Finance Committee on Oct. 26th, 2010

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Barry Turner]

I don't mean to be flippant—

[Ted Menzies, Conservative, Macleod, AB]

No, I know. It's a fair point.

[Barry Turner]

—but it's pretty tough. In this country, with the jurisdictional divisions--as Mr. Mulcair knows, as former Minister of the Environment in Quebec--it's very frustrating for the feds to put their finger on environmental issues and say, “We think you should do this” or “You should do that”. The provinces will say, “It's none of your business”. It's a challenge.

On dumping sewage into rivers, lakes, and streams, the government has allocated many billions of dollars for waste water infrastructure programs in cooperation with municipalities and provinces.

Continue to do that. It's astounding that we're still polluting our rivers and dumping raw sewage. In this day and age it's unacceptable, so we encourage you to keep allocating funds for infrastructure issues across the country.

[Ted Menzies, Conservative, Macleod, AB]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you.

Monsieur Mulcair, s'il vous plaît.

[Thomas Mulcair, NDP, Outremont, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I would like to thank all participants. This morning, I will have learned something about the kind of socks to wear in northern Ontario. It is always pleasant to have a little fun at the start of a meeting on such weighty matters. That in no way diminishes the importance of what is done in the area of regional economic development. I would like to thank the presenters from the Canadian CED network.

My questions are for the representatives of the Green Budget Coalition and the Pembina Institute. Those two organizations need little introduction in Canada. Year after year, the Green Budget Coalition conducts work that is so thoughtful and devoid of even a hint of partisanship. Their budgets are full of common sense and inevitable conclusions.

I would first like to thank Mr. Turner who is not only the chair, but also a former member of the House of Commons. He is dedicated, and devoted, even, to that important work. He also works for Ducks Unlimited Canada, which I believe is one of the best organizations in Canada that helps protect wetlands, that are key to protecting water quality. We must protect them because they help to clean our waterways. They act as filters.

Welcome, Mr. Turner. You're proof that there is life after politics, even if we have to come back to politics from time to time. I would like to congratulate you on the work you do.

I have a question, or rather an invitation for Mr. Weis. I would like him to elaborate further on a complex topic. This is something that is well understood by stakeholders, but is not so obvious for the public. You did a good job in your presentation, but since your time was limited, I would like to give you a little more opportunity to expound on the issue.

You touched on the issue of green bonds. I would like you to give us a few more details. Given the current lack of capital, what would be the economic impacts of sustainable investments in our society, both in the long term for future generations and short term for us? I will give you some time to reflect on that. I find the issue too important to limit it to this very circumscribed meeting.

[Tim Weis]

Thanks for the question.

It is a difficult concept, the financing of some of these projects, particularly when projects make sense economically on their own—and that's often the case. In energy efficiency there are projects that will pay for themselves. So when you look at it on a balance sheet, it can be puzzling as to why people wouldn't invest in some of those projects.

I think the concept of the green bonds is effectively to either help lower the risk of getting that capital or to make those types of investments meet hurdle rates by lowering the actual costs of borrowing. That's kind of the concept. The idea, ultimately, is to create a pool of money that the government would back by allowing individual Canadians to invest their money in that area. We do see that it would have a cost to it, because the government would have to back those loans and there probably would be some defaults, and there would be administrative costs as well.

But ultimately you could create a pool of money that Canadians could use to invest with, either in energy efficiency upgrades or, theoretically, in renewable energy projects as well. Here, we're sort of targeting energy efficiency, but ultimately you're creating that pool of money that is low risk and has a low cost of interest, I guess. So you can make those investments in projects that ultimately have a payback on them, but may have either a high capital barrier or a lower return on investment than otherwise would be made in the private sector.

[Thomas Mulcair, NDP, Outremont, QC]

In the same way, in the U.S., municipal bonds have often been seen as attractive investments, especially because of their tax benefits, since they are ways to finance public works that are of general interest. That is something that could be transposed here, given the interest to build sustainably for future generations, rather than to leave them with the sizeable deficits we see today. We can take the money that is available and build something that will be of use to them, including clean and renewable energy.

Mr. Van Iterson, it is a pleasure to see you again. Like we have just done with Mr. Weis, I simply wanted to ask you a question and allow you to share with us your analysis. Twenty years ago, Porter's hypothesis reminded us that it was possible to implement environmental regulations while making our society more effective and productive. According to Porter's hypothesis, environmental rules lead to greater effectiveness. And yet we are still stuck in a reasoning that opposes economic development and respect for the environment. That is passé, that is what people a generation ago thought, but we do not seem able to go beyond that.

Year after year, the Green Budget Coalition does remarkable work. If someone came up to me and asked what to read to understand the future, how to make sense of what is being done in terms of the environment and how to envisage the future, I would suggest they read the document that you publish every year. It is that clear.

How come Canadians are still in the grip of a debate opposing economic development and environmental protection, as if the two could not go hand-in-hand?

[Andrew Van Iterson]

Thank you very much for your kind words. We certainly appreciate your support for the work. We obviously put a lot of diligent effort into producing our document each year.

Why are we still having those debates? If you look to Europe, you see that they're huge steps ahead of us in terms of what they're looking at and in seeing that the idea of “waste” should be an old term that we should be eliminating. Waste should simply be energy streams and resource streams for other purposes.

