Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I wanted to say thank you to the officials, those who are just leaving and also those who have just come on this.
We, as the Conservative members on this committee, will be opposing the modernization of service fees. Particularly, I wanted to raise the point, and I think it has been well established, that while the CPI does offer an attractive and expedient way for the government to basically keep up in pace with inflation, just due to the whole lock, stock and variety of different fees and services that are offered I don't think it's a very good fit.
I also think that it allows for people not to moderate or temper their spending to try to keep the services at as low a cost as possible, and that innovation, that spendthrift, that bootstrapping will just not happen when you have a CPI, when you don't have a direct correlation between a basket of goods that is for a consumer versus a user fee that is quite different.
I also want to raise some concerns from the hunting and angling caucus. They feel that the user fees and the escalator that's attached to them will actually discourage people from getting out and enjoying the outdoors, particularly when we talk about everything from licences to costs for visiting our national parks.
Overall, Mr. Chair, we do appreciate that we have to make sure our user fees are consistent, so that taxpayers are not subsidizing. On this one-size-fits-all imposed I think, first of all, the Standing Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations will take issue with this, just because you're fixing a price to something that does not match what the actual cost is in delivering the service.
I would add that usually user fees are meant to be self-liquidating, so they either pay for the infrastructure or for the processing and for any work that's done to it. They are not supposed to make any profit for the government. I think there are going to be some unintended consequences that go along with this policy that overall we cannot support.
That being said, there should be an element of cost recovery. I just do not believe that this is the proper mechanism. I think a rolling three- to five-year review to keep these things current will continue to serve Canadians better.
That being said, I think we also know that we have three voices on this committee. We will stand opposed to it, but we'll see what the majority of the committee wants to do.