Finance Committee on May 21st, 2020

[Anita Gaffney]

We're looking at a number of scenarios for the 2021 season. Going into next year, we're looking at the productions we might do; at some of the things we had on the playbill for 2020, and bringing some of those back; and at some other things that maybe are smaller productions. We're also looking at how to use our facilities. We have an 1,800-seat theatre and an 1,100-seat theatre. We have some space for social distancing.

We're looking at the programming and at how we receive people into our buildings.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Thanks, all of you.

We'll go back to Mr. Julian—I believe he's online—and he'll be followed by Mr. Fraser.

Peter, are you back? Do you want to start over?

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

I am back. I hope you can hear me. That was a dramatic exit, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

We've seen you in still frame.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

I was sucked into the virtual vortex.

My questions are for Mr. Dias.

The first is on the supplementary unemployment benefit. The second is on employment insurance reform, so that folks are not left behind coming out of this and we don't have a second unemployment crisis.

I'd also like you to comment, Mr. Dias, on two things. The first is the courage bonus, the courage wage, that the NDP has been pushing for front-line workers.

There's also the issue of sick leave. Both John Horgan, the Premier of B.C., and Jagmeet Singh have repeatedly raised the fact that many workers in this country do not have access to paid sick leave. Amazon workers and other non-unionized workers have to make that difficult choice between putting food on the table or going to work sick. How important is it for the government to actually take steps to make sure that every worker in Canada has access to paid sick leave?

[Jerry Dias]

One of the first things that many provincial governments have done—the Ford government and the Jason Kenney government—was to eliminate a lot of the labour law reforms that were implemented, which included paid sick days. I think they're both probably feeling pretty foolish today for doing that, because there is no question that what we have done by not giving our workers sick leave is that we're forcing them to go to work sick, which is of course making other people sick. I think the pandemic is a perfect example of what happens if in fact we don't have any sort of legislative protection that allows people to take time off when they need to.

The courage pay is something we've been talking about for quite a while. Frankly, I take a look at who the COVID heroes are today, and respectfully, they are a lot of workers who don't get the type of recognition that they deserve. I take a look at our members in the long-term care, retirement and nursing homes and in grocery stores, and at airline workers, truck drivers and transit operators. I can walk through so many workers who make so little. I think about the minimum wage workers in the grocery stores and long-term care facilities, and it's outrageous.

If you look at the crisis in long-term care facilities, you'll see that it has changed significantly ever since they went for a for-profit model. We're finding today, of course, that there are a lot more deaths in long-term care facilities that are for-profit facilities, as opposed to those that are publicly owned.

There is a lot that people should have learned as a result of this pandemic, and it really is about the jobs that are critical and the jobs that are deemed essential. I'm also looking at the manufacturing jobs that don't get the respect they deserve either, because now that we've hit the pandemic, who did the Prime Minister and others rely on to help? It was the GMs, the Fords, the Hiram Walkers, the auto parts companies, and Bombardier in Thunder Bay, because having this manufacturing ability has allowed us to react. It's allowed us to build the personal protective equipment that is needed.

I've already dealt with the SUBPs, Peter. The bottom line is that I don't have a logical answer, but, Wayne, we have now forwarded the letter that we sent to Minister Qualtrough and the finance minister, so you will have that ASAP, if not already.

Ultimately, we need to change how we view working-class people and the contribution that they have proven during this pandemic. Long-term care workers ought not to be shuffled into part-time jobs; that's why they work in two or three different homes. They should be given full-time jobs and given the respect they need. In this pandemic, there would have been a lot fewer lives lost in long-term care facilities and with the health care workers, hopefully, if in fact long-term care workers had been given full-time jobs where they could only work in one home and were given proper wages and benefits. I think our seniors deserve a lot better than we have done.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Peter, can you boil a question down to 15 seconds?

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Yes.

Mr. Sullivan, what is the impact of not providing support to processing workers on the front line?

[Keith Sullivan]

Well, right now, like you said, for some of these people it's a decision between their health and their financial welfare. Obviously, going into work when we might have seriously reduced work opportunities and wages.... We're seeing in some places that fisheries may not open whatsoever. We're seeing employers getting supports for PPE and wage subsidies, but then none of it is obviously directly passed on to the workers.

