Finance Committee on Oct. 7th, 2014

[Mark Fleming]

You know, I don't think we were asking at all for additional funds or money from the federal government. Walter actually made that fairly clear that this is one of the unique parts of our submission, that we're not looking for incremental money. We're looking for support for key policy changes that help create Canada as an attractive environment on the global R and D stage.

The steps forward with the free trade agreement with Europe that have enhanced the intellectual property regime for Canada helped us level the playing field with Europe and the U.S. and other countries. So we're asking for support from this committee and the House to move that forward.

There are key programs already in place that the government funds, if you think of CIHR or the SR and ED tax credits. These are all very competitive programs that we look to take advantage of, and it's not just us, the large pharma companies. It's also the small biotech ecosystem across this country that those programs are absolutely critical for. The future of innovation in Canada rests a lot on the shoulders of the small biotech companies and the partnerships that are created between companies like ourselves at Johnson and Johnson and those small companies as they emerge.

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Thank you.

My next questions are for Ms. Robinson of Polytechnics Canada. You made a number of recommendations. One was that there be an increase in the college and community innovation program of $12 million. You gave an example of how the demand was exceeding supply for those programs, and innovation was therefore put on hold. How did you come up with the $12 million figure? Why isn't it way more or way less?

[Nobina Robinson]

Today the program is $50 million per year, made up of different kinds of multi-year grants. There are, I think, 96 eligible colleges and polytechnics bidding for that $50 million program. We have seen that, over the last three years, 73% of peer-reviewed, good quality applications cannot be funded, because the multi-year approach means that the forward moneys are tied up. So we believe the $12 million increase is about 25%. We are not calling for the doubling of the program, but simply that it allow more projects to come on stream.

There is a need to be careful here. If you double the program, you could cause an excess of funding. We would never pretend to be what we are not.

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

All right. I appreciate what you're saying. I'll continue with you, if I could.

You are making a big plea; and I'm building on what my colleague Mr. Brison asked you about, these labour market information plans. You mentioned that other agencies like what you're proposing, in other countries like Australia, Germany, and the like. But this is an old movie, isn't it? We've had cuts to Statistics Canada, eliminating a number of surveys, elimination of core funding of sector councils, use of Kijiji data to make a jobs plan. Why are you suggesting this new mouse trap? Why don't we just get the government to restore the money that it had in StatsCan and elsewhere to do some of the very things you've been asking for?

[Nobina Robinson]

Restoring money is not the same as asking Statistics Canada or ESDC or any bureaucrat to do something new. We need to do something new. So now—and we have seen this through the whole debacle of the temporary foreign worker issue—we really don't know what the publicly funded institutions of higher education in this country have in the pipeline. Currently that is provincial information, because it is now getting into a shared jurisdiction issue. We need to be able to incent the creation of this information and let anybody take that data and package it and market it to the community for whom they're targeting the workers.

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

This next question is for Ms. Vornbrock. As you heard, Senator Kirby was here to ask for $100 million over five years for the national suicide prevention fund. You're asking to complete the excellent work that your organization has done on the mental health action plan. There's only so much money, so how would you prioritize between your ask and his?

[Jennifer Vornbrock]

The critical part of going forward for the commission as part of the new mandate is the mental health action plan. That's a document on which we intend to have—and have already started—broad consultation with provinces, territories, and national stakeholders. As I said in my statement, with over 350 partnerships, we believe it will be an interesting and challenging task to come up with what we think the priorities for Canada should be. But we have a guide in the mental health strategy for Canada.

We are seeking resources of about $25 million a year for 10 years. We do not think $100 million national suicide fund is necessarily required, because our conversations with communities across the country have yielded some really interesting information about the kind of resources and community assets that already exist in the community. Our job would be really to leverage the partnerships that already exist in those communities and really see some of the innovation and some of the solutions that we believe already exist around suicide prevention.

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

You introduced in a very tantalizing way the work that you've done on the five-cities homelessness project. I think you said that for $10 spent, $20 was saved. I would like you to elaborate more on that, on your success to date and what you're proposing to continue with on homelessness.

[Jennifer Vornbrock]

Thank you for that.

Very quickly, the five cities that were part of the At Home/Chez Soi initiative did exactly find those key findings, which led to essentially 18 more communities implementing a housing-first approach. The Mental Health Commission, with resources that we already have in the coffers, is investing in technical and training assistance on housing first. Another 44 communities in waiting will also be part of that housing-first continuum across the country.

This is definitely with the support of provinces and territories and stakeholders. This is definitely an initiative that is snowballing and is really starting to take root in terms of rapidly ending homelessness. Just looking at my fast facts, results show something in the neighbourhood of reducing hospitalization costs by 72%. We are seeing significant results as a result of this intervention.

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Thank you very much for your great work on that.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Nathan Cullen]

Thank you, Mr. Rankin.

Mr. Allen, over to you for five minutes, please.

[Mike Allen, Conservative, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

Thank you, Chair, for the opportunity.

Thank you to our witnesses for being here.

Ms. Robinson, I think I'll start with you for my first two questions. You talked in your submission about a national registered apprentice number. You're fully aware of some of the challenges we have across jurisdictional issues nationally and with the provincial governments, and even in fact with some of our tradespeople being restricted in going from one province to another.

Can you talk about the labour mobility? It's more than just scholarships and grants and that type of thing. How would you see this working in the context of a fragmented, piecemeal labour market like that?

[Nobina Robinson]

Right: good question. Let me unpack it in a couple of different ways.

