Thank you for the example.
Evidence of meeting #5 for Finance in the 43rd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was economy.
A video is available from Parliament.
Evidence of meeting #5 for Finance in the 43rd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was economy.
A video is available from Parliament.
6 p.m.
NDP
Matthew Green NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Following the line of my friend here, my questions will also be to our guests from the CNC.
Mr. Céré, do you think that, no matter where you live, there should be a single criterion to access benefits?
6 p.m.
Spokesperson, Conseil national des chômeurs et chômeuses
Yes, I think so. You know, Canada is the only OECD country that has a variable eligibility criterion based on place of residence. There are 62 eligibility criteria for 62 economic regions, and the unemployment rate is recalculated every month. That is not normal. These administrative regions are cut up in an extremely arbitrary way. There are 12 administrative regions in Quebec and 62 across Canada. This creates absolutely incredible situations.
We believe that there should be a single eligibility criterion in Canada, with an exception for seasonal workers and certain regions with a very high chronic unemployment rate. This is the case in northern Manitoba, for example, as well as in indigenous communities. This exception measure should provide an eligibility threshold of 420 hours of work. For Canada as a whole, we are proposing a single eligibility criterion of 525 hours of work, which we think makes perfect sense and is balanced.
6:05 p.m.
NDP
Matthew Green NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Thank you very much.
From that line, do you think the next budget should include reforms to accessibility hours? What would your suggestion be for the government in the next budget?
6:05 p.m.
Spokesperson, Conseil national des chômeurs et chômeuses
The government needs to do some serious thinking about these issues.
I am told that the budget will be presented at the beginning of March. I would be surprised if, on the issue of eligibility criteria or eligibility requirements generally for the employment insurance system, we could come up with a sustainable proposal for the next budget in such a short period of time. However, the government should sit down with the other political parties and segments of civil society, reflect and come up with sensible and balanced proposals fairly quickly.
I will close by saying that in the short term, in terms of the budget, we are targeting sickness benefits. There is a commitment from the Liberal Party of Canada on this issue, and the government needs to respond to it. It has to be part of the next budget. In addition, we are saying that the pilot project must be improved and made permanent for seasonal workers. It must be improved and announced in the next budget.
6:05 p.m.
Liberal
6:05 p.m.
Conservative
James Cumming Conservative Edmonton Centre, AB
Thank you, Chair, and thank you to all of you for appearing today.
Mr. Bradley, I thumbed through your electricity innovation book and read with great interest that several of the innovative programs have come from my home province of Alberta. I think that that some of the innovation happening in the province is often not well enough known.
Can you speak briefly on advanced carbon capture utilization and storage and the potential that has?
6:05 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Electricity Association
I would be delighted to talk about carbon capture and utilization.
First off, as you noted and in the material we circulated, we have some real global leaders here. We have some groundbreaking work that is taking place in Alberta by Alberta companies, as well as by the universities in Alberta.
We are not yet at a point where we're going to be able to immediately move away from fossil fuels. It's something, of course, that we're planning on doing over time, but we have already figured out how to capture carbon. The first commercial-scale carbon capture and storage plant on an electricity generation facility was built in Canada by SaskPower, a world leader, in Estevan, Saskatchewan.
We continue to be world leaders now in the area of not just capturing the carbon, but figuring out what to do with it. It gives it both an opportunity to reduce the carbon footprint and it creates a separate stream and separate business for the companies themselves.
We're quite confident that this research is going to result in very useful products being produced, such as the carbon nanotube approach that's being looked at by a couple of the projects, including work by Capital Power, for example. These are products that may be used in Kevlar vests in the future, and in advanced manufacturing, in aeronautics, and so on.
The current product stream is actually just waste. In the future, that waste will likely be turned into very useful high-tech products.
6:05 p.m.
Conservative
James Cumming Conservative Edmonton Centre, AB
Mr. Kingston, in your report you talk a lot about productivity, red tape and regulatory review. Can you get into any specifics about areas where you see we get the biggest bang for the buck?
If you want to give us the big heads-up on your press conference tomorrow, you can do that today, too.
6:10 p.m.
Vice-President, Policy, International and Fiscal, Business Council of Canada
Sure.
6:10 p.m.
Vice-President, Policy, International and Fiscal, Business Council of Canada
On the regulatory front, there are two things, two specifics I'll highlight.
The first one, which has been talked about for many years and we continue to talk about it, is interprovincial trade barriers. According to the IMF, we're talking about a potential 4% GDP boost if we address them for real, once and for all.
What that means in practice is getting rid of all the exemptions that are in the current Canada free trade agreement and a more serious attempt at some of the labour standard differentials that we have across the country.
