Thank you.
Mr. Pacetti, you have the floor for five minutes.
Evidence of meeting #15 for Finance in the 39th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was poverty.
Evidence of meeting #15 for Finance in the 39th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was poverty.
11:40 a.m.
Conservative
11:40 a.m.
Liberal
Massimo Pacetti Liberal Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you to the witnesses. It's always interesting to hear from various interest groups and various people from various parts of the country. We've been at this all week, so we've been hearing different things.
Mr. Gleberzon, I'm going to ask you a quick question. You're an experienced presenter and you've been before this committee at various times. You have to prioritize. The shopping list is way too long. What's your preference? I see some of the items here are missing some dollars, so if you could provide that for us, it would be helpful.
11:40 a.m.
Director, Government Relations, Canada's Association for the Fifty-Plus
I recognize what you're saying, but we only get one kick at the can, and we want to make sure that all of the issues our members--
11:40 a.m.
Liberal
Massimo Pacetti Liberal Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC
I understand, but my time is limited, and I don't mean to interrupt you. If you can--
11:40 a.m.
Director, Government Relations, Canada's Association for the Fifty-Plus
I can tell you it depends on the time of day. Yesterday we received a bunch of emails from people saying make the withholding tax on old age security optional. We believe the guaranteed income supplement should be raised. We believe locked-in funds should be done away with.
11:45 a.m.
Liberal
Massimo Pacetti Liberal Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC
Okay. I wanted your top choice, and perhaps you can give us some of the costs, because Finance doesn't provide us with any of the costs--
11:45 a.m.
Director, Government Relations, Canada's Association for the Fifty-Plus
Well, I can tell you doing away with locked-in funds won't cost you a penny, because it's not government money.
11:45 a.m.
Liberal
Massimo Pacetti Liberal Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC
Okay. So perhaps you can provide that to us forthwith.
11:45 a.m.
Director, Government Relations, Canada's Association for the Fifty-Plus
I certainly will be happy to do that.
11:45 a.m.
Liberal
Massimo Pacetti Liberal Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC
I would appreciate that.
Mr. Sinclair, in your brief you spoke about the challenges, a lot it being global challenges. We started off the hearings hearing from people regarding the fluctuation of the Canadian dollar versus the U.S. dollar, and being competitive in that sense. There has been some push now for some additional incentives for the manufacturing sector, but that only holds true for Quebec and Ontario.
Is that something affecting your members, or is infrastructure still the number one issue?
11:45 a.m.
Director, Economic Development, Greater Kitchener Waterloo Chamber of Commerce
I would say both.
Obviously, this has been a very challenging year. I'm not going to say with the rising Canadian dollar anymore, but the fluctuating Canadian dollar. The competition from abroad, the fluctuating Canadian dollar, have been key issues, and I think they have been the predominant ones, but down the road certainly infrastructure is a concern as well.
Again, as I mentioned in my presentation, we're very grateful, and we very strongly support the proposals that were included in the economic statement this year.
11:45 a.m.
Liberal
Massimo Pacetti Liberal Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC
Perhaps I can interrupt. I think you stated that the municipal infrastructure was what was lacking. Does none of the federal money through infrastructure touch your area or your municipality?
11:45 a.m.
Director, Economic Development, Greater Kitchener Waterloo Chamber of Commerce
I assume probably it does in some way, yes.
11:45 a.m.
Director, Economic Development, Greater Kitchener Waterloo Chamber of Commerce
Well, I would have to get clarification from the region. The Region of Waterloo is the municipality. We have a two-tiered municipal government in Waterloo region. We have the region, and then we have the local municipality as well. Sure, I assume that in fact the funding does eventually flow down to the municipality.
11:45 a.m.
Liberal
Massimo Pacetti Liberal Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC
Mr. Vanderklis, your association is asking for a bit of money for various needs, but how do we determine the return we're going to get for that investment? I hate to look at it as a business proposition, but how do you put more money towards programs when we don't know if the present programs are working?
Are they working? There are a lot of problems in your community. We're seeing problems in terms of education, people not being enrolled, health, various issues. I'm not an expert when it comes to aboriginals, but there are issues facing your community. So are the programs the right...? Is the solution putting new money towards them or is it maybe revamping the programs? You didn't address that point. Perhaps you can address that.
11:45 a.m.
President, Aboriginal Youth Council, National Association of Friendship Centres
Well, in my personal opinion I feel the programs that are currently in place are working. We serviced over a million clients last year, and the number is continually increasing. A prime example is our youth council itself. A lot of the youth involved with that would not be where they were if it wasn't for the programs offered through friendship centres.
I think that, yes, enhancement is needed for that because of the growing population within aboriginal communities. So yes, I think the programs are working.
11:45 a.m.
Liberal
11:45 a.m.
Conservative
11:45 a.m.
Bloc
Thierry St-Cyr Bloc Jeanne-Le Ber, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
In your brief, Mr. Sinclair, you talk of limiting to 3% the growth of program expenditures.
I find interesting this idea of controlling government spending, not necessarily relating to the money to be given to people or to the benefits provided by the government but in relation to the bureaucratic apparatus of the federal machinery.
A few years ago, the Bloc québecois did a study indicating that federal expenditures were completely out of control. This fact was hidden by the enormous surpluses of the government which allowed it to spend huge sums for polls and for other activities providing very little value to Canadians.
Let me give you an example. From fiscal year 1997-98 to fiscal year 2006-07, federal operating expenditures have increased by 74.3%, which is considerably higher than inflation, whereas in Quebec, my province, provincial operating expenditures have increased by 49.2%. There is a huge difference.
Under the Liberal government of the time, we wanted to see how much could be saved without cutting jobs or cutting benefits but only through better control of our operating expenditures. Since then, we have updated our study. At the time, nobody made any comments or challenged our conclusions. Today, after updating, we have shown that 42 billion dollars could be saved over five years, which would give the government lots of leeway.
Do you believe there is a problem here? Do you think that nobody bothers with expenditures control anymore because we have those huge surpluses?
11:50 a.m.
Director, Economic Development, Greater Kitchener Waterloo Chamber of Commerce
In response to your question, generally, I would contend that the private sector, because of global competitiveness issues, has to be very effective and efficient in their spending. I think from a broad general perspective we'd like to see that from all levels of government, and not just the federal level, but the provincial and municipal levels as well.
Yes, I think generally our business community supports effective, efficient, and targeted government spending. I think most businesses are in positions right now where they have to prioritize and identify what their key businesses are. It's incumbent upon the public sector as well to develop business plans to say what they do, and they have to be able to target spending towards our priorities. I would certainly agree with the examples you have provided. I think in general terms, yes, we would agree.
11:50 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Rob Merrifield
We need a very quick question and a very quick answer on this one.
11:50 a.m.
Bloc
Thierry St-Cyr Bloc Jeanne-Le Ber, QC
Mr. Pacey, you have spoken against the right to deduct the book value of an heritage property that would be demolished.
What is your definition of an heritage property? If we wanted to implement such a measure, how would we go about determining that a given property will entitle its owner to deduct the book value from a company's profits?
11:50 a.m.
President, Heritage Trust of Nova Scotia
I am not a tax expert, but my understanding is that buildings are capital assets and they are written down over a period of time. If they still have a book value at a certain point and they are demolished, then the owner would be able to deduct that amount from their taxes.