Finance Committee on Oct. 23rd, 2006

[The Chair, Conservative, Brian Pallister]

Thank you, Mr. Wallace.

It's my turn on behalf of the committee to thank you all for your time and to tell you that from a personal perspective, unlike my colleagues, I personally did get a chance to enjoy your hospitality. I've had a great time. My family and I arrived on Friday, and I can tell you we have had a glorious time. Where else could you go in Canada and experience the romance of Witless Bay, Dicks Head, Harbour Grace, Heart's Content, Heart's Desire, and Quidi Vidi. I can tell you that the next time we come here, it won't be by chance, it will be by design.

You should also be very proud, and I know you are, about—[Technical difficulty--Editor]—tremendous accomplishment. As a former provincial curling champion in Manitoba, I tell you that I've been so impressed by that young man's skills and success.

You have a wonderful and unique part of the world, and we're all very proud to have had a chance to visit your city. Thank you.

We'll adjourn briefly and allow some technical problems to be addressed. We would invite the next panel to get comfortable and come forward when they wish.

[The Chair, Conservative, Brian Pallister]

Welcome to our second panel guests. We appreciate your being here.

We are the finance committee of the House of Commons, charged with the onerous responsibility of hearing from fellow Canadians across the country. I'm told that over 450 submissions will be received by our committee by the end of this process. We very much appreciate your preparing your briefs and being here today.

Some of you observed the previous panel perhaps, but I'll give you an indication when you have one minute or less remaining, and then we'll abruptly and quite brusquely cut you off at five minutes. I urge you to use just the five minutes, so we allow time for an exchange with committee members after your presentations.

We will proceed with the Visual Artists Newfoundland and Labrador, Marlene Creates. Welcome, and five minutes to you.

[Marlene Creates, Co-Chair, Board of Directors, Visual Artists Newfoundland and Labrador]

Thank you very much.

I want to thank you all for coming here and accepting our submissions. I represent a provincial sectoral organization called Visual Artists Newfoundland and Labrador. It's the provincial affiliate of CARFAC, which is the national organization Canadian Artists' Representation/le Front des artistes canadiens. We have included ten recommendations in our brief, and I will highlight a couple of points from those recommendations.

Looking over the whole presentation I want to make, I would like to underline the importance of the arts in strengthening our sense of place, nation, and community. I'm speaking specifically on behalf of the visual arts in some of my recommendations, but the cultural sector as a whole would be affected by several of these recommendations.

Our motto at VANL and CARFAC is “artists working for artists”. We have a volunteer board of artists, and I'm an artist myself. I have work in the National Gallery of Canada collection, and I currently have a large exhibition touring across Canada that was funded by the touring program of the museums assistance program of Canadian Heritage. I mention that to give you some indication of the context that these national programs have on our local artists here.

Our recommendations are roughly in two sections. The first four recommendations come under taxation, and the second set comes under what you might consider social economy.

Taxation is one area where the federal government can directly impact the income flow of self-employed artists. The arts and culture sector has one of the highest rates of self-employment in the Canadian economy. As we know, traditional employment models are decreasing, and self-employment is becoming one of the largest sectors of the whole economy.

Under our recommendations for taxation, we'd like to see a tax exemption on grants to individual artists. We'd like to see a minimum exemption on revenue derived from copyright and residual payments. There are some inequities in the employment insurance program and the Canada Pension Plan that adversely affect artists. Just as a small example, people in the performing arts generally receive paycheques from the companies that employ them for rehearsal time and performance time, and those paycheques include EI deductions and Canada Pension Plan deductions.

In comparison, if you're in the visual arts you do not receive any employment cheques, and visual artists are never in a position to collect EI. In terms of the Canada Pension Plan, we have to pay both halves. So I have to pay twice as much Canada Pension Plan as someone employed in the performing arts whose employer pays their half.

We'd also like to see income averaging brought back. This is an important factor in the cultural sector, because as artists our income can vary wildly from one year to another. If we could have income averaging, again that would relieve some of those problems.

Under the second set of recommendations that I'm calling social economy and the Canadian government's investment in that, the regional organizations here in the Atlantic region and individual artists benefit greatly from the national programs that are available in the cultural sector, specifically the Canada Council for the Arts. As I mentioned, the museum assistance program helps individual artists circulate their work outside of the region. One of the main challenges here in Newfoundland and Labrador is for artists to be able to show their work outside the region.

