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.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Leigh Anne Swayne  As an Individual
Catherine Choi  As an Individual
Patricia Baye  As an Individual
David Stinson  As an Individual
Randall Joynt  As an Individual
Janelle Hatch  As an Individual
Lori Nolt  As an Individual
Maclaren Forrest  As an Individual
Catharine Robertson  As an Individual
Kim Rudd  Northumberland—Peterborough South, Lib.
Matt Jeneroux  Edmonton Riverbend, CPC
Anthony Ariganello  President and Chief Executive Officer, Chartered Professionals in Human Resources Canada
Vern Brownell  President and Chief Executive Officer, D-Wave Systems Inc.
Alejandro Adem  Chief Executive Officer and Scientific Director, Mitacs
Sven Biggs  Energy and Climate Campaigner, Stand.earth
Duncan Wilson  Vice President, Corporate Social Responsibility, Vancouver Fraser Port Authority
Warren Wall  Executive Vice-President, Corporate Affairs, D-Wave Systems Inc.
Robert Lewis-Manning  President, Chamber of Shipping
Jeanette Jackson  Managing Director, Foresight Cleantech Accelerator Centre
Paul Kershaw  Founder, Generation Squeeze
Victor Ling  President and Scientific Director, Terry Fox Research Institute
Kasari Govender  Executive Director, West Coast LEAF
Bradly Wouters  Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, University Health Network, Toronto, Terry Fox Research Institute
Bonnie Gee  Vice-President, Chamber of Shipping
Anna Vanessa Hammond  As an Individual
Mavis DeGirolamo  As an Individual

11 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Wayne Easter

Thank you.

We will turn to Generation Squeeze and Mr. Kershaw, the founder.

11 a.m.

Dr. Paul Kershaw Founder, Generation Squeeze

Good morning. Thanks for having me.

My name is Paul Kershaw. I'm a professor at the University of British Columbia and founder of Generation Squeeze.

Gen Squeeze is a voice for younger Canadians and politics in the market backed by cutting-edge research. In your role, you may know of the Canadian Association of Retired Persons, or CARP. We're building the CARP for younger Canada.

Adapting to an aging population is not going to be new to anyone on this panel. Just as a reminder, back in the day when we started some of our major social programs, there were about seven workers for every retiree. Now there are fewer than four workers, and it won't be long before there are fewer than three.

That has huge implications for economic growth and competitiveness. Data shows that as the share of the population over 60 increases by 10%, literally our GDP per person drops by over 5%. That poses a big challenge to folks like you, who are having to anticipate how we adapt and meet the financial and health needs of our aging population, like my mom, who's a senior, and my 102-year-old grandmother, who probably uses more public investment than any other Canadian in the country while simultaneously having to meet the needs of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

The data there is weak. The data shows that the typical young adult today makes thousands less for full-time work once you adjust for inflation, even though they're more than twice as likely to have post-secondary education. They start very often with student debt for that luxury and then face home prices that have exploded by hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Alas, it's hard for folks like you to actually plan appropriately, because Canadian governments never break down our revenue and spending trends by age. Although this now happens on a routine basis for EU member countries, we don't do it in Canada, so I come with one very simple ask, and it turns out to be inexpensive: We need to begin, at the federal level, reporting how revenue and spending break down by age on an annual basis. In doing so, we would essentially put age into the “plus” of GBA+, or gender-based analysis plus, which we launched last year.

Why do this? It's a pretty straightforward answer. The goal ought to be organizing budgets that work for all generations. The data suggests that some troubling patterns are emerging in the academic literature, and it would be great if the Department of Finance could actually dig in and confirm if they are also worried about some of these trends.

When should we start? We can do it by the 2019 budget.

Who would perform the analysis? The Department of Finance.

What would it cost? I believe this will be your least expensive ask for the 2019 budget year: one staff person's time.

