Finance Committee on May 26th, 2008

[Erin Weir]

I think a great deal of emphasis should be put on training. I think the employment insurance program can be an appropriate vehicle to do that. There would be a lot more resources to do that if we recognized there was an accumulated surplus of $54 billion in the employment insurance fund, rather than saying we've only got the $2 billion to work with, potentially going into a recession. I think a major problem with Bill C-50 is that by putting so little money into the account there may not be the resources available to conduct the types of training we both agree are very important.

[John Williams, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

Mr. Whyte.

[Garth Whyte]

First, I have to say that it is a Canadian's choice to be self-employed. Hewlett-Packard did a study through Ipsos Reid and found Canadians' number one job prospect was to own their own business or be self-employed. That is a major shift that is happening, and I think it's worth people knowing.

How can we get the EI system to adapt to that? I agree with you; we should do whatever works. We've got to tailor it to what people need and also deal with systemic unemployment. We're all onside with this. How do we deal with the seasonal worker or people who are stuck in certain areas and move them into new areas? How can EI best be used for that?

Also, I didn't mention that on the last page of our presentation was reference to a very popular program, the new hires program, which gave kind of an EI holiday for employers to train students or people who were replacing those on parental leave. There are some things there that can be done as well.

We are doing a major training survey that will be sent out to 105,000 business owners. We're presenting that to the provinces and the federal government at the end of the year. It's a big issue.

[John Williams, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

Thank you.

I think Mr. Trahan has a comment.

[Jean-Luc Trahan]

I was surprised by your question. Even though it was not asked for me to answer, I would like to specify that about 20% of the revenue of companies such as IBM and CGI comes from the manufacturing sector and 75% of all research and development, private research, comes from the manufacturing sector. If that sector disappears, as you may be saying it's going to disappear into the service industry, I would be quite nervous for the future of this country. If that happens, again, I don't know where our research will be done.

Statistics Canada just published something on Friday about délocalisation, saying that the danger is more in the service industry because jobs are moving out of this country, while in manufacturing the strategy is to move into value-added product, so that these jobs are paying better, etc.

I just wanted to mention this to make sure we're not creating our own problem. If we're telling our young people not to go into manufacturing, there is going to be a pénurie de main d'oeuvre, that's for sure.

[John Williams, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Thank you very much.

I certainly appreciate the testimony of those who came forward. Thank you very much for coming in and contributing to our final panel for Bill C-50.

For the committee's information, we will be going to clause-by-clause tomorrow morning at 10 o'clock and will be completing it before midnight, as per our motion.

Thank you very much for coming in.

We'll take a recess while we say goodbye to our witnesses, and then we'll deal with our motion.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

We'll call the meeting back to order. If members would just get to their seats, we'll deal with this motion and be on our way very quickly.

With that, we'll yield the floor to Mr. Crête. I believe that you have a notice of motion. If you would be interested in moving that, we would accept it at this time.

[Paul Crête, Bloc, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

I move that the committee set aside one meeting to examine the Supplementary Estimates (A) for fiscal year 2008-2009 as soon as possible after the clause-by-clause consideration of Bill C-50, an Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on February 26, 2008 and to enact provisions to preserve the fiscal plan set out in that budget.

Mr. Chairman, we have received the 2008-2009 Supplementary Estimates, and in there, we find items to be voted on to fund the establishment of measures to implement a Canada-wide securities regulation entity that will help give Canada an advantage on global capital markets, as well as a fund for the advisory group on the Canadian international tax system, as well as a secretariat to examine Canada's tax system.

I would like us to have that meeting before we go past the deadline for consideration of these votes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

This motion is in order; that's not a problem.

Just to let the committee know, I have talked to a mover of a past motion, who is Mr. Crête, as well as the Liberal Party--I haven't had a chance to get to the NDP--with regard to our asset-backed commercial paper motion, which would take precedence right after the budget. Our witnesses are having a difficult time trying to clear their schedules. If we put that back for a week or two, and the mover and all the parties seem to be in agreement with that, we would have no problem proceeding with this motion.

[Paul Crête, Bloc, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

Yes. If we pass the motion, we could set aside Wednesday's meeting for this. The following week, we could perhaps come back to our study of the tax system. I would like us to deal with this issue.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

We'll deal with this motion. I'm just letting the committee know that next week we'll go into our taxation study, and we'll see what happens the week after that. I would like to actually propose a steering committee meeting for Monday to deal with this as well as with pre-budget consultations that we have to sort of come to some terms for. We'll deal with that on Monday, as well.

Let's take this motion now. Do you want to speak to the motion, Mr. Del Mastro?

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

All I was going to suggest is that perhaps we could meet with officials on Wednesday for one hour. I don't think it would take much more than that. I would like to see the motion amended to suggest that we sit for one hour on Wednesday to hear officials on the issue.

[Paul Crête, Bloc, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

I just want us to discuss the issue at the beginning of Wednesday's meeting. It will take at least an hour, because it is the issue of the Canadian Securities Commission. There will certainly be witnesses from the department to provide explanations.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

My suggestion would be that if it passes, we deal with it in the first hour and suspend the second hour on Wednesday. So we'll deal with this issue on Wednesday.

[Paul Crête, Bloc, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

If it takes more than an hour, then we will stop when we are done. We can set aside two hours at most.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

It will be a maximum of one hour. Okay. Fair enough?

[Paul Crête, Bloc, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

We will set aside a maximum of two hours, but that will be the only topic under discussion.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Go ahead, Mr. McKay.

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

In principle, there's no reason why we wouldn't support this. I'm not clear what the time sensitivity is.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Mr. Crête.

[Paul Crête, Bloc, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

That is because we have a certain obligation if we are to debate these items. There is no deadline on this type of item. I was told that when there are only three opposition days left... The clerk can explain that better than I can, but we do have an obligation associated with the issue of opposition days, and that has to be debated earlier if we want it to be debated at all.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Let's get clarification from the clerk.

[The Clerk of the Committee, Mr. Jean-François Pagé]

I don't know what the deadline is, obviously, because the government controls that. However, I think there is a period of three days before the last supply day. We don't know the date, so we could find ourselves out of time.

[Paul Crête, Bloc, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

If we don't do this next week and suddenly we adjourn the following week, we will not be able to debate this at all.