Finance Committee on Oct. 8th, 2009

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Could I ask a very brief question on that? I have about 30 seconds.

The researchers themselves will always raise the granting council funding because obviously that most directly affects them, but the university presidents will very often raise the indirect costs because, as presidents of the institutions, that is obviously what they're most often concerned about. So what's the proportion? You're advising the committee. If you had a dollar to spend on research, what proportion would you allocate for granting councils and what proportion for indirect costs?

[Paul Davidson]

We will be providing the committee and the department with a more precise set of requests as the fiscal situation clarifies. The emphasis in our request this year is for the granting councils. That brings some increase to the institutional costs of research.

I would remind members that the global standard is 40%. Canada is now at about 23%, so there's some considerable distance to cover there.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you very much.

I want to thank all of you for your presentations and for your responses to our questions.

We will suspend, members, for about two minutes and we will ask the next panel to come forward.

Thank you all for being here with us this morning.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Colleagues, we will now proceed with the second panel with respect to our pre-budget consultations this morning.

We have another eight organizations before us: we have the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions; the Canadian Meat Council; Community Radios of Canada; the Canadian Council on Social Development; YWCA Canada; the Canadian Association of University Teachers; the Foster Care Council of Canada; and the Canadian Dental Hygienists Association.

Could we proceed in that order? We will have five-minute opening statements from each one of you, and we will start with the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions.

[Pauline Worsfold, Secretary-Treasurer, Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions]

Good morning, everyone.

I'm Pauline Worsfold, the secretary-treasurer of the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions, CFNU. I also happen to be a working nurse. I work in the recovery room at the University of Alberta Hospital in Edmonton.

With me today is Pam Foster, our government relations person.

The Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions, CFNU, represents 158,000 nurses and nursing students. We thank the committee for the opportunity to share our views.

There is an adage that exists in various forms in different cultures: good health is everything. It is the basis for personal and social prosperity. We would like, therefore, to submit to you three proposals for consideration in the next budget, spending proposals that will assist in fortifying Canadians and Canada for a prosperous future.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Excuse me. I'm sorry, we're being called to the House for a vote.

[Thomas Mulcair, NDP, Outremont, QC]

You're going to get a lot more time than anybody else because we have to stop and start over.

[Pauline Worsfold]

Great.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

The vote is at 11:07 a.m. All members will be going to the House, and we will be coming back immediately after the vote.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

I apologize to the witnesses. That was an unscheduled vote, which often happens in Parliament. We will do our best to have a full panel discussion here.

Colleagues, just before we do that, I think the clerk has shown all of you the increase we're asking for in the budget of the finance committee for our pre-budget consultations across the country. The Liaison Committee meeting is at 1 o'clock today.

Could I ask for consensus or agreement to approve this? It is for an additional $15,881.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

To do what?

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

We now need two days in Toronto and we're asking for a stop in Weyburn, Saskatchewan.

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Okay, agreed.

All right. Thank you, colleagues.

We will now start again with the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions, with their five-minute opening presentation.

[Pauline Worsfold]

Thank you. As I said, I'm a nurse and I'm flexible.

My name is Pauline Worsfold, and I'm the secretary-treasurer of the CFNU, the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions. As I said before, I'm a recovery room nurse from the University of Alberta Hospital in Edmonton. With me today is Pam Foster, our government relations expert.

The CFNU represents 158,000 nurses and nursing students across Canada. We thank the committee for the opportunity to share our views.

There is an adage that exists in various forms in different cultures that good health is everything. It is the basis for personal and social prosperity. We would like, therefore, to submit to you three proposals for consideration in the next budget, spending proposals that will assist in fortifying Canadians and Canada for a prosperous future.

First, make the 2004 federal-provincial-territorial promise to Canadians a reality by implementing a national drug strategy. Currently unemployment is at 8.7%. There are over 1.5 million unemployed workers in Canada, and when Canadians lose jobs, they lose insurance for essential medicines. Already over four million Canadians do not have any coverage or have inadequate coverage for drug treatment. The lack of first-dollar coverage for essential medications results in patients foregoing required meds, which can land them into acute care settings, and we all know that's far more costly.

