Finance Committee on Nov. 8th, 2018

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

I'm sorry; I'm running out of time, and I do have to move on.

To Mr. Allen and Ms. Passmore, you raised acute concerns about the flaws in this legislation. Are you able to present us with amendments in a few days' time? We really need them by the beginning of next week, given the government's bulldozer to try to push this through. I'll be presenting amendments on behalf of the opposition.

How concerning is it that the government is refusing to heed the many voices wanting to address the flaws in this bill?

[Frank Allen]

Well, we regard a number of the provisions in the bill as being improvements and as moving forward. Our concern is that banking is such a vital function, further improvements would benefit bank customers and consumers.

Our organization is a lean organization. We will do our best to contribute to the discussion and try to feed into the consideration of the bill, but obviously the limited time is a constraint.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Pierre Poilievre]

Mr. Julian, you have 33 seconds left.

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

Oh. That's—

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Pierre Poilievre]

No, excuse me; you are over by 33 seconds.

It's kind of like the difference between a surplus and a deficit.

Mr. Fergus.

[Greg Fergus, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Vice-Chair.

I have two questions, which are for Mr. Brown and the Teamsters representatives.

Many thanks to the witnesses for their presentations and their testimony. It was very interesting.

Mr. Brown, you raised the fact that the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations had a particular perspective on the issue of fair dealing for educational purposes. In your opinion, it is important to keep the system defined by the Supreme Court in 2012. Could you tell us more about that?

[Adam Brown]

It's important that students have the affordability that is necessary to be able to afford quality materials in the classroom. It's a concept that is being implemented in some provinces more than others. Essentially, the affordability for students to be able to save money on textbooks, and also for professors to be able to access many diverse perspectives and resources to be able to present to students in their classes, is crucial to the quality of learning in post-secondary institutions across the country. I took a political science course on aboriginal people in politics, for example. That course was entirely based on papers and videos and different materials that were essentially pulled by my professor. I didn't have to pay for textbooks.

It makes things much more affordable for students, but it is worth touching on the quality of those materials as well.

It's good for students to have access to a variety of perspectives. It helps them to learn how to deal with them on specific topics. I hope that answers your question.

[Greg Fergus, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

Yes.

If I understand correctly, you aren't against the idea of paying a certain amount, you aren't asking to be able to copy works in their entirety, and you think it would be useful to maintain this exception for educational purposes by paying limited fees. Is that correct?

[Adam Brown]

Yes, that's it.

It's not that industries are starting to lose a lot of money because of restrictions. Post-secondary institutions spend more than $1 billion per year on educational materials, which means that the educational resources sector is still very active. It's just better for students, since it's more affordable.

Sometimes, when an institution starts investing more in equipment, it will charge students for these expenses through incidental fees, over which students have no control. So, having government assistance on this issue would be greatly appreciated.

[Greg Fergus, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Brown.

Mr. Lacoste, thank you very much for your presentation. I appreciated your organization's point of view.

In your testimony this morning, you said that Teamsters Canada believes that the phrase “while accommodating the diverse needs of employers” is fundamentally at odds with the true objectives of the legislation and even contrary to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. You added that the bill must be amended to remove this passage. You talked about Quebec's experience and, toward the end, you said that these amendments would make it possible to avoid endless litigation and achieve the true objective of the Pay Equity Act. Could you explain how?

[Stéphane Lacoste]

Thank you for your question, Mr. Fergus.

Yes, the real purpose of legislation like this is the one that Justice Abella mentioned, and which I quoted to you. It's about restoring justice to allow women to be paid what they should be paid based on the value of their work in the same way as their male colleagues in similar positions. No system will ever be perfect in its way or methodology to achieve this. We know it's difficult. In this regard, the bill is very good, because it allows us to move forward.

However, this part of clause 2 you mentioned has no place. It is a concept foreign to that of pay equity. Pay equity legislation aims to restore justice and end discrimination, which is unconstitutional. Indeed, the latter provides that laws must protect people—in this case women—against discrimination.

However, the passage you quoted has no place in a clause like this one, nor in light of the principle of such legislation. This legislation isn't for employers; it's for women workers. Of course, in all this, we must take into account employers and how their companies operate, but employers aren't the ones who need protection, it's workers. The purpose of passing this legislation is to protect them and give them what they are entitled to, as quickly as possible, in a process that is as correct and satisfactory as possible, although not perfect. Including this passage in clause 2 is at odds with these principles.

What it also means—and I'm speaking more as a lawyer here—is that when it comes to interpreting a law, lawyers consult certain sections, such as section 2, under the heading “Purpose”, to understand the purpose of the legislation. These provisions then serve as a tool for interpreting the entire act. In this case, the inclusion of this passage in clause 2 somehow pollutes what should be a human rights act. Every time this interpretive tool is used to reduce the rights of women workers, it will be contrary to the Constitution, as the Supreme Court told us in its decision last May on the case involving the Quebec legislation.

[Greg Fergus, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

Do I have time to ask a quick question?

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

You are over time, but we'll allow it.

[Greg Fergus, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

I would like to hear Mr. Hynes' point of view, because I imagine it is a little contrary to what we have just heard.

Mr. Hynes, please go ahead.

[Derrick Hynes]

It's not the same, and thank you for the opportunity to speak to this issue.

I'm concerned about potentially overdramatizing this clause and making some strong assumptions that this clause will automatically end up at the Supreme Court of Canada.

I think what the government is trying to accomplish in this clause is not to prohibit females from being paid equitably. I think what this clause recognizes is that there is a diversity in the employer community. What we're striving for in the presentations we put forward is flexibility in the way that this is delivered. That's not on the outcome, but in the mechanisms and the mechanics of actually doing this within organizations that are large and complex and are not all the same.

