Finance Committee on May 9th, 2019

[Seidu Mohammed]

Thank you for the question.

For me, if this bill is passed, yes, it would put a lot of refugees in danger. You can't expect someone to come from the United States without seeking asylum. For sure, you seek out asylum there, but the United States will not give you the opportunity that Canada will give you to give evidence and tell your story in front of a judge. The United States will just lock you up with people who have committed felonies. You aren't even allowed to have evidence to tell them your story. They will just deny you, because that's what they do, and they don't care about you.

We are all humans, and we need a better life than where we came from. Also, as refugees, we are facing a lot of difficulties. For me, this bill will put a lot of people at risk, and I don't think it should be passed. I'm pleading with you guys because a lot of people have a lot of problems back home in their countries, and they don't want to face those kinds of problems again. I plead with you. This bill should not be passed.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you very much.

I also received a letter—in fact, it was a letter sent to the Prime Minister, as well as other people—from West Coast LEAF, which is a leading organization advocating for the rights of women and challenging for them in court. Along with them, some 40 organizations have signed on to this letter to call on the government to not proceed with this bill. They say that if it does, women and children would be particularly vulnerable in this situation, in fact, recognizing that in the United States, for example, they do not recognize domestic violence as a legal and valid means for asylum seeking. For those who face violence, for example, gang violence, it will no longer be recognized in the United States as a valid reason for asylum.

From that perspective, they are now saying that—particularly for a feminist Prime Minister—we are actually, if this bill passes, putting women in danger. I wonder whether you could comment on that.

[Seidu Mohammed]

Yes. Most of it, such as in the United States, the way they are separating children from their mothers, is dangerous. People are dying without seeing their mothers. The last time I saw it on the news, about 10 people had died in prison. The United States didn't want them to come into the country and they separated them from their parents. For me, it's terrible for a country to do that. Honestly, they don't respect people. The United States doesn't respect refugees. They have no idea what we are facing, or I don't know whether they know and they are just....

I have no idea what they are doing.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Therefore, to sum up—

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

We are over time, but go ahead with another supplementary question.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you very much.

Basically, as I understand it, there's no way to fix this bill. It needs to be withdrawn, and if it's not, we're going to be putting people's lives, refugees' lives, in danger, and the United States is not a safe country for refugees.

[Seidu Mohammed]

Yes, the United States is not a safe country for refugees. They don't want to accept refugees in their country. They see us as criminals, but we are not. We are just refugees who want a better life, to start over from where we came from.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Mr. Mohammed, we'll have to leave it there.

[Seidu Mohammed]

Therefore, yes, the United States is not safe for refugees.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Just so that people understand, folks who are witnesses, and especially you, Mr. Mohammed, the finance committee has farmed out to the citizenship and immigration committee the two sections in the BIA that deal with immigration issues. They have more expertise in that field than we have here. They'll report back to us with their recommendations on where to go on those matters in the budget implementation act that relate to immigration.

Jenny, are you on that committee?

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

I am. Thank you very much for allowing me to be part of the committee today on the issue.

May I ask a procedural question?

Given Mr. Mohammed's testimony and his presentation to this committee, will that information be shared with the immigration committee as well? Is that possible?

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

It is not a problem. The minutes will be available. You're on that committee, and if you want to take that evidence and table it with them, that's quite possible to do. The statements that have been made here today are on the record, so it certainly can be shared with the other committee.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

I have Mr. Sorbara, and then we'll go back to Mr. Lake.

It will be five minutes, and then after those two MPs, we'll be out of time.

Go ahead.

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

Mr. Milligan is a former classmate.

Kevin, it's good to see you.

On seniors and GIS, I know my colleague Mr. McLeod touched on this, but when we were first elected, one of our promises was to increase the GIS by 10% for the most vulnerable seniors, single seniors. From my understanding, we lifted about 57,000 of those 900,000 recipients out of poverty. Also, we reduced the age of eligibility for OAS and GIS from 67 back to 65, where the previous government had announced that policy change on a foreign trip in Switzerland without any type of consultation. We also enhanced the CPP for future generations and put that in place. Now, in this budget, we've gone in again and looked at the GIS exemption amount.

I'll try to be as succinct as possible.

We brought in also national poverty reduction, which is in our BIA. In thinking of all our policy tools, the Canada child benefit, the Canada training benefit, the Canada workers benefit, a middle-class tax cut for nine million Canadians, and now these measures that we brought in on the GIS, you're an economist, just how powerful are those tools in ensuring that the economic growth that occurs is what's called inclusive economic growth?

