Finance Committee on Oct. 4th, 2017

[Jamie Cassels]

Thank you very much, Mr. McLeod, for those questions. I'll address them very briefly.

In front of you, you have our very recently released university-wide indigenous plan. It makes an absolute commitment to work in partnership with communities to develop multiple pathways into higher education. We're fully aware of the challenges, especially in smaller and more remote communities, about creating those pathways.

You mentioned earlier the Nunavut program that the University of Victoria pioneered some 10 years ago. We go into communities in order to create those opportunities. That's a fundamental commitment.

Secondly, on the question regarding indigenous academic capacity and indigenous scholars and leaders, again my answer to that is, absolutely. The initiative that we are here talking about today is fundamentally led by some of Canada's finest indigenous scholars, including Dr. Napoleon and Dr. John Borrows. As a non-indigenous university president, I absolutely recognize that you only develop these types of programs in partnership with communities and through leadership from the indigenous experts in the area.

[Michael McLeod, Liberal, Northwest Territories, NT]

The language revitalization program that you held in the part of the country I live in was very successful and very popular. I think they're starting another round of recruitment of students. As I travelled throughout the summer, I've seen the interest from the other indigenous people, the other governments that want to look at doing something to save their language.

We have 58 aboriginal languages in Canada. If we don't change the way we work with those languages or try to save or stop the deterioration of them, we're told that we'll probably end up with only three. We have some aboriginal populations, such as the Gwich'in, where we expect the language will be gone in as short a period of time as 10 years.

Are you seeing a real level of interest to start programs in the communities, to develop instructors, and to try to put together a strategy to save the languages?

[Jamie Cassels]

The indigenous language revitalization programs are very similar to the indigenous legal orders program in that the idea is to create capacity, to do capacity building with and in communities.

On the language revitalization program, we've recently been working with both university and community partners. For example, in Saskatchewan, the University of Saskatchewan has adopted our methodology about how to work in community to develop the kind of capacity that those communities need to enhance and revitalize language. Similarly, as I mentioned, Dr. Napoleon is working across the country with 40 different nations, using that same type of model. It's about capacity building in those communities.

Those two programs are actually very similar in philosophy.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Thank you.

I'll just ask this before I go to Pat.

In your recommendation, you urged the Government of Canada to fund the establishment of the University of Victoria's indigenous legal lodge. How would the federal government implement that in practice? What would be the process and how much would it cost?

[Jamie Cassels]

First of all, I'd like to emphasize that it's a partnership between the University of Victoria and the province, particularly with regard to the operational funding for the program. We have been in a large number of meetings in Ottawa with Finance Canada, with Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada, exploring options for how the budget line would actually be created. We would like to have a separate budget line in the budget.

The total cost of the lodge and its first five years of programming is roughly $30 million. The proposal that we have submitted to Finance Canada and to your committee is for slightly over $18 million. We're working with the private sector and the philanthropic community to obtain the remainder of the funds.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

That's helpful. Thank you.

Mr. Kelly.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Before I speak, I'd like to thank the members of the public who have come today. I'd like to thank them for their submissions that will follow this section. I may not get a chance to say that, so I'll say it now.

My question is for Mr. Gillespie.

If I understand your business correctly, you are in the retirement planning and financial planning field.

[Clay Gillespie]

That is correct.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Are most of your clients self-employed?

[Clay Gillespie]

I would say that about 35% of them are.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

What are they telling you about the proposed changes affecting the taxation of corporations?

[Clay Gillespie]

First, they were frustrated with the tone of the message, as if they were breaking rules or something. Once we got beyond that and described what the proposals were actually trying to achieve, it was interesting to note that some of the proposed measures didn't bother them.

The second thing I noticed was that the small business owners immediately switched to the solution. That's what they do as small business owners. They said, “If I can't split income with my wife, and I have to do that, that means I can't hire x, y, z employees.” That's how quickly they jump to solutions. They don't have time to do all these other things and hope for things. They just went ahead and planned as if this was actual legislation and started making business changes. The one that worried me the most was the individual who said, “With these changes I can make more money after tax just being an employee, so I'm just calling it a day,” and then he was going to fire his five employees.

There's a feeling that they're not trusted and not seen as doing their fair share in paying taxes, so they are just moving on.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

With respect to the proposed changes on the taxation of income from private investment, this must surely go right to the heart of retirement planning for virtually any long-term, self-employed person who operates a private corporation.

[Clay Gillespie]

I think that people misunderstand passive investments—and there are some things there that also need changing—because they assume that they're only for retirement savings. I don't know how many business owners you've spoken to, but they're saving money for the days when they have no money and they have to make changes to their business. If there's money left, yes, they will use it for their retirement savings, so passive investments are a big part of that. However, passive investments also provide funding for the lean years. When things change in a person's business, that person needs the money to survive, so passive investments have many different uses. There's the retirement part, and there's the funding of business part, which is relevant in our context.

I remember my dad was a small business owner, and he mortgaged our house so that he could pay employees. I've seen this in action. I've seen small business owners take every cent they have to keep their businesses running.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Indeed.

Mr. Chair, I'm going to turn this over to my colleague, Mr. Albas, for my remaining time.

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

Thank you. I appreciate that.

