Evidence of meeting #147 for Finance in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was workers.
A video is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Dan Albas Conservative Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC
So, how can Veterans Affairs Canada—which, I would imagine, is supposed to be treating veterans fairly regardless of what province or territory they reside in, come into this with a standard that is different from anyone else's?
Co-Founder, Paws Fur Thought
Well, actually the easiest move afoot is for Veterans Affairs Canada to contract with the B.C. government to use their standard, which will also be the Nova Scotia standard, to bring it across the country, translate it into French as appropriate and put in the inter-agency reciprocity.
The other problem is that although Veterans Affairs is involved in the financial benefits, this actually involves the justice department, because it deals with legal matters, and the health department, because the medical expense tax credit falls under it. In effect, what we really need is an inter-agency and interdepartmental group to sort this out and if, at the end of day, we wind up with one national standard that has provincial reciprocity, we will have solved a lot of problems.
Conservative
Dan Albas Conservative Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC
Do we proceed with this then, knowing that that work hasn't been done in this bill with this credit?
Co-Founder, Paws Fur Thought
Yes, because currently the medical expense tax credit is available to all the other service dogs that are there. It's embedded in the ITA. You can see it. The sole exception is those dogs that we're using for mental health injuries. I'm avoiding using that “p” word on purpose because it's a stigmatizing word. So you cannot take the benefit and say “okay we need to delay this because we don't have the legislation” because the exact same legislation doesn't apply to any of those other dogs and they have none either, but they are included in the act.
Conservative
Dan Albas Conservative Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC
Veterans Affairs needs to change the way it looks at this. Instead of putting in an arbitrary standard, they should just say, “If you have a dog and it's for these legitimate purposes, let's be practical.”
Co-Founder, Paws Fur Thought
Well, we need a practical standard.
The other side of this is that—and we have to be very careful here—we do not run the risk of just opening the floodgates and letting people run willy-nilly and hither and yon.
For those of you who are familiar, last Wednesday in Quebec an ICU nurse was bitten by a supposed service dog while she was on duty in a pediatric ICU. The dog that bit her was the child's father's service dog, allegedly—not allegedly that he bit, but allegedly that the dog is a service dog. So in some cases, this complex issue really needs to be addressed. Unfortunately, there are several departments that are not playing well with each other. Currently Public Works is embroiled in a slugfest—and that's the best word I can come up with—with Veterans Affairs. Veterans Affairs has been made well aware of the issues we're having. As you may or may not know, the national standards went into a complete state of disarray in the middle of April. All work formally ceased, although that work had informally ceased back in early February and, unfortunately, the record will show that Veterans Affairs knew about it and failed to act upon it. So given that kind of track record, I'm dubious that we're going to get this sorted out, but it does not change the fact that those standards are completely separate from the medical expense tax credit.
Liberal
Francesco Sorbara Liberal Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and welcome, everyone.
This question is for the BDC. In my riding for York region, we have the main BDC head office on Highway 7 and Vaughan. I've met with the officials there, and the team is doing great work.
How quickly can we get the $1.4-billion investment in women entrepreneurs out the door? Is the program up and running yet? Can you provide some details?.
Vice-President, Partnerships and Government Relations, Business Development Bank of Canada
The program is up and running. One of the things I want to do over the course of the year.... You may have noticed in the budget that there was also an announcement about the boot camps that we're going to be running.
What we'd like to do with those boot camps is, obviously, to have them across the country, and use them as an opportunity to bring together the partners we work with, whether the WEOC, Startup Canada, Futurpreneur, or some of the other partners, EDC, and others, to really catalyze our support around women entrepreneurs, and to try to get the word out through them.
We're creating some other online tools to be more visible. One of the things we learned about ourselves is that while we do a fairly good job in terms of the treatment of the loan, once the loan application is made, our loan applications by women are lower than by men. We want to solve that problem.
Liberal
Francesco Sorbara Liberal Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON
I think this program is great. It will take a few years to start showing a lot of dividends in terms of how these entities are performing, and we also need to track that.
Turning to Mr. Milligan at UBC, one of the things you may have commented on the Canada workers benefit, or WITB. One of the big things we aim to do with our budget, and with the BIA, is to increase labour force participation rates, especially when we face the headwind of many people withdrawing from the labour force. Our population may be getting bigger, but there are many people actually withdrawing from the labour force—many baby boomers, and the like. Recently, I've had many people tell me, “I'm retiring, I'm 58” or “I have a pension. I'm 65, and I'm out”.
The Canada workers benefit—and I don't know if you've done statistical modelling of this—should not only lift people out of poverty via the the auto-enrollment, but also encourage people to enter the labour force.
It may not be at the level, numerically, where you want it to be, in terms of where the threshold is, because you have the upward trajectory, the threshold, and then the clawback, but I want to hear your take on the labour force participation angle, because that's very important.
Prof. Kevin Milligan
Thinking about the people in the riding you mentioned, people close to retirement age, it is important for the Canadian economy as we go forward to make sure that we make use of the resources that we have in our economy. One is the wealth of experience, ability, and attitude of our seniors, our near seniors. We want to make sure, for those who want to work, that work pays for them.
This kind of benefit that pays you a supplement if you work part-time, for example, would maybe provide a way for some people who may have retired from their main career or job to keep some attachment to their community and to the workplace through a part-time job that might earn them $20,000, or something like that. This would give them a bit of a bonus, a bit of a push, to keep that connection, which is important for them and for their connection to society and to the economy as a whole.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Wayne Easter
I thank all of the witnesses for their presentations and answers today.
Tomorrow morning we will meet in this room at 8:45. We've heard the evidence on part 5 of this bill, the proposed greenhouse gas pollution pricing act. We'll start with questions for departmental officials. If we have time, we will move to the proposed changes to the Financial Administration Act included in division 1 of part 6, and on through division 2 to division 4. That's the agenda for tomorrow.
The meeting is adjourned.