How would the analysis be performed? We already have a peer review methodology developed at the University of British Columbia that could be adopted outright, or adapted, as judged appropriate, by that one talented staff person in Finance.

What would parliamentarians learn? It would be three things.

First, on a routine basis, you would know how spending and revenue have played out by age in that current year. For instance, looking back on the last budget, you would see that in 2018 the Government of Canada increased its annual spending on the old age security system by $16 billion as of 2022. By contrast, the additional spending for child care and parental leave didn't even grow by a billion dollars. If the latter two things got bullet points in the press release, the old age security increase didn't even get a bullet point there.

We would also have a chance to see trends over time. Those trends would show that over the last four decades we have increased spending on people over 65 in Canada—like my deserving, lovely grandmother, who is 102—at a rate that's four times faster than we've increased spending on her kids, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Simultaneously, we would also learn that we're asking a younger demographic to pay considerably more in taxes today for medical care and old age security for those over 65.

Last, we'd have a chance to look at how debt and deficits have been unfolding. One of the things that we can see over the last four decades is that after adjusting for economic growth and inflation, debt per person under the age of 45 has increased from about $15,000 in today's terms to over $45,000, while the ecological debts that we leave for younger people are also three times larger. This is because we now need to reduce our ecological footprint per person at a rate that is three times faster than we have done over the last four decades if we're going to meet our climate commitments to the Paris accord and fend off some of the very worrisome predictions that came out again from the UN intergovernmental panel just recently.

Why might you not do it?

There's really only one reason. The most common concern is that if we report age patterns in spending, it's divisive, kind of pitting younger Canadians versus older Canadians.

Similar sorts of things have been said in the past about providing data broken down by gender. We're going to pit men against women, or if we do indigenous Canadians versus non-indigenous Canadians.... While we could be understanding of those concerns, generally we think they're self-defeating. We're all in this together, and more information is generally better.

It is now absolutely worthwhile for us to put age into the plus of GBA+. In fact, age is already identified in the language; it's just not yet being operationalized. Your jobs will be so much easier to do if you have that excellent information before you.

Thank you very much.

11:05 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Wayne Easter

Thank you very much, Paul.

Next we have, from the Terry Fox Research Institute, Mr. Ling, president and scientific director, as well as Mr. Wouters.

Welcome.

11:05 a.m.

Dr. Victor Ling President and Scientific Director, Terry Fox Research Institute

Thank you.

I want to introduce Dr. Brad Wouters. He's a senior scientist at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre and executive vice-president of the University Health Network in Toronto.

The Terry Fox Research Institute, or TFRI, supports cancer research by investing money raised by the three million-plus Canadians who participate in the Terry Fox Run each September. Based on the advice of international experts, we fund world-class Canadian teams of scientists and physicians to pursue cutting-edge research to improve outcomes for cancer patients.

In the past two years, TFRI has embarked on a new and significant project. We have taken steps with our partners to build a Marathon of Hope cancer centres network. This is a powerful, collaborative platform to take full advantage of scientific advances from disruptive technologies such as the mapping of the human genome, high-power computing, artificial intelligence, and high-resolution imaging, so that these and other advances can be applied to benefit cancer patients. The large amount of complex data generated is rationalized so that the right treatment can be given to the right patient at the right time. This is what we call precision medicine.

Precision medicine offers a future in which today's miracles become tomorrow's standard of care. Precision medicine will improve outcomes for all Canadians and will help us spend our health care dollars wisely.

Our Canadian health care system has real advantages for collecting and sharing data. Nevertheless, we are faced with significant challenges at the jurisdictional, cultural and geographic level. TFRI has launched a pilot project to learn how to find solutions to these challenges and how to grow the Marathon of Hope cancer centres network and put it on a solid footing. We have co-invested with the B.C. cancer agency and Princess Margaret Cancer Centre to undertake a $12-million pilot project to see how two top Canadian cancer centres can share real-world data across institutional and provincial boundaries.