Right now, they're going into an environment where there is no consideration, if they're left short through this season. Where do they end up? What supports are going to be there for those people? I think we have to start answering some of those questions. Obviously, something like an extended CERB or some considerations around EI absolutely have to be dealt with for people who are considered essential to the workforce and who are generally in lower-wage positions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Thank you both.

Mr. Sullivan, on that supplementary, are you basically saying that 2020 doesn't exist for people working in fish plants and seconds on boats, and that you apply the 2019 EI income to this year, and they draw unemployment based on that? Is that what you're saying?

[Keith Sullivan]

I think that's one reasonable approach. That is one reasonable way to go, for sure.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Thank you.

We'll turn to Mr. Fraser, who will be followed by Mr. Cumming.

Sean.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Thank you so much, Chair.

Thank you to all of our witnesses.

In the limited time, I will focus my questions on Dr. Robson.

Thank you so much for being with us today, and, more broadly, for your work to ensure the public has the information they need, in plain language, no less, to access some of the emergency programs that have been rolled out. It's been a terrific resource for my team. Thank you as well for recognizing constituency office workers.

To my staff at home and in Ottawa, you have kept a lot of people fed and housed in the past few months. I want to say thank you for all the work you've done.

One thing that drives me absolutely crazy is the fact that my constituency staff have to do so much case work, when in fact that service should be provided by the public service, or perhaps by some sort of a navigator. Maybe there should be a non-profit-type solution, as you've recommended.

One thing that jumps out at me from the past few weeks when I compare them to the past few years is the simplicity of the design of the CERB in particular. We have a whole group of people who have never had to access social supports before, perhaps because they have a healthy income and don't live in poverty, who have had to click more or less "okay" and receive money in their bank account days later.

Over the past few years, in my constituency office, we have seen thousands upon thousands of people who are living in poverty trying to navigate a complex web of provincial, federal, municipal and community programs and they are scraping by with not quite enough really to live and be healthy, often in rural communities that have no transit.

What lessons can we learn from the simplicity of design or perhaps the policy design of the CERB or other federal programs, perhaps the Canada child tax benefit, that we are going to be able to apply on the back end of this crisis to help eradicate poverty in Canada once and for all?

[Prof. Jennifer Robson]

Thank you very much for the question and also for the kind words on the little plain language guide that I put together. I'm glad that it's been of help. Thanks again to you, your constituency office, and indeed to all the constituency staff of all the members of the committee. It really is an unsung but incredibly important service that MPs are providing.

As I said in my testimony, I don't think constituency offices can do it alone. I also take your point that the navigation of some of this information should properly be delivered by government officials themselves. The public servants who are actually the subject matter experts ought to be doing a better job. Certainly, we can do some of that, but I think there is also an important issue with regard to public trust. In terms of some of the populations that you just mentioned, where do they turn and where do they feel they can be served with trust? It's often non-profit organizations that are directly in their community and that offer a range of services. At the end of the day, we're going to need multiple touch points because people enter into programs and have complex lives and they need multiple entry points.

You also raised the issue of the simplicity of CERB. It was made possible only by having a more simple design. The employment insurance system in normal times is used to processing, and capable of processing, approximately five claims per minute. CERB, on the other hand, had to be designed in a way—and successfully was—to be able to process 1,000 claims per minute. We do have these in-built tradeoffs between handling volume and handling tiny nuances and tweaks and changes.

As we go forward, as we think about entering into a transition—and as I said, that transition is happening at different times, according to community, according to sector, and according to gender—to the extent that we can, if we can keep programs as simple as possible, it will make it easier for users to navigate them and makes it more possible for administrators to deliver them quickly and to reach the kinds of volumes that we're going to need to continue to reach for the next several months.

I think that's an important principle. As I said in my remarks, part of reconciling having greater flexibility built into programs and being responsive to individual differences while maintaining simplicity is that we're going to have to continue to trust Canadians, that rather than expecting fraud around every corner.... The C.D. Howe Institute just had a paper out today suggesting that perhaps this is the way to reconcile it, to continue to rely on things like attestations rather than waiting for people to jump through multiple hoops before we give them a dollar of help.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

I'm sorry, Sean.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Mr. Chair, am I out of time?

