Finance Committee on Oct. 30th, 2012

[Shelly Glover, Conservative, Saint Boniface, MB]

Of course, I'm a Canadian woman, so I was saying that in jest; nevertheless, I thought it was an important point to bring out.

You mentioned that Governor Carney touched on some numbers with respect to employment. He was very clear that we've recovered all of the jobs lost in the recession and in fact have done surprisingly and exceedingly encouragingly better by creating another 380,000 on top of those that had been lost. We on this side think that's a good measure and are going to continue along that vein.

When the question is asked of you about job employment numbers—I know that you heard what the governor said—do you agree with what he said?

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Make just a brief response.

[Kevin Page]

I'm sorry, I didn't hear what the governor said, but I would agree that employment levels have, as indicated in our report, more than recovered. Actually, I think our report was quite a favourable report on Canada's labour market.

[Shelly Glover, Conservative, Saint Boniface, MB]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you, Madame Glover.

We will go to Mr. Marston, please.

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Welcome again, Mr. Page. We're pleased to have you with us.

It strikes me as ironic, sir, with a government first elected in 2006 on accountability and transparency, how hard you've had to work to draw out the information you need to do your job.

I'm sure you realize that the effect on parliamentarians' ability to do due diligence, which is crucial and is expected by Canadians, is impeded to a great degree by the size of omnibus bills that have come before us and by the fact that one committee, for the most part, is charged with reviewing them.

The role of a committee should be to make bills better. It should look at the problems in the bill and work to make the bill better. Do you think it would be better if the content of those bills and the ability to amend them were distributed to the more appropriate committees that align with the particular departments affected and the laws that are affected?

[Kevin Page]

Well, to the extent that the Parliamentary Budget Officer has a bias, it's for more debate and analysis, and to make that available to you all so that you have a better level of discourse. We're not really well positioned to provide legislative advice on whether omnibus bills or something big or small is better.

For us, more analysis and more debate is better.

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Thank you.

Sir, you were on record very early concerning the change to OAS, saying at the time you reviewed it that it was sustainable, if they made the other changes they went about making concerning the transfers. At the same time, or just a little before, the OECD pension team had reached the same conclusions. For the record, the OECD group actually released their opinion before the government got involved with it as well.

The outcome, at least, was that, with the off-loading of costs to the provinces and municipalities, the costs of disability pensions or welfare are going to be carried for two more years by the provinces. It has to be billions of dollars. The government has said they will transfer a certain amount to the provinces and municipalities to help them. They haven't mentioned anything about helping the seniors, who now have to wait two years without some elevation in their income by going to OAS.

What would your opinion be on that?

[Kevin Page]

The analysis we have done to date is limited to looking at old age security in a fiscal sustainability context. I would agree, sir, with your point, that we thought the federal government had a sustainable fiscal structure before the changes to the age eligibility for old age security. I think the Finance analysis supports that conclusion as well.

We have not done other analysis of a policy nature looking at what the potential impacts could be on the provinces, municipal governments, or seniors in general. We just have not done that work.

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

At our committee, we've recently had a number of academics and scientists talk about the change with the long-form census and how it is impeding their work of gathering the information they need to do their work. We've heard that from several very concerned witnesses.

Do you agree with those concerns? Does the availability of information have an impact on the work you do?

[Kevin Page]

Certainly, when we take on any project we're very mindful of the other work that is done in the field, including the work that we presented yesterday on the labour market. We read pretty much all the work on the labour market that was done domestically and internationally before we put together work. So yes, we rely on those types of researchers.

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Is it fair to say that the impact of removing the long-form census is going to somewhat impede your ability to do your job?

[Kevin Page]

I can't tell you precisely how it will have an impact, but certainly past chief statisticians and other public servants have echoed these concerns. I'm sure that future PBOs will feel the impact.

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you, Mr. Marston.

I'm going to take the next round as the chair.

Mr. Page, I want to focus on your labour market report, which I think is very substantive. I want to thank you and your office for doing it.

First of all, perhaps you can give us some clarification. You talk about comparing Canada with the U.S. and European countries, and about Canada's performing favourably. As you know, Canada and the U.S. come to their unemployment rates differently. In fact, my understanding is that if the U.S. used Canada's method, the rate would be much higher than is actually recorded.

Do your graphs take into consideration the different ways in which the countries analyze their unemployment rates?

[Kevin Page]

Yes, sir. We've used harmonized rates. These are rates that are made available by the OECD, so we've harmonized the rates. You can go to Statistics Canada and get the harmonized rates so we can compare apples to apples with the United States.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

I'm going to ask for unanimous consent to continue for a few more rounds to finish.

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you.

You've got some very interesting graphs on page 9 in terms of labour market tightness by industry and labour market tightness by province, which echo the sentiments of members of Parliament like me and others from Alberta, Saskatchewan, and even Manitoba. They are very tight in terms of the labour market and very tight in terms of certain industries.

I want to give you and your team an opportunity to comment on that. That's certainly the biggest challenge I face in my home riding. People come to me and say that they simply don't have enough people, so we look at answers like quadrupling or quintupling the immigration rate. Most people look at that and say that it's not feasible. We're going to have to find some domestic solutions to this labour challenge as well.

I did want you to comment on the remarks that you make on the graphs on page 9 of this report.

[Chris Matier]

In this report, we didn't want to go into too much depth on underlying causes and provide an analysis. It was largely descriptive in nature. The comments that the governor made previously on labour market mobility and removing interprovincial trade barriers are standard proposals or suggestions to help this. Beyond that, I wouldn't comment further.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

I'm going to follow that up with a question on Newfoundland. Newfoundland is a little puzzling in terms of the graphs because it seems to show strong employment gains in one graph, and yet it's still showing a fairly high unemployment rate in the other graph. It seems to be somewhat of an anomaly vis-à-vis the other provinces in Canada.

Do you want to comment or elucidate on that?

[Chris Matier]

Unfortunately, we don't have a longer time series on the labour market tightness. It's a relatively recent series from Statistics Canada. While we can see the change in employment over the cycle, we can't really evaluate it in terms of the vacancy ratio.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

But it's showing that it's not tight in Newfoundland. The number of employed is dramatically improving in Newfoundland. Am I reading that correctly?

[Chris Matier]

I think it could be the case that previously there was a very high vacancy ratio, and now it's been reduced, but we do not know that for certain.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

You don't know that for certain because of the short time period.