Finance Committee on Oct. 3rd, 2016

[Ron Liepert, Conservative, Calgary Signal Hill, AB]

You still have many that are privately owned.

[Thomas Mueller]

The public sector is also a big building owner in the country.

[Ron Liepert, Conservative, Calgary Signal Hill, AB]

Yes, I understand that.

[Thomas Mueller]

I think the opportunity here is that retrofits, as we are proposing them, actually do have a payback. After three to seven years, there is payback.

[Ron Liepert, Conservative, Calgary Signal Hill, AB]

I understand that.

[Thomas Mueller]

Some of the building owners lack the access to capital to make those decisions and to invest in their buildings.

We are not proposing that the government should give away money, but there are ways, for example, to establish revolving funds to provide low-interest loans to building owners to get them into making retrofit options.

[Ron Liepert, Conservative, Calgary Signal Hill, AB]

Can you put any kind of price tag on what you would like this budget to do to incent people to do that? What's the number?

[Thomas Mueller]

I think there is no general number, because it really depends on which sector of the building industry you are dealing with. Commercial owners, for example, are very much business-driven. They make improvements, and they try to recoup those investments. In the public sector, they own buildings for a very long time.

We would suggest to work with the provincial governments, or in this case, the Office of Energy Efficiency at Natural Resources Canada, and ask what the best proposal is for each of these subsectors.

[Ron Liepert, Conservative, Calgary Signal Hill, AB]

Thank you.

Mr. Meneer, I heard you ask for two things: a user fee increase and $30 million. Thank you.

Mr. Hughes, I know you had trouble giving Mr. Grewal a dollar figure, but I heard you say that in 2012 there were reductions to the tune of $5.6 million, in 2012 dollars. Is that fair?

[Allan Hughes]

Yes, it was $5.7 million.

[Ron Liepert, Conservative, Calgary Signal Hill, AB]

If we went back to 2012, we would be looking for something in the range of $5 million or $6 million.

[Allan Hughes]

The difficulty we are having with even realizing those savings right now is that more officers left....

[Ron Liepert, Conservative, Calgary Signal Hill, AB]

I understand. We are talking, to a degree, about apples and oranges, but we are talking about roughly those kinds of dollars.

Mr. Friesen, you had a long series of asks. In order to get even partially to where you think you would like to be, what's a rough number?

[Chris Friesen]

It's all dependent on the government's decision about increasing the immigration levels. Last year, we were at 240,000 or 250,000. If we are moving towards 1% or higher immigration levels, 360,000 a year, we are looking at an increase of a third of the current budget, which, including Quebec and the special Canada–Québec Accord, is currently $1 billion.

[Ron Liepert, Conservative, Calgary Signal Hill, AB]

That would take in what was mentioned earlier by Ms. Shortt.

Ms. Conway, we had a similar presentation earlier. I am interested in your 2%, which I think is an issue the NDP likes to focus on, so I'll let Mr. Cannings ask you that question.

Did I hear roughly a couple of million or three million?

[Sheena Falconer]

You heard $150,000 per year for one, although we could roll it into the $1.5 million. My original thought was $1.5 million over 10 years, which would be adequate, but I realized that this extends past the scope. So the ask was changed to $3 million over five years.

[Ron Liepert, Conservative, Calgary Signal Hill, AB]

That is a pretty modest amount.

Thank you.

[Sheena Falconer]

It's modest.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Mr. Cannings.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Thank you, and thank you all for coming here today. I wish I could spend time talking to all of you, but I'm going to have to focus. I'll start with Mr. Friesen and Ms. Shortt.

Your presentations were very close to my heart. My daughter works for an organization in Penticton dedicated to immigration community services. She's an ESL teacher. She's worked there for the last three years and for all of those years her budgets have been cut by the federal government, starting with the Conservatives and followed by the Liberals. She hasn't moved back into my basement yet, but she's down to half time. She teaches English largely to Syrian refugee families, whereas, when she started, that wasn't the case. I want, first of all, for both you to comment on those cuts and the impacts they've had.

Mr. Friesen mentioned child care. When I talked to my daughter yesterday, I asked what I should find out today. She said to talk about child care, because she's seeing women who are already in difficult situations being isolated at home, not getting the language training they need, not getting out in the community. This delays, as Ms. Shortt mentioned, the time for the integration of these families.

Both of you could comment on those issues.

Thank you.

[Karen Shortt]

Vancouver Community College did have a program where we trained ESL volunteer teachers to go into the home to work with moms who could not leave. Unfortunately, due to cuts, that program was eliminated. It was very effective, because for moms who have a number of children being able to have English language training at home proved to be both time efficient and cost efficient. We would love to bring that program back, because it was very successful.

[Chris Friesen]

What we see on the ground is increased depression and mental health issues. Ask any immigrant or refugee newcomer and they'll tell you they want to work as quickly as they can. If they don't have the language, however, their ability to attach to the labour market is severely restricted. So this is one of the critical areas, particularly for immigrant and refugee women. The inability to attend classes and the lack of child care prohibit their full participation in Canadian society.

The programs we're involved in are about nation building, and our ability to socially and economically integrate the 315,000 or the 360,000 in the future has a direct correlation to the Canadian economy.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Ms. Falconer, thank you for your presentation. It directly relates to my previous lifetime as an ecologist. I worked for the last 20 years in the South Okanagan with broad community-based partnerships, much like what you were talking about.

I wonder if you could expand on the success of your programs and how they could be portable, how they could be exported, not just to the Atlantic coast or the Arctic but across the country.

[Sheena Falconer]

There are two components to what we do. The first is collaborative round table fisheries management. What we found is that when you have people sitting around the table from different sectors who have basic differences, and they're coming from an advocacy viewpoint, getting small groups together with representatives and asking them to sit down, and talk, and work out their differences has been successful.

We started with one pilot project in area 23, which is our Barkley Sound one. We began with tremendous conflict and people purposely doing things that were contrary to legal situations because they were angry and upset, felt unheard, and felt it wasn't fair. They were just going to go ahead and do the stuff anyway, and then, of course, you have court costs, litigation costs, and enforcement costs.

Now we have a situation where the local fisheries officers will tell you that although there are still infractions, they're caused mainly because people don't know. They are new people coming in, or they haven't been incorporated into the process yet. The sector leader will generally talk to those people, bring them into the process, and explain to them why certain actions are not acceptable.

It has been helpful, and it has also been helpful for allowing first nations, government partners, and fishermen to get along together, so much so that we've expanded from that one area. The sector representatives have asked to work with other sectors and other tables, and do the same type of process, because they find it so much more valuable to sit around, as we're sitting right now, and talk about the issues. People get upset because resource management is close our hearts, we have to defend it, and we have to represent our constituents. You're in a process that allows for caucusing, going away, and then coming back, and you can come to some reasonable agreements. That's what has happened in the round tables that we're managing. We're coming to these reasonable agreements.

Another thing that has happened is that fishermen have voluntarily given up some of their earnings to provide income or support for habitat stewardship. Last year they gave to the tune of $150,000, which was just a voluntary donation given to stewards to increase the health of the area. The round tables for habitat restoration bring people together who may have a fragmented view, because everybody has their certain things. It gets them to focus, get these big things out of the way, and get them done. That's where the need came from. We realized that if you have something big that's broken, then paintings its toenails doesn't work. You have to get in there and you have to fix it, right?

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

I'll have to cut you off there, Richard. We may get time for a second round. We're well over on that round.

I have just one quick question on the English training. Was the LINC program cut in the last budget?