Finance Committee on May 8th, 2019

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

First of all, there were a couple of things said that in my view need to be corrected.

Mr. Ellis of the St. John's Board of Trade, I worked in the global financial markets for about 23 years before I came to Ottawa. I have read probably every budget for a long, long time.

If I look at our fall economic statement where we introduced the accelerated investment incentive, which brought down the marginal tax rate on investing in Canada on a dollar basis to lower than the United States, I would be remiss if I wouldn't say that I totally disagree with your statement earlier on the competitiveness of the Canadian economy.

If you look at the FDI numbers here in Canada and the flow and the stock level, they are both exceptionally strong. If you look at recent announcements, be they in the Alberta industrial heartland or on the technology side in downtown Toronto or Waterloo, or the area I represent, it's very strong.

There were 548,000 job vacancies at the end of the year, a 40-year low in the unemployment rate. Our debt-to-GDP ratio continues to decline. The servicing costs of the debt continue to decline. We've lifted 825,000 Canadians out of poverty. We've created over 900,000 new jobs, the majority full-time, private sector. We have an immigration system where now, if a high-tech firm needs someone, they can bring him or her in within two weeks.

I'm not going to allow you to respond, because I'm going to move on in a second.

If I look during the Harper years, they took a surplus into a deficit before the global financial crisis hit. On that front, I was sort of shocked. We led the G7 in growth in 2017. I can continue and go on and on.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Maybe you should go to a question.

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

I'll go to a question for CARP, actually.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Let him respond.

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

I'll go to a question for CARP.

We introduced a tax cut of nearly $1.8 billion that will benefit over 330,000 seniors. CARP wrote, on the budget, that they were very pleased with the actions that were represented in the budget.

I read your report. I've been to the head office in downtown Toronto.

If you had to list your top two agenda items for this year, can you please do so, Rick?

[Rick Baker]

We actually have five, but certainly I—

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

Go with the top two or three.

[Rick Baker]

Certainly it's financial security, as I alluded to earlier. We're very concerned about the lack of interest in rolling back the RRIF, and also in the protection of pensions. I think they're a very big issue.

We've had a number of sessions here at Parliament with a number of our colleagues and have received some very good support to move forward. It is a work in progress, and we thoroughly understand that.

Certainly for one who lives on a pension, it would be very difficult if it were rolled back. We've seen some examples across Canada where that has happened.

However, we do see some progress and we applaud the government for that.

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

Do I have time remaining, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

You don't have time to even start.

I'll go to Mr. Poilievre and then Mr. Dusseault.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

I thought it was very wise of Mr. Sorbara not to allow Mr. Ellis to respond, because I think, Mr. Ellis, based on your very informed testimony, you would have demolished that lengthy speech you heard. My friend Mr. Sorbara could make a lot of money in the fruit business because he's good at cherry picking.

If we look at the real facts of this economy right now, we are now in a no-growth economy. In the most recent quarter, the economy actually shrunk. In the last year, wages did not keep up with inflation. There's been effectively no middle class income growth in Canada since this government took office. That comes after a record increase in median income during the Harper years. In fact, since we've been recording median income, the only prime minister that saw growth in that was Harper.

On the issue of the debt, the Harper government paid off $40 billion in debt before the recession struck. We were the last country to go into deficit and the first to come out with a balanced budget. We left that balanced budget to this government, which squandered it despite the fact that revenues have exceeded all expectations and despite some very large tax increases.

Our friend omits the fact that he's specifically targeted your members. His government has brought in penalties for businesses that save within the company, for those small family businesses that share income and work with family members. It increased payroll taxes. The new carbon tax, of course, will cost your members money, but they will not get a rebate. That's just a short list, but unlike Mr. Sorbara, I'm actually going to let you respond to my intervention.

The Liberals keep saying that small businesses can just pass the higher cost of the carbon tax on to their customers. Do you agree with that characterization?

[Brandon Ellis]

No, I do not. I don't think that small businesses are able to. Small businesses pass along the cost of carbon tax to the taxpayer—to their customer. The customer will then have less money and will be able to spend less money in the economy. To further build upon your point of the carbon tax and to respond with respect to that, our province is one, if not the only province, in the entire country that is not seeing a rebate on the carbon tax or any tax breaks on the carbon tax.

The Government of Newfoundland and Labrador is pocketing an estimated $66 million on the carbon tax at the expense of our members and the taxpayers.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

That has been the story in every single jurisdiction where carbon taxes have been instituted. The government wins; the taxpayer loses. The Liberal government has been saying that the model for us all to follow is British Columbia. Well now, in British Columbia, it's a buck eighty for a litre of gasoline—the highest in the history of any jurisdiction at any time in the history of gas prices in North America.

