Finance Committee on Sept. 28th, 2017

[An hon. member]

[Inaudible—Editor]

[Raj Grewal, Liberal, Brampton East, ON]

Oh, my colleague from Quebec is saying that Quebec is a better province, but that's a debate for another day.

I want to get your comments on how you think the federal government, even though this is a provincial jurisdiction, can play a better role on equalizing it across the country, because that just seems inherently unfair to me.

[Charlotte Kiddell]

Absolutely, and thank you. I also will mention that our lobby document is available online and can be consulted for more exact numbers.

Canada is the only OECD country without some form of national or federal oversight of post-secondary education. What we recommend in our lobby document is a national post-secondary education act. It would be modelled after the Canada Health Act, which is something, I would say, that we're very proud of in this nation. That would prevent this provincial discrepancy.

I study in Nova Scotia, which sees the second highest and fastest rising tuition in the country because the provincial government there has deregulated fees. That was made possible by a lack of federal oversight.

What we would like to see is a restoration of dedicated federal funding transfers to post-secondary education, as were employed successfully before 1996, and to have those transfers governed by a national post-secondary education act.

[Raj Grewal, Liberal, Brampton East, ON]

Thank you.

I have one quick question.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

No.

[Raj Grewal, Liberal, Brampton East, ON]

It's for kids.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

You are a minute over, by far.

Mr. Albas.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to all our witnesses.

There is quite a potpourri of different policy advice here for the federal government to consider. I appreciate every bit of it.

I'm going to start with you, Mr. Priestley. You sent in a briefing note to this committee. I thought you were pretty clear in your presentation here, but I found that you really didn't touch very much on the flight and duty rules that have been gazetted.

In my understanding, you have said that if these rules go through by Transport Canada, regarding flight and duty times, there's going to be a significant increase in the cost to deliver all forms of northern and remote society services or there will be a reduction in services—one or the other. Could you tell us a little about the flight and duty rules?

[Glenn Priestley]

Thank you for the question. I didn't put that into my written brief because I was responding to the two questions that I was sent on answers to innovation, but thank you for that. Tomorrow is the deadline for the flight and duty regulations that were published in the Canada Gazette part I, and it's going to be a raucous affair. I've never seen the industry so against rules, and we're having a hard time getting the government to understand.

Let me give you a quick example of why it's going to cause a problem. Today and every day we have medevac flights. There are about 30,000 a year. They happen every day in the north and, as Mr. McLeod said, in many places that are accessible only by air. We have an airplane on point in Cambridge Bay. It's part of the contract. It picks up a patient in Gjoa Haven and delivers to Yellowknife, and then it goes back on point to Cambridge Bay. That's done every night.

Under the new rules, that airplane and that crew will be stranded in Yellowknife. They will not be able to complete that last leg. That's an example of how the flight and duty time is going to really hurt the north. We'll have to hire more crew to get that airplane back on point, or you'll have to leave Cambridge Bay and you will not be able to do flights for the rest of that period of time—10 hours. There's one example.

Also, every year we have to bring in fuel by barge. From the barge, Twin Otters land and move it in 10- to 20-minute shuttles. We will do that. We'll fly about 10 to 12 hours a day and do about 18 missions back and forth, 18 sorties. Under the new rules, what we used to do in a day will take three days. That's going to increase the costs of exploration.

There are the medevac and the exploratory world examples for you.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

You also are quoted as saying you believe these rules are absurd. Is that true?

[Glenn Priestley]

I didn't say “absurd”, but they are unrealistic. I did that CBC interview.

They are unrealistic. For instance, as an old regulator, a Transport Canada inspector, I know that if you have a rule, you need to have a way in which to enforce it. Transport Canada, for whatever reason, is putting things in the rules, such as, for instance, that a pilot will get 15 minutes for a lunch break every six hours. How can you enforce that? That's why we're talking about how the majority of the rules are going to make it really tough. There has been no discussion with the north on the good stuff we do, and that's a disappointment, and I share that with you.

That's where the costs are going up. For housing under the new rules, we won't allow crews to have two in a room. They'll need to have one in a room. That means we'll have to double our housing space, and it takes four to five years to build housing quarters.

These aren't little things. These are big money issues.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

I hear you loud and clear, sir. Thank you for your testimony.

I'd like to go to the Canadian Association of Fire Chiefs.

Chief, I really appreciate your frankness with us here. My colleague Todd Doherty has a bill, Bill C-211, which would help to create a national framework for post-traumatic stress disorder. Are you supportive of that effort?

[Ken Block]

I'm supportive of anything that would improve the support for our men and women of the Canadian fire services. Certainly, in terms of the resilience that's lacking in the mental health field to help our firefighters deal with the stresses they encounter, it's really a very high priority for us. Whatever the federal government can do to assist, we would support.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

That's excellent.

Just quickly, you've said that you're quite happy with your own experience with the Mental Health Commission's road to mental readiness program. The Mental Health Commission of Canada is something that the previous government put together. You're happy with that. You're also encouraging the government to seriously consider rolling that out on a wider perspective.

You've also said that you really do appreciate the tax credit that we have for volunteer firefighters.

