Evidence of meeting #176 for Finance in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was funding.
A recording is available from Parliament.
President, Chamber of Shipping
Thank you. That's another great question.
I would echo everything Duncan Wilson said from the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority. I think he covered the response really well. The success of developing port infrastructure or private capital investment is critical. There's a balance to be had. They need strong environmental reviews and also the ability to do that in a fair and expedited way. I think that would suffice.
Conservative
Pat Kelly Conservative Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB
So regarding port authorities, this addresses a problem that doesn't exist?
President, Chamber of Shipping
I think it could. Again, the devil's in the details of how the regulations fall out of that proposed act. There's still work to be done there.
Conservative
Pat Kelly Conservative Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB
Okay.
I'll shift a bit and ask Ms. Govender a question.
You made some great points here, pointing out that access to a legal service is an incredibly important problem that faces Canadian society now. This is not new. This goes back decades, in fact centuries, with regard to access to justice and the obstacles that exist.
If I understood your specific federal ask correctly, you said you would like to see legal assistance included as a specific earmarked portion of the Canadian social transfer. That's your federal ask here at committee?
Executive Director, West Coast LEAF
Yes. I'd like to see what was in the justice committee report from 2017. It was earmarked funds and an increase in funds. It was both of those things, and they were targeted at civil legal aid, not just legal aid in general.
Conservative
Pat Kelly Conservative Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB
Okay. So you would like to see an increase in funding—
Conservative
Pat Kelly Conservative Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB
—and also targeted.
Part of the problem has been that you can target funds through the transfer, and yet a province will sometimes not spend its funds as targeted or as per the transfer. Would you recommend specific mechanisms to ensure that if such transfers are made they are truly spent where they're earmarked?
Executive Director, West Coast LEAF
I believe that every province has a legal aid society. Certainly all the provinces whose legal aid systems I'm familiar with have a legal aid society. That transfer can be made directly. I know that in the last budget there was a commitment to fund legal services around sexual harassment. I've been a little bit involved in consulting on how that happens. That's been targeted. Some of that is going to happen through a grant-based body—that's how I understand it—but one of the mechanisms they were considering was directly through the legal aid bodies. I would fully support that, certainly in British Columbia and the ones that I know about.
Conservative
Pat Kelly Conservative Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB
I'm not sure if I have a short one. I was hoping for time to get to Mr. Kershaw.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Wayne Easter
Anyway, Pat, we'll have time to come back. We'll have another round.
Mr. Julian.
NDP
Peter Julian NDP New Westminster—Burnaby, BC
Thanks, Mr. Chair.
Thanks to the witnesses, and thanks to the folks who came from the Lower Mainland and made that overseas trip to come to Victoria. It's good to have you here.
I'd like to start with you, Ms. Govender. You've been very articulate about the cost of not having an adequate legal aid framework in place. There are $100 million in court costs in B.C. alone. I imagine that if we expanded that, it would be over a billion dollars nationally. There are half a billion dollars in EI payments, and other costs that are probably equivalent to at least half a billion dollars, so it's costing us billions of dollars not to have an effective legal aid framework in place.
You mentioned the issue of adequate funding. That would be the heart of the argument. Do you have any idea of the figures it would take to adequately fund legal aid across this country so that we can eliminate those huge costs that we're seeing now and provide support for folks in the legal system?
Executive Director, West Coast LEAF
I can't give a figure off the top of my head, but I can tell you that the budget for legal aid in B.C. is approximately $80 million, so even if you looked at doubling that.... I'm not asking the federal government to double that amount, but we would like to see the overall budget for legal aid go up to at least double. That wouldn't be much, right? It would be a really small drop in the provincial budget.
We're not talking about huge dollars across the country. The budgets vary quite radically in different provinces, so it's a hard number to give, but I am more familiar with the legal aid budget in B.C., as I say. The CBABC has done some of the costing of that in terms of their ask to the provincial government. Again, I don't have that at my fingertips, but I would direct you to CBABC's “An Agenda for Justice – Platform Updates 2018”. They've done one for each year for the last few provincial elections, so they've done some of that costing out.
NDP
Peter Julian NDP New Westminster—Burnaby, BC
Is it possible that you could provide that to the committee as well?