In a similar way, we have co-invested in a $6.5-million pilot project in Montreal involving four hospitals, three research institutes and two universities to learn how such a consortium can work together. In the coming months, we will be initiating a pilot project on the Prairies and in Atlantic Canada.

We are ready to launch the Marathon of Hope cancer centres network, where we will take all we have learned from the pilot project to develop proper procedures and data governance models. At the same time, the Terry Fox Foundation and our partner hospital foundation are pledging 50% of the funds necessary to build this network over the next five years, to the tune of $150 million.

We are asking the federal government to match with the other 50% and provide $150 million over the next five years. Funding this network will allow the federal government to play its proper leadership role in health care by supporting innovation.

Canada must take the lead in precision medicine. We cannot rely on profiting from data generated by other countries. The network will ensure gender equality and ensure that people from all regions of Canada are represented in the precision medicine database. The high-quality database collected by the network on a genetically diverse population, including new immigrants and indigenous peoples, will become an incredible national asset. It will enable deep learning and catalyze home-grown innovation. It will attract investments by entrepreneurs and by biotech and pharma industries worldwide.

Canada is really blessed because we have Terry Fox. The Fox family supports this proposal and has endorsed the use of the Marathon of Hope branding to bring us together to build this Team Canada of cancer research and to really become a world leader in precision medicine. With this Marathon of Hope network, we will have the road map to cure cancer and fulfill Terry's dream.

Thank you.

11:10 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Wayne Easter

Thank you very much.

From West Coast LEAF, we have Ms. Govender.

11:10 a.m.

Kasari Govender Executive Director, West Coast LEAF

It's such a pleasure to be here. Thank you for the invitation.

My name is Kasari Govender. I'm the executive director of West Coast LEAF.

Our mandate is to use the law to create a more equal and just society for all people who experience gender-based discrimination. We use the law as a tool to do that.

I want to talk to you today about access to justice, and specifically about federal funding for legal aid. The question posed to us is “What steps can the federal government take to support Canadians to grow the economy in the face of a changing economic landscape?” We believe that funding for civil legal aid is essential to the economic security of Canadians.

West Coast LEAF has worked extensively in the area of access to justice for women, including through the research we've conducted, a multi-year project funded by Status of Women Canada in which we talked to advocates and service providers across the province and heard a lot about how to best meet the legal needs of women in the province. In that process, we also learned a lot about how inadequate legal aid impacts the lives of people and their communities.

To give you a little of context, the state of legal aid in B.C. is one of crisis. It was slashed in 2002. It was cut across the board by 40%. Family law legal aid services were cut by 60%, and poverty law services were eliminated entirely.

There is a very large gap right now between those who can afford to hire a lawyer in a family law matter and those who need it. For example, a person working full time on minimum wage would not qualify for legal aid, yet clearly would not be able to pay a lawyer's fee.

What are the costs of underfunding legal aid? The first, of course, is a disproportionate impact on women. Women are less likely to be able to afford counsel. They're more likely to have primary care for their children and more likely to be victims of spousal violence, so they often have more at stake in family law proceedings. Protracted proceedings that do not have counsel to seek resolution often lead to protracted violence.

The human cost is also felt on children if both sides aren't properly represented, especially in provinces without a children's lawyer in family cases, like B.C. There is insufficient evidence of the child's best interest before the court, and their best interest may not be met.

Children's lives and safety are also at stake when family violence is involved, of course, so unresolved legal problems that lead to escalated tension and violence in the home also affect the well-being of children.

Indigenous people, migrants and people living in poverty are also deeply impacted by the underfunding of legal aid.

The costs are not just those costs on the person side of things: There is also a cost to the public purse. We had a public commission on legal aid in 2011, led by Len Doust. In that context Commissioner Doust said “...short-changing legal aid is a false economy since the costs of unresolved problems are shifted to other government departments in terms of more spending on social and health services, the cost of caring for children in state custody, and so on.”