We'd like to see a permanent funding commitment to the Canada Council for the Arts in the realm of $5 per person per capita, as well as Canadian Heritage's Tomorrow Starts Today program made permanent.

We'd like to see the cuts made to the museums assistance program reinstated.

We'd like a federal museums policy.

We'd like the completion and opening of the National Portrait Gallery of Canada in Ottawa.

We'd like an extension of the $500 children's fitness tax credit, which is given to parents who enrol their children in sports, extended to those who enrol their children in artistic activities.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Brian Pallister]

We'll continue now with John G. Paul, Atlantic Policy Congress of First Nation Chiefs Secretariat Inc. Welcome, sir. Over to you.

[John Paul, Executive Director, Atlantic Policy Congress of First Nation Chiefs Secretariat Inc.]

Thank you.

I'm here on behalf of our 36 Mi'kmaq, Maliseet, and Passamaquoddy chiefs in Atlantic Canada, from the Gaspé of Quebec, and we have representatives of the Passamaquoddy in Maine in the United States.

Our focus is trying to get out of poverty and really become players in the economy of Atlantic Canada. Our strength is the strength of our people, our language, our culture, our aboriginal and treaty rights, as well as a young and rapidly growing population. Our treaties, which have been recognized and affirmed by the Supreme Court, are paramount in our relationship with provinces, the feds, and municipal governments. Our treaty rights apply to all our people across our traditional territories, including the Mi'kmaq of Newfoundland.

Under our treaties, the Supreme Court of Canada agreed that we have constitutionally protected right of access to the commercial fishery, to obtain a moderate livelihood. But we can't understand why today so many of our people still live in poverty. People living on $74 a week is not a livelihood, and we must take action to address this situation now and for the future.

The Marshall decision in 1999 provided hope for our people and provided much-needed access and economic development for our communities. Our chief vision of the future is to regain the self-reliance we once had in the past. We want to enhance and realize our own economic, social, and cultural objectives through actions of our own design. We envision having vibrant, prosperous, entrepreneurial-minded communities and understand that we must balance development with the right social and economic change. Economic development must be compatible with our people, respectful of the environment, and inform the needs of future generations, ie., sustainable economic development.

Our economic developments must be based on gaining access and control of our traditional land and resources, consistent with our rights, and we expect to be respected partners in all sectors of the Atlantic economy. Today, we have communities like Miawpukek in Newfoundland, St. Mary's in New Brunswick, Tobique in New Brunswick, Lennox Island in P.E.I., Millbrook in Nova Scotia, and Membertou in Cape Breton that are representing the leading edge of rebuilding our economies in our communities.

We really want to get away from dependence, and we really do want to become part of the economy. And we want, basically, to allow our young people from our communities to become the real potential of our future in terms of the economy, and to participate fully in the Atlantic economy in a way that we're contributing a great deal to society in general in Atlantic Canada.

The other issue we have is long-term funding sustainability for our communities. Our communities provide basic services. We need to ensure that long-term sustainability of these programs provided by the federal government be maintained over the next decade, to ensure that we do have the opportunity to become part of the economy and contribute to the future of Canada.

In closing, I want to tell you that the health status of our communities continues to be quite low. Things like hypertension, diabetes, cancers, addictions, and mental health illnesses have become a death sentence for many of our community people. Reductions in certain services, whether it be medical, transportation, eligible prescription drugs, or lack of mental health services, has drastic negative effects in our communities. Both Canadian and international health studies have shown that poverty and poverty conditions correlate to poor health status.

We need jobs, opportunities, education, and an economy to help improve our overall health status. We cannot sentence our children, our young people in our community, to another generation of poverty. And our chiefs, our leaders, and our communities want to contribute greatly to the Atlantic economy and become prosperous Canadian citizens in Canada. We want to contribute our values to everybody else in the country, and we need to do this by building an economic agenda and targeting activities to increase our access to natural resources, to build on the potential of our young people and build a strong, vibrant community for now and into the future.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[The Chair, Conservative, Brian Pallister]

Thank you very much, Mr. Paul.

We continue with the Society of Rural Physicians of Canada, Michael Jong, President.

[Dr. Michael Jong, President, Society of Rural Physicians of Canada]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman and honourable members. Thank you for the opportunity to appear before your committee to speak on behalf of the Society of Rural Physicians of Canada.