Through a national drug formulary, bulk purchasing, reduced administrative costs, and other aspects of a national pharmacare program, we can get more value for less money. Where public health care costs have remained stable against the GDP for decades, the cost of pharmaceutical drugs is increasing at three times the rate of inflation. This poses a threat to the sustainability of our health care system and to the individual health of all Canadians.

The federal government must agree to partner with the provinces and territories to cost-share a national pharmacare program. We also urge the federal government to invest in one of Canada's largest labour forces, health human resources. Nurses, the largest component of the health workforce, worked 21.5 million hours of overtime in 2008. I am one of those. That is the equivalent of 11,900 jobs, costing $879 million per year, and the provinces are spending money competing for scarce resources, poaching nurses one from the other. We need to improve retention and recruitment rates of our health care labour force.

The Health Council of Canada has called for the creation of a national coordinating mechanism, and we second this. Hence, our second recommendation: create an observatory on health human resources as exists in many other countries.

Our third recommendation also relates to a possible federal role in HHR. We urge the government to create an innovation fund to support pilot projects related to retention and recruitment of HHR in Canada. This fund should be made accessible to provincial and territorial governments. It should encourage partnerships between governments, health care authorities, health care unions, professional associations, colleges, and universities. We have confidence that an innovation fund similar to the $30 million patient wait times guarantee pilot project fund that was announced in 2007 could help revolutionize health care workplaces by addressing labour shortages.

Currently, CFNU has received $4.2 million from Health Canada to implement pilots in nine provinces. We are retaining and recruiting more nurses and building capacity to address labour shortages through these very successful partnership programs. It is these kinds of micro-innovations in the workplace, supported by macro-resources, that will ensure retention of the skilled workforce.

To summarize, we suggest allocations in the next federal budget towards a national pharmacare strategy, a national observatory on HHR, and an innovation fund on HHR.

Thank you for the time, and I look forward to your questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you very much for your presentation.

We'll go to Mr. Laws, please.

[James M. Laws, Executive Director, Canadian Meat Council]

Good morning. My name is Jim Laws. I'm the executive director of the Canadian Meat Council here in Ottawa. We represent Canada's federally registered meat processors in Canada.

We have three recommendations for you today.

First, Canada’s federally inspected meat processors are, by far, the most regulated of the food sectors. The Meat Inspection Act and regulations are extensive, and unlike other food sectors, meat inspection is mandatory and very regular. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency charged $21.4 million in 2006-07 to processors for meat inspection fees. Other inspection fees, such as export certificates, label approvals, etc., constitute a competitive disadvantage to Canadian meat processors. Unlike the American processors and provincially registered processors, we have to pay fees. Our first recommendation is that Canada should not be charging inspection fees to the meat processors. Some would argue that paying meat inspection fees compromises the independence of the regulator.

Our second recommendation is related to Canada's enhanced ruminant feed ban as a result of BSE found in Canada in 2003. In July of 2007, Canada put in place new enhanced feed ban regulations that would require the removal and disposal of certain ruminant materials that were previously allowed in the non-ruminant animal feed supply. These requirements imposed tremendous ongoing costs and lost revenues for our beef packing sector not faced by our American competitors, who are currently importing the same live cattle. Therefore, our second recommendation is that Canada should offset the cost of the enhanced ruminant feed ban regulations. Our latest survey shows that these cost our federally regulated industry $35.6 million per year.

Our final recommendation is related to food safety in Canada. As many of you know, over the years, meat processors have been continually improving their food safety systems. Millions of dollars have been invested by companies in upgrading their equipment and reformulating their products to include newly approved antimicrobials, such as the new high-pressure pasteurization technology and the addition of sodium diacetate to ready-to-eat luncheon meats. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional listeria, salmonella, and E. coli testing and countless more hours of sanitation management and quality control personnel have been invested. Needless to say, the lessons learned from the listeria outbreak of the summer of 2008 indicate that more needs to be invested in food safety technologies. As a result, our third and final recommendation is that Canada should fund new food safety technologies. Many new technologies do exist, and we estimate the cost to be $200 million per year.

