Finance Committee on Nov. 2nd, 2010

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you, Mr. Paillé.

Mr. Généreux, you have the floor.

[Bernard Généreux, Conservative, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would like to thank all the witnesses for being here. I am going to continue the discussion with Mayor Lemoyne.

I was a mayor myself, and when you are faced with this kind of challenge, it's a lot of work. I congratulate you, you and your team, for the enormous energy you are putting into making sure that your community gets through these hard times.

In your testimony, you said that you were going to succeed. I think that is an important attitude to have. Whether we like it or not, everything has been said in the last five years about the forest industry in Quebec and Canada. In your case, the fact that you are a single-industry community certainly didn't help, that much is clear. When we know what the past has been and we look ahead, what exactly are the factors that will enable you to achieve that success?

[Gérald Lemoyne]

We would have to have financial assistance of various kinds, loan guarantees. Is it possible to get assistance when... You are a government and you administer public money. For example, our project would create 300 very well-paid jobs. There would be payback, as the jargon goes. It would employ 300 people who at present have no income on which to pay taxes. And those are just the direct jobs. In the pulp and paper industry, we can certainly set a cost of at least $100,000 per job. Obviously, that is going to turn the economy around and there will be payback. Is it possible to get assistance for recovery projects?

I make a big distinction between a subsidy to keep on doing what was done wrong in recent years and a plan for the future with new markets. We have done this by ourselves, which is why it took five years, with no help from anyone, or with very little help. I can tell you that we have almost succeeded, but we still need government support.

The auto industry has been given extraordinary, exemplary assistance. Did anyone say that the auto industry would not get help because Pontiac was going to close down, there are too many brands of cars on the market, and there's global competition? No. They said they were going to give that industry assistance, because it has a future—or so I presume.

In Quebec and Canada, the forest industry and the pulp and paper industry have helped to build Canada, but forestry today is still an industry for the future. Things have to be done differently from now on, but there is a future. We have to invest a lot more than has been done. There is about $170 million coming from the federal government. For the Lebel-sur-Quévillon project alone, we're talking about $200 million.

[Bernard Généreux, Conservative, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

I'm glad you said that we have to invest differently now. In recent weeks, representatives of the Canadian forest industry have told us we have to look to the future, look toward new emerging markets, and do it differently. For several months, if not years, we have been told we needed to give loan guarantees to companies that were ultimately doomed to failure, to a certain extent and in certain cases.

What you are asking for, in terms of loan guarantees, I'm glad to hear it. It really is a different way of doing things, in terms of recovery projects that are going to focus on new emerging products. It's no longer a matter of doing things they way they were done in the past.

[Gérald Lemoyne]

If I may, I will add one thing.

There is something that's fairly simple to understand in the forest and paper industry, when you are a stakeholder in the industry. We have talked a lot about integration—you close three plants and leave one open, and because it's important, it will succeed. In Quebec, the example we have doesn't show that at all. The plants that have succeed are not the biggest ones and are not necessarily the ones that are integrated. Let's not try to put a system back in place. Let's look at what works, rather than creating a model that doesn't work.

In terms of integration, having a sawmill near a pulp and paper plant... Nearby means in the same yard. So that cuts shipping costs, and obviously there is also the whole question of greenhouse gases, which is an important one. In terms of competitiveness, there are lower shipping costs. There is also the whole question of energy production. We are capable of producing energy from the production of pulp and paper or related products. There is ethanol production. We have done research, as I mentioned, for manufacturing pharmaceutical products. Yes, the researchers have found some things worth considering.

In my opinion, there is one important aspect, among others, that is how we got where we are in the pulp and paper industry: each paper company in Canada had its own research centre and did a lot of research. One morning, they said this was expenses and cut them. When we stop doing research and development, we stop developing and we are doomed to fail, sooner or later.

So we have to do a little more research and development, in addition to looking at what the competition is doing. Yes, we have competition, from America, from Brazil—with eucalyptus, but we have products that have a fibre quality that means we can be competitive. It's a matter of developing the right products for the right market. We also have to look toward markets other than the American market.

[Bernard Généreux, Conservative, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

What the people in the forest industry have told us, because they work with...

[Gérald Lemoyne]

I often say we are at the end of a winding road, in the middle of nowhere. In terms of our project, we are not going to sell our product in the United States. We are going to sell it elsewhere. If we have succeeded in doing it incur town, with very little assistance, I really believe we are capable of doing it elsewhere. If, as a society, Quebec and Canada decided that this is a basic industry and it has to be developed, you would say, as we do in Lebel-sur-Quévillon, that you are also going to succeed.

[Bernard Généreux, Conservative, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

Thank you, sir.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you, Mr. Généreux.

Mr. Mulcair, you have the floor.

[Thomas Mulcair, NDP, Outremont, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I am going to address the people from the Canadian Feminist Alliance for International Action first. The aim of the Alliance's presentation was to make the connection between budgets and human rights. I would like to thank its representatives for providing us with this part of the analysis, which was missing from our discussions. That is why we insisted on remedying the fact that it was not included in the first round. We can see that their presentation was an excellent one and that we were entirely right to insist that these people be present.

I am essentially going to ask two questions. The first relates to the OECD analysis from 2008 concerning the growing inequalities in Canada. We know about this, but it is very often ignored. I would like you to give us more details on this subject, obviously focusing you analysis on what we could do in terms of budgeting.

