Finance Committee on April 25th, 2013

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Unfortunately your time's up, Mr. Rankin.

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

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to all the witnesses.

I would like to start with Mr. Holden. You're an economist. You have actually mentioned previously that, “The best policy option for reducing poverty among youth and young adults is to create strong conditions for economic growth and job creation.”

Do you remember making that statement?

[Michael Holden]

Yes.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

Would you still agree with that?

[Michael Holden]

Yes, absolutely.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

Could you just tell us whether or not you were pleased with the new Canada job grant? That was the commitment from the federal government to work with the provinces to increase apprenticeship opportunities and to provide under-represented groups with help.

[Michael Holden]

I thought it was an interesting idea. As was mentioned before, it does put the onus on businesses, employers, and employees to take the initiative to meet their own specific labour needs. That was a positive. I hesitate only because the program hasn't been implemented yet. There's been negotiation—

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

I understand totally. If there's more skin in the game, you're going to have more commitment from employers—

[Michael Holden]

It remains to be seen how well it works, but it has potential. Yes.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

You also mentioned in relation to seniors, and I quote again:

The proportion of seniors living below Statistics Canada’s after-tax low-income cut-off (LICO)— the most commonly-used measure of low income—fell from 26.1% in 1979 to 5.2% in 2009. Seniors now have the smallest incidence of low income of any age cohort.

Do you agree with that as well?

[Michael Holden]

Yes.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

So we've had some good successes in that, and you must have been pleased with the government increasing the guaranteed income supplement for the most vulnerable seniors and removing 380,000 seniors from the tax rolls. Those were good steps by the government?

[Michael Holden]

There are a lot of steps that we're taking.... As mentioned before, removing or almost eliminating seniors' poverty has been one of our policy successes in the last decade or two.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

I think somebody mentioned they didn't like tax credits—I think it was Mr. Corak—and I was suspect for a few years as well, but we did have tremendous success with tax credits as ridership went up after we introduced the tax credit on transit passes. I wanted to mention that, because we did see empirical evidence to prove that.

I want to spend the last two minutes of my time on aboriginal Canadians. I'm from Fort McMurray. There has been tremendous success in my communities. We have five bands involved in the aboriginal groups that work specifically in the oil sands, and we now have Dave Tuccaro, who is the richest aboriginal in Canada—I think has somewhere over $100 million in personal wealth—and we have a lot of aboriginals who work in the oil sands at Syncrude and Suncor. At Syncrude, I think it's 15% or 14%, and about 9% at Suncor.

This is an open-ended question. Do you see a successful correlation between aboriginal Canadians' successes and the resource sector? Because that's what seems to be driving the wealth of many aboriginal Canadians, and of course most aboriginal Canadians who live on reserves live in isolated areas where resource booms are happening. So do you see the correlation that opening up the resource boom will help the most vulnerable people?

Mr. Holden, maybe you could comment on that?

[Michael Holden]

I think that's absolutely where the greatest potential lies as it stands now.

I live in Alberta, and one of the biggest public policy issues we study is how we can help aboriginal Canadians better share in the economic opportunities from resource development on the reserves, or on projects that pass through their reserves.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

Some of the more recent investments by our government in building and renovating schools on reserves is the best we could do as far as the return on investment. The low-hanging fruit of who needs it most is aboriginal Canadians, who have the highest incarceration rate, the highest growth rate, and the lowest education rate of any group in Canada. The more we concentrate on that...and what we've done we should continue to do. Is that fair to say?

[Michael Holden]

More of that kind of work is needed. There's also more work needed, I think, in helping build the capacity to better participate in these kinds of economic development projects that we're talking about.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

Do I have one minute?

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

You have thirty seconds.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

Mr. Eisen, you mentioned that it is important to recognize the technological and economic forces driving income gains at the top, and to recognize that these gains are not necessarily coming at the expense of other workers.

Would you agree with that?

[Benjamin Eisen]

Yes.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

Could you comment on that?

It seems to me that what you're saying is just because people are making more income, it doesn't mean they're taking it away from the low-income earners.

[Benjamin Eisen]

Yes, I would say that. I think that obviously as technology advances the returns to investment and high skill go up. There's global competition and markets for these sorts of very skilled and talented individuals, and the wage growth that's been taking place at the top of the income distribution for those workers is very likely to continue. I don't think that it necessarily comes at the expense of other workers in the economy.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

Thank you very much.