Thank you very much. I look forward to your questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you very much for your presentation.

We'll now go to Community Radios of Canada, please.

[François Côté, Executive Director, Alliance des radios communautaires du Canada, Community Radios of Canada]

Good morning. My name is François Côté, and I am Executive Director of the Alliance des radios communautaires du Canada. I'm here with Kevin Matthews, who is Executive Director of the NCRA.

In these times, when the vast majority of regions across the country are hard hit by the economic downturn, it seems all the more necessary for the Government of Canada to take specific measures to financially support social economy enterprises on an ongoing basis, especially community radio stations that play a key role in the survival and development of many Canadian communities.

To say that the positive impacts of a community radio station in communities are such that the government can choose not to pay special attention to community radio is just not true.

Community and campus radio stations contribute directly to creating several hundred jobs across Canada, especially for many young men and women who benefit from great work experience they will use throughout their professional lives.

Moreover, by effectively promoting local advertisers’ activities, goods and services, community radio stations play a major role in halting the erosion of the economy and the flight of capital to other countries. Clearly, community radio stations in Canada are not only key players in their respective regions’ economies but also real promoters of talent that see new communications careers emerging every year.

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) clearly states in its definition that a community radio station should be owned and controlled by a not-for-profit organization that provides for membership, management, operation and programming primarily by members of the community at large.

It is certainly the main reason why so many Canadians devote themselves freely and actively to it. But, at the same time, nothing is harder, especially for small organizations like ours, than training and coaching these volunteers without adequate and ongoing funding, which is sadly lacking right now.

[Kevin Matthews, Executive Director, Broadcasting, National Campus and Community Radio Association, Community Radios of Canada]

Our radio stations also foster the development of new and local musical talents much more than anyone else by providing them with a showcase for their music.

In fact, not one single commercial broadcaster in Canada could boast about putting as much energy into helping budding vocal and musical artists as community and campus radio stations.

Even though our stations are not all necessarily the “cornerstones” of their communities’ social and community activity, in that they do not deal with comparable markets in terms of size and type, they must nonetheless make the same, sometimes superhuman, efforts to properly fulfil their mandates as open and inclusive broadcasters.

If we want to be able to provide effective coverage of local, community and social components that the CBC/Radio-Canada or private broadcasters cannot or do not want to provide, community radio stations need to have the appropriate budgets.

Because, regardless of what some people say and think, and despite all the good intentions of the public and private sectors, they are not the ones who open their airwaves to social and community discussion boards, cover local and regional news or give voice to people, to cite only those examples. Our community radio stations do. And to do so, now and in the future, they must have the capability.

The Alliance des radios communautaires du Canada (ARCC), the National Campus and Community Radio Association (NCRA) and the Association des radiodiffuseurs communautaires du Québec (ARCQ) bring together about 140 community radio stations in Canada and have over 500 employees and 10,000 volunteers.

Because they wanted to ensure the development and sustainability of the third sector of broadcasting, our three associations created the Community Radio Fund of Canada.

In our view, our radio stations need at least $30,000 each annually to carry out their duties. This would allow them to at least maintain one permanent position per station.

That is why we have worked very hard recently to urge the Government of Canada to contribute $4,200,000 annually to the Fund. So far, Astral Media has been the only company to contribute directly through two programs managed by the Fund. Other financial backers have also expressed an interest in contributing through the Canadian Content Development program, for which the Fund was named an eligible recipient by the CRTC.

But let us not kid ourselves. Without recurrent funding from the Government of Canada, we fear that our radio stations’ situation will worsen, given that employees and volunteers are increasingly running out of steam.

[François Coté]

We have only one recommendation to make this morning: that the Government of Canada contribute $4,200,000 annually to the Community Radio Fund of Canada to maintain and develop community radio stations in Canada.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you very much.

We'll go next to the Canadian Council on Social Development, please.

