It doesn't surprise me.
Evidence of meeting #89 for Finance in the 41st Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was changes.
A video is available from Parliament.
Evidence of meeting #89 for Finance in the 41st Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was changes.
A video is available from Parliament.
5:50 p.m.
Conservative
Brian Jean Conservative Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB
Certainly we should bring our private sector realities to the public service. Wouldn't you agree with that?
November 6th, 2012 / 5:50 p.m.
Vice-President, National Affairs, Canadian Federation of Independent Business
Yes, I would.
5:50 p.m.
Conservative
5:50 p.m.
NDP
Wayne Marston NDP Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON
I'm going to be focusing my questions primarily on Ms. MacEwen, but we've had some agreement here that surprised me a little. Ms. Pohlmann, when you talked about how the 2015 deadline for taking care of the deficit should be crowded out to 2017, you publicly agreed with the NDP.
Mr. Thomas, you talked about the need for pensions among your group. I agree with you. Twelve million Canadians don't have pensions. I just want to point out my perspective. That may or may not be accurate in Ms. Pohlmann's case, and I can see my friend here is going to proceed a little further on that.
Going to Ms. MacEwen, the reason I raised the pension issue is we have a national pension plan now that the CLC has been promoting an increase to. That to my mind is a way of addressing the problem with less of a complication than the PRPPs. Ms. Pohlmann's right in that there are concerns about whether or not the industry or the provinces will go forward on the PRPPs. At least one province says they don't want to; I think it was Ontario. That may change with the change of leadership. The issue of pensions is obviously very present on everybody's mind.
Having raised that particular point with regard to the increase of CPP, it is a well-known stated position of the CLC and the NDP as well, so I don't think we have go into that and I'll shift gears. It's just that when I heard what sounded like some agreement, I wanted to raise that. I've heard rumours that some folks in the CLC were concerned about the provisions of EI funding that you see in this bill.
I have a connection going back and I should label it. The CLC has 3.3 million members. It was established in 1883. For 14 years I was a president of the labour council in Hamilton.
My point is that the CLC has had a long history of advocating for workers, and in this case we have concerns about EI that I'd like you to address.
5:50 p.m.
Senior Economist, Social and Economic Policy, Canadian Labour Congress
Are you talking about concerns about EI financing?
5:50 p.m.
NDP
Wayne Marston NDP Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON
Yes, within the bill that we're talking about here.
5:50 p.m.
Senior Economist, Social and Economic Policy, Canadian Labour Congress
Right. Our concerns about the financing are that first, just as the CFIB stated, this is one area of agreement where we would like the funds to be separate from the general account. We want to make sure that if there are surpluses they aren't stolen as they were before. The $57 billion in surplus was stolen. I think even before that surpluses were taken away from the account, right? We want it separated and managed in the interests of the premium payers, the employers and the employees. That is what it's there for, to help the labour market function more effectively.
We're concerned that it be separate. Then we're concerned that when or if the board is reinstated, there be a provision for tripartite control of those funds where business and labour effectively have joint control over how the surpluses are managed.
5:50 p.m.
Senior Economist, Social and Economic Policy, Canadian Labour Congress
The government has some control, yes.
5:50 p.m.
NDP
Wayne Marston NDP Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON
I wanted to clarify that one point.
Going back to the PRPPs, pension splitting is an issue. You notice I fall back on pensions because I had a lot to do with them for three years as the critic for our party for them. Again I have heard from people in the labour movement who had concerns about that. Do you share those concerns?
5:50 p.m.
Senior Economist, Social and Economic Policy, Canadian Labour Congress
Absolutely. This bill does provide for PRPPs to be subject to pension splitting as well. That's one concern.
We are concerned about pension splitting and the adverse effects of that on low- and medium-income families in terms of where you're putting your tax expenditure dollars. As you say, if you want to make a simple pension plan that employers can offer that's portable between jobs, that's efficient in terms of getting more out of every dollar in CPP. Defined benefit pensions are more efficient to run, and the larger they are.... The CPP is already separate so government can't get their hands on that money and take it. That is controlled in a way that benefits the people who pay into it.
5:55 p.m.
NDP
Wayne Marston NDP Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON
We'd also have to open it up to allow for some of the people who can't get in now to be able to get in, in Mr. Thomas's case.
Thank you, Chair.
5:55 p.m.
Conservative
5:55 p.m.
Conservative
Mark Adler Conservative York Centre, ON
Thank you, Chair.
Thank you, everybody, for being here this afternoon.
I want to start with Ms. Pohlmann.
Mr. Marston was talking about increasing the CPP payments. By doing that, wouldn’t business have to pay more into CPP?
5:55 p.m.
Vice-President, National Affairs, Canadian Federation of Independent Business
Yes.
5:55 p.m.
Conservative
Mark Adler Conservative York Centre, ON
Yes. What would that do to your membership? How would they react to something like that?
5:55 p.m.
Vice-President, National Affairs, Canadian Federation of Independent Business
They would be pretty unhappy. It's the payroll taxes. As I talked about in the presentation, payroll taxes have the greatest effect on the growth of a business. They pay 50% of the cost of CPP for every employee. To increase the CPP would have a substantial impact, and we have fought against it as much as possible.
5:55 p.m.
Conservative
5:55 p.m.
A voice
Part of you would be partisan.
5:55 p.m.
Conservative
Mark Adler Conservative York Centre, ON
Tough but fair.
Presumably, people would be laid off, and there'd be a rise in unemployment. The more costs you put onto business, they're passed through the system, and if the costs are too onerous, people are laid off. Right?
5:55 p.m.
Vice-President, National Affairs, Canadian Federation of Independent Business
For smaller firms, payroll taxes certainly have an impact on their choices about hiring. I think a lot of them would probably take a second look at whether they could afford to hire someone because now they would have to pay more for that person.
On CPP, the other thing I want to mention is that people who are self-employed pay both shares. When you increase CPP, you're not just increasing it for the employee. For that self-employed person, it's a double increase. They would be required to pay a substantial amount into a system where they want to use those funds to pay into something different than the CPP system.
