Finance Committee on Oct. 4th, 2018

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Thank you very much. I would like to move on to Mr. Mullally from Goldcorp.

It's nice to see you, John.

I have a quick question. The U.S. put into place a number of fiscal measures at the beginning of the year. You mentioned the capital cost allowance, which is something I've spent a lot of time talking about in the committee deliberations so far. I think—if I can use a hunting approach—a rifle approach is needed, and capital cost allowance would be beneficial to a lot of businesses in Canada.

Could you comment on that, please?

[John Mullally]

Yes. One thing I've remarked about is that in the mining industry, we need to really focus on later-stage technologies that are beyond technology readiness levels like six, seven, eight, and nine. There are things there, opportunities, many of which would be supplied by Canadian suppliers, things like the battery-electric vehicles and many of the water-reduction technologies we're currently investing in. There is risk aversion. If you invest, for example, a billion dollars in a capital project, then you're often prone to using these proven technologies and things that date back sometimes. These are the things that handcuff large resource companies at times so that those types of incentives, when it comes to capital, and other means, I think kind of tip the scale on those investments.

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

I'm going to ask a question on behalf of a member who's not here, Mr. McLeod, who represents the Northwest Territories. I know a lot of the diamond mines up north are utilizing skilled folks from the indigenous community. Can you comment on how important it is that we use this resource that we're blessed with and on what companies like Goldcorp and other producers in that sector are doing to encourage them to enter the labour force?

[John Mullally]

First of all, the mining sector is the largest private sector employer of indigenous people. Second, we operate in remote and northern communities, alongside many communities, so we offer, in fact, very good opportunities for people to work in proximity to their homes in some cases, instead of their going to other urban centres. I think the biggest thing we've noticed is that programs need to be designed to bridge, in some cases, the cultural understanding and, if you're working in a remote destination like our Coffee project in Yukon, to bring people in very early on to understand the dynamics of working at a remote site for a week and then going home for a week and then coming back. These are things around pre-employment-type programs that have been really effective. Not everyone is necessarily going to work at a mine site, but you're better able to ascertain that fit early on and develop a better understanding.

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Thank you. I'll stop you there.

I'd like to go to the University of Ontario Institute of Technology. One thing I've spoken to—and I learned this when I first had the privilege of serving as a member of parliament—is this notion called parity of esteem, which I heard about from the Germans. If someone goes to an institute or a tech or a polytechnic for training, versus going and becoming a lawyer or going into sociology or history, these are all great pursuits in their own right, but it's about encouraging young people to become an auto technician for Mercedes or for some company, which is very high tech, versus maybe going and getting a liberal arts degree, and to have parity of esteem. It is so important that we encourage equality in terms of how we view these things. I think, sometimes, it is a little bit off-kilter these days.

Can you talk about that? Our government has made a large commitment to universities, both on the operating or capital side and for fundamental research, as I call it. Can you comment on that as well, please?

[Dr. Steven Murphy]

In our sector, colleges and universities are working more hand in glove. What you'll find is that our university students will graduate and move on to a college system. We share a campus with Durham College, so the mobility is high, and you will see Durham College students graduate and become our students.

The challenge for us is always at all levels. It's about making parents more aware and making kids, as they're moving through school, more aware of where sector skill shortages exist, and how we can work collectively with our partners at the K to grade 12 level to think about how we prepare the workforce of the future.

As you rightly point out, we need people with varied skills, and we need them in varied areas. Reducing the stigma of what it means to go to college has come a long way, but certainly around the trades, there's room to improve. The fact that we see more and more universities and colleges working hand in glove is a good indicator, and we're certainly committed to doing even more of that work.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Ms. Alleslev.

[Leona Alleslev]

The downside to having many more witnesses is that we don't get additional time to ask questions, so I apologize in advance and thank everyone for great presentations.

I'd like to focus the bulk of my questions toward you, Mr. Pedlar, because it is incredibly important work, but also very complex work that not everyone understands.

Could you give us an idea of what your scope is and what, perhaps, you would like it to be in terms of the populations that you include? Certainly, you'd include veterans, but where are you with military personnel, so that we can track it right from before people serve to while they are serving? Are there things we can do to be proactively preventive? Could you also include first responders and the RCMP? And where does Health Canada fit into this?

[Dr. David Pedlar]

Let me go back to the beginning, briefly. Why would we start something like this in the first place? We know that military personnel and veterans do have unique issues. I clearly made that point. When the institute started in 2010, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research did not have an institute for military and veteran health, nor were veterans a special population, nor are they a special population now.

It meant that, although the problems were increasing among military and veteran populations through the 1990s, and through Afghanistan, Canada didn't have its best talent at the table to address these problems. That's at the heart of the void that I mentioned at the beginning, and then we covered—

[Leona Alleslev]

We made them a special group.