My name is Michael Jong, and I am a rural family physician in Goose Bay, Labrador. I am the president of the Society of Rural Physicians of Canada. I'm joined here today by Dr. James Rourke, who was a rural doctor in Goderich, Ontario, for 25 years and is now the dean of a medical school here in Newfoundland.

I consider it a privilege to be here today to speak to you all about the problem of rural health access and the solutions we are proposing to ensure that our rural citizens are healthy, for their own benefit and for the benefit of their employers and the economy of this country. We cannot ignore the links between health care and the sustainability of rural communities.

Having access to health care is important in ensuring that people will be willing to live, and companies will be willing to develop industries, in rural communities. Limited health care access is forcing rural Canadians to relocate to urban centres. From sovereignty, self-sufficiency, and economic perspectives, rural depopulation has negative long-term economic consequences for our country.

The primarily rural-based natural resources sector accounts for approximately 40% of our national exports. Canada's rural natural resources provide employment, forest products, minerals, oil, gas, food, tax revenue, and much of our foreign exchange. Rural health and our national economy are closely linked.

Rural health is in need of repair, as evidenced by the higher overall mortality rate and shorter life expectancy amongst rural and, of course, aboriginal residents. Efficiency is not the problem; the cost per capita in dollars spent and health care providers engaged in rural Canada is well below urban standards. The rural health problem is one of access, not wait times.

Dealing with the issue is one of the most complex and challenging aspects of health care policy. Mr. Romanow suggested that we devote $1.5 billion to developing a rural health access strategy. For 10% of this cost, the Society of Rural Physicians of Canada is proposing a comprehensive list of solutions to address these needs: to enhance rural medical student recruitment; to provide specialized rural skills training for students, residents, and practising rural physicians; to bring medical education to a rural setting; to do rural research; and to bring all national rural health planners together to identify a collaborative strategy to improve rural health and health care. These solutions are outlined in the package you have in front of you.

I believe that we health care professionals, legislators, and policy-makers all have a responsibility to ensure that all Canadians, whether rural or urban, have reasonable and equitable access to health care. A two-tier health system, the lower for rural Canadians and the higher offering better access for urban Canadians, is not acceptable in Canada. I believe that with your help we can implement the proposed solutions and that we do have a moral obligation to do so.

Thank you very much for your attention. I know you're in big rush, but Dr. Rourke and I would be happy to answer any questions you may have.

[The Chair, Conservative, Brian Pallister]

Thank you very much, Dr. Jong. We appreciate your presentation as well.

We'll continue now with a representative from the St. John's Board of Trade, Ken Birmingham. Ken, over to you.

[Ken Birmingham, Chair, Finance and Taxation Policy Committee, St. John's Board of Trade]

Thank you.

I am Ken Birmingham, and I am the chair of the finance and taxation policy committee with the St. John's Board of Trade. I also sit on the board of directors with the St. John's Board of Trade. I'm joined today by Mark King, our assistant general manager with the St. John's Board of Trade.

I want to begin by thanking you very much for making St. John's a stop in your consultation process. We appreciate the opportunity to present today.

Today we'll cover a few different topics. Of course, the challenge is to get it in within five minutes. We're going to touch on competitiveness and productivity, equalization, personal taxation, corporate tax, small business income tax, debt, spending, public-private partnerships, and federal presence.

Of course we begin with competitiveness and productivity. That's the engine that drives the machine that produces the money that helps to pay for all the different programs. Ensuring Canada's long-term competitiveness in the global economy should be a top goal, especially given the surging new economies of China and India and the increasingly acute skill shortage and demographic challenges faced nationwide.

Canada's productivity gap with the U.S. has been pegged at about 15%, and we run the risk of falling behind there, so productivity is an important topic. Clearly, productivity growth will be increasingly important if we want to provide the fiscal resources to support critical investment in the future of education, health, and infrastructure, all of which are tied into the quality of life and competitiveness. The federal government must respond by making strategic policy decisions. Fiscal policies must include a competitive tax system and must encourage work effort, savings, investments, and risk-taking. There must be an emphasis on further reduction of federal debt and on program spending.

I'll turn it over to Mark now to speak briefly on the topic of equalization and taxation.

[Mark King, Assistant General Manager, Policy and Communications, St. John's Board of Trade]

On equalization, the general issue of fixing the fiscal imbalance and the specific question of how to improve the equalization program have no doubt been hotly debated and are quite divisive as well. The provinces haven't reached a consensus, of course, on exactly how the program should change, and probably never will. The current government, however, campaigned on and stood by a position that all non-renewable natural resource revenue should be excluded as a base on which equalization payments would be determined. Very briefly, we strongly urge the government to follow through on this specific commitment.