Executive Director, West Coast LEAF
I'd be happy to. I apologize for not having a written brief. I was invited only last week, so I didn't get a chance to prepare that.
NDP
Peter Julian NDP New Westminster—Burnaby, BC
We're pleased to have you here. It's very important that you're here. We take the information people give in testimony and in briefs prior to the meeting but also after the fact before we prepare the report.
NDP
Peter Julian NDP New Westminster—Burnaby, BC
If you do have any corresponding national figures or figures from other provinces.... It would seem to me that when it's costing us billions of dollars, plus all of the hardship that comes from not having adequate access to the legal system.... I think everyone around this table understands what happens when people can't get adequate defence in the legal system because they don't have the money. There are more than enough horrific stories about what the impacts are. Just on a financial cost-benefit basis, it seems very clear to me that making those investments in legal aid not only avoids that hardship and a wide variety of tragedies and catastrophes but it is also of benefit to the Canadian economy and to Canadian public policy.
Executive Director, West Coast LEAF
Absolutely. If I can just make one clarifying point there, the reason I raised that provincial budget amount is just to point to the CBA number that I gave you, which is about $100 million in savings in the provincial court per year. They're spending $80 million on legal aid. On that one measure, it's outweighed per year by costs within the justice system just in provincial court, not in superior court. I'll get those numbers to you if I can.
NDP
Peter Julian NDP New Westminster—Burnaby, BC
Thank you very much. I'll move on to Mr. Kershaw.
You've been very eloquent in determining the importance of the different generational spending. I certainly support your recommendation. There's also the issue of intergenerational revenues.
When we talk about public policy, we're talking about public spending but also public revenues. We now have the Parliamentary Budget Officer who, finally after a five-year struggle under the previous and current governments, has been able to obtain the tax-gap information—the statistics on the money that goes offshore into tax havens. It's estimated to be anywhere from $20 billion to $40 billion a year in lost tax revenues. We will find out within the span of a few months from the Parliamentary Budget Officer what that tax gap is.
Isn't that important to take into consideration as well? I would assume, and we'll find out from the PBO, that it is primarily older Canadians who benefit from these overseas tax havens—in other words, not paying their fair share of taxes. Younger Canadians on salaries are paying their fair share of taxes, and often we're seeing people in low-wage jobs paying more than the corporate CEO who runs the company that they're working for. Shouldn't that be part of the equation as well, this inequality in revenues now that comes from various generations compared to their actual income?
Founder, Generation Squeeze
That's an excellent question. It's a very broad question. I'm not an expert on tax evasion offshore. I tend to be somebody who always has to dig into the data, and there's been a dearth of data about offshore issues. I'm happy to hear the PBO is now going to be sharing that more generally with the research community.
Broadly speaking, here are some key things for federal parliamentarians to bear in mind. In the mid-1990s we started to grapple more with the fact that we were going to have an aging population. We said back then with regard to our Canada public pension plan: “Wow, we started this when there were seven workers for every senior. We set the benefits at that level. It's not going to be that way indefinitely.” In the mid-1990s, we had a big conversation about the CPP and adjusted it accordingly.
Ironically, we didn't do the same thing for old age security or medical care, and we should know that about 50¢ of every medical care dollar goes to the population over 65. That's not necessarily a bad thing. As I said, my grandmother uses more than probably any other Canadian in the country, and I'm appreciative of it.
We do have a problem now where, as GDP per capita has gone up, two things have happened: we have reduced income tax rates, although we're able to collect slightly more taxes because people are more affluent; and then we have simultaneously prioritized two things that were built in the past to get additional money. What's happening now is that we ask younger people to spend, over their working lives, what could add up to as much as $18,000 more today than in the past towards medical care and old age security for the loved ones in their lives who are elderly, while then saying on everything else, we're going to have people contribute less in tax revenue.
That is the issue. We're collecting less revenue for everything else, but growing old age security and medical care, which is why, then, a younger demographic is asking how the government will address the big things in their life, why child care still costs as much as a mortgage payment, and why parental leave, despite the changes that have been made recently, still means a major hit to our financial well-being the moment we have a new person in the household.
I could go on, but you don't have much time, so I'll stop.