In regard to what you said about many people not understanding how the system works for long-term care, British Columbia offers some of the most robust choices, and even then—I talk to constituents on a regular basis—when people go into the system, they find out that it is very tough to get a spot and that oftentimes couples are separated. That's part of the challenge you have, because people just don't know what the expectations are.

I know many provinces have very little, if any, and that's one of the reasons people move to British Columbia.

When you say, sir, that there should be more education as to what each individual province does and doesn't offer, and that if people don't plan for it, then you'll be slotted in, and someone has to plan for you, I think that's a good message.

Even the Canada Health Act doesn't define exactly what kind of care the money is supposed to be used for. The provinces are given a lot of latitude. Do you have any further comments in that area?

[Clay Gillespie]

It's really shocking to see that most people think long-term care is provided under the Canada Health Act. That's the first misnomer you have to deal with. On the ability to pick the region, B.C. may have one of the better areas, but you could be moved way out of range of your family to find a spot to go into long-term care. Not only do we need to educate people, but we also need to incentivize people to do some planning ahead of time for the situation that many people will eventually face.

Not only do I believe education is important, but I strongly believe that we have to incentivize people, just as we did with RRSPs and other things that we thought were relevant.

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

Professor Napoleon, thank you for being here today. I have two quick questions. What are the other law societies saying? Are they considering recognizing this new venture?

Second, obviously this is an important area for you, for British Columbia. What do you think we should all depart here knowing today that maybe hasn't been raised yet?

[Prof. Val Napoleon]

We're at a really exciting time in Canada with the TRC recommendations and the missing and murdered indigenous women's inquiry. Recently the Federation of Law Societies of Canada asked a question about what a competent lawyer needs to know today about indigenous law, because the reality insofar as land issues is that when we look at the environmental landscape and the economic landscape, indigenous peoples are a part of Canada, and Canada is multi-juridical.

How do we relate and solve human problems and conflicts across legal orders, and what are the different kinds of skills that people need to have in order to be able to do that? That's what we're grappling with, those nitty-gritty kinds of things that are the human problems of law, which law has to be equipped to solve.

We've met, as I mentioned, with the Federation of Law Societies of Canada and with other law societies across the country. We've been looking at the different evaluative requirements that law societies have in the planning of their curricula, and we're imagining drawing on the trans-systemic methodology of teaching from McGill that looks at civil law and common law, and we'll take an adaptive but similar approach.

We could have, for instance, Anishnabek constitutional law and Canadian constitutional law. We could have Tsimshian or Gitxan property law and Canadian property law, or Dene criminal law. We're looking at which courses would be taught trans-systemically in the first year and all the courses imagined over a four-year term. The plan includes field schools as well as class time so that students don't lose their connection with their regions and their communities.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

We'll end that round there.

Mr. Fergus, you have six minutes.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I would like to thank all the witnesses here today.

I have some rather specific questions for Mr. McMaster, Mr. Cassels, and Ms. Napoleon.

I will start with Mr. McMaster of HealthCareCAN.

You want us to launch an antimicrobial resistance project. Yesterday, committee members and a group of MPs had the opportunity to tour the VIDO-InterVac Centre, an international vaccine research centre at the University of Saskatchewan.

It seems to me that $25 million in funding over five years is not enough. Could you explain why you are asking for this amount?

[Robert McMaster]

I appreciate your question. I actually participated in the World Health Organization vaccine discovery a few years ago, so I'm very familiar with the vaccine development.

What we're asking for is the support that the Public Health Agency has requested from the government, to increase their budget an additional $25 million for their stewardship program. We are supporting the request from the Public Health Agency. As a public health...they can't actually make the request.

Clearly, for the whole field of antimicrobial resistance, it's much, much larger than $25 million. In terms of the federal government, which I started on, with the funding for research, if you look at, from the Canadian research institutes of health, how much of that is for research on antimicrobial resistance, that would be much larger money. So the requests are related, because if you request back to the fundamental review of science, a piece of that will be supporting antimicrobial resistance. It would be interesting to find out how much money currently is being spent on that research and the stewardship.

Totally, the request is to support the Public Health Agency, but antimicrobial resistance is a huge international endeavour.

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

Thank you very much.

Mr. Cassels, I know that the University of Victoria—and certainly you and your predecessor—has always taken seriously the importance of fully engaging indigenous peoples in the post-secondary education system. That is definitely what is happening at your university.

I would like to know what percentage of your university population did indigenous students represent in 2000, for example, and what is that percentage today. You mentioned that the population of indigenous students has risen significantly. Can you give us some exact numbers?

[Jamie Cassels]

Thank you for your question.

I could give you a general back-of-the-envelope response to that, but I would want to get the most accurate information to you later.

In a decade, the population of indigenous students at the University of Victoria rose from roughly 250 students to 1,200 or 1,300 students. Indigenous students now represent over 5% of our student population. What's very gratifying about this is that we saw that growth at the undergraduate level for the first five to 10 years. We're now seeing that growth moving into the graduate level and into the professional schools.

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

That's great. Congratulations.

I know the work you have done. Not only have you welcomed indigenous students, but you have supported them throughout their studies to ensure they would graduate from university.

Your university implemented some measures to support students from BC's interior. For example, if one of them had to go home because of the death of a family member and could not return because they did not have enough money to buy a bus ticket, they could get help.

Does this program still exist? Are you continuing with these measures, which do not cost very much but are really needed in order to ensure that students return to the university?