Turning to taxation, while reductions in the GST have been a priority for the current government, we believe that the emphasis should now shift to other measures for greater tax competitiveness, primarily in the areas of personal and corporate income taxes. These are tied more directly to Canadian productivity. For Canadian families, reducing personal income tax rates would result in higher disposable income and more savings for retirement. The benefits of increasing the incentive to work, save, take risks, and undertake further education and training come in the form of higher productivity and economic growth. We believe government should, therefore, look at a multi-year plan to lower personal income tax.

[Ken Birmingham]

When we look at corporate income tax and surtax, obviously the competitive tax structure is important. We think the federal government is on the right track with accelerating reductions in corporate tax rates, but we believe the pace is too slow. We'd like to see the pace of the step-down tax rates stepped up by a few years. We also think the federal government should carry through with the elimination of corporate income surtax for all corporations by the start of 2008.

When we look at small business income tax, we think, again, that the federal government is on the right track in raising the threshold. We should continue on that trend by increasing the incremental relief for Canadian small businesses by committing to raising the threshold even further, as well as accelerating the reduction in the small business tax rate. Small business is the machine that drives the country, and we need to create further incentive there for them to create employment and increase productivity.

Debt reduction is obviously important. Demographic challenges that we face coast to coast are not going away any time soon, and we believe it is prudent to step up and take responsibility for the debt we currently face. An increasing emphasis on paydown on debt is the right thing to do.

From our members' perspective, the opportunity to take part in government-related work and projects is attractive. Public-private partnerships are obviously an important way to streamline the efficiency within government. We think that government should continue to look at those more closely as a means to streamline processes and create efficiencies at the government level.

Governments should ensure fair and proportionate levels of federal government employment and procurement activity on a provincial basis and correct any unwarranted imbalances that disadvantage particular provinces.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Brian Pallister]

Thank you for your presentations, gentlemen.

Now we have Mervin Wiseman with us, who is here on behalf of the Newfoundland and Labrador Federation of Agriculture. Welcome, sir.

[Mervin Wiseman, President, Newfoundland and Labrador Federation of Agriculture]

Good morning.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, honourable members, staff, and colleagues.

My name is Mervin Wiseman. I'm the president of the Newfoundland and Labrador Federation of Agriculture, and I'm also co-chair of the newly formed Canadian agriculture sector council, which is a council that was formed to address some of the human resources issues we have facing us in the Canadian agriculture industry.

I want, very succinctly, to tell you about the value of agriculture in this province and opportunities for growth challenges, and give you a few recommendations to see how we can move this file forward.

The industry in this province is worth $0.5 billion annually, which is something that comes as a bit of a surprise to a lot of people, I believe. It employs about 6,200 people. It is the most significant growth seller in the resource sector, including forestry, fishery, and mining in this province, and has a potential to double the industry over the next four or five years, given the proper investment and the proper attention.

Where do we see some of the opportunities for growth? It is in the diary industry, worth $100 million at the moment. We have 32 million litres of industrial milk quota allocated by the national quota system, which we're now just starting to utilize because there's a chance to get into value-added processing, secondary processing, and so on. There is the chicken industry, horticulture, vegetables. There is the red meat sector, currently an industry with a consumer value of about $100 million. In the fur sector we've gone from less than $0.5 million two years ago to an industry worth $40 million as we speak. We have nursery and landscaping. The life science industry is an industry where we're going to have tremendous growth in the future, especially in the area of functional foods, nutraceuticals, and primarily we want to get into cultivating and harvesting northern berries.

By way of example, last year for just blueberries alone, there was $82 million in direct sales in Nova Scotia. That was just on blueberries. We have many varieties of berries in this province, of course, not the least of which are blueberries, cranberries, what we call the bakeapple, and lingonberries, and all these berries can bring tremendous health benefits. We have spoken about the issues of health. Agriculture can work into the health equation.

Some of our challenges are lack of infrastructure, for meat inspection and slaughter facilities, for example. Farmers in this province cannot market their produce locally. We can't get into wholesale supermarkets, retail chains. We can't export to other provinces. We can't export internationally. So of the $100 million industry, at the moment we have 1.5% of that industry because of the lack of infrastructure to be able to do it.

