Finance Committee on Oct. 21st, 2009

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for joining us today. I only have a few questions and I only have five minutes anyway.

I am going to ask Mr. Denis a question. I appreciate what you have put in front of us today. Obviously, based on your answer, you have thought the issues through very well and gave what I thought were reasonable answers. Understanding that it's an insurance program, and regardless of what your situation is, if you pay an insurance fee you should get the benefit that you thought you were getting.

I personally think we should be more proactive as a federal government in making sure there's a mobility of labour so that you go where the jobs are. Now, my family has been in Canada for many generations, but my in-laws came from Italy for work. They made a big move. I'm just looking forward to seeing if you or your colleagues have been thinking about the question of whether the federal government has a role that it's not playing now in making sure that if jobs aren't available in Windsor, they might be available in Winnipeg. Should that be our role or not? If it is, do you have any ideas on what we should be doing?

[Richard St. Denis]

I know of people personally who have moved for employment. I know some people who have gone out west. I know some people who left Windsor because we've lost plants, who have transferred up to Brampton, for example, because there's employment there.

Certainly in terms of supporting people who are looking for employment, I think that's a good thing. And if there's some sort of credit that you could provide to them to allow them to move so that they can find work, that's a good thing.

The problem we have in Windsor is 15% unemployment, so if we could get to 10%, that would be a good thing. Right now, we have an unemployment rate of between 14% and 15%, and the people there are looking for work, but there is just no work for them to find.

In our industry, part of that is because of the loss of the Auto Pact, and now we have all the foreign imports coming over—but that's another issue completely. I'm here specifically for the people who are unemployed, who are running out of options in terms of trying to find a job. There are just no jobs available in Windsor. So moving is certainly a good thing, but if you lose your job, why should you have to wait five or six weeks before you see any money? You're not going to move right away.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

I understand your arguments on EI. I think you made some decent arguments and you've obviously thought it through. I just don't know whether, based on your discussion with your colleagues, moving to where there might be employment is an option. If it's something you're forced to do, is there something we should be doing to help encourage that?

There are parts of Canada that may not be as lucrative as they were at one time, such as Saskatchewan and parts of Manitoba. Alberta was at one time, but now unemployment is high there. But I appreciate your position.

Ms. Hewitt, I have a question for you. I'm a little confused about the structure. I don't want the details, but I want to know why. Is this new corporate structure that would be in the tax act to help not-for-profits?

I was on the board of the Burlington Arts Centre. They have a store, and it helps fund their cause.

Are we trying to help not-for-profits? Are we trying to find entrepreneurs? We had Mark Chamberlain here earlier, who's definitely a business guy, but he has a social conscience that he wants to do some things with.

Who are we targeting, and why do we need it? What's the end goal?

[Allyson Hewitt]

Ultimately, if you look at the spectrum, you'll see that charities historically didn't generate any income, and then you had for-profits that didn't give anything back to the community. We're putting pressure on both sides of that, so now you have things such as corporate social responsibility and income-generating non-profits. Our sweet spot is ultimately in the middle with this embedded double- or triple-bottom line.

What we're trying to do is put some pressure on the middle, but we need to create a new legal structure that exists in the middle. There isn't anything there right now.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Are you putting that pressure there because those two things are having a hard time surviving? Is that the issue?

[Allyson Hewitt]

We're putting pressure on them because we think it's the right thing to do, from a sustainability point of view, both economically and for the environment, and for social issues and to encourage innovation. If we can get people to use the brain power that's currently in the private sector and the passionate brain power that's currently in the non-profit sector—you can tell where I come from—we can have people make money and make a difference. We're trying to encourage that. Right now, access to capital is a critical issue right along the spectrum.

There's this whole thing called impact investing. We used to go to ethical funds; that was a big movement. Now this is almost the next level of that.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

The person providing the capital, in your model, would still expect a rate of return. It just might not be quite as high because they're giving a social benefit. Is that it?

[Allyson Hewitt]

Correct. Perfect.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you, Mr. Wallace.

We'll go to Mr. McKay.

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

Ms. Hewitt, you seem to be quite popular today. Mr. Dechert and Mr. McCallum anticipated some of my questions.

My line of questioning has to do with unintended consequences. I just finished a book called Dead Aid, which is an analysis of aid in Africa for the last number of years. Arguably, billions of dollars have been poured into Africa to no discernable consequence, for the best of reasons, and with good people.

One of the points the author makes is that when we buy bed nets and send them over for Mr. Dechert's tuberculosis, we actually put Africans out of business.

