Evidence of meeting #41 for Finance in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was energy.
A recording is available from Parliament.
5:05 p.m.
Liberal
Paul Szabo Liberal Mississauga South, ON
Thank you.
I want to go back to the hydro cells. We've had other presentations that have dealt with this to some extent. Where does the fuel cell rank right now, in terms of efficiency and cost, to the substitutes?
5:05 p.m.
Manager, Fuel Cell Development, Clean Technology, Enbridge Inc.
From a cost perspective, I'd suggest the technology today is where the wind industry was about five-plus years ago. It's still early, but there are rapidly declining costs.
On a cents-per-kilowatt-hour basis, some will range around 14¢ a kilowatt hour. Clearly it's more than brown power rates, but it's by no means what's needed for solar PV and some of the other solutions.
5:05 p.m.
Liberal
Paul Szabo Liberal Mississauga South, ON
Okay. And of course the technology continues to improve. I must admit that even what we've seen with turbine technology has been fairly spectacular.
How do we rank in terms of supporting R and D on fuel cell technology compared to other countries?
5:05 p.m.
Manager, Fuel Cell Development, Clean Technology, Enbridge Inc.
I would suggest that Canada has been very supportive at the early R and D stage. Quite frankly, there's some leadership in this country. Where we clearly struggle is with moving this to the mainstream commercialized opportunities.
We have manufacturers in Mississauga; part of our fuel cell plant was built in Burlington, Ontario; and we have heat-to-power manufacturers in Alberta and Ontario. All of these are being forced as manufacturers to look to U.S. and European markets to try to innovate beyond their first-generation technologies.
5:10 p.m.
Liberal
Paul Szabo Liberal Mississauga South, ON
What about commercialization opportunities at the high end?
5:10 p.m.
Manager, Fuel Cell Development, Clean Technology, Enbridge Inc.
To put it into perspective, with just this one concept or innovation that Enbridge has advanced, we believe in our own pipeline network we would have 30 megawatts, or about 15 times what we've built already, in the next five years.
The opportunity in the U.S. is probably tenfold--we believe it to be about 300 megawatts--and clearly the technology just starts to go up on that hockey-stick type curve.
5:10 p.m.
Conservative
5:10 p.m.
Bloc
Daniel Paillé Bloc Hochelaga, QC
I'm going to share the time available to me with my colleague.
I will be speaking to Mr. Saillant, since he says he often comes here to refresh our memory, something that should always be redone.
You are a symbol of perseverance, and at some point you will be heard, or else you will stop coming here.
You cited a number of figures, and yesterday other people told us that between 10% and 12% of families in Quebec were inadequately housed because too many people are living in the same dwelling. They also said that this varied with groups, that it was in the range of 20% to 30% in the case of single-parent families, aboriginal persons and seniors. As I said yesterday with regard to the homeless, 100% of them do not have a roof over their heads. That has to be said.
You drew an interesting parallel today by saying that the costs of a single F-35 would make it possible to subsidize 3,500 housing units. That means 8,760 hours of use of a housing unit per year because it is used 24 hours a day. For 3,500 units, that represents 30 million hours of use equivalent to the cost of a single F-35. That's striking.
I would like to hear what you have to say about the harmful effects of the end of the social housing agreements. I'm experiencing this in Hochelaga, where people seem to have forgotten that upon expiry of the mortgage agreement, the cooperative is old. Money that we don't have therefore has to be used to renovate the doors and roofs and to change the plumbing. In the worst cases I've seen, one-third of the coop is being sold to renovate the other two-thirds. So people are being evicted. This is the first effect that I would like to hear you talk about.
There is another. The end of the agreements also means the end of the subsidy granted to those who have low incomes enabling them to occupy the coops. So we're going to wind up with a stock of social housing coops.
5:10 p.m.
Coordinator, Front d'action populaire en réaménagement urbain
We are very concerned about the end of the agreements. It's something that will affect all of Canada and virtually all social housing units. So it's a major problem that has emerged in the past two years. Across Canada, 11,000 units are no longer subsidized by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation because the mortgage agreement has expired.
The idea behind all that was to believe that the agreement would expire, that the people would have properly maintained their units, that there would be no problems and that we would have the money to help lower-income individuals. In real life, that's not how it works.
Except in the past two years, the federal government has always refused to grant subsidies to renovate these units. So there were no subsidies to renovate the units, whereas those units have deteriorated and, at the end of the agreements, people will probably be forced to take out a new mortgage. As a result, the saving that will come from the end of the mortgage will be offset by another mortgage, this time to adequately renovate the buildings.
As you say, for us, the major consequence is still for the low-income renters. I live in a housing coop, and all the money we receive from the federal government, from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, goes to low-income individuals in our coop. That's why, instead of paying 50% of their income for housing, these people pay 25%. However, that subsidy will now be withdrawn from those people from one day to the next. This means that they will be forced back into the misery in which they formerly found themselves. In addition, these people could very well go away, and where will they go, in view of market rents?
5:10 p.m.
Bloc
Daniel Paillé Bloc Hochelaga, QC
That's correct.
I would like to give Mr. Carrier the five minutes I have left.
5:15 p.m.
Bloc
Robert Carrier Bloc Alfred-Pellan, QC
Good afternoon, everyone.
I am not a member for the same region as my colleague. He is from Montreal, the member for the constituency of Hochelaga, where housing needs are urgent. I'm a member from the city of Laval, where there is also a housing problem. This puts pressure on homelessness. Since Laval is a Montreal suburb and there are a lot of bungalows there, you get the impression that people are comfortable there. However, there is also a lot of pressure this respect.