We're still in a situation such that if a company looks to be environmentally responsible, there's a cost to them, and they have to see whether they're willing to meet that cost. Probably, if there are stakeholders, if their investors see it, they might not support it. We need to shift, through fiscal changes, as you well know, to a point that businesses that take environmental leadership actually make more money, while companies that are laggards are paying a greater cost.

Obviously there's a lot of pressure for fiscal restraint in this budget. I don't think we're going to see a lot of money spent in the next budget, even though it could pay off in the future. But this is a prime time to cut counterproductive subsidies. We've made a commitment at the G-20.

I'd like to point out, with some really thorough research, that we could save $760 million a year, the two prime areas being the Canadian development expense and the Canadian exploration expense. I would encourage you to ask Minister Flaherty to simply bring tax treatment of oil to the same level with other—

[Thomas Mulcair, NDP, Outremont, QC]

Thank you very much. I just wanted to end by reminding people that, contrary to the claims that are often repeated by the Conservatives, Canada is no longer the country with the highest economic growth rate of the G7; that award goes to Germany. And that country fuels its economic growth by complying with environmental rules.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Merci, monsieur Mulcair.

Mr. Brison, go ahead, please.

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to start off with both the Green Budget Coalition and the Pembina Institute.

I'd appreciate your analysis on how the Canadian government stimulus package over the last two years compared internationally with other countries' stimulus packages in terms of investment in green economic measures—everything from electric grid and smart grid to modernizing energy production, to green technology. I'd appreciate your insight as to that comparison.

[Tim Weis]

We did an analysis of both budgets for the past two years and found, in comparing the States and Canada—there was other analysis that compared Europe to Canada and other countries—that by and large the investments were in the energy efficiency realm. We did it on a per capita basis; obviously the United States is 10 times the size of Canada.

On a per capita basis, energy efficiency in both packages was on the order of 5:1 or 6:1 in terms of per capita investment. Investment in renewable energy in the States was about 10 times what was going on in Canada. The Americans really had a much bigger investment in the last two budgets than we saw in Canada, relatively speaking.

Having said that, there were some commendable things in both budgets, particularly the reinvestment in the home retrofit program in Canada, as well as the clean energy fund. There were some things in Canada that were commendable, but on a relative scale, the Americans, on a per capita basis, made much higher investments.

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

I like the green bonds idea broadly. If you look at the Canada Saving Bonds as they are now, people don't participate to the extent they once did; people are looking for secure investment vehicles, and you could almost see a victory bond type of appeal to citizens to invest in green infrastructure and that sort of thing. I think that's a good idea.

I have a question for REAL Women.

Ms. Watts, thank you for appearing before us today. I do agree with you that it's important that Canadian women have choice. Would you agree that one of the reasons that we have more two-income families today is partly that women are exercising their choices and choosing to work outside of the home in many cases?

[Diane Watts]

In many cases they are, and we're in favour of women having a choice. Members of our organization come from all professions. We are in law and medicine. We have helicopter pilots in our organization. We have businesswomen. We have grandmothers who haven't worked outside the home and mothers who want to be in the home.

It's important to recognize that there is a variety of choice out there for men and for women. Of course, in many cases, women who want employment can't get the specific employment they want. That is something we would want to alleviate, but we are in a situation--and I think even the feminists admit this--in which many women are really stressed because they have very serious concerns about the care of their families, and they find a conflict between their employment and their responsibilities within the family--

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

I agree.

[Diane Watts]

--and sociologists and psychologists recognize that men are different. They don't feel conflicted as much as women do.

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

I agree. I hear from a lot of women in my riding who feel very stressed. They are people who have careers outside the home and are mothers and parents. They are telling me that they want to have the choice of a really good early learning and child care system, and that one of the stresses they have is not having quality child care spaces in a regulated and dependable system.

What would you say to those women who simply want to have that choice of being able to have that good high-quality care, not just child care but early learning?

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

You have about 30 seconds, Ms. Watts.

[Diane Watts]

Our position is that there should be a wide variety of child care. It could range from the large institutions, if parents want it, to the medium-sized neighbourhood facility, to the ethnic religious group, to the choice of staying at home, or to the choice of having a relative care for the child. Nobody should be penalized for making any of those choices.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you, Mr. Brison.

Monsieur Carrier, s'il vous plaît.

[Robert Carrier, Bloc, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Thank you.

I wanted to comment on something Ms. Watts said.

We meet with dozens of groups, and this is the first time I hear an organization that wants to cancel the funding of other interest groups. You have negative words for representatives of businesses, unions, sports organizations and lobby groups, and you specifically single out groups that promote day care centres. Groups come before us to promote their views. It is up to the committee and the government to take stock of all that and establish priorities. Witnesses must not diminish other groups by saying that they are unimportant. I think that we are able to make the distinction and act as arbiters. We all represent ridings of approximately 80,000 voters. Consequently, we are well placed to take the pulse of our constituency.

I have only five minutes, and I simply would like to say that I find it regrettable that you diminish other groups. That is all.

[Diane Watts]

[Inaudible—Editor] We meet groups that are subsidized, and we do not feel treated on a par with those groups.

[Robert Carrier, Bloc, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

I know, no one is on the same footing—