Finance Committee on May 15th, 2017

[Roger Ermuth]

The way the legislation is worded is that if enabling legislation does not already have an inflationary factor in it, a CPI-type of inflationary indicator would be necessary for all fees. In essence, the fee escalator would apply across all fees. Again, some would be under the legislation, unless, of course, the enabling legislation has its own.

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

Most of the fees imposed by the government are set by regulation, are they not?

[Roger Ermuth]

There are some that are statutory, but there are others that are regulatory as well. Quite frankly, even some of the ones that are statutory do not necessarily have a built-in inflationary escalator.

This would ensure, again, that as the inflationary costs of delivering those services and products go up, that the associated revenue from fees would keep pace with those changes.

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

Let's take the example of a $5 fee that was included in 2010 regulations. If there is an indexed, gradual increase, those fees would be about $8 in 2017, but they would still be $5 in the regulations in question, since they will not have been amended to reflect the change.

[Roger Ermuth]

On the specifics for each individual set of regulations, I'm not necessarily sure how to answer that question specifically. The point would be that if a regulation might have stated originally that it was set at $5 and would increase at 2% per year, then obviously the fees would go up on an annual basis. If there were nothing in the regulation or the legislation, then, through the current legislation, the escalator would kick in.

One of the things that we are also putting in is a requirement on an annual basis, tabled in Parliament, that each department then publicly states how much each of those fees is going up. It would be made clear to parliamentarians as well as to Canadians, as those fees are increasing.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

I thought we might be able to get through this section, but we have a number of questioners—I can see why—and we won't be able to finish. You'll have to come back again. We will have to hear from you at about 5:30 tomorrow.

Just for the committee's information, we have four witnesses, instead of the six we had hoped for, on each panel tomorrow. We'll have four witnesses from 3:30 to 4:30, four witnesses from 4:30 to 5:30, and then at 5:30 we will have Treasury Board come back. Then we'll go to division 18 on infrastructure, division 13 on the immigration act, and division 14 on the EI Act.

Mr. Ermuth, I have one question for you to think about in the meantime. When the inflationary factor, the escalator, is put in, what incentive is there for a department to do things more efficiently and cut costs? That's a huge concern I have with escalator clauses. How do you create the pressure on the department to create efficiencies on their end and cut costs? You can have that answer tomorrow.

With that, we'll adjourn until tomorrow at 3:30.

We have three minutes to get to the vote.

The meeting is adjourned.