Evidence of meeting #20 for Finance in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was budget.
A video is available from Parliament.
1:20 p.m.
President, Caledon Institute of Social Policy
The new program we mentioned in our report wouldn't be universal; it would be income-tested. The mechanism we're using now for more and more social programs is income testing.
I'd have to think more about a universal program.
1:20 p.m.
Liberal
Francesco Sorbara Liberal Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to the panel for your insightful comments. I want to touch on everyone a little bit and so I'll try to make my comments quick.
Mr. Lee, have you run the numbers on estimating the policy of 100% survivorship benefits for poor or low-income seniors when their spouse passes away?
1:20 p.m.
Associate Professor, As an Individual
I haven't. A lot of my data is synthetic. In other words, I'm drawing on someone else. Of course, I fully footnote it and so I'll specifically cite the source. It was Professor Jack Mintz in, I think, January 2015, who published it in a working paper at the University of Calgary. He did a deep dive into the numbers and asked a very good question: Who are the 7.2% of Canadians under the poverty line?
He found that overwhelmingly they are what I call “elder” elder women. That is, women in their eighties and nineties, my late mother's generation. They stayed home in the 1950s and had children and raised their children at home, and worked in the home. It was very hard work.
My point is they don't have a pension. When their husband dies, because men don't live as long as women, their pension drops down to 60%. To answer your question very succinctly, Jack Mintz crunched the numbers and he said that for $5 billion we can eliminate elder poverty in this country, the 7.2%, by doing that.
1:20 p.m.
Liberal
Francesco Sorbara Liberal Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON
To your comment, in my riding we ran some tax clinics. We did have some elderly folks come in, and there was that noticeable trend for specifically women.
Our government has introduced in Bill C-15 an increase to the guaranteed income supplement of up to $947. That will benefit folks who make up to $8,500 in the prescribed income level. I think that's going to benefit 900,000 people, the majority of which are single seniors and women. They tend to outlive us men, for whatever reason.
1:20 p.m.
Liberal
Francesco Sorbara Liberal Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON
You talked about the OAS and GIS. When those two programs were put in place, and they're the bedrock of our social fabric for many millions of Canadians, they were to help the poorest of the poor, and they are funded directly through government tax revenues.
There have been some discussions looking at potentially changing clawback levels, because a two-person senior family making $300,000 a year combined can theoretically still qualify for old age security.
1:20 p.m.
Associate Professor, As an Individual
If you're asking whether it should be reduced, I'd certainly advocate for it. The clawback I think now is $110,000 or $113,000 or something. A lot of professors will have pensions of over $100,000. I think paying them old age benefits is immoral. The clawback should come down.
1:20 p.m.
Liberal
Francesco Sorbara Liberal Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON
Mr. Lampron, how many of your members would benefit from the labour-sponsored funds tax credit in Quebec?
1:20 p.m.
Directeur Affaires publiques, Fondaction, le Fonds de développement de la CSN pour la coopération et l'emploi
Thank you for your question.
Since the budget was announced, we have indeed seen more and more shareholders returning. There are various ways to join and to buy Fondaction shares. One way is through payroll deductions, which means a certain amount is deducted from every paycheque as a way to save. People can also make a one-time lump sum investment.
We are seeing people coming back and choosing payroll deductions. This is the greatest and most interesting effect noted with respect to the middle class.
1:20 p.m.
Liberal
Francesco Sorbara Liberal Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON
Thank you, sir.
Mr. Battle, in the mid-1990s, under former finance minister Paul Martin, we got rid of what was called inflation creep.
I do recognize your concern with the CCB. I also think the CCB is a very powerful instrument in eliminating child poverty. Three hundred thousand children will be taken out of poverty by 2016-17 versus the number in the last fiscal year, so I do recognize your comments on inflation creep.
When Mr. Martin brought it in through his budget in, I think, 1996 or 1995, it was one of the largest tax cuts for Canadians ever with the introduction of “inflation bracketing”, if you want to call it that, and so I do recognize that.
To your mind, is there anything else we could do quickly to pull even more children out of poverty?
1:25 p.m.
President, Caledon Institute of Social Policy
First and foremost, index the system. Otherwise you're going to be losing ground all the time. What we would like to see is that the child benefit—the new child benefit is an extremely powerful instrument—be increased over time, invested in over time. Not everything can be solved by income programs, don't get me wrong. There's a whole range of other things that low-income people need. But the child benefit is incredibly important.
1:25 p.m.
Liberal
Francesco Sorbara Liberal Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON
My last comment for Céline, a question actually, is on commercialization. There's innovation, which Canadians aren't that bad at, but there's commercialization, which we could be a lot better at. Would you care to comment on that?
1:25 p.m.
President, Analytica Advisors Inc.
Commercialization is where you actually get money for what you invented, and you get to employ people to do that. I think Canada's in the process of going through a major economic restructuring. If we think of Canada as a corporation, the lines of business are going to have to change over the next little while. We won't be able to rely on oil and gas to the degree we have up until now. That's going to mean that we're going to need to be able to grow new companies and they are, therefore, going to need to commercialize. What that means is they need to be able to finance scaled-up instances of their solutions. Examples might include new ways of deploying technology in cities through infrastructure spending; new ways of deploying technologies in public procurement; new ways of solving environmental problems within our large industries: forestry, oil and gas, and mining.
