Hi. Thank you.
I'm here on behalf of the 3.5 million members of the Canadian Labour Congress. I want to thank you for the opportunity to present our views on Bill C-29.
The CLC brings together Canada's national and international unions along with the provincial and territorial federations of labour and 130 district labour councils whose members work in virtually all sectors of the Canadian economy, in all occupations in all parts of Canada.
As my colleague from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation did, I'm going to touch on just two parts of this bill because the bill is very long.
Part 1, subclause 43(1) amends section 122.61 of the Income Tax Act, indexing the Canada child benefit to inflation, but only starting in July 2020. The Canada child benefit replaced the universal child care benefit, which was taxable and not indexed; the Canada child tax benefit, which was not taxable and indexed to inflation; and the national child benefit supplement, which was also not taxable and was indexed to inflation.
The Canada child benefit was introduced and came into effect as of July 2016. It is not taxable, like two of the previous three, and not indexed to inflation, like the UCCB. It simplified the other three programs and it better targeted this benefit to low-income families, so it was very popular and one of the things that the Canadian Labour Congress pointed to as a success that would lift children out of poverty.
The maximum benefit under the old system, if you had one child under six, would be $5,700 for this year. The new CCB gives those families an extra $650 a year for that child. This is a considerable amount of money if you have a low income, but since the CCTB and NCB were indexed to CPI, this advantage shrinks to only $190 in 2020. It is inexplicable that a benefit aimed at reducing child poverty would be allowed to erode by so much in such a short period. An alternative to keep costs down would be to phase the benefit out earlier. Right now, two-child families with incomes of up to $200,000 still receive some benefits. It's also inexplicable that we're allowing.... Because we're not indexing either the $30,000 or the $65,000 as peoples' incomes rise, they'll grow out of those groups...in order to keep benefits for fairly wealthy families.
Part 4, division 1 introduces a definition of “suitable employment” into the Employment Insurance Act. This definition was previously spelled out in EI regulations and in the “Digest of Benefit Entitlement Principles”. Most of the definitions from the EI regulations have been moved into legislation but some parts of them are specifically missing.
The health and physical capabilities that allow workers to commute and perform the work is no longer a factor in considering suitable employment nor is it necessary that the hours of work are not incompatible with family obligations or religious convictions. That's quite significant. If you are offered, say, a night shift but you have a child in school, do you have to take that night shift or can you say that's not suitable employment? Most of us have to be accommodated for our family situations, and it would be incongruent if EI did not also accommodate us for our family situations.
That the nature of work not be contrary to moral convictions or religious beliefs is no longer included in the definition of suitable employment. This was in EI regulation 9.002(1). The definition in Bill C-29 is otherwise the same as EI regulation 9.002(2) and (3). I'm wondering if this was an oversight, or if it was intentional, given that the Social Security Tribunal relied heavily on years of jurisprudence from the Board of Referees and the umpire. We're likely to get more consistent decisions if we can stick to the established definition and people will have more consistent outcomes.
Thank you very much.