On feed self-sufficiency in terms of forage and so on, developing forages for our dairy industry, our livestock industry, land development, it's just so darned expensive. The average cost of developing land in this country is about $600 per acre. In Newfoundland and Labrador the cost to develop an acre of land is $3,200.

On fair market return, lack of framework, some might say a regulatory framework to ensure that farmers get fair market return is one that we're trying to deal with right across this country, and of course we have that critical issue in this province.

On liabilities, we're faced with environmental food safety, animal welfare liabilities. The issue of food safety has caused great stress and anxiety to farmers, particularly marginal farmers who simply don't have the ability to meet the standards required of them.

On research and development, if we're going to get into the life science industry, it just speaks and is totally synonymous with having the wherewithal to do research and development, particularly applied research. The big investment that we have to move for research and development, the food safety pillars and all these very important pillars for agriculture forward, is of course the agriculture policy framework agreement, which we all know about across this country. That $32.5 million federal-provincial agreement has been all committed. Three years into the agreement, we have two years left, and of course it's going to be very difficult to work and have any strategic growth funded through that particular stream.

I have just a few recommendations.

We certainly will be needing assistance for strategic growth, certainly along the lines of what we can do on our federal-provincial agreements and APF.

The land development issue has to be factored into the equation. There is a Canadian policy that we won't develop land anymore. We've fallen into that particular trap in the case where land is critically underdeveloped, so we think it's a question of trying to fit a square peg in a round hole, as they say.

We feel there should be government funding for public good initiatives, especially for food safety, environmental enhancement, and animal welfare issues. The liability that's being passed on to farmers to carry is simply too much for them to carry. Given the liability issue there and the fact that it can't be taken back from the marketplace, because we are so far removed from the marketplace and the consumer, it's just something we can't do.

I mentioned infrastructure development. The cold climate crop research station, along with others across Canada, was going to be cut and slashed in the federal budget the year before last. One of the rationales for that was that the infrastructure was now at its life expectancy and had gone past it. We've now turned the policy around on that, and the federal government will continue to engage in these kinds of facilities, yet no assurance has been given that we're going to bring these facilities up to standard. We need—

[The Chair, Conservative, Brian Pallister]

Thank you, sir. We have to cut you off there. Well done. There will be time for questions.

We'll continue with Penelope Rowe. She is here on behalf of the Community Services Council Newfoundland and Labrador. Welcome. Five minutes, over to you.

[Penelope Rowe, Chief Executive Officer, Community Services Council Newfoundland and Labrador]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I welcome you and the rest of your group to St. John's. We appreciate the opportunity to present to you.

Let me just say that I represent the Community Services Council Newfoundland and Labrador, which is a non-profit, charity-registered social planning research organization. A lot of our activities are involved with national organizations as well, so a lot of my comments relate not only to my experience here but to my experiences with the non-profit, voluntary, community-based sector across the country.

The main point I really want to make is to lay the context for the importance of the non-profit, community-based sector in our country, particularly as it relates to the terms of reference that you have before you, in terms of citizens' quality of life and prosperity.

A recent study across Canada indicated that 91% of Atlantic Canadians view voluntary organizations as the key determinant and the most important element in quality of life in this country. That figure is almost similar to the way Canadians feel across the country, yet in Canada we have no overriding strategy for working with the non-profit, voluntary, community-based sector. There are many relationships between individual departments and individual organizations, but in essence we don't have a broad view of how we should work with the sector as a whole.

In Newfoundland, for example, we have 2,200 registered organizations, all of which are working at a local community-based level to provide support to Canadians. In many instances, they're also providing support to economic development, whether it's through community economic development or by providing Canadians with the skills that they need to be able to participate more fully in our economy. In fact, we know that 62% of organizations in Canada work at a local level, yet the federal government plays an extremely important role in its relationship in supporting those organizations. In other words, it's not just a federal or municipal responsibility.

The other thing we know is that the voluntary, non-profit, community-based sector, whatever you call it, is different from the private sector and the public sector. We all operate with volunteers. Volunteers govern our policies and make our organizations function.

I believe we have to find new ways of working with this sector in Canada, and I think any new government obviously wants to find its own approach to working with the non-profit sector. We know that organizations are under huge stress to recruit qualified board members, qualified volunteers, qualified staff, so I want to make a particular recommendation here today. It has to do with how the federal government and the sector could work more effectively through technology.

