Finance Committee on Dec. 6th, 2007

[Alexa McDonough, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Thank you.

It seems to me that a common thread in at least four if not five of the presentations was the desperate need for a national anti-poverty strategy, a comprehensive strategy. I wonder if any of you might want to speak in quite specific terms about how this should be approached.

We've recognized from time to time that there is a need for a major federal push around a particular public policy area. This just keeps recurring, becoming even more serious and more urgent because of the erosion of federal support over a period of over a decade now, closer to a decade and a half, for many of the programs that would make up such a national anti-poverty strategy.

Does anybody want to kick in on that question? One of the difficulties here is to collapse so many different presentations, which are each in their own right very important, and try to get a common thread to really get some impetus for the finance committee to carry forward your recommendations.

I'm wondering if you might comment on that need for an anti-poverty strategy and how we might go about it.

Sharon, I see you're ready.

[Sharon Hope Irwin]

Having been last before, I'll be first now.

At least four of us have talked about child care as an essential component to a national anti-poverty strategy. We would endorse that, and support and applaud the action on Bill C-303, which is currently before the House. That is a child care bill that will move us forward.

[Paul O'Hara]

I had a conversation with Wayne McNaughton, who's here with me this morning and who has experience in all of this, and he said the time for consultation is over. How many reports does government need before it acts? We all know, and we look to what's happening in Newfoundland and Quebec, and look at the Irish experience. Stop insulting us with consults and start acting. Government knows what to do, and it's doing the opposite.

There are lots of benchmarks in child care and early childhood education, in affordable housing and minimum wage. There doesn't seem to be any real integrity in the government approach to....

We respect everything the federal government does, we really do, and we're grateful for programs like the national child tax benefit. However, it's so minimal. Housing is a really good example of what this province does with the federal money. It's basically nothing.

[Alexa McDonough, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Thank you very much.

We'll now move on to Mr. Dykstra.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate the time allocated.

I was interested in listening to all the presentations this morning.

I shared finance committee responsibilities with Mr. Savage last year, and he did a good job hosting us.

I also want to comment on my colleague Mr. Keddy, who's done a pretty good job. I don't come here and speak about him as a cabinet minister; I come here and speak about him as a member of the finance committee. When it comes to Atlantic issues, he does an amazing job representing all of you there in making sure that we're as aware as we need to be about the issues that face both Nova Scotia and obviously Atlantic provinces.

So it's good to have him sitting next to me, because at least when it comes to some local issues, he's been able to feed me with the information and knowledge necessary.

I want to touch on a couple of things with you, Sharon. You mentioned some of the things that the group had requested over the last year in the last budget. I certainly saw the organization when I was here in Halifax last year. Again, under the work of Mr. Keddy, we saw that you had forwarded six applications to the federal government and in partnership were provided with $552,000 in funding for those six applications.

I wonder if you would comment on a couple of those that you were able to implement and how they were able to benefit the community.

[Sharon Hope Irwin]

First of all, we are not they--that is to say, the applications that were forwarded were not from SpeciaLink. They were part of a broader effort of people who are trying to bring forward research, development, and help directly for centres providing care across the country and needing funding to do those things. Parents of very young children are generally at the beginning of the trajectory of their income and don't have the money to make those things happen. We keep trying to remind you that these things cannot be solved by the market alone. Think of the fairly well off physician who had to leave the workforce because her dollars couldn't do the job.

Child care has been on the agenda since late 1960s. There was almost federal involvement in 1988 and 1993 and then under the bilateral agreements of the Liberal government. Now government is going in a completely different direction, and it seems to think that child care will mystically appear--

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

No, I wasn't necessarily getting into the philosophy of it. You did a very good job articulating that position earlier.

I was more interested in finding out.... The broader organizations that you fall under in terms of an umbrella group did receive $550,000 from the federal government. I was interested in finding out how you were able to parlay that into action on the street and action in the community.

[Sharon Hope Irwin]

Thanks.

A lot of that went into work on what in this field is called best practices. That material on what to do about physical education in preschool, about nutrition, about support for kids with language issues, and about all those things would not have happened--and therefore would not have been transmitted to the little day care centre around the corner--had it not been for that support though the $500,000 you're talking about.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Bradley, among the things your organization requested last year were three things that we were able to move on. One was to lower corporate tax rates--to cut tax rates to 19% immediately and eventually to 17% in the next five years. I have to apologize that we're actually going to go to 15% by 2011, so we had to take your recommendation and go 2% lower.

[Francis Bradley]

I just want to show there are two thumbs up.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

I appreciate that.

The other point you made was around the accelerated capital cost allowance, especially in your industry, and the commitment the government made in the 2007 budget to move forward. There was over $1.3 billion in uptake from community businesses and from larger corporations that saw the benefits in making investments to increase productivity and also to help the environment in terms of sustainability and to advance that cause.

