Finance Committee on Oct. 21st, 2016

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

Okay, thank you for that.

I'd like to ask a question of Mr. Miller.

Mr. Miller, I do agree that smoking is a plague on our society, but one of the challenges I have with the new brand-free or advertising-free packages is, first of all, enforcement. How are the RCMP or other local authorities supposed to know when something is counterfeit? It's much harder to tell if all boxes have no insignias or branding on them.

Second, I'm also concerned that if the consumer doesn't know, then they buy contraband tobacco, and there's no money going to provincial and federal revenues that help keep the price of...as we've seen over the years, the higher those taxes are, the less people are encouraged to smoke, because there is quite a cost.

How do you address those concerns?

[Gabriel Miller]

One of the arguments that has been used against plain packaging—and I have to say, it has mainly been by the industry, but I know other people with the right interests are also asking some of those questions—has been that somehow it will make contraband easier.

There really isn't any evidence to suggest that. Australia has introduced plain packaging. They haven't seen a significant increase in contraband.

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

Could there be something like Microsoft had, for example, in the old days, when they used to sell their software? They would have almost a certification stamp, or something so that you could identify what was counterfeit.

[Gabriel Miller]

Yes. There are seals on tobacco products in Canada to serve that exact purpose.

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

Okay, that takes care of that concern.

Lastly, Bill C-277, have you heard about it? It's a national strategy for palliative care.

[Gabriel Miller]

I have.

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

Is that something that your organization supports?

[Gabriel Miller]

Yes.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Thank you, Dan.

Mr. MacKinnon.

[Steven MacKinnon, Liberal, Gatineau, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank you all for coming here.

Mr. Simon, I'm a big music fan, and I hope that you're successful in your endeavours. Perhaps I will give you the opportunity, if you wish, to provide us with any last reflections on what you perceive to be the return to Canadians for an investment, such as the one you propose.

[Peter Simon]

When it comes to the Fort McMurray thing, we were asked by the Department of Justice in Alberta to do something about the school situation there with 3,000 students in Fort McMurray, because most indigenous students weren't graduating from grade 8. In order to get a job driving large trucks, you need grade 10 mathematics and what have you, and that connects to unemployment and incarceration rates.

Over a three-year period, we were able to fix that because we were able to create a climate of engagement in the schools. One-third of students in most schools are disengaged, and that one-third have poor educational prospects and poor economic prospects, and they are a drain on our whole system. Through music and the arts, you can engage students and connect them to learning mathematics or history, and to greater academic achievement. That's an important economic thing, I think, because you can't lose one-third of your work force.

The second thing is that, internationally, Canada fights well above its weight in the performing arts, especially in music. The potential for us in China is just ridiculous in how great it could be. There's no system there. We have a great opportunity, but it's always about investment capital, as with everyone else, to invest and to create that kind of growth.

[Steven MacKinnon, Liberal, Gatineau, QC]

Thank you very much.

I'm going to turn to CUTRIC, Ms. Petrunic.

In my home province, electrification of transport is a major initiative, and that's owing in no small measure to the hydroelectric resources of the province of Quebec. In my home community, we're planning a major investment in a rapid transit system. We've gone from a bus rapid transit through my riding, and in the neighbouring riding now they're debating about routes, among other things, but also which mode and which technology.

With that backdrop and your knowledge of Quebec's efforts on electrification, and maybe with your knowledge of the debate we're having in Gatineau, what is your sense of the best way forward? I don't want to put you on the spot, but in picking a mode and a preferred route, and so on, how could CUTRIC and what it does assist in the debate that we're having?

[Josipa Gordana Petrunic]

I'll preface this by saying that across Canada there's no equivalent of what CUTRIC is in any of the provinces, except for Quebec. In Quebec we partner with InnovÉÉ and as well with some of the other innovation consortia, such as CRIAQ in aerospace.

There's a history of innovation consortia in Quebec. Typically, those innovation consortia have never funded the industry members; they typically only fund the academic members. We're working on that.

Now, in Quebec, the strategy around electrification is a case of “great strategy, loved the championships”. The problem is—and this we're seeing manifested in many provinces—that the focus has tended to be incentives for procurement. If you simply incent for procurement—cash out the door to encourage you to buy an electric bus or electric school bus or electric car—most of those dollars are exported.

The area they are domesticating in Quebec is the school bus initiative, and it has helped a couple of small companies. But incentives for procurements are not solving the innovation issue, which occurs earlier on, when the company is facing how to design a new powertrain or a new data analytics routing system. That's still a gap in Quebec.

