Finance Committee on Nov. 21st, 2013

[Garth Whyte]

I think the answer is yes. We need to corral all of us here. It's provincial and federal. It's education, training. It's EI. It's immigration. We have to look at a whole menu of strategies.

As far as youth employment is concerned, it is double. The 15-to-24 cohort unemployment rate is higher. Part of it is matching the jobs through the schools. I do know that colleges, the culinary schools, have line-ups to get in there. We have to figure out how to deal with this. I have metrics, but I also have three kids. I have to push them sometimes to get that first job.

Then we talk about, well, should someone who has never had a job, who doesn't know anything get top dollar. No. They are being trained. They have to be trained. There's a huge benefit, and they'll tell you this, and you'll tell us this. One out of three Canadians worked in a restaurant at some point in time. It's a great opportunity and I think we should leverage that opportunity.

[Gerald Keddy, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margaret's, NS]

To build their own self-esteem and to be able to enter that job market at another time....

Very quickly to Mr. Whyte—

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

I apologize, Mr. Keddy, but I have to move on to Mr. Thibeault.

[Glenn Thibeault, NDP, Sudbury, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, witnesses, for being here today.

Ms. MacEwen, I'd like to start off with you. In the opening round of questioning Mr. Adler asked you a question about worker contributions from CUPE, and then didn't like where the answer was going, so he put something on the record for you. I'd like to give you a minute or so to be able to put your point on the record.

[Angella MacEwen]

Sure. I guess the issue is that union dues are tax deductible. I am a proud member of Unifor and I pay dues to Unifor. Part of that is in the eventuality of a strike. If that should ever happen, we pay wages. There's a strike fund. That may be what he is referring to as profit; I'm not sure.

There is also the responsibility of the union to have savings in case of a rainy day, so counter-cyclical savings. We have a responsibility to care for our union members. There may be negotiations that come up that have to be paid for, or arbitrations, and that is what that money is used for. It's always used in the best interests of the workers. The workers always have access to that information. It's a democratic thing, responsible—

[Glenn Thibeault, NDP, Sudbury, ON]

Great. Perfect. Thank you for clarifying. I thought it was important that you be able to answer that question.

[Angella MacEwen]

Thank you.

[Glenn Thibeault, NDP, Sudbury, ON]

Mr. Whyte, thank you for being here today. I've had the opportunity of meeting with your members from coast to coast to coast when we're talking about merchant fees. They are exasperated with the amount of money they're having to spend every month, to the tune of $20,000 in some cases. This summer the Competition Tribunal made a ruling on some of the anti-competitive practices that we've seen from Visa, MasterCard, and Amex. They've punted that back to the House of Commons because we as parliamentarians will need to make a decision on that.

When we're talking about job creation and investing in your community, it is our small and medium-sized business owners and restaurant owners who do that in our communities. When you're hearing that they are having to spend $20,000 just to accept credit cards when that could actually be hiring more people, isn't it time that Parliament acted?

I would like to know two things. Do you think the voluntary code right now that we have should become mandatory? Should we be looking in this budget at ensuring there is some mechanism now that we address the issues which the Competition Tribunal punted back to Parliament?

[Garth Whyte]

We pay $40 million in fees, just on the tax portion of the bill.

[Glenn Thibeault, NDP, Sudbury, ON]

That's not going to—

[Garth Whyte]

That's $40 million, so can we not do something about that? It was punted back. The Competition Bureau went forward with it, did great presentations, and they basically said we could appeal all we wanted to, but they had to make a decision. There has to be a decision. It absolutely has to be dealt with. The voluntary code needs to be tightened. We think the base rate should be brought to the EU levels. Things can be done. We had a round table with all the different players. We told the banks and the credit card companies what is going to happen some day is that we're going to hopscotch over credit cards and we're going to find other alternatives, such as PayPal and Square. Work with your customers. We serve our members a lot. This is by far the number one issue. It galvanized our membership: 90% said it was an issue, 72% didn't even understand the fees. It's a big issue, and you need to deal with it.

[Glenn Thibeault, NDP, Sudbury, ON]

Yes, exactly. Thank you.

You mentioned that some of your restaurant owners make less than minimum wage employees. This is a great way of addressing that issue. Before Jack Layton passed away, we held an event in his riding with a restaurateur who put on the bottom of his menu “please pay with cash or debit”, which is breaking the contract because you can't promote one form of payment over another. That individual saved $18,000. He bought a new stove with that, which allowed him to put more product on the table, which meant he had to hire two more people. At the end of the day, those spinoffs had him moving to a larger location.

[Garth Whyte]

If I can clarify, the minimum wage staff I'm talking about are making incredible money in tips.

[Glenn Thibeault, NDP, Sudbury, ON]

Who are then having to pay a merchant fee on top of that if the person uses their credit card.

[Garth Whyte]

We do need to deal with this, but the devil is in the details. Canada is blessed with a great debit card program and depending on the type of regulation we do, we could undermine that. We really have to figure this out.

[Glenn Thibeault, NDP, Sudbury, ON]

That's perfect. I'm out of time, but thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you very much, Mr. Thibeault.

Colleagues, I know question period is starting, so if you have to go. I'll just remind you that there are no motions but I did want to finish.

Mr. Whyte, I want you to address the questions that I posed. On the labour shortage issue, unless your members and other members and other companies like Tenaris in the steel sector or PCL or others are saying things to me that are completely false, there is a massive labour shortage in my area and in Alberta. In terms of wages, these are companies that are not paying low wages and benefits. Frankly, many of the employers are finding housing for people who are working for them. Can you address that issue?

[Garth Whyte]

Absolutely. Pay higher wages. They can't get them, period. They just can't get them in certain spots. You know what? Surprisingly, that's happening in St. John's. It's happening in certain pockets. You also asked about the Canadian jobs strategy.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Can you discuss the model and implementation of that?

[Garth Whyte]

The goal is good. The devil is in the details. The federal government and provinces still aren't getting their act together, which is confusing for us. You asked what you can do. I think in the LMA, labour market agreement, the problem has been that the only measure was on take up, not on getting the actual jobs.

[Angella MacEwen]

That's not true.

[Garth Whyte]

A lot of it was. You couldn't and you still can't. If you're going to put this program in place, I would recommend getting your metrics to see where it follows through, rather than just finding people who know how to leverage getting dollars for training. Make sure we can see where it's going and how it helps. That's always been the challenge with any of these programs.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Okay, I appreciate that.

Dr. Kenny, can you give this committee a ballpark number of temporary and permanent jobs with respect to three pipeline proposals: Keystone, gateway, the west-east? I know that's a big question, but this session is about job creation and employing Canadians.

[Dr. Brenda Kenny]

Maybe I could make an undertaking to come back with that from those three, but I would say that the overall plan in terms of investment is about $25 billion and a typical large pipeline construction project will employ about 4,000 people. The bigger story is what it enables. Clearly, all the job growth that comes from being able to produce, develop, export, and deliver energy is in the hundreds of thousands of jobs, and that is enabled by having these new pipeline projects in place. Our jobs in getting a pipeline built are minuscule, albeit important, compared to what it enables.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

That's why when I had colleagues in Nisku in my area, the relationship between the manufacturing sector and the energy sector is direct. That's why there are some labour movements that are actually very strongly supportive of building of pipelines.