We have been across the country listening to presentations, and one of the common themes we've been hearing is that we should be extending that program for up to an additional five years and certainly extending the current program from the two-year allocation. I wanted to get your thoughts on the positive aspects of that and whether we should be expanding it. How successful has it been out here in the east?

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Could we have a very tight answer, please?

[Francis Bradley]

A tight answer would be that there is a huge challenge. Whether it's through changes to the capital cost allowance or otherwise, anything that will allow us to put in the infrastructure that's going to be required to make sure we're able to support the economy is welcome.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Thank you very much.

We are going to ask for a couple of quick questions. We have two burning ones over here, so we'll go with Mr. Savage first.

Go ahead, sir.

[Michael Savage, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Thank you, Chair.

I had wanted to ask a couple of questions, but I don't actually have time. As I respect the time concerns of the committee, let me just say—and I'm sure Alexa would agree with me, having grown up in this community of Halifax—that we have great panellists here this morning, in particular Dianne and Paul and Sharon, who are among the people who have worked so hard in this community to make it better. They've been fighting a tough fight, frankly.

There's Dianne and the work she's done with Feed Nova Scotia, which is remarkable. It's a tough time of year for you. I wish you all the best. I'd like to ask you questions, but I don't have time.

Paul, the work you've done with your community is very significant. I know that.

Sharon's been working in child care going back to the days when my father was doing it, many, many years ago. And there are Sue Wolstenholme, Pat Hogan, and Margo Kirk, and the people who really blazed a trail and saw some hope with the child care plan of the Liberal government. I don't want to get terribly political, but I do think the people in the community who are working at community level, who understand the need, who see the need every single day, have more to offer government than probably any other single group. I want to thank you for the work you do. If I had time...but I don't, apparently.

I think Paul perhaps mentioned the child tax benefit. The Caledon Institute of Social Policy indicated that although we haven't done anywhere near enough for child poverty, the child tax benefit that was introduced in I think 1997 was one of the things that has actually had an impact on reducing child poverty. I think it was Paul, or perhaps it was Sharon, who recommended an increase in the child tax benefit. I've heard about that from a lot of anti-poverty groups, and I wonder if you have any comment on that.

[Dianne Swinemar]

An increase in any benefit would be welcome, because as I said, families are vulnerable. Their level of poverty has deepened over the years because of the cost of living and their incomes have not increased accordingly. So if there is a recommendation for an increase in the child tax benefit, we would certainly welcome that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Monsieur St-Cyr.

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

Thank you.

Mrs. Swinemar, one of your two recommendations relates to employment insurance.

Recently, the House of Commons voted on a Bill tabled by the Bloc québecois to set up an independent fund so that the money be left to the workers. Unfortunately, the Bill was defeated because of the opposition of the Conservatives, strangely enough since they had been in favor of such a fund when they were the Official Opposition, and of the Liberals, which is also surprising since they have just released their anti-poverty program.

Had this Bill been approved and had a fund been created to allow workers to keep their money instead of putting it in general revenues to be spent for something else, do you believe this would have been helpful in the fight against poverty?

[Dianne Swinemar]

Perhaps so, because the people who are finding themselves unemployed are finding it very difficult to access EI benefits, and the weeks of EI they're given are not long enough for them to either get retrained or to find another job.

So that sounds as if it would be something that would work quite nicely.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Keddy, very quickly.

[Gerald Keddy, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margaret's, NS]

“Very quickly” is hard to do!

I think one of the things we struggle with here—and this is just a general statement—are our jurisdictional bounds. We have federal jurisdiction and provincial jurisdiction. Dan English is also here from HRM, so we have municipal jurisdiction too. The federal government transfers dollars; the provinces have the right to use those dollars where they see fit, even though we target them towards certain areas; and the municipalities have another agenda and another responsibility. Quite frankly, it's very difficult.

I hear the request to have this federal oversight and federal body that, for instance, might bring in child care, but it is a provincial responsibility, not a federal responsibility. So there are some serious jurisdictional challenges here.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Do you have a question? Just point the question and fire it. That would be great.

[Gerald Keddy, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margaret's, NS]

I have a quick question for Colin Dodds.

Mr. Dodds, regarding the challenges of the universities in Nova Scotia, I think we have 11 or 12 degree-granting universities in the province of Nova Scotia, with our population of 900,000 people. Most of our students, quite frankly, are coming here from other places. The provinces those students come from get those transfer dollars, not the Province of Nova Scotia.

Is there a way we can access those dollars?

[Dr. Colin Dodds]

That's an argument we've been making for some time, on the basis, as we understand it, of the transfers from the federal government to the provincial government. But these in fact are based on residency. Some of our universities have 30% to 40% of out-of-province students—not at my own, but across the system.

We've been arguing for some time that if we want to do the things we want to do at our universities, there should be a change in how the transfer payments are in fact made.