In terms of addressing the broader regulatory issues that face companies, I wish there were a silver bullet. There is not. However, the idea we're proposing is to create, effectively, an auditor general of regulation, a separate arm's-length agency from government that has the mandate and the power to shine a spotlight on any area of regulation they desire, be it at the municipal, provincial or federal level. It triggers a response from the government responsible, to comply or explain.
I know there's irony in recommending more bureaucracy to attack bureaucracy, but we've seen this work in Denmark, for example, where it has been highly effective. It's a good start to getting at some of these regulations and finding a way to get rid of unnecessary ones.
6:10 p.m.
Liberal
Sean Fraser Liberal Central Nova, NS
Thank you very much to each of our witnesses. I have more questions than I'll have time to get through, so if you can keep your answers tight, I'd appreciate it.
I'll begin with the Vanier Institute. A number of times during your remarks you mentioned the importance of measuring well-being. I don't know if you've had a chance to review the mandate letter of the Minister of Middle Class Prosperity and Associate Finance Minister. It signals that she should be tasked with developing better indicators to measure overall well-being. GDP, of course, is a useful tool but a bit of a blunt instrument to really demonstrate how Canadians are faring.
What kind of indicators would you suggest are appropriate to build into a framework to understand how Canadians are actually getting by?
6:10 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Vanier Institute of the Family
Right now we have a couple of existing indices—one that looks at individuals, one that looks at children and youth, one that looks at communities—and we're developing one that looks at families, which sort of ties it all together and makes sense of it all.
What we're looking at is the way that families interact with the economy, their community and the environment. For example, what's the impact of climate change on families, family life and family finances? They're huge issues.
We have four major domains and about 25 different indicators for family well-being.
6:10 p.m.
Liberal
Sean Fraser Liberal Central Nova, NS
To the extent that you have those indices ready, if you want to submit them to the committee through the clerk, I'd invite you to do so for our consideration.
6:10 p.m.
Liberal
Sean Fraser Liberal Central Nova, NS
My second question is for the Canadian Electricity Association.
Mr. Bradley, I come from Nova Scotia. We're still mining and burning thermal coal for electricity. One of the frustrations I have with our federation is the fact that it's really difficult to burn clean energy—I shouldn't even say burn, but to use—that's been produced in neighbouring provinces when we're still burning coal. It strikes me that a regional or national electricity grid might help with that clean energy efficiency. I'm curious as to whether you think that's a policy worth pursuing.
Part two to my question is this. Given the conversation around storage of clean energy, if there are one or two key items you think the federal government can move forward on to help enhance our collective capacity to store green energy, I would love to hear your advice.
6:10 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Electricity Association
Thank you very much for two very interesting questions.
On the first one, there are and have been very active discussions with respect to connecting grids within specific regions. Talking about a national grid the way we over 100 years ago talked about connecting Canada from coast to coast by rail is, frankly, just impossible because of the geography, and there are other challenges. However, there are clearly opportunities within specific regions. Natural Resources Canada has undertaken studies in certain regions of the country to look particularly at what those opportunities are. There are some interconnections already, those that have already been economic and have moved forward, but this is an active discussion and specifically in the province where you come from.
With respect to the question about storage, right now the focus on storage is about batteries, but there are a lot of other new technologies that will be coming forward, cutting-edge technologies. The question we're asking, particularly with respect to our discussions with the Government of Canada, is what the Government of Canada can do to incent moving forward more rapidly with some of these new technologies, whether it's looking at compressed air systems or advanced battery technologies.
Clearly the federal government played a role in the past to spur the development of wind and solar energy. Wind power in just about every jurisdiction is now a viable option, so we've gotten through that process and it's reached that level of maturity. The question is whether some similar sorts of support can be provided for emerging renewables and emerging storage technologies.
6:15 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Wayne Easter
We are completely out and a little over.
We'll go to Mr. Morantz and then back to Mr. Sorbara. We may have time for a couple of supplementaries later.
Mr. Morantz.
6:15 p.m.
Conservative
Marty Morantz Conservative Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB
Thank you Mr. Chair. I may want to share a bit of my time with Mr. Poilievre, if I have the chance.
Mr. Kingston, back in 2017 the Auditor General released a report on the CRA that was fairly damning in its results. In the interests of time, I won't go through every single problem. More recently the “Serving Canadians Better” report that was commissioned by CRA and done by Stantec Consulting found that 83% of respondents had an experience that didn't meet their needs.
Your report spends a fair amount of time talking about the need to modernize and simplify the tax system. One thing that jumped off the page for me was the fact that the Income Tax Act is now 3,281 pages long.
I'm wondering if you can comment on how you foresee tax simplification in Canada unfolding and the benefits of that.