Finance Committee on Feb. 22nd, 2017

[Robert-Falcon Ouellette, Liberal, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Bryan, for coming. I appreciate it.

I was wondering if you knew of any other countries around the world that might be using a similar tax incentive in their tax code.

[Bryan May, Liberal, Cambridge, ON]

I'm not familiar with other countries around the world, specifically.

In North America, nobody is doing this well. When I say 4% in terms of having the opportunity to have somebody trained in an emergency, you have about a 4% chance in Canada. The only place that seems to have done this well is King County, which is where Seattle is located. I'm not 100% sure about how they did it, but I have read a couple of things about it. In King County, I understand that there was a governor or senator who lost a child, and this became a mission. They give training on it in schools. It's a cultural thing. It's something that is ingrained right from the very beginning. They take it two or three times in school, so it becomes a habit.

My vision is for this not to end here, because this is not going to solve all the problems. It's not going to get us to the 24% chance of having somebody within arm's reach, which is what they have in King County. This is just a first step. My vision is that at some point in our culture we can expect the following scenario: an expectant mother walks into a doctor's office, and the doctor says, “Hey, congratulations. You're pregnant. Here's a prescription for a first aid course.”

The fact that we don't do that, the fact that this isn't part of our culture, is really confusing to me. I think that's why the federal government, if it were to support this bill and move forward with it, would be giving very clear direction that this where we want to go.

[Robert-Falcon Ouellette, Liberal, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Thank you.

I'm always interested in how many times someone actually has to take the training in order to be confident enough to actually use it. I've been in a number of situations. I was in the military for a number of years, and I must have taken it over a dozen times. I've never had the opportunity of using it in my career, thankfully. In my civilian life, when it did arrive after 20-odd years, boom, I knew what to do. It just clicked in, and off I went. There were a lot of people around me; the place was full of people, but everyone just stood around looking. I had to shove some people out of the way in order to get to the person.

Do you know of any stats on that, at all?

[Bryan May, Liberal, Cambridge, ON]

On what, specifically?

[Robert-Falcon Ouellette, Liberal, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

On how many times someone would have to take training today to actually become proficient at it.

[Bryan May, Liberal, Cambridge, ON]

I can tell you anecdotally, having been around this type of environment for most of my career and having talked to individuals who take it.

We used to have our camp staff take it every year, regardless of whether they needed it or not, just so that we knew everybody had been refreshed. It was part of the camp training.

We hear just that. Every time somebody takes it, their confidence level goes up.

It's funny, because the number one thing we would hear in training was that the instructors would always have to tell people to push harder when doing compression training on the dummies. Does anybody know what the response was from those people? “I don't want to hurt them. I don't want to break their rib.”

Well, they're dead. Their heart isn't pumping. You can't hurt them anymore. This is the element of confidence that we need to instill in people, that you're helping them by pushing harder. We've seen this a lot with defibrillator training, AED training.

Has anybody here taken AED training? I see that a couple of you have.

We've seen AEDs pop up all over the country. Scott Reid from the Conservatives has done a really good job of getting these out into his community. We've seen them pop up everywhere. The training associated with them has not grown. That's why this is included in this bill.

With regard to AEDs, we know that the rationale or the argument against the training is, “Well, they're self-explanatory. They actually tell you what to do when you open the box.”

If you don't know that, if you don't know that it tells you what to do, it's like handing a can opener to somebody who has never seen a can opener and saying, “Okay, go figure it out.”

This is a situation where seconds matter. People need to have the confidence to run to where the AED or the first aid kit is—and know where it is—and use it. I think that's the key. It's even knowing to call for help.

[Robert-Falcon Ouellette, Liberal, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Thank you very much.

I have a few questions about the efficiency of tax incentives. I wonder whether you have any stats or any information about them.

For instance, we had the Canada fitness credit and child culture credit for sports and recreation, and we always question its efficiency. Does it actually increase the number of people who then go out to obtain those services, or encourage the activity? It's like, for instance, the fat tax or salt tax or sugar tax: will it actually increase or decrease the behaviour? This is the question.

The tax code is about government. We control this large apparatus. I was just wondering whether you had any stats on that.

[Bryan May, Liberal, Cambridge, ON]

Specifically, no, and the reason is that this has never been attempted before. We don't have anything specific about an incentive to this industry that we can use as a benchmark, but I believe it can't help but help.

It's important to note that I designed this bill such that it would be a mild incentive. We're not talking about making it free for everybody. It isn't the intention of this bill to have another million Canadians participate in subsequent years. It's a small incentive to respond to the need for additional first aid-trained individuals in society as our society ages. It's intended to target those on the margins, those for whom a $15 to $30 incentive would be something to push them over the top to make their decision on this training.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

You have time for one quick question, Robert.

[Robert-Falcon Ouellette, Liberal, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

It's a very short one.

Do you know what the impact is going to be on the CRA in the collection of taxes? How complicated is this for the CRA?

[Bryan May, Liberal, Cambridge, ON]

It's not. I know that the question of whether it would muddy the tax code has come up time and time again. It does not. It is very simple to administer and it would be very simple to claim. It would be similar to claiming a donation that you made: you have to keep your receipt, and it has to be from a certified registered first aid provider.

If we had made this a progressive bill, if we had made it a progressive tax credit, I would agree with you. It would require the CRA to calculate income based on the credit and give out $5 here and $3 or $7 there. Then they'd have to deal with the onslaught of people asking, “Why didn't I get $15? I thought it was a $15 credit.” That's where it starts to muddy the tax code.

This does not. This is like throwing a grain of sand into the ocean.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

We have a couple more questioners, I believe, and we want to wrap up, if we can, in 10 minutes.

