Finance Committee on Oct. 8th, 2009

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Okay.

Thank you.

Mr. Laws, again, if we can be brief, that would be very helpful.

[James M. Laws]

In fact, it's a totally free market. If the slaughter houses aren't subject to these inspection costs that other sectors aren't required to pay, that's no doubt in order to offer more money for live animals, absolutely, yes.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you, Mr. Laforest.

We'll go to Mr. Dechert, please.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your presentations and for your patience during our delay for the vote a few minutes ago.

I have a number of questions for several of the presenters. I'd like to start with Ms. Fedora from the Dental Hygienists Association. You cited in your presentation a report of the Competition Bureau of Canada that indicated that when private dental hygiene businesses are restricted, the price of dental hygiene services is approximately 5% to 11% higher. Can you tell us what the current budget for dental care is for NIHB clients and what you think would be the cost savings of the government if we were to accept your recommendations?

[Wanda Fedora]

I will be honest and say I actually don't have a direct figure on what the annual budget for NIHB is for the dental services, but I will tell you how to save money in the long term when you look at the cost of caries reduction. Right now, when someone in a remote area or in the northern part of Canada is being treated, especially children, they can be flown from northern communities down to such places like Winnipeg and Edmonton for treatment. That compounds the cost of their expensive dental care. But when you are treating someone and you're in a preventive profession, such as dental hygiene, you are reducing dental caries and dental disease. In the long term, the NIHB budget would be impacted profoundly by the fact that we would expect to see better oral health in NIHB or first nations and Inuit clientele.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

Thank you. It sounds like a good idea to me.

I have a couple of questions for Ms. Scott, Ms. Taillon, and Ms. Decter. I appreciated your presentations.

You know our government has made a number of investments this year in social housing--$2 billion. Certainly in my area of Mississauga and Peel, a number of social housing projects have received funding under that. That has freed up money for new construction in other areas. I hope that's been helpful.

I was particularly interested in your comment about immigration settlement services for new Canadians. That's a big issue in the Peel region, Mississauga, Ontario, where I'm from.

Can you tell me specifically what you—I think you mentioned it, Ms. Scott—might recommend in terms of increased services for immigration settlement and what funding is necessary?

[Katherine Scott]

Certainly we raised immigration settlement in the context of social infrastructure and the moneys that were available, the current level of funding. The federal government currently does support immigration settlement through a number of programs at CIC and the like. We flag it particularly because what we now know from the research over the last decade is that newcomers are disproportionately represented among the poor in Canada and are having increasing difficulties in integrating into the labour market.

I know some provincial programs are certainly trying to address labour market integration.

In terms of a question about increasing funding, I do think there remain huge gaps in providing social supports to newcomers, particularly around language training, support for their families when they get here and support for children in the education system. The federal government has its own programs, but I believe as well that moneys through the CST are allocated to social programs provided by provincial governments.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

You don't have any specific figures on what's needed.

[Katherine Scott]

No.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

If you could provide those at a later date, that would be great.

You mentioned that there's a greater percentage of working mothers now than ever before. I know that a lot of those working mothers are self-employed. What's your view on the proposal for increasing or allowing parental leave benefits under the EI system?

[Ann Decter]

We welcome all extensions of employment insurance at this time. In a previous round of budgeting we submitted material on employment insurance, but we were asked to talk about only three items. We welcome it, but we also see that a lot of other people are excluded from employment insurance, and we encourage you to broaden it in other ways.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

Ms. Taillon, we talked about laid-off workers and the problems they have with re-integrating into the labour market. What's your view on education and skills development for laid-off workers?

Our government made unprecedented new investments this year in extending skills training for laid-off workers. But is there more that we can do in training laid-off workers so they can re-integrate into the labour market in another profession or line of work?

[Peggy Taillon]

As my colleague Katherine has mentioned, much of the retraining is tied to EI eligibility, so a disproportionate number of people are not eligible. We hope you will seriously look at expanding the eligibility criteria for EI and make sure that training is connected to that.

Our position at CCSD is that we really need to look at a comprehensive lifelong learning strategy that targets youth, people of retirement age who must work for financial reasons, and work-aged individuals who have to shift careers. So I think a broader lifelong learning strategy is required.

On your question about new Canadians and education, I would urge the government to really look at foreign credentialling. Before coming to CCSD I was a senior vice-president at the Ottawa Hospital, and Dr. Kitts was the CEO in the former group. We recognized that there are tremendous health human resource challenges, as Pauline has outlined. There are many individuals in Canada today who could easily work in our health facilities but do not have the credentials. It's a huge barrier, and given the number of vacancies in that field it needs serious consideration.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

I'd like to share my time with Ms. Block, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

You have about 45 seconds for one quick question.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, SK]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and thank you to all of our presenters.

My question is for the Canadian Federation of Nurses Union. I was formerly a member of a regional health authority, so I'm very interested in your recommendations. Can you give us a little more information on the third recommendation? Are you recommending a multi-year plan? What is the exact amount that you'd be requesting for the innovation fund?

