Finance Committee on Oct. 17th, 2016

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

Thank you.

I now want to discuss the issue of the next generation of farmers, a problem we regularly hear about in our meetings, including this morning's meeting.

Could you submit a recommendation to the Minister of Finance for the next budget and indicate what the ideal solution would be for the next generation of farmers?

Would the solution be to transfer enterprises within the same family, to provide training or education to encourage more people from other areas to choose agriculture, or perhaps targeted immigration to find people to join the next generation of farmers?

Is there another solution which in your opinion would be more appropriate to solving the problem of the next generation?

[Amanda Wildeman]

Thank you.

I don't think a single solution will solve everything. In my opinion, the strategy should include the three avenues you have just mentioned. Immigration is very important in New Brunswick. We are a particular case, in the sense that our agricultural lands are not expensive compared to the rest of Canada. The provincial government has just launched an immigration program, both internationally and interprovincially, to attract people who have experience in agriculture from elsewhere in Canada, Europe or elsewhere, and who want to come here and work in this area.

That is all very good, but the young people of the province who want to return to their rural community often need training or mechanisms to allow them to purchase their family's farm or that of their neighbour. It is very expensive to acquire those lands, buildings and all of the necessary equipment. It represents an enormous cost for someone who is just getting out of university.

In the United States, there is an interesting program that allows people who join the public service to have their student debt eliminated. Agriculture has just been added to that program. In this way, anyone who chooses a career in agriculture will have their student debt eliminated. That is another program that could be considered.

Finally, I expect that the solution will be a combination of all of the aspects you have just mentioned.

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

Thank you for your last suggestion.

[Amanda Wildeman]

We did not discuss the issue of Internet access in rural areas, since we wanted to limit our presentation to five minutes. We did not go into suggestions aimed at improving quality of life in rural areas, which would include Internet access, for instance.

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

Farms are increasingly making use of technology. And when you talk about technology, you are talking also about the Internet.

[Amanda Wildeman]

Seven people from all over Canada sit on our board of directors. Since there are hills everywhere in New Brunswick, in order to get a signal so as to be able to use his cell phone, one of these people has to climb a hill, on his neighbour's property, and another one has to stand on his toilet bowl. Otherwise, they can't get a connection. The options are really bizarre, and limited. As you said, young people are the up-and-coming generation, and all the members of that generation are connected.

How could they possibly want to live in a rural area without being connected like the others?

In short, we need more solutions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

I understand the feeling. I can't make a cellphone call from my own yard in P.E.I.

On your public service program and paying off student loans, etc., is that under the U.S. farm bill? Do you know what it's under, Amanda, so that we can look it up?

[Amanda Wildeman]

I can find it and send in the link.

The National New Farmer Coalition in Canada was based on the National Young Farmers Coalition that was created in the States. They did a major survey in 2012. This survey gave such good and interesting data that they've been able to move it forward to concrete policy recommendations, including removal, exclusion, or forgiveness of student loans to new farmers as a public service. I'm not sure which bill it came under, but it's recent. It's the National Young Farmers Coalition.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Thank you.

Mr. Sorbara.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Universities Canada, in your recommendations there is one recommendation that I want to focus on because I think information is powerful and without information you can't have good decisions. We brought back the long-form census, and I think the take-up rate was above 95%, which was excellent. I think this is going to provide a lot of good information when it finally gets released to businesses, universities, provinces, and every single user group in the country, basically.

I wanted to touch upon the recommendation for resources for Stats Canada and improving our labour market information. Is there a numerical amount you would want to attach to that?

[Paul Davidson]

Over the years, we've drawn this committee's attention to the work that Don Drummond did. He estimated that an investment of $50 million would be required to get Canada's labour market information up to a level of sophistication that would be useful to employers and educators.

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

Right now, if you look as an economist and someone who follows the markets continuously, the information you get from the U.S. is much different from the information you get here. You have two surveys that come out there, and the standard error on ours is just atrocious. We need to get the information on our labour market.

With regard to ITAC, there were a number of recommendations. With respect to the capital cost allowance, unaccelerated, what would be the cost to the treasury? I know in 2007 we had the accelerated capital depreciation, capital cost allowance, come in to encourage, because of our dollar, industries to buy equipment, capital-intensive equipment especially, from the States. The digital sector, though, is different. My understanding is that it's a different type of investment from what you have in traditional manufacturing. Is there a dollar cost? If you can add some colour around this, it would be greatly appreciated.

[Robert Watson]

The ICT companies in Canada will be investing. They're going to invest. It's a matter of accelerating it, having it move forward faster. That's what you're doing with the capital cost allowance. You're allowing greater depreciation. If you think about it, it's simple. What you're doing is so different, because they would either write it off later or write it off sooner. If they write it off sooner, it's better for their bottom line, and they're making a bet on the future. They're betting they're going to get the revenue to follow that. So it's not as if it's all one-sided. You're allowing them to do that, but they are betting on the future.

As for the actual cost to the government, I don't have that figure. However, The Conference Board of Canada has said that increasing it to 50% would add another $163 million to the GDP and support over 1,600 full-time jobs, so it's quite significant. You have the corporations, all the major telcos, the major IT companies, the application guys. They are all ready to go. If you were to do that, it would be an incentive for them to start spending.

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

I would be remiss if I didn't ask about something on New Brunswick, because we are here in New Brunswick and it's my first time in this lovely province.

We're well aware of the challenges that Atlantic Canada faces in its demographics. We're aware of the fiscal situations in some of the provinces, the headwinds in various areas, even taxation levels. Could you list the first two priorities you'd want to see tomorrow morning coming out of us as recommendations? From a bigger picture point of view, what would be your two priorities, excluding the Fredericton airport? Flying in yesterday I can understand the capital investment needed in that airport, first, to alleviate the overcapacity, and second, to draw more tourism folks. It's obvious that this is required. I think that's also the case in P.E.I. with their airport.