[Prof. Kathleen Lahey]

There is considerable evidence that inequality in Canada is growing by leaps and bounds. I think the most graphic resource to look at is the Social Watch gender index that is published every year. They did a 2004 through 2007 analysis and concluded that women in Canada had actually lost two-point-some percentage points of equality in that three-year period. Out of 135 countries that were able to be ranked in that way, Canada was ranked at 101, and the best was number one.

Other indicators reveal other dimensions of that. But budget-wise, what can be done? Anything that gives women more than 36% of market incomes would be a very good start: strategic investments in access to care facilities, housing, and expanding the maternity support available; giving all members of the family, fathers as well as mothers, strong incentives to spend time with their children; and expanding the role of the school system could all very rapidly turn things around and put Canada back on the right track.

Don't forget that in 1999 Canada was ranked number one in gender equality in the whole world. So this is a rapid and devastating change that has been taking place.

[Thomas Mulcair, NDP, Outremont, QC]

My next question is the natural follow-up to what you have just said, which is good.

I am on page 4 of the French version of the document. It talks about Canada's human rights obligations. At the beginning of the paragraph entitled "The principle of non regression", you say there is a "strong presumption of the impermissibility of any retrogressive measures". The rest of your quotations refer us to footnotes. Would you be so kind as to tell us the source of that quotation, about the "presumption of the impermissibility of any retrogressive measures"?

[Kate McInturff]

That is sourced from the treaties and reports of treaty monetary bodies, which are accessible through the website of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. That's footnote 6 in our brief.

As you clearly know, since you've read the brief—thank you for that—we identify some specific regressive measures. In response to your first question, one of the things you can do is repeal those regressive measures. In particular, take pay equity for public servants out of the realm of human rights.

[Thomas Mulcair, NDP, Outremont, QC]

That makes twice now that your answer has anticipated my next question. Of all the things I have seen since I have been here... I come from Quebec, where we had a system developed, in both the private sector and the public sector; and we can see that no one has died. It was a fairly technical exercise, thanks. We have given substance to the fact that women were entitled to equal pay for work of equal value. The ways of doing that might seem complex at the outset, and in fact it was, but we have succeeded.

I can tell you that since I have been here, that is what has surprised me most: seeing the Conservative government take away women's right to equal pay for work of equal value—that's it's ideology, fine. But to see the Liberals voting with the Conservatives, I simply could not get over that, I was not expecting it.

Could you give us more details about the repeal of the pay equity regulations and its long-term consequences?

[Kate McInturff]

Yes, absolutely, I'd be happy to speak to the PSECA act, which was part of the 2009 budget.

I was here earlier this week speaking to the Standing Committee on the Status of Women about the importance of the legislation, currently before the House, to repeal the PSECA act. I'm here before the finance committee, so I am doing my best to make clear economic arguments, which I think are valid.

But underpinning that or at the heart of it is the notion that we need to do the right thing, which is what the human rights framework allows us to do. The right thing to do is to pay everyone for their work. We live in a country where women right now work for free one day out of every week, because of pay inequity. Women get paid, by any measure, including the most conservative estimate, something like 80% on the dollar. Other estimates bring that down to 73%; if you're a racialized woman, or a minority woman, or an aboriginal woman, it goes down considerably.

So essentially we have people in Canada who are going to work every day, who are working hard and trying to make the basic needs of their families, and they're not being paid for that work.

To take that problem out of the realm of human rights and say this is something that is subject to market competition is to fail to recognize the right of people to get paid for their work, which seems to be a pretty fundamental claim.

Now, in terms of the economic impact of that, I used my case as an example earlier, but I want to say that I'm in a very lucky position compared with the majority of women in Canada.

This is why it's so important to think about how we are enabling women to achieve economic well-being, because when you deliver assistance through tax policy, for example, there's a huge sector of the female population of Canada who can't access that, because they don't make enough money to pay taxes. And when you try to institute reforms under EI—which you're having your own problems with, including Mayor Lemoyne—

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you.

[Kate McInturff]

—many women aren't able to access that because they don't meet the minimum number of hours, because women are more likely to be employed in part-time and contract work.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you. Merci.

We'll go now to Mr. Pacetti, please.

[Massimo Pacetti, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you to the witnesses for appearing.

I know, Mr. Mulcair was always Liberal and he still wants to be, but I don't know what he's talking about when he says we voted against pay equity.

I just have a couple of quick questions for the Business Reform Coalition. Mr. Larson, in your presentation you're asking for an extension of the accelerated capital cost allowance. Seeing that you represent different groups, I'm just wondering what your position is regarding the Alberta Chamber of Commerce's position on retaining the capital cost allowance for oil sands and mining projects in Alberta.

[Roger Larson]

Mr. Pacetti, I have to admit I'm not familiar with that position.

[Massimo Pacetti, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

Okay, thank you.

Mr. Wilson, of the lung association, I think you're asking for $10 million for new funding for research. Is that enough money?

[A voice]

Oh, oh!

[Massimo Pacetti, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

And how do you expect members of Parliament on the finance committee to determine whether we should give priority to people suffering from lung disease, or for research for lung disease? We just had the diabetes association and numerous other groups who have asked for research money.

How can you help us make that decision? Where's the cut-off? When is there enough money, and how do we reconcile the requests?

[Christopher Wilson]

First of all, I'm going to let you off the hook. I'm not going to ask you to choose between disease groups because that would be an impossible decision for anyone, particularly for a political representative.

[Massimo Pacetti, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

I appreciate that.