At the moment, there is no technology platform within the federal government for relating to the non-profit sector. In fact, there is no vision within the federal government for how technology can be used with the non-profit sector. We may have a strategy for government services online, but it's silent when it comes to how we relate to this huge non-profit sector, which is in fact the locus of over 10% of employment in this country.

So in my remaining minute or two, I would like to suggest that we look seriously at how the federal government and the non-profit sector can provide support to these hugely important organizations in much the same way as we provide support to small and medium-size enterprises. For example, there are sites that provide support to the business sector when it wants to figure out how to do its job. There is no such site in Canada for the non-profit sector. There is, however, an emerging voluntary gateway, and I have circulated information about that particular platform portal, which is just being developed.

The Community Services Council Newfoundland and Labrador is now operating this national portal through a competitive process that we embarked upon with the federal government. The portal has the potential of streamlining relationships with the non-profit sector. I recently presented to the blue ribbon panel on grants and contributions that this would be an extraordinarily good way for you to be able to work more effectively around grants and contributions, which are nothing more than a patchwork at the moment in terms of how we relate to the federal government.

So I recommend that you learn more about lack of platform within the federal government and the use of voluntarygateway.ca to streamline our relationships, thereby building the ability of Canadian citizens and their organizations to serve us all better for our own prosperity.

[The Chair, Conservative, Brian Pallister]

Well done, Ms. Rowe.

Thank you all for your presentations. We'll move immediately to questions.

John McCallum.

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

I would like to begin by saying that I have visited St. John's many times and it's a great pleasure to be back. I only wish we had a little more time, so that we could see more than this room today.

I want to focus first on rural doctors. To me, this is a really important issue. I think that as our colleague Michael Ignatieff has emphasized, there's an inequality in the distribution of hope across this country. Hope is concentrated in the bustling, booming metropolitan areas, but notably absent in some of the rural areas. While access to doctors won't solve every problem in rural Canada, lack of access will kill initiatives that could benefit rural Canada. I'm going to keep your recommendations. I think they're really good.

My question is, what is the federal role? One of the disagreements we have with the government is that they seem to seek jurisdictions in water-tight compartments—health care is provincial, full stop. I don't see it quite that way. But with respect to the recommendations you have made, what would be the federal role, as opposed to the provincial role, in addressing this problem?

[Dr. Michael Jong]

We're very careful when we put in those solutions. We are aware of the issues surrounding the federal-provincial-territorial jurisdictions. We think these solutions will address all that can be addressed by the federal government.

I'm going to leave it to James to clarify that.

[Dr. James Rourke, Dean, Faculty of Medicine, Health Sciences Centre, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Society of Rural Physicians of Canada]

In your work and ours, one of the most important things in getting something done is having a chance. The Canada research chairs program, which is a federal program, has shown us how different areas of research are organized in a pan-Canadian way in universities across Canada.

We are asking for funding, in each of the medical schools, for Canada chairs in both medical education and rural health research. These chairs would not be located in, say, St. John's or Toronto, but rather in, say, Goose Bay. They would serve as primary connectors between the communities and the medical schools, ensuring that the focus remains on delivering medical education and doing grassroots research. This could be funded in the same way as the federal government funds the Canada research chairs—in a national program. The rural health question is pan-Canadian, and we need some pan-Canadian answers. That's why we picked these two—because they could be funded federally.

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

My second question is joint, to Ms. Creates—I think “Creates” is a good name for an artist—

[Marlene Creates]

I know. People think I made it up. Problem.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

—and also Ms. Rowe.

I am a strong supporter of federal government support for the arts, museums, and the volunteer sector, a non-profit sector that plays a crucial role in our country. It seems to me it's come under some attack recently. We've seen cuts to the museum programs, and you're wanting more money. We've seen cuts to the volunteer sector, not to mention literacy programs.

Perhaps you were too diplomatic to mention these things, but I'm asking if either or both of you could comment on the implications of these recent cuts.

[Marlene Creates]

Recommendation 10 asks for a reinstatement of the funding that was cut from the women's programs and the literacy programs. There is an actual correlation between literacy rates and the crime rate. If the government is interested in doing something about the crime rate, I think literacy would be a great place to start. This is connected to the arts—you can be literate in visual arts and in every aspect of the arts.

So we are very distressed about those cuts.

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Actually, a 30% cut in literacy programs is very substantial.

Ms. Rowe, do you have a comment on the volunteer sector?