Now, in terms of your question about routing and how best to go about selecting routes, many of you will know, if you sit on a corner and watch most buses in Canada go by, that they go by empty or half-empty. We tend to think of transit as a solution for climate change. Yes, if the bus is actually full, then it is a solution. If the bus is running around half-empty, it is dirty and polluting. Our transit systems are dirty, and they are polluting. It has taken a long time for that realization to come to the fore.

What we realize is in addition that when they're running around empty, the reason is that they're typically on routes that were designed by “that guy”. If you go to a transit agency, it's not as though there's a big computer crunching analytics, with demographic data being fed in, and congestion data and mobility data. It's a couple of people around the table who know their routes from 30 years past, and they'll make incremental changes. At best, you will get municipalities updating their routes every five years on five-year demographics.

For a city such as Gatineau, or such as Brampton or York or Calgary, that is growing at certain periods exponentially, this is insufficient. One of the things that CUTRIC is doing with InnovÉÉ and some of the other innovation consortia, such as Prompt in Quebec, is looking at big data-driven analytic solutions for routing, route optimization, and immediate route redesign. Sometimes that includes getting buses off the road and putting on automobiles, which are smaller, lighter-weight vehicles, for transit application.

To conclude, we're really in an era now in which CUTRIC is trying to promote the idea that we need to stop siloing transit and automotive. It is integrated, multimodal mobility that needs to be data-driven.

[Steven MacKinnon, Liberal, Gatineau, QC]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Thank you.

I have just a couple of questions. We are out of time.

Mr. Simon, you mentioned the Fort McMurray exercise, for lack of a better word, that you did. Do you have any data on it that you can forward to the clerk? Your proposal, at least in my view, and I haven't been on the committee that terribly long, is a new concept, a kind of thinking out of the box, that I've certainly never thought about. If you could provide the clerk with that information, I think it would be helpful.

[Peter Simon]

It's my pleasure.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

On the stem cell issue, Mr. Price, you're talking about both health and the economy and health in the economy and growth, and their interconnection. You're looking at a Canadian stem cell strategy here. Most of what you talk about in the strategy is economic growth. There is a health aspect to it, too, I suspect.

[James Price]

Yes, absolutely. When we talk about stem cells being the biggest innovation in medicine in the last 50 years, it's because stem cells actually are focused on treating the root cause of disease rather than treating conditions. We're looking at a health care system on which we spend more than $200 billion a year, and two-thirds of it goes to direct treatment costs of currently incurable diseases.

Most recently, an Ottawa group published in The Lancet a study dealing with multiple sclerosis patients, using the same stem cell transplant protocol that has been used for leukemia and applying it to MS. Now they have patients who are 10 years post-transplant who were full-time in rehab centres 24/7, needing to be fed, whose drug costs were close to $70,000 a year, and who post-transplant are now working full-time, are completely off drugs, are contributing, and are paying taxes.

We're seeing this in MS. We're seeing it in Crohn's disease. Diabetes is another big area in which the clinical trials are moving forward quite quickly. The Edmonton Protocol group in Edmonton is using now insulin-producing islet cells in their transplant program.

When we talk about relieving some of the stress on the health care system, we're talking about really trying to address root causes of disease rather than just treatment options.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

It would also save the health care system money.

[James Price]

Absolutely.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Okay.

I'm sorry we're out of time. It was a very, very interesting panel, one that stretched pretty well across the map. Thanks to all of you for your presentations and your answers to questions.

We will suspend and then we'll reconvene for the next panel.

Thank you to all.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

We'll call the third panel to session. As panellists know, this is the Standing Committee on Finance and we're doing pre-budget consultations in advance of the 2017 budget. We would hope witnesses can hold their remarks to about five minutes. You've all been presented with the questions we're trying to emphasize in all of our presentations beyond the budget itself. What can we do to better achieve greater economic growth within the country?

To start, I will ask each of our members to introduce themselves, so you know as witnesses where our members are from.

Mr. Grewal, do you want to start please?

[Raj Grewal, Liberal, Brampton East, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My name is Raj Grewal. I'm the member of Parliament from Brampton East, which is about 15 to 20 minutes from here.

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

Good afternoon and welcome everyone. My name is Francesco Sorbara from the riding of Vaughan—Woodbridge, which happens to be directly to the east of Raj's riding.

Welcome to Toronto and just north of us, York region.