When we think about things like defining what constitutes the establishment, things like access to short-term, highly skilled and what is largely very expensive labour, the use of comparators—internal versus external—the point we've been making all along around this desire for some flexibility is an allowance that would give employers, within the construct of the act, a way of achieving the same outcome but maybe not using the exact same mechanics to get there.

I don't think this clause necessarily dilutes the entire act. I don't think this necessarily takes us directly to the Supreme Court. I challenge those assumptions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

We'll have to leave it there.

Before we go to the five-minute rounds, starting with Mr. Poilievre, members have a budget before them, which is to do a study on Bill C-86, a second act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on February 27, 2018 and other measures.

The amount of money requested, basically for witnesses to attend the hearings that we've already pretty near completed, is $30,100.

Do I have a motion to that effect?

Mr. Julian.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I have a quick question. How much has been expended to date with the witnesses we have scheduled or the witnesses who have already come before us?

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

I'm not sure on that amount.

As you see, we're talking about persons from Yellowknife, Toronto, Calgary, Vancouver, Montreal, Halifax, Winnipeg, Regina and others, and video conferencing. Normally the amount requested for the study would be for more than we'll need. We won't spend that $30,000.

It doesn't answer your question directly in terms of what we've spent, because I really don't know.

[The Clerk of the Committee, Mr. Alexandre Jacques]

For instance, we've only had one video conference, and we don't think we'll have another one. That's just an example. We planned for four, and we've only had one.

This is all going to go back to the global envelope of committees.

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

That's unless the committee changes its mind and requires more witness study, which I believe we'll be considering at our next meeting.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Okay, I'll call the motion.

(Motion agreed to on division)

On to five-minute rounds, Mr. Poilievre.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Dr. Hannah, you suggested that governments need to take action to mitigate the damage that free trade, in your view, causes to women.

I found that approach rather surprising, given that the data points in the opposite direction. In countries where there is more free trade, women, minorities and the less fortunate are all significantly better off than in countries where there is limited trade.

For example, the highest life expectancy in the world for women, according to the World Bank, in a document entitled, “Life expectancy at birth, female (years)” is, incredibly, Hong Kong, a place with one of the highest population densities on planet earth, with no natural resources whatsoever—they even have to import their own water—where you have a space that is a fraction of the size of the city of Ottawa, with eight million people clustered and sharing space. There, female life expectancy is 87 years old.

What is interesting is that for men it's only 81 years old, so in terms of inequality between the sexes.... We see that women in this jurisdiction actually live longer than in other places. Hong Kong, of course, is the freest economy in the world and has the most free trade. It has almost no tariff barriers whatsoever, almost no quotas and a very limited and simplified tax regime.

I don't just point to this example. The top 10 countries in life expectancy for women are: Hong Kong; Japan; Macau, a jurisdiction within China; Spain; France; South Korea; Bermuda; Singapore; and Switzerland. All of them are actually free-trading nations and almost all of them are free market economies.

So I'm wondering why you seem to think that free markets and free trade are bad for women when, at least when it comes to life expectancy, the data demonstrates precisely the opposite.

[Prof. Erin Hannah]

I think you've misunderstood me. I am not making a normative or a blanket statement about the benefits, the virtues or the dangers of free trade. Sometimes free trade does very good things for people, sometimes free trade lifts people out of poverty, sometimes free trade empowers women economically, sometimes it closes the gender inequality gap. Sometimes, however, free trade has adverse consequences.

The point I'm trying to make today is that we need better data about the circumstances under which free trade has adverse consequences, and we need a strategy for mitigating what those consequences might be.

The other point that I'd like to caution against is the tendency to talk about women as economic actors only. Women are certainly economic actors. Women are workers and consumers, but women are also carers. Women are engaged in formal economies, and women are working in informal economies.

We don't have good data about how trade liberalization impacts women in informal economies and how it impacts the work they do in the home. It's an indisputable fact that an overwhelming amount of social reproductive labour falls on the shoulders of women, so we need studies and data about how services liberalization, for example, impacts the social reproductive labour that takes place in the home.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

If our goal is to end poverty, shouldn't we be trying to open free markets? That seems to be what has ended poverty for hundreds upon hundreds of millions of people. Look, for example, at China. In the late l970s, the Chinese government represented 100% of GDP, and that led to the biggest famine in the history of humankind. Since that time, the share of the Chinese economy represented by government has dropped to about 33%, stock markets and private property have been legalized, and the government has allowed free enterprise zones. As a result, approximately 800 million people in 35 to 40 years have been lifted out of extreme poverty into the middle class.

If our goal is to end extreme poverty, which we all agree falls disproportionately on women, then ought we not to be promoting free markets and free trade?

[Prof. Erin Hannah]

I'm not making a statement about whether free trade lifts people out of poverty. Sometimes it has the potential to do that. Free trade has the potential to do lots of good stuff, but we need to make sure governments have appropriate regulatory powers to protect their citizens when bad things happen: when there are import surges, when there are price fluctuations and when there are unexpected consequences that come along with more open markets.

To give you some concrete examples, there are already explicit carve-outs in existing trade agreements that make tools available to governments to protect human life, plant life, the natural environment and so on. There should also be explicit carve-outs available to promote gender equality if a government so chooses.

Please don't misunderstand me. I'm not saying there is no potential for free trade to have a positive impact on poverty. In fact, I would make the opposite argument. However, we need better policy, and to have better policy we need better data. We need better collaboration with our trade partners and with the international organizations to which we belong.

Of course, a major priority of the current government is women's economic empowerment. That's only a very small part of the story that, I think, is important; the work we're doing on women's economic empowerment needs to look at a bigger picture of who the women we seek to empower are.