Finance Committee on Oct. 16th, 2017

[Penelope Rowe]

I'm sorry; could you just rephrase the last part of your question?

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Of course.

Certain community organizations or social economy enterprises have in the past not been able to apply for projects or federal government contracts because they were not profit-making entities. Have you had that kind of experience?

[Penelope Rowe]

I'll approach this in two ways. First, very often federal government funds purport to be open to non-profits, but because of the way in which a non-profit works, it can't comply with all of the requirements, so we need to try to improve that.

In terms of a specific example, I can think of times when our own organization, for example, has been looking for federal funding. I've never encountered the challenge that some charities speak about. It is very complicated for them because of the Canada Revenue Agency requirements. I do know that many charities will argue that it's challenging to become social enterprises and to generate revenue because of the ceilings that are placed on what you can earn and what you have to spend, so we need to start to more clearly understand that enterprising opportunity.

In Quebec, for example, I know that you have some very well-honed approaches to using community organizations for generating employment, and that's a model that many of us in the other parts of the country look at as a way to deploy revenues. As an example, much of the work that gets done at a community level needs to filter down to the local level. It's not all national. Many of us don't work at a national level.

There are some significant barriers. One would be the Canada Revenue Agency guidelines. Second would be the guidelines in many economic development funding bodies that say you have to clearly show your economic contribution, as opposed to the way in which the social contribution feeds into that economic contribution.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Thank you both.

Go ahead, Ms. O'Connell.

[Jennifer O'Connell, Liberal, Pickering—Uxbridge, ON]

Ms. Rowe, I'm also going to start with you. You answered one question I had, in terms of that second recommendation and what you meant by it. I just want to ask for further clarification, because in your testimony you said that you want the programs for youth skills and that type of development to be worked into all federal programs. However, in answering Mr. Fergus's question, you said it's more so in the employment skills programs. You used the example of Canada summer jobs and our skills programs.

Is that what you mean, or did you mean across the federal government programs?

[Penelope Rowe]

I'm a pragmatist, not an idealist, so I suspect we couldn't get it into all federal programs. When I think of some of the youth internship programs that were typically sponsored by what used to be Industry Canada, which encouraged young people to get involved in technology, there was a program that worked with the non-profit sector. While we created employment, we were also doing career development skills. However, that was never mandatory. I think there is a lot of money flowing into work programs that don't require a genuine, detailed approach to career development.

It's particularly important for young people, but it would also be true for people who are older and who are trying to re-engage in the workforce. It's not just about giving people a job; it's about giving them the skills they need, often the soft skills, to know how to go to work every day, to know how to show up on time, to know what is appropriate business etiquette. These things are not necessarily second nature to everyone.

I would really like to see a strong emphasis on far more career development, which is why I've recommended that there be a round table of non-profit leaders who can speak more fully to this aspect and work with the federal government to see where the real opportunities are.

I certainly don't have all the answers now. I do know that it's a real weakness in the work that we're doing and that we need to be able to get much better at doing that.

[Jennifer O'Connell, Liberal, Pickering—Uxbridge, ON]

Thank you for that clarification. That was helpful.

I would suspect that for new Canadians, these types of career development skills follow within your approach. It's not just for young people.

[Penelope Rowe]

Absolutely. It would also apply to people who have mental health issues, for example. Not everybody can work nine to five. Perhaps we need to be able to look at career development with a much more flexible trajectory for many employees and to find more flexible workplaces.

That's all directly related to career development and the kinds of skills that we need to have, but it also speaks to the way in which employers create their workplaces. There needs to be this greater understanding of where people can work, how they can work, and how they can be productive citizens. We can't leave behind vulnerable clients, people with disabilities, people with mental health issues. This career development piece is essential to helping us shore up the ability of all Canadians to be productive.

[Jennifer O'Connell, Liberal, Pickering—Uxbridge, ON]

Thank you.

I will turn now to the St. John's Board of Trade, to whoever would like to answer. I appreciate and understand your brief and your comments in terms of some of the proposed tax changes, but I do have limited time in terms of questioning. As we complete this process for pre-budget consultations, and in keeping with our study, I completely understand what you and your members don't think is helpful to businesses—small businesses, in this case—but do you have suggestions or recommendations?

You said at the onset, in terms of the white paper released in July, that you had a different set of ideas that you probably would have submitted to this committee for pre-budget consultations. Do you want to take a minute or two—I probably don't even have that long—to outline some of the recommendations that we might be able to consider that would help growth for small businesses and help your members?

