Finance Committee on May 31st, 2012

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Rainer.

Thank you to all of you for joining us today.

I want to speak to you about this whole issue of income inequality and the gap between rich and poor in Canada, which has grown under federal governments of different political stripes. It's grown under provincial governments of different political stripes in Canada, so it's not a partisan issue.

What would be the public policy prescriptives that would actually potentially make a difference in terms of narrowing the gap? And please try to focus on the area of equality of opportunity and not just income inequality. I want to avoid class warfare stuff. I want to actually focus on what we can do to help give people a really good start, to avoid the gap of equality of opportunity growing to a point that it becomes damaging to social cohesion in Canada.

I'd appreciate your thoughts, Mr. Rainer. And I suspect Mr. Turk and perhaps Dr. Turnbull may have comments on this, too.

[Rob Rainer]

I'll mention two points, one of which is income related, and it's actually a recommendation that has been put forward to Parliament by the special Senate committee that looked at the whole issue of poverty and the federal role.

There was a recommendation for a green paper study on guaranteed income, which is a form of social security that we have to some degree in Canada, but it could be expanded. I would say there's a resurgent interest in guaranteed income in terms of what it could do to help stabilize people's lives and offer them better opportunity to move forward and essentially replace, in my view, 19th century and even 20th century concepts of social security.

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

Senator Hugh Segal has—

[Rob Rainer]

That's correct. Senator Eggleton's and Senator Segal's report had a recommendation for an in-depth feasibility study of essentially expanding the system of basic income or guaranteed income in Canada.

The second point is that the research is pretty solid in terms of investing in early childhood learning and education, and the return on that investment is in the area of nine to one. Children are our most vulnerable and also our most precious resource, and as the UNICEF report on child poverty has made clear this week, we are doing poorly as a country. So there's a lot more we could be doing in that area. I think the federal government has a profound role, not just through early childhood education but obviously through adult learning as well.

There's lots we could be doing there, and we are not having the kind of discussion and debate in this country on those kinds of issues that we should be having. Instead, I think we are getting sidelined by some lesser concerns, such as are wrapped up in Bill C-38, which is just an absolute hodgepodge of issues that we can't possibly do justice to.

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

Time marches quickly, doesn't it? Thank you very much.

[James L. Turk]

I would certainly second what Mr. Rainer said with regard to the importance of early childhood education. The evidence is overwhelming for that being one of the most important investments.

Also, it's the investment in proper social housing. It's a desperate problem in this country that needs to be addressed more aggressively.

With regard to the legislation before you, the changes in employment insurance that are going to be permitted by this bill will have very serious consequences for the least wealthy people.

I'll give Dr. Turnbull a chance, because you don't have much time.

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

Dr. Turnbull, in recognizing that poverty is a significant determinant of health outcomes, I would appreciate your input.

Are you seeing a gap in the quality of health care, for instance, in communities based on levels of income?

[Dr. Jeffrey Turnbull]

Absolutely. As social inequity grows, so does health inequity, and we're seeing consequences of that, sometimes comparable to that of the developing world in our most socially disadvantaged and vulnerable populations.

Whereas there are many strategies to address social inequity, I can tell you that it's addressing health care inequity and reaching out to those vulnerable populations. It's improved strategies creating national standards of minimal acceptable standards of care, creating pharmacare programs so that all Canadians, no matter where they live, can access pharmaceuticals, and particularly addressing the health care of aboriginals—a unique federal responsibility.

If we could address those things, I can tell you that at least we would be able to address some of the downstream consequences. I would argue that we should, at the same time, be addressing the upstream social inequality that leads to health inequity.

Thank you.

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

Just on the early learning point, there were 23 kids in my grade 6 class in rural Nova Scotia and only 8 graduated from high school. When I think back to those kids, the difference between those of us who did and those of us who didn't, those who didn't came from families where they didn't have an opportunity to read at home and that sort of thing—not because they had bad parents, but because they had parents who probably couldn't read or had limited literacy. So I agree with you in terms of breaking that multi-generational poverty cycle.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

I take that as a comment.

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

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you, Mr. Brison.

We'll go to Mr. Hoback, please.

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

Thank you, Chair.

Again, I'd like to thank the witnesses for being here this afternoon.

I'm going to talk to you, Mr. Braun, about Rights and Democracy. I have a chartered director's designation through McMaster, so board governance, to me, is a very important issue. When you take that designation, you learn a lot about it, and you hear some good case studies on what goes wrong in corporations or not-for-profit organizations when they don't have proper governance and proper transparency. It looks to me as though you came into a really good case study, which sounds like it's full of challenges.

Could you give us a few more examples? Your example in Burma—that's a scary challenge. Just tell me what you were facing when you first came into that organization.

[Aurel Braun]

When I came in, I had some idea that Rights and Democracy had been problematic. There had been previous crises, and we knew that. The severity of it was not apparent until you got to the organization, until you began to ask for accountability and transparency. What was sad about it is that despite the efforts we made, and we invested an enormous amount of time, people who were on the board were highly dedicated and tried to get the organization right. We all felt that the promotion of human rights and the protection of democracy were absolutely crucial. But you can't do that when most of the money is spent wastefully, when you don't know where it's going. Previously, we had been giving money to Navanethem Pillay's office, the High Commissioner for Human Rights, but there was no accountability for that money. We may as well have put money in a suitcase, opened it up over Geneva, and thrown it out. The Deloitte & Touche reports indicate we don't know exactly where the money went.

