Finance Committee on Feb. 18th, 2021

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Thank you.

Former parliamentary budget officer Kevin Page said of the fall economic update that, “It's impossible to read. I have done this for years and I can't even follow the money.”

Can you folks outline how your departments keep tabs on the amount of money that's being spent?

[Alison McDermott]

I'm not quite sure what to say.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

I know that's a really global question, but....

[Alison McDermott]

I used to work for Mr. Page. I'm surprised he said that. That sounds very critical.

Honestly, I'm happy to walk through any part of this with you or with Mr. Page. We do feel that it's a pretty good accounting of the financial aspects of the plan. Particularly in the fall economic statement there are tables, one for each chapter, in which we outline all of the measures that are part of this COVID response plan. We have specific coding for all the new measures. We include that and wrap it up in analysis of all of the existing measures just for completeness. We show the impact value. We show the accrual value, the financial costs and how it will be reflected in our public accounts if we end up being accurate in terms of the costs.

That's all consistent with how we show our summary statement of transactions, where we show what that means for the overall aggregate fiscal situation, so—

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Just to briefly interrupt, you're confident that you're accurately tracking the money.

[Alison McDermott]

Of course we're continuing to update this. We feel that at the time of the FES, we put out the most accurate information we had. We're continuing to work on updating that. We'll put out a budget at some point in the spring. We will have updated figures at that time.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Thank you, all.

We'll turn now to Ms. Dzerowicz, followed by Mr. Ste-Marie.

Ms. Dzerowicz.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Thank you so much, Mr. Chair.

I also want to start off by thanking all three departments for their hard work and their amazing service to Canadians during this unprecedented time.

I have two completely different sets of questions. First, I know that a lot of the emergency funding was provided to the provinces. I want to know whether, on the one hand, there is some monitoring as to whether the funds that have been sent to the provinces are actually being spent. The second part is whether or not the monies that have been spent have been successful in producing a positive public health response and a positive on the jobs recovery front.

I'll give you an example. Nova Scotia has had a 95% recovery of their jobs and they've had a very successful public health response. In Ontario, apparently there's still some money left on the table in terms of the safe restart as well as in terms of safe school funds.

I would love to see if anyone can respond to that.

[Galen Countryman, Director General, Federal-Provincial Relations and Social Policy Branch, Department of Finance]

On the question of transfers to the provinces, yes, for a number of programs, you're quite right, there were funds given directly to the provinces and territories to support them in the fight against COVID -19. Perhaps the principal one among them, as you mentioned, was the safe restart agreement. The safe return to class funding went out in two instalments, one at the end of September and one just a couple weeks ago.

For the safe restart agreement, most of the funding has flowed to the provinces and territories. About $12.2 billion has flowed to them already. In those cases, it was letters that were submitted from the premiers to the Prime Minister—

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Mr. Countryman, I'm sorry to interrupt. I don't have a lot of time.

Are we monitoring whether the funds are actually being spent? Of the monies that are being spent, are we trying to determine whether or not there's a correlation with a positive public health response and/or a jobs recovery?

[Galen Countryman]

Once the money has flowed to the provinces and their provincial treasury, they are responsible for the spending. We do not have a direct line of sight. We have what their intentions were as they submitted, but we don't have a follow-up mechanism afterwards.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

We're not following whether they're spending the money in the areas that we've asked them to spend it: the PPE, the [Technical difficulty—Editor] control, the public health measures, those kinds of things?

[Galen Countryman]

Reporting requirements are fairly light on the first cycle of the safe restart. On the safe return to class fund, there was generally high-level reporting from the provinces on what they spent in the first tranche and their plans for spending the second tranche. As a general rule, there is very little line of sight as to how they spent the money and when they spent it.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

I appreciate that. Thank you so much.

Can someone explain how the Canada recovery sickness benefit was designed, and how it was intended to complement and fill existing gaps in sick leave provisions for Canadians? Who can speak to that?

[Elisha Ram]

I can.

The sickness benefit, as you know, came out of the conversation with the provinces under the safe restart agreement. The concern expressed at the time was that once the CERB had wound down, there were going to be Canadians who wouldn't have access to paid sick leave. Without access to that leave, individuals would have an incentive to ignore symptoms and go to work because they needed income to survive. Therefore, the Canada recovery sickness benefit was designed to be as flexible as possible to avoid that problem. They way we did it is that it is effectively a universal benefit for individuals who have minimal labour market attachments, which was defined in the same $5,000 way as we originally defined it in the CERB.

If you have that income and you are required to self-isolate or you acquire the virus, you are allowed to take the benefit. We don't ask whether or not you have other forms of sick benefits available to you. If you have sickness benefits from your employer, if you have an entitlement to EI sick benefits, you don't have to take those benefits first. However, we do require that you not receive multiple benefits for the same period of time, so you can't be claiming EI sickness and the recovery sickness benefit for the same period of time. If you do have more than one benefit available, you have the choice as to which one you want to take.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

You have about a minute, Julie. I'll give everybody an extra minute today.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Thank you so much.

When someone calls my office and says they want to have access to the Canada recovery sickness benefit, I say to them, it's fairly easy to apply and that 98% of those who apply get approved or get their benefit within three to five days. What is the concern? There seems to be some concern about people having access to the Canada sickness benefit. Is the issue that we can only offer it in one-week chunks? We're trying to resolve that issue.

First, could you verify that 98% get approval and that the processing is between three to five days?

Second, could you outline what a key issue is right now and what's being done to resolve it?

[Elisha Ram]

On the approval, I'm going to have to defer to my colleagues at the Canada Revenue Agency.

In terms of access, we have heard that some people are concerned, and certainly the one-week application period has come up. When you apply for the benefit, you have to attest effectively that you have been unable to work at least 50% of your regular work week, and this is to ensure that people really are unable to work because of reasons related to self-isolation or sickness.

In some cases, we've heard that people are concerned that they may only be in isolation for a day or two before they get their test results, so the 50% rule does become a problem. From a delivery perspective, we're not able to deliver that benefit in periods of less than a week, so we're aware that this is a gap. However, at this time there's no obvious solution to that problem.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Thank you, all.

We're coming back to you, Mr. Ste-Marie, for three minutes.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

As I was saying earlier, today, Mr. Vailles published an article entitled “An $11-billion mystery ”. I thought it was timely because we were hosting the officials at the committee. So we could shed some light on this issue.

Based on the responses I have received, I understand that information about additional support for medical research and vaccines is confidential. Therefore, the mystery remains.

I would therefore ask the Department of Finance to provide this committee with a complete and detailed breakdown of line 1.4.1 of the fall economic statement 2020, specifically the breakdown of the $13,087 billion in additional support for medical research and vaccines.

I am also filing this motion with the committee. Mr. Roger, the clerk of the committee, will be able to read the English version to you and he will also be able to send it to you in both languages.

That the government present to the Standing Committee on Finance in an in-camera meeting the details of “Further support for medical research and vaccine” in relation to vaccine contracts, by the end of March 2021 at the latest.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Mr. Ste-Marie, are you giving us notice of that motion?

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

I would like us to adopt it now. Mr. Roger could read it in English, if that suits him.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

The clerk will have to clarify whether or not it's in order. We are on this business at the meeting, so I believe.... I'm just reading the motion, so it is in order.

It's open for debate. Does anybody want to debate the motion?

Pat Kelly, you had your hand up.