Evidence of meeting #28 for Finance in the 41st Parliament, 2nd session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was work.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Scott Brison Liberal Kings—Hants, NS
Even community organizations in small town Canada could have access to it.
Liberal
Scott Brison Liberal Kings—Hants, NS
On the CPP issue—and I know we've gotten off the youth employment issue a little bit—the proposal by P.E.I., for example, would I believe exclude from any expansion of contributions employees making less than $25,000 per year.
That would address, Ms. Reynolds, some of your—
Executive Vice-President, Government Affairs, Restaurants Canada
My understanding is that the real pressure point concerning future payouts of CPP is for the middle- and higher-income workers who are not going to have saved enough. It's not so much for the lower-income workers. I think the real risk in CPP premium increases is what it will do to youth employment and whether it really will help those employees over the long term.
In fact, we actually are supportive of the proposal that was put forward by P.E.I.
Liberal
Scott Brison Liberal Kings—Hants, NS
So there are proposals on the table that your members would find viable.
Liberal
Scott Brison Liberal Kings—Hants, NS
Another example of public policy around the area is that of the U.K., wherein they've expanded their pension plan, but they did it with an automatic membership in the plan and a voluntary opt-out. Yet 90% of the members of the plan actually stayed in. So something like that would provide some flexibility to those who are fundamentally opposed to participating, but it would encourage more people to participate.
Left to their own devices, people aren't saving enough. Even if they save enough there are very few long-term investment plans that are better than the well-diversified—geographically, across asset class and across industry—Canada pension plan. It's a very good low-fee structure approach. Regardless of what we do in terms of financial literacy, we're not going to turn all Canadian investors into Warren Buffetts, as much as that might be a good objective.
Conservative
Conservative
Liberal
Scott Brison Liberal Kings—Hants, NS
I think you just made that up.
I will give my time to somebody else, Mr. Chair, just to show the kind of fellow I am.
Conservative
Gerald Keddy Conservative South Shore—St. Margaret's, NS
I'll take your 20 seconds, Scott, and I appreciate them.
Conservative
Gerald Keddy Conservative South Shore—St. Margaret's, NS
I'm going to try to bring it back to youth employment, and some of the challenges that we're facing.
Mr. Smillie, you made a comment about the difficulty of going from the trades to university. From the witnesses we're heard, I think we're actually headed in what I believe is the right direction across this country. It is actually easier to do than it was 10 years ago.
My comment earlier was that in Nova Scotia, if you have a Red Seal trade—two years of community college—you can actually work at that and make a very good wage. You may not be finished your apprenticeship because you may not have enough hours, but you can go back then to university, and your first two years of university will be already covered. I think that's a step in the right direction, and it's actually easier, not more difficult—at least in some jurisdictions.
That was my point.
I just want to go back to the guidance counsellor again, because I don't think anybody around the table has said it. What I hear from teachers all the time is that the profession has changed dramatically. Teachers don't tend to deal with discipline in the classroom as they did at one time; there might be a shift in that. The guidance counsellor is very busy doing guidance. Often it's psychological guidance. They have a whole realm of responsibilities that they didn't have in the past, and they have less time to deal with career guidance.
This is my first question, for anyone who wants to chip in. I'm wondering if we really need to separate out those two positions. Obviously, they have to talk to one another, but should we have career counselling and guidance counselling as two different things?
Go ahead.
President, Canadian Teachers' Federation
We do have career practitioners in my province. They come to the schools and their focus is strictly on careers and working with students on careers. Having said that, it's not an easy thing. You can't just draw a line down the middle of a kid, part of it is psychological and part of it is what are they going to do with their lives. They are whole human beings, and when you're talking about those sorts of things there is no doubt there's some overlap there.
In my experience, there's a much higher priority on career education in secondary schools than there has ever been. There's a lot more priority on education being done with respect to the trades than there has ever been before—again, in my experience. So I would agree with you that we're moving in a good direction.
Conservative
Gerald Keddy Conservative South Shore—St. Margaret's, NS
But we are moving, and that's different from how it was 20 years ago.
Conservative
Gerald Keddy Conservative South Shore—St. Margaret's, NS
That's the point I'm trying to make.
The other point concerns what the chair mentioned, that you could take shop, or when I was at school you could take woodworking or home economics. Then they took shop and that home ec program out of the schools in Nova Scotia totally. For at least 15 years, they were gone; however, now in the junior high schools, in the new schools that are being built, they are back. They give young men and women an opportunity to explore some of those areas.
Here is the other question I have. It didn't come up today, but one issue we've had a lot of discussion on, especially from the student groups, is the cost of student loans and the burden of them. Education comes with a price tag. One of the issues that really pushes the students in a major way is that working detracts from what you can get as your student loan.
I wonder whether we need to change direction here to put a greater incentive in place for students to work, and not take it back from their student loan.
President, Canadian Teachers' Federation
That's really not my area of expertise. I'm more in the area of the elementary and secondary school system and teachers.
Conservative