There are significant extra costs for justice. The Canadian Bar Association has estimated—conservatively, they say—that because of the inefficiencies caused by unrepresented people, if legal aid were properly funded in family and criminal cases, provincial court would see savings of at least $50 million per year. Savings by providing legal aid in poverty law cases are estimated at another $50 million. That's just provincial courts. That's just in those areas. That's just in B.C.

There are significant labour market costs of underfunding legal aid as well. A study in Texas from the Perryman Group found that for every dollar spent on legal aid, there were over seven dollars in benefits in labour market costs, mostly to the private sector. As well, the Canadian Forum on Civil Justice recently estimated that job loss caused by civil and family justice problems account for an estimated $450 million in annual spending on EI.

Health care, of course, is also impacted. Again, the forum estimated that on an annual basis, the additional cost to the health care system as a direct consequence of people experiencing everyday legal problems is estimated at over $100 million.

We know there are also significant costs to the health care system in dealing with the medical problems flowing from violence against women in both the psychological and the physical effects of that violence.

Finally, the forum estimates that public spending on social assistance resulting from everyday legal problems costs an additional $248 million annually. This problem has come to international attention. The CEDAW committee, which is the international committee looking at equality for women, has brought this issue to the attention of the federal government. They called on the federal government to earmark funds in the Canadian social transfer for civil legal aid, to ensure that women have access to justice in all jurisdictions.

The justice committee report—another parliamentary committee report in 2017 on legal aid—recommended that the federal government target increased provincial transfer funds to civil legal aid. I would ask that you make a similar commitment in this committee.

Thank you.

11:20 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Wayne Easter

Thank you very much, Kasari.

For committee members, the next witness, Westport Fuel Systems, couldn't get on the ferry this morning. We used to have that problem in P.E.I., Peter, too, but we built a bridge.

11:20 a.m.

NDP

Peter Julian NDP New Westminster—Burnaby, BC

But you missed the ferry ride.

11:20 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Wayne Easter

That's right, we missed the ferry ride.

Anyway, they presented a brief in August and the remarks that she was going to give will be sent out to members.

With that, we'll turn to questions. The first round is seven minutes.

Go ahead, Ms. Rudd.

11:20 a.m.

Northumberland—Peterborough South, Lib.

Kim Rudd

Thank you, Chair.

What a great panel. I think it will be a very good conversation around the table.

I'm going to start with Kasari.

For full disclosure, my youngest daughter is a family law lawyer, so I've heard this argument before.

Part of the role of this committee and for us as parliamentarians is to understand what the possible solutions would be in a context that we don't necessarily understand. Broadly, yes, we do, but those doing the work, like you and my daughter, have a very intimate knowledge of what some of those solutions might be.

Not just from her but from colleagues as well I have heard some of the suggestions around an alternate dispute resolution system in family law that could indeed provide the process with a more efficient process, reduce the costs, and ensure that there is a well-represented process for participants. Some of the comments coming back to some degree are taken out of the public realm.

One of the things that happens in family law, as you know, is that if there is a split in the family, it's not often amicable. Having children sit in the courtroom while this is playing out...it's similar to Parliament when things get a little bit over the top.

Do you have any suggestions about solutions that may address not just the financial piece...? Also, to your point, your comments around EI, health care, all of that, are extremely important in this process. Do you have any suggestions around what a model might be that could get us where we want to go and maybe address not just the financial issues, but the other issues as well?

11:20 a.m.

Executive Director, West Coast LEAF

Kasari Govender

Yes, I do.

It's not a simple answer, but I'll try to give the simplest one I have.

On the unified family court structure, the federal government, as you know, announced that in the last budget for certain provinces, but not for British Columbia. We're not moving forward with that model yet. I would urge the federal government to make the commitment to funding this model in B.C.

