Thank you very much.
I am the vice-president of the Canadian School Boards Association and past-president of the Ontario Public School Boards' Association.
The Canadian School Boards Association represents school boards across the country. Our members are the provincial school associations that provide direct support to boards that in turn govern the range and quality of educational services to Canada's public schools. Elected trustees represent Canadian communities and Canadian taxpayers, including the 70% of the population who do not have children in school.
The Canadian School Boards Association is non-partisan. Our interest is, first and foremost, the excellence of our education system. We believe you share that goal. However, we are not asking you to intervene in the education system. Rather, there are areas of federal jurisdiction that do have an impact on school boards across Canada. Given that you have asked people coming before the committee to focus on the tax system, we shall make recommendations that ensure school boards can maximize revenues that provincial taxpayers provide to support education.
There are three areas that I would like to address today: the clawback inherent in the GST on school board purchases; a recommendation to encourage green spending; and a general proposal to encourage aboriginal students to complete high school and post-secondary education.
We were disappointed that the federal government did not adopt the recommendation of the finance committee last year to fully rebate the GST to school boards. The GST is a federal government tax on moneys that school boards receive as a consequence of taxation—namely, provincial government grants. It also imposes a complicated administrative system that forces school boards to engage consultant experts to help them comply with regulations. Clawbacks on publicly funded schools do not make sense.
Our second recommendation is to encourage green spending. School boards nationally spend just under $3 billion annually on capital expenditures. It's fair to say that capital expenditures are fairly consistent over time. If those expenditures were subject to tax incentives based on their environmental impact, the federal government could be a powerful influence.
We refer you to the “Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design”, or LEED, green building system, a benchmark for the design, construction, and operation of high-performance, environmentally responsible buildings. LEED Canada tailors the systems for our environment. As yet, there is no LEED for schools like there is in the U.S.
Given that the suppliers of LEED products and designs in the U.S. are also operating in Canada, it would be fairly easy to implement in Canadian schools. We could even improve on it by adding health-promotion design. We believe that the annual amount of school board expenditures would be a powerful demand-based instigator for a green economy and would spill over into other sectors.
We would also like the federal government to explore an incentive for aboriginal graduates, similar to what Saskatchewan offers students in the province. Saskatchewan has introduced a program offering elimination of income tax for a set period of time for aboriginal graduates. While it is intended to encourage recently graduated young people to remain in the province, we believe it can be adapted to encourage aboriginal students across Canada to complete their schooling.
I believe these recommendations are doable and sensible, and ask that you consider them in your deliberations.
I thank you on behalf of the thousands of elected trustees who are entrusted by their communities with the job of educating Canada's most valuable natural resource: our children.
Thank you.