[Dr. David Pedlar]

We covered the entire waterfront at CIMVHR, which means that we covered military personnel, veterans, the RCMP, and increasingly we've been working with a sister organization called CIPSRT, which operates out of Regina, so that we can have knowledge exchanges in a complementary fashion between first responders and veterans.

[Leona Alleslev]

Are you getting the data from DND? Are you getting the data and support from the RCMP?

[Dr. David Pedlar]

Absolutely. CIMVHR was born in a very close relationship with our government partners. The reason for that is that most of the investment in Canada in military and veteran policy is developed and delivered by government. For example, we have a public service contract by which we're able to help support the science and technology needs of the Canadian Armed Forces, and we're pushing up to about 50 contracts that we've worked on with Veterans Affairs and the Department of National Defence.

[Leona Alleslev]

Could you talk about the funding model? Right now you say you're getting money from Health Canada, but are you getting consistent funding, and where is that funding coming from?

[Dr. David Pedlar]

The Health Canada money, $1 million-a-year, came in 2015, and that was through the health care policy contribution program. That has played a very important role in our development as an organization. It has helped us build a broader network across the country as well as helping us focus more on the implementation of knowledge and findings with both our partners and the broader military and veteran community.

That includes a forum that we run every year that had 700 participants last year. We'll have about 550 next week in Regina. However, the contribution was a non-renewable contribution. In other words, it was a project-based funding model. Our objective is to be sustainable, first of all, and to do everything we do now, except to do it better. That would mean that we would be able to build research nodes across the country, and play a stronger role in developing the capacity of our network.

[Leona Alleslev]

Do you get funding from DND? Is the one-time funding just from Health Canada?

[Dr. David Pedlar]

We got the one-time money from Health Canada. It's about $1 million a year over five years, so $5 million. Our other sources of funding come from work we're doing with industry. Right now we have a contract with—

[Leona Alleslev]

Is it from the private sector as well?

[Dr. David Pedlar]

Yes, that money comes through Babcock in a partnership with IBM, where we're working on big data solutions to veteran health.

[Leona Alleslev]

Obviously, when we put a budget together and we make recommendations to the government, we have to also be able to demonstrate that it's not only for this one group, but that it benefits society as a greater whole.

Could you give us some idea of how this focused research on a very homogenous population informs us in terms of broader Canadian society, and how you then transfer that research and understanding to the broader population? How does it enable us to have a conversation around mental health and PTSD and all those other things that we're finding significantly and dramatically increased in our first responders and our military population?

[Dr. David Pedlar]

First of all, there's a long history of research in the military and veterans sector being transferred to the general population. That actually goes way back through the history of the Department of Veterans Affairs when it ran hospitals across the country.

That stopped through the 1980s and the 1990s, but CIMVHR is the seed for it to regrow again, so that veterans are again part of the—

[Leona Alleslev]

That's what I'm asking you. Please explain to everyone why that's so important, not only to that population group but also to the broader society, because we had it, we lost it, and now we need to get it back.

[Dr. David Pedlar]

The innovations we developed in the areas of mental health, like PTSD treatment for example, and suicide prevention—an area we're very active in right now—can and will transfer to other populations. The ones we've been working with most closely have been other uniformed, trauma-exposed populations, but those innovations can transfer to other Canadians.

We have engagement with other populations through Health Canada and through the Public Health Agency. Our annual forum, which brings everyone together, does not just include the military and veterans sector. It also includes other sectors, and we're actively involved in impact and knowledge translation.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Thank you both.

Mr. Julian.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Thanks to all witnesses. Wow, there has been a lot of very good testimony to us today.

I'm going to try to get through as many questions as I can, so I'll ask you to keep your answers relatively short. I'll start with Mr. Rowlinson and Mr. DeRochie.

Mr. Rowlinson, you spoke very eloquently about the issue of the just transition and the possibility of developing our economy. We know, because the building trades have told us, that the renewable energy market in North America, particularly in the United States, is going to quadruple over the next decade or more. The federal government investing in a very marked and substantial way in that just transition creates jobs for those tradespeople, as other countries have seen, and provides us with the means to avoid the increasing catastrophes we're seeing under climate change.

The examples from this summer, as we've heard from other witnesses, include dozens of deaths in Quebec, the heat waves and wildfires in British Columbia and Ontario, and record flooding in southern Ontario. You have tremendous economic costs of climate change—$3 to $4 billion dollars and climbing—yet the federal government is providing $7 million a year, which is basically just tiny crumbs compared to the costs of climate change and the subsidies going to the petroleum industry.

What is the best way to make the investments in just transition, and is the federal government doing anything adequately at all to actually speed that just transition and the jobs that will be created from it?

I'll start with Mr. Rowlinson and then ask Mr. DeRochie to answer the same question.