[Prof. Kevin Milligan]

Thanks for the question. Again, it's good to see my former classmate.

I note that the poverty reduction act is part of the BIA. I think what's important in thinking about a poverty strategy is to have a strategy that looks both at short-run measures, for example, for seniors who are already retired, to make sure that they do not have to live their older years in poverty, and to look at families who are right now struggling with the needs of children, to make sure their incomes are sufficient as well. A strategy should incorporate both those short-run, immediate measures, but also a long-run view to make sure that in the long-run Canadians are also able to help themselves and lift themselves out of poverty through their own efforts.

I have two examples of that: first, the Canada training benefit, which allows workers to continue to upgrade their training while still on the job; and second, the enhancements to the Canada pension plan, which are going to be transformational for the next generation. For people who are already retired, it doesn't touch their benefits. For the people who are younger, who are just starting to work, they're going to have benefits that are substantially larger, that are secure, invested wisely by the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. I think that long-run strategy is a great complement to the short-run measures that have had, as we have seen, an immediate impact on poverty measures.

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

Thank you, Kevin.

Changing gears a little bit, Mr. Cross and Mr. Milligan, competitiveness is very important to me. I'm an economist by training. I grew up in a very middle-class humble background in northern British Columbia, but I had the privilege of working on both Wall Street and on Bay Street. I understand what risk takers and small businesses or large corporations do every day.

In the fall economic statement we brought in the accelerated investment incentive which now implies an effective marginal tax rate for investing a dollar in Canada is at 14%, the lowest in the G7. In the United States, it's 18%. Mr. Cross and Mr. Milligan, surely no economist would argue that we follow the path of the United States in doing a deficit-to-GDP ratio of nearly 5% in any sorts of tax measures versus our number, which is around 0.7% of our debt-to-GDP ratio, which is now declining.

First, I'll go to Mr. Milligan and then I'll turn it over to Mr. Cross.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Mr. Milligan, go ahead.

[Prof. Kevin Milligan]

I think it's great to bring this up because, as Mr. Cross mentioned, the new tax regime in the United States is something and was something that I think deserved a response, and we did see that response in the fall economic statement.

One could respond to the U.S. fiscal situation in one of two ways. One could follow them directly and run irresponsible deficits and raise the debt-to-GDP ratio by throwing good money after bad, but that was not the path taken. Instead what we see is some smart measures that have an immediate impact on investment going forward, which is the accelerated depreciation measure, which for an affordable amount provides a large boost to investment incentives in Canada.

What you see with the measures in the fall economic statement is that we've improved the investment climate in Canada in terms of the accelerated depreciation, but also done that in a context where we didn't have to blow the budget to do it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Mr. Cross.

[Philip Cross]

One comment I'd make is I would be careful of making comparisons of Canada-U.S. debt figures that only focus on the federal government. It ignores that our federation is a much more decentralized federation. I think these comparisons are much better done at the level of total government. But I do agree that I'm not advocating debt-financed transfers to the business community.

I think I indicated, though, that there are lots of ways of communicating with the business community and not all of them involve money. Rhetoric and actions are another.

I mentioned, for example, that I thought one of the most significant measures from the new Ontario government was when they appointed the former head of the Ontario Chamber of Commerce to chief of staff at Treasury Board, overseeing government operations. This is a person who is very well known in the business community in Ontario. I think that sends a very strong message, as strong as any of the policies that have been announced so far by the Ford government, that there's going to be a different relationship between the business and government communities in Ontario going forward.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Thank you.

It's back to Mr. Lake for what will have to be the final round.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Wetaskiwin, AB]

Thank you again, Mr. Chair.

I've been around here for a while, 13 years as a member of Parliament. I know many of you from previous iterations, both in your worlds and mine. Those whom I know, I know we care a lot about the same types of things. I think what we're debating here is how we get there.

Adam, are the things you're advocating for today things that you want to make sure we can still afford 10 and 20 years from now? I'd like quick answers on this.

[Adam Brown]

The short answer would be yes. I think a lot of the things in here, like interest rates or if we're talking about moving towards 100% work-integrated learning, are absolutely things that Canada needs to continue with into the future.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Wetaskiwin, AB]

Does anyone want to weigh in on that?