I have on my list Mr. Sorbara and Mr. Grewal.

Go ahead, Mr. Sorbara.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Welcome, colleague and friend Mr. May.

I applaud your efforts in bringing this issue forward to get more Canadians to take first aid training, whether CPR or other courses that are available. There are courses other than CPR available for first aid training.

If I take a step back, Bryan, and look at our income tax system, be it either on a personal or corporate level, but more on a personal level, I see there are a number of tax expenditures in the system currently. My personal view has always been to have a simpler, more efficient tax system. My view has always been that if tax credits are offered, they should be refundable and that everyone should be able to claim them whether they have taxes payable or not.

My understanding of this bill is that you must have taxes payable in order to claim the credit itself. Is that correct?

[Bryan May, Liberal, Cambridge, ON]

That's correct, yes.

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

Then that obviously would impact the uptake in being able to claim the credit, and it really wouldn't impact the behaviour of someone who really wasn't able to claim the credit.

[Bryan May, Liberal, Cambridge, ON]

Correct.

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

My second question is in terms of the efficacy of the measure in what I would call the overall budgeting process. My means test is just the efficacy.

If you make an RRSP deduction, you get a tax credit. There's a dividend tax credit. There are a number of items in our income tax system that you'll get a tax credit for. A lot of them are very laudable, but I've always been one who has shied away from introducing new measures into the tax system. When I look at this measure, my concerns are first that the overall goal of increasing the number of individuals enrolling in CPR hasn't been shown, and second, there are the administrative costs to putting in this measure when there are other avenues and other means to increase uptake of CPR courses, and this measure is not as effective as those other potential means.

If you could comment on that, it would be appreciated.

[Bryan May, Liberal, Cambridge, ON]

Your first question was regarding, say, a child or a youth who took it, or somebody who doesn't currently pay taxes, and that person would not receive a refundable tax credit. As I've said, that's outside the scope of what I could do with this bill.

I don't disagree with you even a little, but it's not within my power as a private member to do that in the legislation. This is as much as we could do while staying within what I thought was, and what I still believe is, being fiscally prudent. This is not an expensive tax credit. This isn't something that you're going to spend billions of dollars on, or even hundreds of millions on.

In the case of children, yes, they can actually transfer that tax credit to a parent, so it depends on the situation. In terms of efficacy, whether the relatively low benefit to taxpayers essentially justifies the cost is really what you're asking. It's almost impossible to measure. How do we measure a life? How do we sit here and say this is what we save by stopping this person from dying? Even if a few lives are saved, even if a handful of people—a couple of thousand, maybe 10,000 to 20,000 extra people—decide to take this training because of this credit or the attention that this credit is getting and those people go out and save just a few people, I don't know that any of you would disagree that it would be worthwhile.

It's also worth talking about the non-life-threatening first aid provision, those who sprain a knee or need a splint, those who need a cut patched. We had a number of very active basketball programs at my YMCA, and I can tell you I have splinted so many breaks and so many sprains that I can't even list them all.

I can tell you about one situation. A gentleman, a pilot by trade who used to work for Air Canada, broke his leg, and I was able to properly set that leg and splint it and get him to the hospital. He came back and told me the doctor told him that because it was properly splinted, he's looking at six weeks of recovery, not six months. That's the part we have to figure out how to measure. I'd be making numbers up if we tried.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

I'll stop you there, Mr. May.

Mr. Dussault, you may have a short question, and then Mr. Grewal can have a short question. Then we'll go to Department of Finance officials.

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

I would very briefly like to go back to what Mr. Ouellette said earlier about the efficiency of certain former tax credits.

The Conservatives introduced the child fitness tax credit. Was the efficiency of that tax credit subsequently evaluated? Did we observe any increase in child participation in physical activities after it was introduced? Is there a model we can rely on to determine whether a non-refundable tax credit is efficient?

[Bryan May, Liberal, Cambridge, ON]

It is and it isn't. This is a much wider scope we're talking about.

There has been a lot of conversation about boutique tax credits. That hasn't been brought up today, but I'll bring it up. I'll use the “elephant in the room” word. This is not a boutique tax credit by any definition. The beginning of this bill explains that anybody can take it. Anybody can avail themselves of it if they take these types of training.

We're not talking about very specific individuals or groups. We're not talking about youth only. We're not talking about students only, or seniors, or teachers only, or doctors only, or anybody only. This is for anybody who takes this training.

It's tough for me to say with any authority what the uptick would be, because this is not a boutique tax credit. To compare it to boutique tax credits and the numbers they have been able to show is not realistic.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Thank you, Mr. Dusseault.

Mr. Grewal, you have the last question.

[Raj Grewal, Liberal, Brampton East, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to my colleague and my good friend, Mr. May, for coming.

I don't think you will find anybody who is against your intent. I think it's very admirable, but we're here sitting in the finance committee, so dollars and cents and data drive our decision-making.

I've looked at the numbers. I've heard your testimony. The consideration is about the uptick and the cost-benefit analysis, and it goes both ways.

You said there isn't clear research because something like this hasn't been done anywhere before. Can you elaborate on that a little bit?

[Bryan May, Liberal, Cambridge, ON]

When we started doing the research on this particular issue, the Library of Parliament said there has never been a PMB or a piece of legislation out of the federal government that offers an incentive to take this kind of training. It is unique, so we are in somewhat uncharted territory.

It's very speculative to suggest.... I know I'm going to be followed by the department. If they can come in and say that they believe A, B, and C, I don't know where they are finding that information, other than just through pure speculation.

[Raj Grewal, Liberal, Brampton East, ON]

Are you saying no other jurisdiction in the entire world has something similar?