[Nancy Healey]

As my colleague pointed out, the tax system in Canada is complicated. We've made Band-Aid changes over the last 40 years, since 1971 or 1972. We really need to start over again. One of the things that my colleagues and I across the country did, through the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, was to pass a resolution at our meeting in Fredericton at the end of September for a royal commission inquiry into the federal tax act. It needs a comprehensive overview.

There seems to be a lot of desire to become more like a Scandinavian country, yet we're sitting next to a neighbour, the United States, that is anti-tax and anti-regulation, so we have to find some sort of balance. We have high levels of provincial taxation and municipal taxation. Every other OECD country or G7 country is much more compact, and their federal government is much stronger than their regional governments. All of that has to be taken into consideration. Our tax act has run its course. It's a 20th century tax act. We're in the 21st century now. Things have changed. It's about time our tax system was updated and changed, so we're calling for a full review. Let's not do more Band-Aids. Let's fix it from scratch.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

While we're with the St. John's Board of Trade, I have a question.

You mentioned the Atlantic growth strategy in your original submission. What recommendations do you have to improve it or make it work more effectively? Do you have any thoughts on the Atlantic growth strategy? It was listed in your original brief.

[Nancy Healey]

We certainly are encouraged by it, and the themes that are there, from innovation to immigration, are critically important. It's still in its development stages. Tourism, we would agree, has big potential for Atlantic Canada. I'm not so sure about the Chinese angle on that one. I come from a tourism industry association background from years ago, which is why I'm familiar with that file.

Clean tech, innovation, and immigration are critically important. We have the most rapidly aging population in all of Canada here. We have a critical need for immigration. We met with your colleague the parliamentary secretary for IRCC a while back. I think that whatever stumbling blocks there are to getting people, the Government of Canada really should have an immigration number of 1% of the population, over 300,000. There's a lot of emphasis now on skilled workers. One of the things we also need in this country and in this province is unskilled workers. We did a good job of bringing in a bunch of refugees from Syria a while back. We didn't look at what their skill levels were. Maybe we need to do a bit more of that too.

For the most part, we're encouraged by the Atlantic growth strategy and are still waiting to see how it plays out.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Mr. Albas is next.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all of our witnesses for their expertise and for sharing so much with us today.

I'd like to start with the mining industry. Thank you very much for your presentation, sir.

You mentioned the importance of certain programs with zero waste, etc. Highland Valley Copper is in my riding in British Columbia. One of the benefits of increased efficiency and innovation and whatnot that reduce the footprint, so to speak, is that they have extended the mine life by 20-plus years, which is incredibly important to a small community called Logan Lake. Do you have examples of similar operations in which taking into account both innovation and reduction of waste has led to increased efficiency as far as shelf life of the mines goes?

[Ed Moriarity]

I can speak to one example in the Baie Verte Peninsula. There was an open-pit mine, and the open pit was reaching the point of exhaustion. The company was interested in bringing other deposits, both from the local area and from Nova Scotia, into their mill. They proposed that they use the pit as a tailings facility. That's probably not so much an innovation as it is a practicality—looking at the reality of what you have on the ground and utilizing that to your benefit.

Second, the company entered into an agreement with a number of other partners to sell their waste rock as aggregate into the Carolinas. That's another way of getting value from what you have by thinking a little bit beyond the box. Sometimes it's a little bit about being creative.

Looking ahead at the mining industry as a whole, relative to other extractive industries, you start with a large amount of land. Let's say you need the whole table area here to do exploration. You get down to some targets, and you find that you need to narrow it down and narrow it down. Your footprint, at the end of the day, can be small, but we believe we can, as an industry, do better internally over time to improve our processes—Canada being a leader in this area—and leverage our technologies to better ends.

Digital mining is another area where we need to step up a little bit further. We also need to look at the benefit of what we're going to do for the world in terms of the low-carbon economy. Minerals are very much necessary for the electrification of vehicles and for changes in how we approach a low-carbon economy. We're very encouraged on that aspect.

We've done some things in this province. It's interesting that the mining sector can be a little bit slow to adopt. We had a program here locally called GeoExplore. When it was first rolled out, people were a little bit hesitant to get engaged, but once one or two companies got engaged and people got talking, the next thing we knew, we had 27 projects being pursued.

We have good relationships with the university community, with the College of the North Atlantic and others, to leverage our activities in this regard. We're very proud of that.