[Peggy Taillon, President, Canadian Council on Social Development]

For those of you who aren't familiar with us, the Canadian Council on Social Development has been around for almost 90 years. It's one of the organizations that has really come up with unconventional ideas at some of the most challenging times in Canada. For example, CCSD was the organization that came up with the concepts of EI, disability pensions, and old age pensions, and worked with the government on those key programs that are now literally part of the fundamental fabric of Canada.

We're here today to flag for you that Canada has a ballooning social deficit. This is not solely linked to this economic downturn; it's actually compounded by it. The protection that has historically been in place for Canada's most vulnerable citizens has silted away significantly over the past several decades, and the buffer that used to be present for those Canadians is no longer there at a time in Canada when we need it most.

We're here today to put forward some unconventional ideas about protecting the most vulnerable. Consider the buffer that's required for those who have recently lost employment, but also think about the future workers of Canada and what the economy should look like as we move forward. The test and challenge for all of us is not how we get through this recession, but what we learn from it and change as we go forward.

If we look back 10 or 25 years from now and see that we haven't made fundamental changes to some of our economic structures, policies, processes, and silos, we won't have learned a thing from this and will live through another cycle in a couple of decades.

I'm going to ask our head of research, Katherine Scott, to walk you through a couple of the recommendations we have for you today.

[Katherine Scott, Vice-President, Research, Canadian Council on Social Development]

Thanks very much.

Just by way of picking up on what Peggy's been talking about in regard to our concern as a council going forward, certainly a year ago we were talking about what the stimulus package should look like as we slipped into recession. Going into recession, we were already raising flags about what was really a polarized labour market and saying that in Canada there are groups of workers who are very well employed and who enjoyed the success of the previous 10 years--and it was a good 10 years--but there is a large and growing group of people who are confined to the low-wage labour market, certainly those on income assistance programs.

Looking forward, we've certainly seen that the numbers have swelled through this recession. We can speak more specifically about what the impact has been vis-à-vis some of the programs. We know that we have growing numbers of people in the low-wage labour market and that some of the programs certainly have failed to support them, but going forward, what are we looking at?

I think some of the early evidence suggests that many people who are losing their jobs in construction or in the manufacturing sector here in Ontario, and certainly in the forestry industry in Quebec and British Columbia and the like, will not be finding employment afterwards that actually will compensate them at those levels. We are really seeing and living through the erosion of that and through a fundamental shift in the labour market structure in the country.

Looking forward, even if people do begin to pick up jobs--I think we're out on where we are in the cycle of the recession, but it's not worth debating--I think we can certainly say that many more people will be picking up jobs that pay less than they're used to and their access to benefits will be more circumscribed. There is a real and present danger that we're seeing a solidification of the divides in the labour market and that the haves and the have-nots will be present with us for a long time.

Looking at that, and being conscious of the fact, certainly, that we've also come through a year in which an enormous amount of public money has been pumped in through stimulus financing, I know that this committee is grappling with what the package should look like going forward. Certainly, cost containment, I think, is pretty top of mind for everybody right now. We're thinking about what we've already spent and we're looking at a budget in the neighbourhood of $60 billion. What should we look at going forward?

I would argue that it's important as we undertake this exercise to keep in mind that there are certain groups of vulnerable Canadians, as I said, who should have first call on the nation's resources and supports. With that in mind, our brief highlighted three areas that I think demand consideration.

There has already been a recommendation to look at the national pension system. I understand the government is looking at holding a summit on seniors. This is a critical area. I think we need to look at pension reforms specifically in order to ensure economic security. Some positive steps have been taken, but many more things need to be done. We can speak about follow-through.

As for the whole situation around training and access to programs, again, this government in the last number of years, and certainly the Liberal government before it, flowed money through the granting councils and to post-secondary, and there's a whole structure of moneys going to the provinces through the EI fund. Again, there's that group of people outside this who do not have access to EI programs that I think we have to be careful about. We recommend moneys being devoted to people who do not have access to training programs through the EI fund. Again, building on that going forward is a look at the structure of the labour market.

Lastly, the other particular recommendation that we've put forward is, again, to come back to the importance of early childhood education as one of those things that will position Canada in regard to moving forward.

I'll leave it there. I recognize that my time is up.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you very much.

We'll go to YWCA Canada, please.