Those are two measures that you absolutely would like to see go forward and be preserved. Is that correct?

[Ken Block]

Yes, without a doubt.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

Thank you, sir.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Thank you.

Before we go to the last questioner, I'd like to point out on the fire issue that in my area we have mostly volunteer fire departments.

I can give you an example. Last year, the New Glasgow fire department had 128 calls on the mental health side of the issue. Most of those were first responders. I don't believe there was even one fire. The calls would be about accidents. In a community like mine, it is often going to be somebody you know who was in that accident.

I can't stress enough how important that issue is.

I have a question for you. You mentioned in your brief that industry and academia have a decided advantage over the fire service in advocating building code revisions. What do you mean by that? I don't follow it.

[Ken Block]

In the building code process, when you submit a building code amendment or revision it typically goes through a series of reviews. It ends up in front of a standing committee. The standing committee ultimately will make a recommendation on whether or not it should be adopted.

I've presented at many standing committees as chief fire officer. Every time, your evidence is welcome and it's well-received. However, for the most part, it's anecdotal. The challenge is to have that evidence-based research in a form that academics and engineers recognize and accept.

We have a long way to go to get the fire service experience translated into evidence-based research so that it stands a chance of adoption at those standing committee levels. Let me put it this way: there's a lot of room for improvement in our Canadian building codes. This would go a long way to help.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Mr. Fergus, you're the last questioner for this panel.

[Greg Fergus, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I would like to tell my colleague Mr. Grewal that, as a father of three children who attended university, and as a Quebecker, I told my children that they had the choice of going anywhere for university, as long as it was in Quebec.

I would like to ask all of you questions because your presentations were all really interesting. Unfortunately, I only have four or five minutes. So my questions will be for Dr. Brouwer, of the Canadian Association of Graduate Studies.

I thought your presentation was relevant and important to Canada, which must compete with economies in other countries around the world. To do so, and to make sure we have our place, we need to invest in higher education.

My first question concerns your recommendation to increase support to promote the inclusion of disadvantaged graduate students. How can we ensure we find ways to do this?

My second question is about Canada's ranking in access to international students in higher education in Canada and the benefits of increasing the number of scholarships so that Canadians can study outside the country.

Could you comment on those recommendations?

[Dr. Brenda Brouwer]

I will try to answer, but first I need to make sure that I have understood the questions.

[Greg Fergus, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

Either one of you may answer. It's up to you to decide.

[Dr. Brenda Brouwer]

One concern that I think is pervasive across the country is about access to graduate studies, and access for disadvantaged students who are under-represented. This includes students with disabilities. It includes indigenous students, first nations students, and a whole host of things in between. Part of the challenge, of course, is that graduate studies are primarily full time, 12 months of the year. Many of the scholarships that are awarded also require full-time study, which is not always practical. They also require you to be on campus. If you're doing your research, you need direct access to the labs and libraries, which may not always be feasible for people who need to be in their communities and what have you.

We really need more flexible options and more flexible eligibility criteria for scholarship holders in order to best accommodate the nature of their day-to-day lives as well. There has to be some balance so that it's not just all about school. They have to live their lives in addition to that.

So that's what we're asking for—a re-evaluation and reconsideration of some of the policies and practices that are currently in place, with many of the scholarship programs that are currently available; and targeted scholarship programs as we better recognize and understand some of the challenges that prospective students have.

With respect to your question on the value of the international student exchange, there are a number of reasons why bringing international students into our programs is so important. There's the diversity of perspective they bring and the different experiences they bring. As well, many of the issues we're grappling with from the research side are extremely complex. They're not unique to Canada. They're not unique to a particular region. They're very global. There are cultural differences and policy differences that vary across the world. When we're looking for solutions, ideally we want a solution that will be quite transportable beyond our own boundaries. That's one of the elements of the value of having the diversity of perspective.

It's also important for our Canadian students to get out to different parts of the world. It's cultural education. It's learning to be a global citizen. It's learning that things are done differently. We find that in many cases it's very challenging to get domestic students to go abroad. Whenever students do go abroad, when they come back their eyes have been opened. They see how there are a lot of similarities but the differences are really important. It helps them in their further studies, because they incorporate that global perspective as they explore whatever their field of study is. As they pursue their research, they want it to be representative and generalizable to a global community, as distinct from something that's literally very regionally focused .

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Thank you. We will have to end it there.

Ms. Clement, Mr. Dennis, or Mr. Buy, I don't believe you had a question from the panel. Do you have any quick comments you want to make on what you've heard, or to up your testimony? Or are we all done?

[Laurie Clement]

It's been interesting listening to the people in the room talk about the challenges with policy. I guess the fundamental challenge we have is that in Canada there is no vision policy. There is no eye health policy. That's the first place we would start. It's rather shocking that in the year we're in, we don't have any eye health policy as part of overall health.

That would be a fundamental place to start. It wouldn't be very expensive. We're here in front of the finance committee, but the reality is that a public awareness campaign and a framework would be very inexpensive places to start to attack this problem that we are going to have in terms of emerging eye care issues.