Could you talk about the one or two things you would like to see the committee focus on?

[Larry Shaw]

Sure, and respecting the fact that you aren't going to let me talk about the airport, I won't mention the airport more than three or four times.

The two things are quite simple.

The first would be the educational infrastructure and support around what I will call the knowledge industry or the knowledge-based sector, so that means anything we can do to increase educational support, whether it be at a university level, a community college level, or, in fact, in certification programs.

Look at the cybersecurity initiatives we're doing right now. There are deep and entrenched requirements with InsideUNB, but there are also some short-term things we can do around changing some of the legislation—albeit provincial—that allows other educational institutes to come in and set up dedicated education around cybersecurity certification programs and things like that. On the education system, by and large, if I were to try to summarize it, I think I would say that we need to overhaul it completely. There needs to be an awful lot more focus on the applied research and the commercialization of research.

That's a number of things within the educational portfolio, and the second thing is immigration.

There has been some movement. There have been some changes on the immigration allowances for this region. One of the things that's troubling right now is that there's some language that would suggest that until we get our retention factors improved, we may be penalized in the attraction of immigrants or newcomers. That's the wrong approach, I would suggest. What we have to do is allow the gate to be opened up quite wide—respectful of security and all those things—because once you build communities, you then start to increase your retention factor rate. Today we have 27 ethnic groups here in the city of Fredericton, but some of them are quite small. We need to get them to be of a size where they have a community built around them.

Those would be the two items: education and immigration.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Thanks to both of you.

Mr. Pollett and Mr. Goetz, if you have anything to add at any time, just raise your hand and we'll let you in.

Mr. Albas, I know you're really wide awake, having taken the red-eye here all night, so go ahead. The floor is yours.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all of our witnesses today.

I'd actually like to pick up where Mr. MacKinnon opened the discussion, and that's in regard to labour market surveys and getting good information connecting with institutions.

Mr. Davidson, are you aware of BCIT's career build tool that they have online? Just for the people here, could you maybe explain that and what BCIT is doing on that front?

[Paul Davidson]

I'm not specifically familiar with BCIT's tool, but a number of tools are being developed across the country. The Ontario Chamber of Commerce is doing a very good job of matching available jobs to available students through the magnet program they offer. BCIT, I know, is doing similar work.

The other point I would make about BCIT and British Columbia's higher education sector is that the pathways between colleges, universities, and the employment sector are much clearer than they are in other parts of the country. We realize that you're walking through some careful jurisdictional issues as the federal government, but we're working very closely with colleges and polytechnics to make sure that students can flow in both directions to get the skills they need for the jobs that are coming.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

Just as an example, when you go to the career build site, you can actually choose a career, and the tool will tell you everything from the average range of the scale of pay to how many vacancies there are within the region. Again, this is all linked to Statistics Canada's information. It tells you which programs there are and allows you to compare different ones.

Mr. MacKinnon, if you want to, you and I can talk a little more about this, but we should really get Kevin Wainwright from BCIT here, because they are doing outstanding things to make sure that when students are making decisions, they're based on the local availability of jobs. They're also projecting out. This even says what the age distribution is for the regions and how old the workers are in each one. I don't know how they get that information, but it's pretty fantastic.

I'd like to go to you, Mr. Goetz. Thank you very much for raising this. I understand that the Canadian Beverage Association has been harping on the labelling issue for 20 years. What is the explanation you get from Health Canada? Why are we the only jurisdiction that enforces this labelling?

[Jim Goetz]

The beverage industry has long been trying to innovate and bring new products to the market in order to diversify the portfolio of products that are on the shelf for Canadians, but also to continue to drive the lowering of calories in the choices that Canadians can make.

The great thing about the changing of this regulation is that we're not trying to push a rock uphill. Health Canada agrees with our position, which is that we are the only country that regulates the front-of-pack sweetener regulation. The answer we consistently get is that we need to find the right time and the right package of changes to implement in getting rid of this regulation.

I think it was brought in as a stopgap measure, as sometimes regulations are when new products hit the market. It's not a sexy change. It's not something that's top of mind for people, but it's very important for our industry as we try to get consumers more attracted to low- and no-calorie products.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

This is what drives me nuts about innovation: constantly elected officials—and this is at all levels—will say to business, “You need to innovate; you need to be cutting edge; you need to bring forward new products, new services”, and then what we do is put up roadblocks by not reviewing our regulations. To me, that's an issue. I really hope that gets heard. Again, regulations that are excessive or do not help with health and safety but end up just costing us in terms of new products, to me that is an area we can win on, and very inexpensively. Would you not agree?

[Jim Goetz]

Yes, I would completely agree.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

Since my colleague Mr. Liepert isn't with us today, and he has a habit of asking people to give a price tag on their number one priority, I'm going to ask you to say one. So far Mr. Watson has been very clear. He's had a couple of different things, but I'd still like to know which your number one priority is. You've also given how much you've costed it out. If we could just go right down and say, “Our number one priority is...”, and “What we believe it will cost the taxpayer if we were to buy onto your program today is...”.

[Jim Goetz]

Zero. We're not asking for anything. We are asking for our industry to keep innovating and bringing new products to the market and protecting the 60,000 well-paying, pensioned jobs across the country. A little known fact is that Coca-Cola and Pepsi, for example, two of our larger members, have the largest facilities in North America, located in Brampton and Mississauga. Some 7,000 people in the GTA are employed in that industry there.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

I wondered why Raj was so sweet.