Finance Committee on Oct. 17th, 2006

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

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Brian Pallister]

Thank you.

Kenneth, I very much appreciate the work your organization does and I thank you for your presentation.

You expressed concern about the elimination of funding on a program that you well know doesn't work and hasn't worked. I accept your point that there needs to be another program put in place, but I would make the point, and I hope you would agree, that as long as first nations communities rely on deep discount smoke sales and contraband cigarette sales to generate revenue, it's going to be pretty darn hard to convince first nations people not to smoke.

One the problems we faced in Manitoba recently was a piece of legislation that the provincial government passed that exempted first nations communities from its smoking ban. A court challenge ensued and the court ruled that it did not meet charter challenges.

I just want you to go on record, and I sincerely hope you will, as supporting a smoking ban across the jurisdictions of this country that applies equally on first nations communities as it does elsewhere. Would your organization support that?

[Kenneth Kyle]

Yes, absolutely. This would solve huge health problems among our aboriginal peoples.

[The Chair, Conservative, Brian Pallister]

I really appreciate you putting that on the record, Kenneth, because I do think there are a lot of, certainly in my jurisdiction, first nations residents who've called my constituency office and said they would really appreciate leadership that stops putting their health behind the dollars they might get that will cause them cancer and emphysema, and so on. So I appreciate you being on record.

I'll move quickly to the sector councils. Wendy, you talked about the situation in Fort McMurray. Our committee just had the opportunity to travel to Fort McMurray. I can tell you the Tim Hortons that you speak of has 25 cars, minimum, line up around the clock. What's wrong with a person with very few skills being able to make $35 an hour, and if they stay in the position for a year, getting a paid vacation for two to Hawaii from Tim Hortons?

[Wendy Swedlove]

No, it's fabulous, and that's a perfect example of how the crisis is generating a different approach to human resources for those businesses that are in serious trouble. It is going to make a difference in this country. There's nothing like a good crisis to change behaviour. So for those who have minimum-wage employees, I think we're going to see a different approach to human resource management on the part of those businesses, and that is a good thing in this country.

We need to get to the folk who are perhaps not in crisis mode yet but will be shortly, so that they can manage their crisis better than those folk who were caught off guard in Fort McMurray.

[The Chair, Conservative, Brian Pallister]

Okay, thank you very much.

We'll go to Mr. McKay now.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. It was a bit embarrassing, though, when you submitted your application for the job there.

[The Chair, Conservative, Brian Pallister]

It's a step up.

I was hoping for discount product from Tim Hortons myself, but that's another story.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

Mr. Kyle, I understand the argument of putting up excise taxes on cigarettes and things of that nature. What do you say to the folks who say all that does is increase smuggling and illegal behaviour?

[Kenneth Kyle]

Well, let me make the point that you've been inundated for weeks on all kinds of good things that you want to fund, and we're one of the few groups that have a solution.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

You want increased taxes.

[Kenneth Kyle]

You stop the illegal manufacturing of cigarettes on Indian reserves and raise federal taxes, and that will bring in tens of millions of dollars that can fund all these good things. The technology exists to fight contraband. There have been meetings with the Canada Revenue Agency for years to work out how this can be done. The answers are there. All it will take is some political direction to stop the contraband.

Part of the problem is in the U.S., as I mentioned. We've had meetings with Senator Clinton's office, and so forth, on this, and we think increased pressure by Canada on the U.S. government can help. But a lot of the contraband is coming from reserves in Canada. They are being illegally manufactured, and as you probably know, they aren't following Canadian laws in the manufacture of these cigarettes. They're not fire-safe cigarettes, for example--

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

Which is terrible, as a sponsor of that bill.

It's kind of ironic that the GST cut is a perverse incentive to smoke, and I don't disagree with you at all.

You do make a point in your paper that there have been some cuts to the advertising. We've had a social revolution in this country. Smoking has gone from being a cool thing to being a socially disreputable thing. Yet you can slip back the other way quite easily.

I agree with your point. What could possibly be the rationale to cut back on advertising?

[Kenneth Kyle]

There is no rationale. I think a part of it was the sponsorship issue. The funds for advertising for Health Canada were sent to the Privy Council Office, and there's a whole history and story there. It's all tied up with that issue.

But it's a program that's working, the mass media program. Do you remember the Heather Crowe ads? They had a huge impact. Canada in the seventies had the highest per capita smoking rate of any country in the world. We were number one. We're now the lowest per capita tobacco consumers in the OECD, but why stop at 20% of the country smoking? We can get it down to 10% and 5% and save huge medical costs 20 to 30 years from now.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

I just returned from Moscow. Our delegation all noted how oppressive it was to have so much smoking going on. In fact, I believe the differential between the death rate of men and women is something in the order of 17 years, largely attributable first to alcoholism and second to consumption of tobacco. It's a huge social problem.

Anyway, I have very little time and I want to change horses to Dr. Hitchcock. I'm a Queen's alumnus, 1973, law, and I'm sure that while you're here you'll speak to Speaker Milliken, who's a shameless promoter of Queen's University.

One of your foremost recommendations has to do with the post-secondary transfer. On the face of it that sounds like a plausible, good idea, but our experience in the previous government with the health transfer was of trying to get the provinces to give some level—even a minimal level—of accountability with respect to how those funds were distributed. Any politician who takes responsibility for raising funds has to have some accountability on the other side. My friends here would just scream bloody murder that they have no area of accountability. How are you going to get accountability?

[The Chair, Conservative, Brian Pallister]

You have fifteen seconds to answer that one.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Dr. Karen Hitchcock]

It's communication, again. Of course, I can't speak for how the province would respond, but certainly universities can be very strong advocates for accountability for the expansion of the post-secondary sector, increased access—all of those things that could come from a direct transfer. Needs in Canada for workforce development are huge.

I can't answer your question directly, except that universities would be there to try to help.

[The Chair, Conservative, Brian Pallister]

Thank you, Mr. McKay. And with no direct effort to promote Queen's, I should also mention that both our researchers are graduates of Queen's as well.

We'll move on now.

Mr. Paquette, you have four minutes.

[Pierre Paquette, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Unfortunately for you, I am a graduate of the University of Montreal.

I will come back to the question put by my colleague, Thierry St-Cyr.

Looking at the summary of recommendations, what can be applied to Quebec more particularly, given that it has its own loans and bursaries system? We did not all agree on the fact that more money has recently gone into loans than into bursaries; nevertheless, the situation in Quebec is different from that in the other provinces.

Among your 11 recommendations, could you point out those that are of greatest interest to Quebec students?

[Suzanne Brunette]

Of course, the smaller the amount of debt that students have to reimburse and the end of their studies—

The recommendation concerning the Canadian Millennium Scholarship Foundation is also important to people in Quebec.

[Pierre Paquette, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Yes, but that is still very marginal.

[Suzanne Brunette]

Okay.

[Pierre Paquette, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

In my riding, for example, only three or four students a year receive millennium bursaries. We are very proud of them, but that does not reduce the level of indebtedness of all students.

[Suzanne Brunette]

I am not very familiar with the Quebec system. I know the Ontario system, and my colleague here is familiar with Manitoba's. Our last recommendation is to have a place where people can go to get information, regardless of where they live. When students from Quebec come to see us, we often have a hard time answering their questions with regard to their student debts and financial assistance that they received from various organizations.