I can't understand why, in 2010, we're talking about buying 65 F-35 aircraft at a cost of $9 billion and can still tolerate the fact that entire families are without housing and do not have access to affordable, adequate housing. It's inconceivable.
Mr. Saillant, I wanted to ask you what figures you currently have on Laval. It seems to me that more than 1,000 applications for affordable housing administered by the Laval municipal housing board are pending. To my mind, the situation is a problem, and I'm doing a lot of work on it.
5:15 p.m.
Coordinator, Front d'action populaire en réaménagement urbain
According to our figures, more than half of people in Laval spend more than 30% of their incomes on housing, which is the generally accepted standard. You're right. The waiting list for low-cost public housing in Laval is extremely long. The problem of homelessness is increasingly pressing. However, Laval is one of the cities in Quebec that, all other things being equal, has fewer social housing units. It's one of the cities where a catch-up effort has to be made in the area of social housing.
Unfortunately, the funding we'll be receiving starting next year guarantees us that, for all of Canada, there will be $125 million over the next three years to build affordable housing. FRAPRU has checked. That means that Quebec will be entitled to $29 million. That represents subsidies for 413 housing units under Quebec's AccèsLogis program. With 413 units, we can't even meet half the needs of the people of Laval. But we're going to subsidize 413 units for all of Quebec
In the meantime, an F-35 would represent 3,500 social housing units. Something's not right.
5:15 p.m.
Bloc
Robert Carrier Bloc Alfred-Pellan, QC
Do you at least have an answer regarding the Homelessness Partnership Strategy, whose budget has not been indexed since 1999?
5:15 p.m.
Coordinator, Front d'action populaire en réaménagement urbain
We'd like to have the answer, but unfortunately we don't have it today. We aren't the people who are most concerned; that's the people who work directly in this area and the people who receive those services.
We were told that that would continue over the next three years. There will be non-indexed amounts. However, the people who intervene in the field don't even know which interventions will be subsidized. That means that, if we offer a service right now, we may be forced to close our doors next April 1.
5:15 p.m.
Conservative
Ted Menzies Conservative Macleod, AB
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
If I can start off, I'll be sharing my time with Mr. Hiebert. I'll be very brief here. There are just a couple of points I do want to make to Mr. Saillant.
I guess, to hear you speak, you think that the government actually didn't commit $2 billion to social housing over the years 2009 to the end of 2011. I'm not going to take away from the fact that there are people who need housing, but let's at least recognize the fact that $2 billion has gone toward that. That's not to mention some of the social housing projects for our first nations, which are in some pretty dire situations, and many of us as rural MPs have seen that.
I do take exception, and maybe I'm...when you said that homelessness is increasing. Are you meaning just in Quebec? Because we actually had a witness yesterday, from the Canadian Housing and Renewal Association, who recognized the investments that we have put in and suggested that homelessness in Canada is actually 1% lower than it was in 2006.
Just quickly, what role can the private sector play in developing social housing? I've heard many people suggest that we need to include the private sector in this.
5:20 p.m.
Coordinator, Front d'action populaire en réaménagement urbain
First, I'll answer with regard to government assistance over the past two years. It is entirely true that more money has been granted, which partly enables us to catch up, but not completely. We deplore the fact that the effort was made for two years and that now nothing further is being done. There will only be crumbs left, approximately $125 million for the construction of new social housing across Canada. That's peanuts. That's the smallest amount of money the federal government has allocated for new social housing since 2001.
So efforts have indeed been made over the past two years but those efforts are coming to an end. We aren't at all convinced that the economic crisis is over, but we definitely know that the effects of that crisis continue. So we are asking that these budgets be maintained over the next few years rather than cancelled. That goes for the funding granted to the provinces, the aboriginal and northern communities and to the people who live in social housing, who have managed to renovate a small part of their dwellings in the past few years, but for whom this is over.
So we're not telling you you've done a bad job over the past two years, but that not everything has been repaired and that we have to continue, that we have to go further. With regard to the construction of new social housing, we have to invest bigger amounts than those granted over the past two years.
5:20 p.m.
Conservative
Ted Menzies Conservative Macleod, AB
Okay. Thank you. It's always nice to recognize what actually has been done rather than just saying that nothing's been done.
To our episodic disabilities witnesses, to be very frank--
5:20 p.m.
Conservative
Ted Menzies Conservative Macleod, AB
Okay. Thank you.
In budget 2010 we've allowed a deceased individual's RRSP or RRIF proceeds to be transferred into an RDSP. Is that going to be helpful for the people that you represent?
5:20 p.m.
Director of Public Affairs, The Arthritis Society, Episodic Disabilities Network
It's one of the issues we're looking at, but part of the problem with an episodic disability is definitional. Part of the work that the Episodic Disabilities Network is about to undertake is to look at the definitions that are used for the various disability programs--as Martine alluded to, they're quite diverse--and figure how they can encapsulate the issue of episodic disability. I can speak most personally about arthritis, because it's the disease I know most about; many people with arthritis don't meet the definition even though they do have significant episodes of disability.
5:20 p.m.
Conservative
Russ Hiebert Conservative South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC
My question is for Ms. Walmsley.
This isn't the first time we've heard a presentation on this issue of taxation of funds. For the benefit of my colleagues, I was wondering if you could just elaborate: is it not the case that if an investor were to purchase, say, five securities and their choice would be to go to either a bank, a brokerage, or a mutual fund for the same five securities, they would be taxed differently if they purchased them from a fund as opposed to a bank or a brokerage?