Could Newfoundland and Labrador support $1.80 a litre gas prices?

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

We will end it with your answer.

[Brandon Ellis]

I don't think so.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

All right.

Mr. Dusseault.

We've had an interesting exchange on the numbers, so all parties cherry pick.

[Pierre-Luc Dusseault, NDP, Sherbrooke, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll get back to the bill before us, Bill C-97.

Thank you all for coming here today.

My first question is on how to measure poverty. Your presentation was excellent and convincing. You said that we shouldn't be using the Market Basket Measure, the MBM. You would use another tool which is the 60% low-income measure, if I understood you correctly. I'm not quite sure what we would be replacing the MBM with to truly target poverty. Could you explain it to me?

[Serge Petitclerc]

Without going over what I said previously, I would add that the MBM was created to meet people's basic needs. If you want to eliminate or reduce poverty, you need to define that better. We think that measuring low income after taxation and transferring 60% of the median income in Canada is a better indicator than the MBM.

I will give you a very concrete example from Quebec, because I am more familiar with the statistics from that province.

In Quebec, using the MBM, a person living on his or her own would need about $18,000 per year to be considered below the poverty line. If we use the 60% low-income measure, the line would be set at $24,000 or $25,000. That's not the same amount of money and it certainly makes a difference in people's lives.

That's the reason we propose this indicator, which is more generous. Moreover, it is used in Europe and other places to make international comparisons between member states of the OECD, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. We think that this measure should be used to establish the official poverty line in Canada.

This does not preclude us from setting targets with other indicators. We have low-income indicators, but there are all sorts of tools that can be used to fight against poverty and socio-economic inequality.

[Pierre-Luc Dusseault, NDP, Sherbrooke, QC]

Thank you.

The committee will have to take this into consideration when it looks at possible amendments on the measure.

Ms. McIsaac, Ms. Khanna, if we adopted a national strategy on housing without adding the right to housing in the act, will the act actually be useful? Without making this addition, is it just a useless enterprise?

[Elizabeth McIsaac]

I feel that it would be a missed opportunity. There was a tremendous amount of work done over the last two years in bringing forward and creating a model that is uniquely Canadian. We don't see this model exactly in other countries. We have taken care to work with government to create something that has some core elements. Many of these elements would be reflected in good policy work as well.

Specifically and explicitly recognizing our commitments in the international context is very important in driving home what that framework is and what that accountability needs to be. Quite frankly, we've made these commitments over a number of years, and we haven't delivered on them. I think we are compelled to do so and there's an opportunity to do it with our national housing strategy. Not doing so would be a missed opportunity.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Blake, we'll come back to you.

Mr. McLeod.

[Michael McLeod, Liberal, Northwest Territories, NT]

I have a question on the comments by my colleague, Mr. Poilievre. I just finished reading a couple of articles on the price of gasoline in B.C. There didn't seem to be any mention of this being connected to the carbon pricing. I guess I'll have to go back and do more research on that.

I do know, however, that there's an issue in my riding—I represent the Northwest Territories. I heard some of you talk about the issue of housing. In the presentations in the first round, we had the Canadian Housing and Renewal Association talk about indigenous housing.

In the Northwest Territories and in our indigenous communities, we got hit double by the cuts of the previous government, the Conservative government. We got our housing money cut and we got our indigenous money cut, and it left us in a real crisis for housing. We are trying to make a comeback. We're trying to deal with the deficit in housing.

I don't think we can deal with it unless we start looking seriously at an indigenous housing strategy. Could I ask the people from Maytree and the United Way to give us an opinion on how that would influence the outcome of our housing crisis?

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Do you want to start, Ms. Khanna?

[Anita Khanna]

Indigenous communities are clearly within the federal jurisdiction. I know from my own research that child poverty is an especially serious issue among indigenous people and that we need to study this question and provide housing solutions for families living on reserve. We need to have solutions for indigenous families also living off reserve, especially in urban indigenous communities, and we need to move this forward quickly.

This has been an internationally recognized crisis by the UN bodies. We've heard this time and time again in international settings, and we need to take action on it quickly. These are essential components having three distinct strategies and then a fourth one, as Jeff Morrison mentioned in the previous panel, that addresses the urban indigenous housing crisis and homelessness.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Mrs. McIsaac.