[Dr. Judith Shamian]

It's malaria.

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

Is it malaria? Okay.

With respect to unintended consequences, you used the example of the Phoenix project. If I were a print shop in the neighbourhood, I'd be a little upset that there is an enterprise that gets government funding and I have to compete with it. You'd start to hear the same complaining that, say, CTV and Global do with CBC. Tell me how you deal with that criticism.

[Allyson Hewitt]

If you look at it who's being “employed” by Eva's Phoenix, they are marginalized homeless youth. We either keep them in a shelter system and they go on to prisons, go on to be a drain on the system, or we give them real skills.

The print shop down the street is not going to hire them; they're not set up to hire them. They don't have social workers or other kinds of folks on staff. The cost of running a business like Eva's print shop is way more than running a traditional business because they have this double or triple bottom line that's embedded into what they do. If we're committed to giving these kids employment opportunities and moving them off the system, then we have to look at it in that way.

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

I buy that argument, but if I'm the fellow down the street, Eva's print shop is eating my lunch. What do you say to the person who is competing with Eva's print shop?

[Allyson Hewitt]

I talked about the spectrum. I could offer them the other end of it, which is that if they are a for-profit business I want to set up systems that would encourage them to hire those youths so they're mainstreaming them. Competitive business has to be prepared to take on these marginalized youths and the additional cost it takes for just getting them to show up every day. If they are prepared to do that, then we could look at providing tax incentives or other opportunities for them along that spectrum.

Right now they're trying to run a business and they're trying to bring in the best and the brightest. These kids are being left behind. If you see it on a continuum, I think we could look at opportunities that way.

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

That's a good thought. I appreciate your response; it's a very thoughtful way to respond.

Mr. Drewett, we had a presentation earlier today with respect to disability tax credits, both deductions and credits. It had to do with small and medium-sized enterprises that may or may not want to make their facility accessible, but if you had a credit or a deduction of some kind they might be encouraged to do so. What's your reaction to that?

[Bruce Drewett]

I think that accessibility in the built environment continues to be one of the largest barriers experienced by our population, to be sure. They are clearly affected most by the physical environment, unlike some other disability groups.

When you consider that a person who has experienced a spinal cord injury costs society $2 million over a lifetime and that we have an unemployment rate approaching 50% at times, I think any type of incentive like a disability tax credit in order to incent employers to allow people to get into their place of work and so on is important.

It's often not the training and things like that. Quite often people have the training. As I say, it could be any of you around the table. You're all fully employable, obviously, and you have lots of skills and talents and so on. It's not that. But if all of a sudden you ended up using a chair because you broke your neck or back or whatever, your life would change. What you're considered able to do today and what you're given the opportunity to do tomorrow would be entirely different. But what has changed? Nothing about your ability other than getting into an accessible work environment.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

You have 30 seconds, Mr. McKay.

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

I too want to thank VON for its contribution. In my family it was for my father. We appreciated everything you did for our family.

I want to ask one brief question about this Infoway. You want $100 million out of the $500 million for the Canada Health Infoway. As you know, in Ontario things are in a bit of mess around electronic--

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

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

Tell me how we can ask for more money from the taxpayer while simultaneously dealing with a billion dollar mess?

[Dr. Judith Shamian]

Here's the rub. I wouldn't worry about Ontario. The federal government has not flowed the half billion dollars that it promised the Health Infoway, so let's look into our own courtyard as it relates to this table.

While there are issues in e-health, and some of us are more aware of it than others, it doesn't take away from the concept that we're falling behind Europeans and others in a big way. We're talking about wanting to be a productive, successful country, and we are just not doing it. The further we move along, we will save costs and we will definitely improve the well-being of Canadians. The challenge is that most of the investments and the conversations are around physicians' offices--and we've poured billions into it so far--and in some pharma systems in B.C. and others.

We forget that in order to get full benefit we need a continuum of care. That's why we're saying we realize there isn't a lot of new money, but let's reprofile some money to do the home care and the community care component so we can get the full picture on whether this person can go back to their home or has to stay in the bed for another six months until a long-term care bed becomes available.

Now I will shut up.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you very much.

We'll go now to Mr. Menzies.

[Ted Menzies, Conservative, Macleod, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you again to all of our witnesses.

Once again, we face too many questions and not enough time.

Very quickly, to CNIB, I've been a Lion for 36 years, and Lions Clubs are strong supporters of CNIB, so we've worked very closely with our local and regional CNIB. You guys do great work.

In terms of a vision health plan, can you elaborate on that?