I had the pleasure of meeting with the federal Minister of Justice last week on these related issues. I know that those conversations are somewhat ongoing, but there isn't the financial commitment to do that at this point.

The unified family court structure is a relationship between the superior courts, which are the federally appointed judges—in B.C. that's the B.C. Supreme Court—and the provincial court in the province. There is split jurisdiction over family law matters, which greatly complicates issues. The unified family court structure unifies provincial and Supreme Court jurisdiction just on family law issues, and it simplifies the process.

It also can mean that there's a family justice hub. That can mean there are more integrated services. There can be legal aid clinics attached to these hubs. There can be mediation centres attached to these hubs. There can be legal advocates and paralegals who can do work outside the legal realm, which would cost the system less money if those are equally as accessible. If people need lawyers, they can go to lawyers, but if they don't need the full legal spectrum of services, they can go to this more interdisciplinary approach.

I think that the UFCs are the way to go.

11:20 a.m.

Northumberland—Peterborough South, Lib.

Kim Rudd

Thank you. You did very well. That was the answer I was looking for. You may find on occasion we know what the answer is, but you articulate it much better than we do.

Jeanette, hi. Where did you...?

11:20 a.m.

Managing Director, Foresight Cleantech Accelerator Centre

Jeanette Jackson

That was Peterborough. Now I'm here.

11:20 a.m.

Northumberland—Peterborough South, Lib.

Kim Rudd

When I read your brief, one thing that to me comes out very clearly is that it is a system that isn't accessible. Even though it may have all of the elements that we want or need to get the end result, it's not accessible for a number of reasons.

I don't know whether you're aware, but actually that was a complaint of Export Development Canada as well. It provided a new model with a one-window entrance. A number of the program components you have listed are now part of the EDC model. I wonder whether you knew that.

11:25 a.m.

Managing Director, Foresight Cleantech Accelerator Centre

Jeanette Jackson

Yes. I'm very familiar with EDC. We consider them partners, because we're all trying to work together to find the right mechanisms to help the companies find the best point of access to all these resources.

What we find is that because Foresight is an independent non-profit organization, they have trust in coming to us to lay out what's happening in their company so that we can get them to a point that they are ready to approach various organizations for funding.

I would also say that sometimes the folks assessing the companies might not be those most familiar with what's needed in the industry. They're great at supporting the companies, and they're great at reviewing the applications, but when it comes to vetting the companies, sometimes we're surprised at who gets money and who doesn't. It's an interesting position to be in.

What we do differently from EDC—and again, we work with EDC. At EDC we have folks who are all engaged.... They come to us because we help funnel the companies and, for one thing, get them to a place where they're ready for funding. They need the right team; they need the technology.

It's like going to seek funding from a VC. I don't know whether any of you have fundraised from a VC, but you want to almost get them to the level where they have a market technology.

Then it's understanding who really has funding now. As you know, within NRC IRAP there are often two intakes, and that's it, and then money might become available. There's a lot of uncertainty around when funding can be released and how it can be released.

Export Development Canada are great, because they really foster the concept of exporting technologies to other markets. Some of the funding mechanisms actually prefer that we build the market in Canada. In B.C., hydro is 3¢ a kilowatt. We don't really need a lot of energy companies in B.C., but we'd love the company and the technology to stay here and to then export to the best market they can serve.

Every organization is different, but there's still a big gap.

11:25 a.m.

Northumberland—Peterborough South, Lib.

Kim Rudd

Thank you.

Paul, I was fascinated by your brief. It's something near and dear to my heart. Some of us read Boom, Bust & Echo back in the day when no one was paying attention to this.

I have a couple of things to say for clarity. I will say that I have more research to do now, because there were some assumptions I had that I'm not sure.... You have a lot of figures and data in here that I need a bit more understanding of.

One thing I will ask is this, and a couple of things are playing into it. We have lower birthrates in Canada; we know that.

11:25 a.m.

Founder, Generation Squeeze

11:25 a.m.