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

When we were in Yellowknife, we heard from the NWT & Nunavut Chamber of Mines. They put forward support for the objective of having the tax credit for mineral exploration extended, not just on a yearly basis but for at least three years. I would almost say five years, but again, obviously there are cycles, and you don't want to overstimulate something.

Do you agree that a three-year extension would give greater certainty to your industry?

[Ed Moriarity]

Yes, sir, I do, from the point of view of where it's tracking right now in terms of exploration. There is a need to replace the mines that are becoming exhausted across the country and to see more dollars come into the Canadian exploration sector. Otherwise, those dollars will go elsewhere. They can go to South America. They can go to Australia.

We need to ensure that we can speak to investors and tell them they can look ahead for three years and see some certainty in terms of that piece. It de-risks a project further and encourages more activity to come in. Three years is certainly a position that is supported by the PDAC, our association, and the Canadian Mineral Industry Federation as a collective group in the country.

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

You also mentioned the need for geoscience. Not all provinces have the same tax base. In the territories they have a large land mass, obviously, so when we were there, it was a big issue for them to have that science done. There is innovation coming within that as well. Drone technology is being used increasingly. You can fit a small airplane, controlled by an operator off-site, to check and see if there are mineral deposits, using magnets.

In regard to geoscience, what kinds of investments does your province require?

[Ed Moriarity]

Well, geoscience typically has a provincial activity base, as does mining. The Newfoundland and Labrador geoscience group is quite active in terms of their programming, but with limited funds. I'm sure they could always do with more support. The beauty of the federal program is that GEM augments or complements northern areas of Canada. Labrador being, of course, the near north, they have active programs in terms of the GEM piece there. The federal government certainly can continue to see opportunity in opening up our mineral potential and can participate collaboratively with both industry and the provinces in that regard.

How do we get more money in the ground? Well, we can look at other ways in terms of innovation. There's a lot of core left in the woods. There are ways to extract data from that core. There are technical digitization methods. There are ways to build a new story from an existing set of past experiences for companies. There are lots of ways to look at what you just described with regard to the technical piece.

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

Thank you to everyone for your contributions today.

I just want to say to Mr. Miller that my uncle, who I'm named after, is actually a sociologist. I just want it to be on the record that he commits sociology every day.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

All right, Dan.

Mr. Grewal, you're the last questioner to this panel.

[Raj Grewal, Liberal, Brampton East, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the panellists for coming today.

My first question is for Ms. Rowe.

You commented on the Canada summer jobs program. One of the unique things about being a backbench MP is that you can actually control that one program and where its funding goes. It's been very beneficial to my riding of Brampton East.

There has been a lot of discussion about increasing the program to go year round so that we can really target youth unemployment. What are your comments on how you think that would work?

[Penelope Rowe]

I think that would be a splendid idea. Obviously, if it is not only a summer program, then it has to be offered to either high school graduates who are taking a gap year or to recent graduates, which is a really good way to go. There have been programs in the past that have, in fact, encouraged the hiring of recent graduates.

Just to speak to the summer program for a minute, all the research across the country—and I don't know whether this would apply in Brampton as well—indicates that there is a much greater demand for that program than there is funding available. The end result is that a lot of people don't get funded. Even the students who do get approved are getting very short numbers of workweeks, and that's a real challenge, because when you're working for only four or five weeks, you don't necessarily get the full benefit you really need from your summer program.

There have been programs particularly around youth internships in the technology field. That was a wonderful program for high-tech companies, but it was also very useful to non-profits, which were able to provide really good ways for people with technical skills to help develop other organizations.

I'm all over a year-round program. I'm sorry I didn't recommend it.

[Raj Grewal, Liberal, Brampton East, ON]

It's something I personally have been looking into to see if we can recommend it. I think there also needs to be a more targeted approach in areas where youth unemployment is higher than the national average. In Brampton East I live in a very much upper middle-class riding where youth unemployment is not that high, but we still received $500,000. It's great for the local MP, but is it best for the country, moving forward? That's something we'll take away.

You mentioned mentorship. I'm a product of great mentorship. I used to work for the Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development when I was 19, and 10 years later I get to sit alongside him in the House, so I'm a big fan. We've been trying to start mentorship programs in our riding. The problem is that we can't get young Canadians engaged enough. I almost feel that the mentors are ready but the mentees aren't, and you can't force a child to participate.

What are your comments on how we could do a better job of that?