Finance Committee on Oct. 5th, 2010

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Massimo Pacetti]

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Block.

I'm going to take the Liberal round. I have just a couple of quick questions.

Ms. McBride, just to be a little bit more direct, just putting additional moneys towards investment in studying abroad, is that going to solve the problem? Or do we not already have the resources, where there don't need to be additional moneys but there is perhaps something else that's wrong in terms of attracting these foreign students?

[Karen McBride]

In terms of attracting foreign students to Canada, the biggest single gap is a lack of federal investment at this point in time. In my estimation, all of the other foundations for a successful effort are in place. All the key stakeholders are aligned and working in partnership. There is very good federal-provincial cooperation, which has resulted in a first round of funding with an Imagine Education au/in Canada brand. There is an investment on the part of institutions across the country in this effort. But at the federal level, the investment has been $1 million per year.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Massimo Pacetti]

And where is that money going to go, specifically?

[Karen McBride]

The investment we're calling for we need to go primarily to actually deploy the education brand, the Imagine Canada brand. It needs to be spent principally on enhancing the visibility of Canada in key markets overseas through promotional activities. Some of that money would also need to be dedicated to creating a much—

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Massimo Pacetti]

So would it be through embassies or just general...? Doesn't Immigration Canada already do that?

[Karen McBride]

What Immigration Canada does is it processes the study permits for the students when they apply to come to Canada. And indeed some backfilling of resources there would be required, but—

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Massimo Pacetti]

And our embassies don't do that? There is no promotion done by our embassies?

[Karen McBride]

Many of our embassies are somewhat active in that area—

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Massimo Pacetti]

And our western universities, for example, would not try to target, perhaps, more the Asian countries, and eastern universities target the European countries? Wouldn't that be a natural...?

[Karen McBride]

I would say that many of the universities and colleges are looking at similar target countries, in particular China, India, Brazil, those with whom we want to—

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Massimo Pacetti]

So there are more resources needed for that type of marketing?

[Karen McBride]

There is absolutely more. When you compare with what our competitors are putting in, we lack visibility.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Massimo Pacetti]

Okay.

I just want to get a quick question in to Mr. Conway. I think everybody is in agreement that we make the Income Tax Act a little bit easier. I'm an accountant by profession, and even though that's how we make our living sometimes, it would actually make our lives a lot easier.

But you're sort of contradicting yourself and I'm going to challenge you on this one. First of all, you say you want to make the Income Tax Act easier, and then you turn around and give us three or four additional recommendations that would only make the Income Tax Act much more complicated, along with some of your other colleagues around the table or some other groups we've had here testifying before committee. So where do we start?

Even something as simple as saying a 125% deduction for an RRSP would probably take another two or three pages in that little book of yours.

[Michael Conway]

That's a good question. We're recognizing that probably this big thing is not going to skinny down to this little thing any time real soon. As with everything in life, there is a bit of a balance. We were trying to put forward some recommendations.

Maybe to respond more fully to both your question and Mr. Wallace's earlier question, we—

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Massimo Pacetti]

So if we can get some concrete recommendations, I think Mike and I would appreciate that.

[Michael Conway]

Well, actually, within our submission we did detail out various recommendations, like the reduction of CCA classes, consideration of joint personal tax returns, and permitting private corporations eligible for small business deductions to use accounting income for taxable income.

Possibly because this is such a complicated thing—as you know from your educational background—maybe a task force could be established, and we'd stand ready to assist.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Massimo Pacetti]

That's probably a good idea.

Okay. I just have one more minute, and I want to challenge the Make Poverty History group. Just quickly, there are two trains of thought. Some people will say poverty will never be eradicated no matter how much money we spend, and then some people say just a little bit more money and we're going to solve all the problems in the world. So is there a balance there somewhere in between? I guess the question is, do we get a return for the money we invest?

I know Ms. Rothman alluded to part of that, but how do we calculate? And I'm talking as an accountant now.

[Dennis Howlett]

Well, no country has eliminated poverty altogether. But Canada actually does poorly compared with many other countries in terms of its own domestic poverty. Many countries in Europe have achieved rates of less than 5% poverty. We're at 10% or so. So we could do that.

What I'm saying here is that we really need to shift our thinking away from the welfare state kind of model to investment in human resource development, and that investment will pay off. So it's not money down the drain. It's investment in our future, and that will pay off in terms of reduced health care costs as well as people who are better able to contribute to their full capacity to society at large.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Massimo Pacetti]

Thank you, Mr. Howlett.

Mr. Menzies, for five minutes.

[Ted Menzies, Conservative, Macleod, AB]

Thank you, and thank you to our witnesses for coming here today. We have so many questions and not enough time to ask all of the questions we'd like answered.

Some of them, Mr. Johnson, I'm sure you've answered before. Is it the fifth year that you've come here to plead your good case with a well-portrayed, good, solid argument? I think this committee needs to take a serious look at it, because you're never going to go away.

[Donald Johnson]

I agree.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Ted Menzies, Conservative, Macleod, AB]

We appreciate that. So I actually don't have a question for you, Mr. Johnson.

To Mr. Morsky, one comment that I will make is about the concerns we had getting the stimulus money going. We're looking at deadlines now at the end of March. We had to set deadlines because the stimulus money was temporary, timely, and targeted—and for the temporary part, we had to put an end date on it. We're saying we're going to be flexible with that now, but a lot of it was that recessions don't wait for governments to get ready. We had to react quickly, and because of regulatory hurdles we had to jump through, some of your projects were started late. Provinces, municipalities, and the federal government worked well together, but some of the projects were late in starting because of all of those regulatory hurdles. I would assume those were what you were dealing with before you ever actually got the approval to get started.

[Wayne Morsky]

Yes, there were a lot of those things. I know that our association worked very closely with the environmental people here in Ottawa to try to get the permitting process to move more fluidly so that some of these projects could go through, instead of having both a provincial environmental assessment done and a federal one. They were amalgamated so that the two were done together. Things like that were done to get things through.

A lot of it has to do with capacity and planning, and that's what we think about when we talk about infrastructure. In order to have a cyclical up and down in the development of the infrastructure, it's really hard for an industry to ramp up and to ramp down for it. If you take, for example, my industry of road building, the capital cost of purchasing equipment is one of the biggest things we have to deal with. So anything we can do to speed up and help the process is very much appreciated—and it is cost effective for the end user.

[Ted Menzies, Conservative, Macleod, AB]

Do you have a number at your association of the jobs that were either saved or started?