Guildwood, ON
Thank you.
Ms. Harvey, with respect to this mental health commission, our family has been touched by mental illness, so I have a rather gut sympathy with this issue. However, I'm not clear on what you would see this mental health commission doing.
12:55 p.m.
Interim Executive Director, Chronic Disease Prevention Alliance of Canada
I'm not the best one to answer that. CDPAC is composed of a number of organizations, and one is the Canadian Psychological Association.
My understanding is that this recommendation was part of the Kirby commission and came out of that particular piece. In terms of the specifics of exactly what that commission would do, I don't have the specifics. I could certainly get them from our colleagues at the Canadian Psychological Association or the Canadian Mental Health Association if that would be helpful.
12:55 p.m.
Liberal
John McKay Liberal Scarborough—Guildwood, ON
It certainly is an extraordinary number: $30 billion lost annually due to mental health and addictions issues.
I have two seconds left, presumably.
12:55 p.m.
Liberal
John McKay Liberal Scarborough—Guildwood, ON
Well, now we can relax.
On the allocation of 1%, you said that would be about $300 million to $400 million, of which $100 million is targeted for investments that will enhance physical activity. What portion of that would be with respect to physical infrastructure? You hear people come before the committee and talk about walkways and bicycle pathways and things of that nature. Is that physical infrastructure included in your 1% proposal?
12:55 p.m.
Interim Executive Director, Chronic Disease Prevention Alliance of Canada
When we talk about the walkways and bicycle paths, I know it's a little confusing because we had so much physical activity in this particular brief. On the infrastructure fees around those particular things—walkways, bike pathways, interconnectedness, etc.—we were suggesting that 7% of the transportation-related infrastructure funding would go to those pieces, so it is a separate piece actually.
12:55 p.m.
Liberal
John McKay Liberal Scarborough—Guildwood, ON
Okay.
Finally, Mr. Konow, your first recommendation is to “Re-enact Class 24...and Class 27...to incent the electricity industry”. Is that different from the changes that were made in the last Liberal budget? Is that a different request from the ones that were made previously?
12:55 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Electricity Association
Yes, that's correct. These would be. Under the last series of budgets, we had received an increase in the CCA rates for generation, transmission, and distribution infrastructure. As you will note, we're asking for an additional increase to reach parity with the rates in the United States. However, we are grateful for what has been given.
This is a separate request that would deal with the end-of-stack cleanup technologies that need to be applied to our existing fleets to make them more compliant with future goals with respect to SOx, NOx, particulate, mercury, etc. In response to the earlier question, my notes do clarify that our estimate of the cost of that would be about $33 million a year to the federal treasury over twelve years, for a total of about $400 million over that timeframe for that retrofit cycle.