When it comes to Burma, and this was fairly recent, we learned that we and other organizations had been defrauded in Burma of a total of several hundred thousand dollars, tens of thousands of dollars in our case, and the staff did not inform us of this. We found out afterwards that the late Mr. Beauregard, who was used, sadly, by some members of the press and the opposition to bash those of us who tried to bring responsibility and transparency to this organization, had testified and had misled Parliament in the clearest fashion. There were documents that were available that were kept from us.

There was an article by a journalist this year, and we went to him and said that we found out that the denials about participation in the Durban II hatefest...Canada, you will recall, took the lead in walking out of the Durban II conference. We were followed by the leading democracies. Ahmadinejad addressed that hatefest, and 29 countries walked out. When Mr. Beauregard testified, he said unequivocally, and two of his key lieutenants were standing beside him, that they did not participate. This was reported in the Ottawa Citizen. We found out that the staffer's responsibility—we did not know there was a staffer in Geneva—was to manage the Durban NGO panel correspondence, write Durban planning newsletters, and brief NGOs on the registration and accreditation process. She undertook a senior role in the Durban II preparations. This was a carefully crafted, deliberate participation, which was kept from the board, which was kept from Parliament. We could not get access to this document even in 2011, even though we made the best possible efforts.

You can't run a human rights organization that is not internally transparent. You can't help the cause of human rights unless you make sure that you are accountable and you are responsible.

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

It's really confusing to the general public, because the name “Rights and Democracy” makes it sound like an honourable and noble goal. When you say that has to change and you start explaining some of the governance issues, and when you can't get reports, or you have no way of getting transparency to how money is being spent, then you, as a director, take on liability without having any visibility on what that liability is. Is that not correct?

[Aurel Braun]

Mr. Hoback, you put your finger on it. As a director, and particularly as chair, you have a duty of care. You cannot carry the duty of care unless you are able to make fully informed decisions, unless you get timely and clear information, unless you have that information that we asked for released. Board members, month after month after month, asked for information, and they were faced with stalling and denial of information. These were members of the board of directors. I, as chair, was not informed for several months that we had been defrauded in Burma while we made decisions. It becomes absolutely bizarre.

We had a situation where a chair's report was sent to Parliament with my signature on it, and it wasn't cleared with me.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Hoback.

We now go to Ms. Nash, please.

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Thank you.

Welcome to all the guests.

I want to begin by reaffirming what some of you have already said, which is that this massive budget implementation act is like nothing we have ever seen. My colleague has said that there may have been two other BIAs that this government has brought in that had more pages, but neither of them had this complexity and this number of laws impacted, and neither had the vast scope that we are seeing now, which of course is all under time allocation, so they do not get to be thoroughly debated. Each of the areas you are raising is so substantive on its own.

I'll try to be quick because I have five minutes to ask all of you questions.

First of all, Mr. Turk, something that we've not had the chance to talk about here until you raised it was the issue of cuts to Archives, although I have been contacted by many archivists and many of my constituents about this. The heritage minister assures us that “All the services that we operate right now to Canadians will continue, but they'll be done differently.” That's a quote.

First of all, I'd like to get your comment on that.

Secondly, most thinking people agree that we are increasingly living in a knowledge economy. Scientific expertise and capacity is important. I would like your brief comment about so many of our scientists' getting pink slips and so many of our scientific institutions being, if not undermined, then certainly eliminated, and the potential economic impact of those decisions.

[James L. Turk]

First, with regard to our Library and Archives Canada, the consequences of what's happening there, exacerbated by the most recent budget, are very serious indeed. Every industrialized country has a national library and a public archives. Ours is in great danger. The public archives side of it is sustained by skilled archivists who specialize in certain areas. Their positions are being eliminated. The collections are not being maintained. Canadian Pacific, for example—we've been told—has been trying to give its archives to the LAC for several years, and they have not been accepted. Whatever one's views of Canadian Pacific, certainly they have had a major impact on the history of our country.

Our ability to know our own history is at risk. There was a response saying not to worry because this is all being digitized. Currently, after years of work on it, the best estimate of the percentage of the LAC collection that is digitized is 2%. That's 2%. It's not going to be in my lifetime or the lifetime of anyone in this room that the entire collection will be digitized, or a major portion of it. There are approximately one billion records in the LAC. At 25 cents a page, which is a cheap estimate, it would cost a quarter of a billion dollars to digitize.

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

I'm rapidly running out of time. I did ask you a question about the economic impact of scientists, but I'm not going to be able to have time to hear from you on that.

I want to ask Michael Jackson a question. You talked about, first of all, the change being made in this bill being a potential constitutional breach. That's certainly something that's bracing, when we hear that as a committee, but I'm also concerned when you say that most of the people who will be affected are aboriginal people. They are, of course, an extremely disadvantaged people who have faced incredible systemic barriers, not the least of which is massive economic inequality. They are socially vulnerable, and they are the fastest demographic in our country.

What could be the economic and social impact of this change being proposed in the BIA?

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

A point of order, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Mr. Jean.

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

Did you mean the fastest demographic or the fastest-growing demographic? I know they're fast, but is it the fastest? You mentioned the fastest demographic—

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Jean, for that important clarification.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

That's not a point of order.