In each case, those deployments will have relatively little technical risk, but they'll still have financial risk. This means that the banks will not easily be able to underwrite those deployments, whether through project finance or through just basic working capital loans. In order for us to be able to commercialize new innovation in all parts of our economy, I've proposed, and I'm on the record as saying, that we need something like the CMHC for the low-carbon economy. We need to be able to backstop risk so that we can deploy innovation where, in a commercial way, banks.... The fact that it's been deployed three or four times is not good enough for a bank. They need 10 times. To commercialize, we need to stand behind these deployments and offer insurance across all different sectors, whether those are municipalities or the private sector. Just as we did when mortgages were new, we need to do the same thing again today so that we can actually deploy and commercialize our solutions.
1:25 p.m.
Conservative
Phil McColeman Conservative Brantford—Brant, ON
Thank you, Chair, and thank you to the witnesses.
First for Mr. Battle, I'm just on the Caledon Institute of Social Policy website, and I'm just going to read from one posting here, and it's talking about the Canada child benefit. I'm just following up on what my colleague was asking you about. It says, about the Canada child tax benefit, “It won’t be indexed to the rate of inflation until 2020.” That's posted on your website.
Just following on the questions of my colleague, you explain that this is a result of a news report and then further conversations with persons at the PBO on this matter, so would it be possible for you to give us the names of the individuals at the PBO you spoke with?
1:25 p.m.
A voice
PMO.
1:25 p.m.
Conservative
Phil McColeman Conservative Brantford—Brant, ON
Thank you so much.
Dr. Lee, I want to go to your presentation and the deck you provided, but there are two underlying questions. One is, and I think I know the answer but I want you to confirm it, that your research as a scientist, as a person who does proper statistical analysis, is it considered scientific in the sense of what people would say is proper science in academia?
1:30 p.m.
Associate Professor, As an Individual
That's an interesting question. I'll be very straightforward. I pride myself in not manipulating. Some professors modify, massage the data. My little bit flippant phrase is, I photocopy the StatsCan data. It's a bit flippant, but I mean by that I don't massage it, I don't transform it, I don't manipulate it. The value added on my research is finding the data because drilling down into OECD and IMF, you could spend all day long for the rest of your life, and 10 lifetimes, doing it, I assure you, having done that.
If you're asking me, is the data absolutely sourced reliably from StatsCan or OECD, yes. Is the data reliable? Is StatsCan reliable, and OECD reliable? I believe they're the gold standard, as well as these other international bodies like the IEA or the WTO. My value added is in finding the data. There's a goldmine of data in these, and that's why I provide the full URL for every data source I find, so if anybody wants to challenge it they can go then and argue with OECD or IMF or StatsCan, and so forth.
1:30 p.m.
Conservative
Phil McColeman Conservative Brantford—Brant, ON
In layman's terms, it's scientific evidence you've provided through your testimony today.
Further to that, I'm a resident, and I represent a riding in Ontario. This urban myth you talk about.... I was on a Chamber of Commerce panel locally, and this issue came up in questions about the Ontario pension plan being devised right now by the Liberal government of Ontario. When I presented the numbers—because I used some of your numbers that I had researched before going in— I used the 85% number, the 85% of people who are pension ready. They've prepared themselves for their retirement, and they're ready to go. You further subdivided that group down to about 7.5%.
It was not received by the person who had to defend the Ontario government's position on this matter as being at all reliable, and I wasn't asked where that information came from. I'm going to be pleased to provide him with this information you've provided today.
The question I want to ask is, can you give us your candid views on why this urban myth is being received and believed at the level it is in this country?
1:30 p.m.
Associate Professor, As an Individual
I can provide you and the committee with those sources, by the way. I will tell you right off the top, it came from Hugh Mackenzie, it came from Professor Jack Mintz, in his published research, and it came from Professor Kevin Milligan at the University of British Columbia's Vancouver School of Economics, and that's just to name three. There are others who have done parallel research to verify that and to document it.
By the way, there is some debate. Some say it's 17%, and some say it's 13%, but it's somewhere between 13% and 20% of Canadians who are not yet retired and not yet pension ready. You can get into the definition of what pension ready means.
To answer your question, I think it's partly because some NGOs—and specifically CARP, and I've been on panels debating them—have raised this profile. It's a nice story, and historically it was true from the beginning of our country until the late 1960s. My late mother used to tell me all the time that the face of poverty in Canada was elderly. Today the face of poverty is not elders, it's young single mothers. It's not all single mothers, but about 20% of single mothers are poor. That's the face of poverty today. As I said, I've got the stats from StatsCan showing the wealth. The wealthiest cohort in this country are elders.
1:30 p.m.
Liberal
1:30 p.m.
Liberal
Jennifer O'Connell Liberal Pickering—Uxbridge, ON
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I want to go back to Madam Bak about clean technology. One of my questions is going to be about some of the biggest hurdles in turning the technology, or having Canada as a leader in clean technology and in the economy in that way. You also mentioned financing throughout your testimony and even some of the questions.
Can you point to other countries where you think they're doing this quite well? I think a lot of countries are probably right now competing to be the leader in green technology. With the Paris Accord, countries needing to reduce their emissions, and things of that nature, I think everybody wants to be the leader that other countries are going to draw on.
Do you see financing as the major hurdle? I understand your points that were made. Can you point to other countries or ideas you think are leading in your opinion?