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Yes, you are, unless you can do one in 10 seconds.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

I'd invite any follow-up that you want to submit to the committee.

Thank you so much for your work. It's greatly appreciated.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Thank you very much. And yes, do that, Dr. Robson, if you would like to do so.

We'll turn to Mr. Cumming, followed by Ms. Koutrakis.

James.

[James Cumming, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all the witnesses. I can assure the people from the Stratford Festival that I have not been and it is now on my bucket list, for sure.

I'd like to direct my questions to our two friends from MNP, and they can arm-wrestle for who wants to take the question.

The first thing is that I love that you quite often come with practical solutions to a problem that is going to come up and needs to be dealt with. This one is the capital cost for businesses to revamp their businesses once we restart, and that could be through air conditioning or filtration methods; it could be screens. It could be a variety of things.

You've come up with the tax credit concept.

Can you expand a little on that and why you thought that was the right direction?

[Kim Drever, Regional Tax Leader, Edmonton, MNP LLP]

One of the reasons we are really keen on the refundable tax credit concept is that we see right now that businesses are very concerned about spending any of their capital. Businesses at this point in time have a finite amount of cash. They're relying on government programs like the CEWS, the different loan programs, those types of things. A lot of these businesses are not just deciding when to open; they're deciding if to open, will they open.

I'm sitting here in Alberta and, like you, we are in phase one of our reopening. There are still a lot of businesses that are eligible to open and they're not. They're not opening because there's a lack of consumer confidence and there's a lack of confidence within the business community. If they go out of pocket to reopen—whether it's doing the infrastructure that's necessary to make sure their teams, their staff, can socially distance and their clients can be safe in their environment—they want to make sure there is some merit in their being open.

A refundable credit would allow people to make improvements, whether it's working on their HVAC systems, their air conditioning, working on installing doors that open automatically. Even in our office here, everyone is afraid to touch the door handles, because no one wants to contaminate another person.

We believe in a measured response like a refundable credit for businesses, and also for homes. There are a lot of families who are looking at bringing their elderly parents into their homes, who are looking at working from home on a go-forward basis.

If we could have some way to kick-start the economy and get construction workers working on some of the retrofits for the businesses, that would be good. We're not talking about things that are prettying up.... We're talking about things that would improve the safety and well-being of all Canadians in a manner that gets businesses back up and running.

[James Cumming, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

I want to turn to another one of your proposals. It's being able to withdraw from an RRSP to have capital available.

We've advocated, particularly for small business, that you could take it out as a loan and put it back into your RRSP when you are able to do so. Some will argue that takes away from savings, but if people need money, they need money.

Can you expand on your proposal there?

[Kim Drever]

I don't know if everyone here is familiar with the homebuyers' plan, but that allows you to take money out of your RRSP and you return it over the next 15 years. There's no penalty for taking it out, no tax. We are proposing a concept like that for COVID.

We are seeing that people are taking money out of their RRSPs right now. With regard to the cautions on why we would want to encourage people to withdraw from their RRSPs, doing a program like this would let people access them. They are being viewed right now as a rainy day fund for a lot of people. They're pulling money out and paying tax on it. They will never have that retirement room again in their RRSP, and they're taking out more than they maybe need right now to get to the net number because they have to pay the tax bill.

From those two perspectives, we believe it's very important to allow for an RRSP withdrawal. That RRSP withdrawal could be used to get them through tough times. It could be used to help them pay off some debt or their mortgage payments. It can help them fund some education. It can help them do things as simple as putting a loan into their company so they can continue to pay their workers.

We have the CEWS program. That's fantastic for a lot of businesses, but that CEWS program is really complicated. It has been extended, which we applaud because that's going to be necessary, but I think that in order for business owners and families to be able to maintain economic viability, it's going to be important to access funds wherever they are.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Okay. We'll have to end it there.

That's been done in other instances before, I believe, and I believe it's in your brief.

Ms. Koutrakis will be followed, I think by Mr. Brunelle-Duceppe, but it may be Mr. Ste-Marie. One or the other, in any event, will follow Annie.

Go ahead, Annie.

[Annie Koutrakis, Liberal, Vimy, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all the witnesses for your presentations this afternoon.

Mr. Chair, I will be splitting my time with my colleague Julie Dzerowicz.