The first issue is that we just don't have a grip as a country, or even in any province, on what are the different barriers being faced by apprentices. To answer the bigger question that I think all of you should ask yourselves, why don't we have more tradespeople certifying? The nature of that training, the nature of that kind of acquisition of skills, is that you must learn from a master craftsperson. If we don't have master craftspersons, journeypersons, then we will not be able to train the next generation. So completion is the problem.

I also believe we need to recognize that the federal government has year after year tried to attack the problem by giving more incentives to individual apprentices. The time has come now to get a grip on the data. That's what this is. This would be a voluntary number assigned, like a SIN, a social insurance number, to those applying for federal supports so that over time you would be able to track them.

We actually spend $7 million on a national apprenticeship survey once every decade. Going back to the earlier question that Mr. Rankin asked me, on the speed at which Statistics Canada crunches the data, the last time we surveyed the apprentice population in this country was 2002. We didn't get the data until 2009. Now we're in 2014, on the other side of the recession.

That's why I think we need a real-time data set on apprentices. You would find willing apprentices giving their number.

[Mike Allen, Conservative, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

Thank you.

You hit a little bit on the reporting mechanisms and the strength of the reporting mechanisms that you have at the polytechnics. I'm not sure, but you're probably aware that Minister Kenney made a statement a couple of weeks ago with respect to the federal transfer, the $12 billion for education, and wanting to get more reporting back on that. I think the community colleges and polytechnics tend to do more reporting than the universities do.

Do you see starting that dialogue with the provinces as a way to start to get more reporting, and understanding more of the job success that some of our students are having?

[Nobina Robinson]

First of all, as publicly funded institutions, whether universities, community colleges, or polytechnics, everybody has their reporting tracking. They have to in order to get their operating grant from the province and the provincial capital funding for “bum in seat”. So the issue is, who's not making it public and who's distorting the data? That's the challenge right now.

The other issue is that all of these institutions are providing it to the provincial capital but not the federal government. I do believe we gave away the levers at the federal level when we didn't seek accountability. The Canada social transfer and the post-secondary education escalator set aside within it—we don't know what we're getting for it. Now it's coming home to roost, and we're asking.

That's fine; things change a decade later, so let's actually look at this again. But it would be no burden to ask us to give you the data. What's shocking to me is when I go to ESDC and they're asking me for the data because they can't get it from the provinces. Some sort of incentive has to be created to allow the existing data to be put into the hands of the people who need it.

[Mike Allen, Conservative, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

Thank you.

Do I have some time left?

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Nathan Cullen]

You have a little less than a minute.

[Mike Allen, Conservative, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

Thank you.

Ms. Vornbrock, I'd like to ask you about your submission and the chart, “Momentum of Mental Health Commission: Diffusion of Innovation”. You say “Canada is here”, and you're coming here now, two years ahead of when the funding is going to expire. Can you talk really quickly about the “Adaptations of the Strategy” and the “Facilitated Uptake of the Strategy” and what those two next steps would be?

[Jennifer Vornbrock]

Yes. Thank you for the question.

The reason we're here now is twofold. One is to signal to the government and to all parties that we have completed the mandate we were asked to do, on time—and actually ahead of time—and on budget.

But for the mental health strategy for Canada, which we think—and as we've heard from our colleagues across the globe—is a best-in-show, really, in terms of a strategy, we do not want to see that document ending up on the shelf. We want to make sure that document doesn't end up on the shelf, so putting it into action.... In fact, this week is actually Mental Illness Awareness Week; we're wearing our orange bracelets. I think the theme of it is acting on mental health. For us, to really accelerate the momentum, to see that innovation, and to really see it take root is wanting to translate the strategy into action. That's what will really be the foundation for the work of the commission going forward.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Nathan Cullen]

Thank you, Ms. Vornbrock.

Thank you, Mr. Allen.

I'll take a few minutes of questions here, and I'll continue with you, Ms. Vornbrock, for a second.

In an answer to a question from Mr. Rankin about the effectiveness on homelessness with those suffering from mental illness, you got into the answer, but I don't think you were completely able to finish. Could you add a bit to that in terms of the effectiveness of the program?

[Jennifer Vornbrock]

Yes. As I said in my opening statement, for $10 spent, it's $20 saved. For somebody who's worked for many years in a hospital setting, cost avoidance means as much, sometimes, as cost savings, because it means that money can be reinvested into other more innovative solutions that exist in hospital care, acute care, and, more importantly, in mental health community care.

Also, individuals who were in a long-term hospital space for mental illness and were part of the cohort study for Housing First were discharged 116 days sooner, with support. That's a savings of $12 million.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Nathan Cullen]

Let me catch you there. They were discharged earlier with support, so it's less of a burden on the health care system.

[Jennifer Vornbrock]

Absolutely.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Nathan Cullen]

My question would be on the need for either provincial or national affordable housing strategies to complement the services being provided. If we're discharging people earlier yet they still don't have reliable and affordable housing, is it a concern for your group? I apologize if this was in your earlier testimony.

[Jennifer Vornbrock]

It wasn't.

It's not currently a concern, because what we're actually seeing are some really creative ways to think about housing going forward. One of the most interesting partnerships that I think emerged out of At Home/Chez Soi was the partnerships with landlords.

I came from the city of Vancouver, where vacancy is challenging, but you were seeing landlords stepping forward offering sweets to the mentally ill, which I think blew a lot of people's minds, really. What they were getting, though, was secure tenants, with support. I think for us what we have yet to really tap into is some of those really innovative housing solutions. That's what At Home showed us.