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you.

Be very brief if you can.

[Pauline Worsfold]

It would be a multi-year plan. We currently have $4.2 million, so we'd need an amount greater than that.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you very much for that.

We'll go to Monsieur Mulcair.

[Thomas Mulcair, NDP, Outremont, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I'll start by thanking you all for your presentations. This morning, I was speaking with one of my colleagues from another political party. We agreed on one thing: this exercise makes us aware of a set of concerns that will affect people's health, their ability to study, the right to protection that is supposed to exist, but that is sometimes lacking. Consequently, the exercise as a whole is very important.

Mr. Chairman, I would dare say that, in a number of presentations, presenters are requesting major investments by the federal government in fields of exclusive provincial jurisdiction. That's part of the challenge because we've already created the model. We've created it to such a degree that some say we need only do the same thing in other fields.

It would be extremely difficult for me, as a Quebec member, to agree to the federal government's imposing some control on education or child care services. Obviously, we could never support such a thing. Mr. Dunn observed that sometimes we see funding here that is earmarked for a specific purpose—there are agreements—and sometimes we're unable to follow the money. There's food for thought here for this parliamentary committee.

First of all, I'm taking the liberty of asking Ms. Decter whether she would be kind enough to explain to us what is happening with her proposal concerning child care services in a province like Quebec, which already has a very structured program. My colleague Olivia Chow has introduced a bill on child care services that provides that Quebec can completely opt out since it already has such a system. That opting out option was so obviously right that our Bloc colleagues supported the NDP proposal.

Since this is a field of exclusive provincial jurisdiction, do we allow the transfer where there is such a service and do we simply transfer the funding? I'm asking Ms. Decter the question.

[Ann Decter]

The proposal was to transfer funds, but also to control how those funds were spent in the sense of setting up a system of values. We heard from a lot of different presenters in their fields that you can't just transfer funds; you have to say how they're going to be spent.

The Quebec system is excellent. Unfortunately, provinces that are moving on early learning and child care are not emulating the Quebec system. Right now, four provinces are looking at having full-day kindergarten--adding two years of full-day schooling and wrapping day care around that.

Obviously it's not possible to dictate a model, but we would be looking for the federal government to step up as a partner in the extension of child care services. Right now it is left entirely to the provinces to move on it or not. We think the federal government can show leadership so we have a national program that families across the country can access.

[Thomas Mulcair, NDP, Outremont, QC]

Thank you.

Now I'm going to ask Mr. Turk to go into greater detail. He has given us some statistics on what has been spent on physical and intellectual infrastructure. Can he provide us with more figures on that?

[James Turk]

Yes. Thank you, Mr. Mulcair.

One of the difficulties with the federal government's last budget was that while there was a good deal of money, it's not being spent wisely. I think that is, as I mentioned at the end of my comments, the result of lack of adequate consultation with the scientific and research community. A good example of that is an actual reduction in the money for the granting councils that fund the researchers who do the research, as well as a desire in earlier budgets to target the granting councils, so there's a restriction on the people, funding for the people to do the research.

The response the government gives us when we're critical about that is to say, well, there was $2 billion in a knowledge infrastructure project, which there was indeed. There are two problems with that. We've tracked every announcement by the federal government of infrastructure funding, of which there have been quite a number. Only about a third are actually for research, interestingly. Of the total that's been allocated so far, according to our calculations—and I have a copy of this detailed analysis for members of the committee—only 36.6% has actually gone to research.

The related problem, however, is in talking with our members who are scientists in various places. I'll just give you two quick examples. One is the National High Field Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Centre at the University of Alberta. It's the one centre in Canada that has a magnet that's 190,000 times the magnetic field of the planet. It's essentially a microscope to look into the nucleus of atoms. It's the one centre for the whole country. They're running out of money to operate it. So they have the equipment, but they can't run it. The other would be the Polar Environment Atmospheric Research Laboratory. One of the prize gems of Canadian science in Nunavut is going to have to close up on March 31, 2010, because while they've got new money for equipment, they have no more operating money. They have no source to turn to for operating money.

What we're urging the government to do, and urging this committee to recommend to the government, is to have more consultation with us so the money can be spent in ways that recognize that science requires physical infrastructure, absolutely, but it also requires human infrastructure. Without the money for the scientists and for the operational expenses, we have shiny equipment in plastic wrap that can't be used.

[Thomas Mulcair, NDP, Outremont, QC]

Mr. Turk, thank you for so clearly illustrating this with selected examples. It's similar to what often happens in the health field. New equipment is installed, but, for lack of recurring budgets, it can't be operated.

Ms. Taillon, I'll close by thanking you for raising the following crucial point in a very simple manner. When we examine these choices—governing means choosing and setting priorities—we shouldn't believe that we're achieving long-term savings by cutting social services and services to the public. I think your point was singularly well made, and it will be an important point for us to consider.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Merci, Monsieur Mulcair.

Madam Taillon, do you want to make a brief comment? We have about 30 seconds.