Finance Committee on Oct. 18th, 2012

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

I was at a conference just a few weeks ago. The Canadian Council of Chief Executives had a conference. There was a Calgary oil person—or oilman, I guess, or whatever you want to call this CEO—who was saying that he had as much interest in the quality of the education system in Nova Scotia as he did in that of Alberta, because a lot of their employees in the future were going to come from places like Nova Scotia.

The quality of the education system in Newfoundland or Nova Scotia is important in places like Calgary. I appreciate that and the need for a national strategy.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

You have one minute left.

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

Mr. Dolan, in terms of the disability tax credit that is currently provided, should we be making it fully refundable? Currently it's non-refundable, which means that low-income Canadians, people who are making too little money to actually pay taxes, the people who need it the most, don't actually get any benefit from it. Would it be equitable to make it fully refundable?

[Tony Dolan]

Yes. I totally agree with you, Mr. Brison. That is something we have discussed with Mr. Flaherty on a few occasions.

It is fine for the 40% of employed persons with disabilities who have a taxable income, but the unemployment rate among persons with disabilities is upwards of 60%, 61%, 62%. These people don't benefit from that tax credit. The tax credit is there, but having it fully refundable would be of great benefit to a lot of persons with disabilities. It would pull them out of poverty, in some cases.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Brison.

We'll go to Mr. Adler, please.

[Mark Adler, Conservative, York Centre, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to all the witnesses for being here today.

To Mr. Knight, there was mention of a national learning strategy. In terms of having such a strategy, I would anticipate a number of problems, a number of challenges, with that. Heck, we can't even get a national securities regulator in this country, let alone having a national learning strategy.

I think what we need is more of a belief that education is a lifelong process and not something that ends when you're finished at 22, when you finish college or when you finish university and have your B.A. or master's or Ph.D.; that education continues throughout life. This is the sort of cultural attitude that we need to instill in people as we move forward.

I was very intrigued with a lot of the things you were saying. The access to skilled labour is a monumental problem for our country and it's just going to get worse. You're so right that we cannot depend entirely on immigration to solve that problem for us.

Now, we are making revisions to the immigration process. It's going to be more labour demand-oriented. Nevertheless, it's still not going to solve our problem.

You talked about over 900,000 people between the ages of 15 and 29. Again, it's a huge problem. If you could solve that problem today, what plan would you have for those 15- to 29-year-olds that would address that problem?

[James Knight]

Well, solving the problem today would be a big job. Many strategies would be required.

I fear that these people are being overlooked. I fear that we're not giving them options, opportunities. We're not identifying them. We're not giving them the hand they need. They need to be brought into education. Lifelong learning is what they need; I agree totally. In fact, we educate as many adults as we do young people. Some colleges have an average age in the thirties.

It seems to me that your concept of lifelong learning is very much an element of a national vision or a national strategy. There could be a multitude of national strategies, and different ones would apply in different jurisdictions. But this vision of a more highly educated country is really essential if we're going to solve these problems, with many, many strategies.

The prospect for Canadian business is quite bleak. Immigration is just a little bit of help. We need hundreds of thousands of people in different sectors where people are retiring and there's no one bringing up the rear. This is a national problem, and it needs a national vision and a national enterprise to fix it. It needs everybody, all the partners—the provinces, municipalities, educational institutions, and civil society organizations. We have to identify this as the principal economic constraint facing our country and find a way of collaborating toward a solution.

We've fixed many social issues. We've fixed drinking and driving. We've fixed smoking. We can fix education through a national strategy and vision.

[Mark Adler, Conservative, York Centre, ON]

How much time do I have, Chair?

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

You have about one minute.

[Mark Adler, Conservative, York Centre, ON]

Thank you.

I have a couple of questions for the Canadian Association of Community Health Centres.

You talked about a poverty reduction strategy. Have you costed out what it would cost to implement such a policy?

[Scott Wolfe]

Of course that's the million-dollar question, isn't it?

What we do know are the costs of poverty—

[Mark Adler, Conservative, York Centre, ON]

No, I'm asking you what it would cost to implement this policy.

[Scott Wolfe]

Specifically? No.

[Mark Adler, Conservative, York Centre, ON]

Okay.

You also talked about how there has been a reduction in the delivery of social programs because of insufficient funding. You are aware that our government has increased the social transfer to the provinces by 6%. The provinces, however, have not delivered on that 6%. They've delivered, in Ontario, for example, 2.3%, and they use the difference, the variance, for something else. The average has been 2.5% across the country. I think only one province delivered the full 6%.

So I think when pointing fingers particularly at governments, our government has delivered. It's the provinces that have been insufficient in delivering the social programs.

Is that something that—

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

A brief comment, please.

[Scott Wolfe]

A brief comment is that we believe fundamentally that the biggest issue at stake is one of coordination: coordinating these services and providing a federal vision to integrate services across the country.

[Mark Adler, Conservative, York Centre, ON]

[Inaudible—Editor]...in terms of federal vision; it's the provinces—

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you, Mr. Adler. We'll have to leave that for an additional round.

Mr. Caron, you have the floor.

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Thank you very much.

I'd first like to thank the witnesses.

I noted that Ms. Thibault took care to mention something related to each of our ridings, including the Rimouski CLSC. That was very well thought out.

However, my first few questions will be for Mr. Conway because I really liked his comments on tax simplification, among others. In that respect, I would like to repeat what my colleague, Ms. Nash, said and that I also pointed out in the speech I gave in my riding, which is that, in 1917, the Income Tax Act was 10 pages long, whereas today, it has 3,300 pages. This is a very important topic, and I will come back to it later.

Something caught my attention. You said that you might be open to a GST increase, meaning it should not be out of the debate. Beginning in 2006, the government reduced the GST by two percent. A number of economists—and I, too, share this opinion—said that, if the government wanted to reduce the tax to stimulate economic growth, reducing sales tax like the GST was not the best way. Instead, they advocated an income tax reduction.

Do you share that opinion?

[Michael Conway]

FEI Canada didn't say that we wanted to promote raising any taxes.

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

I agree.

[Michael Conway]

We said the government needs to balance the budget because Canadians need to be able to afford to maintain Canada's social programs at their current level. There are what I would call demographically driven increases inherent in the current expenditures. As our society ages, the government is spending a lot more money on old age security, transfers for health, etc. Just to stand still, there will have to be either a decrease in other program costs or an increase in tax revenues. That's just a fact, because those demographically driven expenses are going up. We said we'd have to look at it one way or the other.

Which way would we prefer? We came forth with expenditure reductions through program reviews, doing things more efficiently, and tax simplification so that both sides of the table, CRA and the government, can save lots of money by skinnying down that big fat tax act to something smaller.

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Mr. Conway, I only have five minutes.

[Michael Conway]

If at the end of the day there needs to be a revenue increase, we have said that economists agree that commodity tax increases are the best form of taxation.

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Thank you very much.

Since we are talking about tax simplification, I would like to know if you agree that tax expenditures are currently one factor that is complicating the tax system and that represent a large part of the act's 3,300 pages. We are talking here about tax credits of all kinds, things that add a lot of lines to the income tax return that citizens and companies have to file.