Northumberland—Peterborough South, Lib.

Kim Rudd

We need more immigration—we know that—in order to maintain our employment, our standard of living, our tax base, etc. When you talk about the increase in numbers of seniors and the increase in funding to them and a less equitable amount to those under the age of 45, have you factored in the fact that as a percentage there are more seniors than there are—?

11:25 a.m.

Founder, Generation Squeeze

Dr. Paul Kershaw

Absolutely. Let me just answer that question really quickly.

There are four million more seniors today than there were in 1976, and the demographic shift of adding four million people into that category has coincided with a $42 billion increase in annual spending. Let's put that in context. There are also 4.6 million more people under the age of 45 who have post-secondary credentials, and—wait for it—that fact barely budged the post-secondary allocations of spending that we employ provincially.

Simultaneously, there are 2.3 million more women aged 25 to 44 in the labour market today, and yet our budgets for child care and parental leave have increased by about $6 billion in total, largely in Quebec.

I guess the question becomes why a four-million-person change at a later life core stage drove a $42 billion increase in annual spending when a 4.6-million-person change in an earlier life core stage didn't really shift public spending at all.

11:25 a.m.

Northumberland—Peterborough South, Lib.

Kim Rudd

Thank you.

11:25 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Wayne Easter

Thank you, Ms. Rudd. We're well over.

Mr. Kelly.

11:25 a.m.

Conservative

Pat Kelly Conservative Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to begin with you, Mr. Lewis-Manning. Some great, interesting testimony has come on the heels of what we heard in the last panel. You talked about the competitiveness of supply chains and the implications for the overall competitiveness of the Canadian economy.

When we were in Atlantic Canada two weeks ago, I heard of something that I had not been aware of. This was the inability for shippers to use foreign-flagged carriers between two Canadian ports, the effect being that a Canadian refiner may not efficiently or competitively be able to bring in a Newfoundland crew, for example, to a Canadian refinery. We heard about and all know about the inability to get Alberta crude to market and the implications for the Canadian economy, but I hadn't heard about this before. I'm wondering if you can comment on this. Is there a competitiveness issue with foreign flagging?

11:30 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Wayne Easter

Just to clarify, that was foreign over 150,000 barrels, wasn't it? Or was it 250,000? I forget.

Anyway, it was a certain size of foreign-flagged bigger ships.

11:30 a.m.

President, Chamber of Shipping

Robert Lewis-Manning

Thanks, Mr. Kelly. I'll be more general in my response.

In terms of the subject you have identified, these are Canadian cabotage laws. Under the Coasting Trade Act, any ship travelling between two Canadian ports must have either a Canadian flag with Canadian crew or an exemption under the act. There's a process for that, with some limited exemptions at the moment that have come under the comprehensive economic and trade agreement with the EU.

To answer your question, it's a balancing act. We need to promote good, Canadian professional seafarers. To some degree, the cabotage regime allows that to happen. We need to keep them working in Canada because we have a growing domestic requirement for professional seafarers, and at the same time we need to promote competitiveness within international trading. For example, that limited opportunity now under CETA is provided for between certain ports in Canada.

So there's no easy answer. This is a management issue where we have to maintain a good Canadian workforce; encourage them to stay in Canada rather than working abroad, which of course any seafarer can do; and provide good, efficient economic opportunities for foreign trading.

11:30 a.m.

Conservative

Pat Kelly Conservative Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB

It would seem, though, that there's also the defeat of Canadian workers who are involved in the extraction of the resource that can't then be shipped within Canada, and the reliance of eastern Canadian refiners on imports from places like Saudi Arabia. I hope that most Canadians, especially given the prices and the availability of Canadian crude, would prefer that we could refine Canadian crude rather than Saudi.

Again, you reinforced a lot of what we heard in the previous panel, but I want to ask you as well, then, if you have any particular thoughts on Bill C-69 and the way that will impact some of your industry.