Finance Committee on Nov. 19th, 2013

[Mark Adler, Conservative, York Centre, ON]

On the clinical side I was absolutely fascinated by the high-intensity ultrasound, non-invasive surgery. Could you talk a little bit more about that?

[Dr. Barry McLellan]

Probably the best way to do so is to give a patient example. I'll talk about a patient who was treated last year in our organization. We're doing this right now. This is inventing the future of health care today.

A man in his 60s had a debilitating tremor to the point where he was unable to eat, couldn't drink a glass of water, couldn't use a pen. The disorder, the lesion, was deep in the brain and the alternative would be to cut through, which a neurosurgeon might do. It's an invasive procedure where you're damaging brain tissue on the way through. High-intensity focused ultrasound allows you to deliver treatment non-invasively with great specificity and destroy the lesion. That patient was able to drink water and draw the same day. Again, with no anesthetic the treatments are either on an out-patient basis or on an overnight-stay basis.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Okay, thank you.

[Mark Adler, Conservative, York Centre, ON]

Oh, is that my time?

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Yes. Thank you very much, Mr. Adler.

Mr. Côté, you have the floor.

[Raymond Côté, NDP, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would like to thank all the witnesses for being ready to answer our questions, even though we have very little time unfortunately.

Mr. Goldstein, we have known each other for two years; it is nice to see you again. Thank you for being available and for sharing with us the Statistics Canada summer 2011 data on jobs. I was able to see that, among my 11 colleagues form the Quebec City area, including the south shore, my riding ranked third with more than 6,000 jobs in tourism. That is one of the reasons why I am very worried. In my riding, we also have major players and very attractive sites.

I would like to go back to the issue of the real tourism deficit compared to global performance. In a Statistics Canada table on tourism jobs, we can see that in the first quarter of 2013, Canada was barely at the level of employment before the recession, six years ago, after experiencing a dip. We can talk about catching up, but something else is going on when tourism jobs have not followed the global growth curve at all.

Would you like to comment on the situation?

[David Goldstein]

Thank you, Mr. Côté.

I want to thank you and in fact the chair for your continuing support of the all-party tourism caucus, because these issues are important to us across the board.

I'll deal with the question in two parts, first of all the resilience of the industry; then, there's a Conference Board piece coming out today that talks about the resiliency of the investment and the jobs in each of those ridings. But we also know—and these are not our numbers but Treasury Board-approved numbers from the return on investment statistics that the Canadian Tourism Commission puts out—of the quick turn-around in job creation that our sector provides, especially amongst young Canadians.

In fact, what we saw during the economic action plan and the stimulus package was a multiplier of those jobs in various regions of the country in a very quick fashion. How we get to what we would consider to be our fair share—Canada's 4%—is really a function of marketing and of accessing product. These are issues that we have dealt with at the caucus on a regular basis.

We could have gone through a litany of issues that we had through the deficit reduction action plan, but we understand that there were certain cuts that had to be made. The one that's probably the most debilitating for the sector is the lack of ability to invest in the U.S. market. We're not asking the federal government to go this alone. We're effectively setting up a model, much like what Brand USA is in the United States, whereby we're going to raise a dollar of investment for every dollar the federal government puts forward.

[Raymond Côté, NDP, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

You are right, especially since the Canadian brand is particularly strong. Our country is a leader in this sector, and yet our brand is suffering.

In the document entitled “Gateway to Growth: Connecting America”, the paragraph in the section “Keeping pace with the world-targeting 4% growth” states: “Over the past decade Canada's international arrivals have dropped by nearly 2%”. A table shows the change in room nights and in spending. It is interesting to look at the “government revenues attributed”. According to the table, if we had been able to keep up with the 4% global growth, those revenues would have been an additional $151 million.

Could you comment on how this type of contribution from the federal government could have compared to the contribution it actually made?

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Give just a brief response, please.

[David Goldstein]

Perhaps we could file that information with the committee in a more detailed way. But rest assured that the methodology to get to those return numbers was based on Treasury Board guidelines and that the government revenues attributed to tourism are derived from a Statistics Canada model. If anything, we believe they are a fairly conservative estimate.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you, Mr. Côté.

Mr. Goldstein, you can certainly file that information with the chair through the clerk. We will endeavour to see that all members get it.

We'll go to Mr. Van Kesteren, please.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, all four, for being here. It's a very interesting discussion that we're having.

Mr. Goldstein, a lot of the questions are going to you. I want to ask you a couple of questions and then maybe I'll move on to some of the others.

You talked about moving from seventh to sixteenth place. Was that a result of 9/11?

[David Goldstein]

Yes, mostly.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

We talk about a resurgence, or somewhat of a comeback. Has the American appetite moved away, or are they travelling less? I need to know that.

[David Goldstein]

They're travelling more.

Let's be fair to ourselves. I think we took the American market for granted for a great period of time because of such things as the low dollar and the open border. To use a real estate analogy, sometimes you ignore the anchor tenant. To our credit and due to our partnership with the federal government, we have spent a lot and have invested greatly in emerging markets. We just last month led a trade mission to China. The results are impressive. But it's time to retrench with the anchor tenant, and we really haven't had a national, coordinated campaign in the United States since the Olympics.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

I'm curious. Have you done a study? It's in the numbers. As a kid, I worked at a gas station. We were near the border, and the Americans would come over in droves with their campers. I suspect that because the baby boomers have moved forward, this has ended. There are probably a number of factors like that. I don't need you to answer the question, but if you have done a study and have mined the numbers, I think this committee would like to see it. I know I'd like to see it.

[David Goldstein]

Just to give a quick answer, the study is underway, and the results will probably be here in two months. We will provide them.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

We did another study through industry. One thing we can do, not necessarily as a government but as a people, is to be more welcoming. I've had some bad experiences coming into Canada with border guards. I suspect that if that's the case, it happens more often, and if it happens with Canadians.... Are you seeing some charges to that effect, and what are you doing and what can we do to correct that situation?

[David Goldstein]

On the one hand, CBSA are not greeters; they're here to perform a function. But that said, there was a very exciting project that took place leading up to the Olympics wherein CBSA was given customer service training. We'd love to see that again. They perform a role, but at the same time, people have travelled the world and know that you don't necessarily have to be accused just to come into the country.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

We're all part of a team.

Mr. McLellan, we talked at great length about some of the exciting work you're doing at your facilities. It's fascinating stuff. I hate to drill down into the dollars, but I wonder what kind of economic impact this has. Do you have some information for the committee about what the training does and what the impact is on the economy?

[Dr. Barry McLellan]

We have had significant success with a number of research commercialization initiatives. We have one example in which some of our imaging equipment has been used, resulting in the creation of hundreds of new jobs. Clearly, building this facility would by itself result in some stimulation of the economy through additional jobs as well. But at the end of the day, the impact of mental illness and diseases of the brain to the economy, directly and indirectly, is in the many tens of billions of dollars each year.

So the combined direct and indirect costs are in the tens of billions of dollars per year. We believe that we can do a much better job in treating patients, getting them back to work, and decreasing the impact that these illnesses are having broadly in society.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

I'm going to suggest that if such a study is being done, the committee would like to see it as well, to see what the impact is. If not, it might be something that would be of great use.

[Dr. Barry McLellan]

To be clear, it wouldn't be a study that we're doing on the impact; it would be data that we have available, which we could share with the committee, that demonstrates the impact it's having on society.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you, Mr. Van Kesteren.

Mr. Rankin, please.