Finance Committee on May 11th, 2021

[Evelyn Dancey]

Sure. I can start.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Just yell if I don't see you.

[Evelyn Dancey]

I was pausing to see if my colleague, Mr. Marsland, wanted to reply as well, but perhaps we can share in our response if we have different things to say.

There are actually new or enhanced program announcements for Budget 2021 that will be available to new businesses or those that have been launched since the beginning of the pandemic.

With respect to my area at Finance of economic development, there is the Canada digital adoption program to support the acquisition of technology to help the digitization of business. There is the expansion of the Canada small business financing program, which includes a number of elements that are included in Bill C-30 for further detail, but both expands the range of assets that can be financed as well as the different types of financing available.

There also has been an expansion of the government's suite of entrepreneurship measures for women entrepreneurs, Black entrepreneurs, and other equity-deserving entrepreneurs.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

For the entrepreneur who has spent all of their life savings in 2019 to build a new restaurant with an opening date of March 15, 2020, there's really....

With all due respect, I think many of the programs you've described, or some of them, will decline those businesses, and for the same reasons they don't qualify for all of the existing programs. Is there really anything for a business such as I've described?

[Evelyn Dancey]

The elements that I've described are available to new businesses.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Okay.

When the government launched the CECRA program.... Let me put it this way. In the transition from CECRA to the Canadian emergency rent subsidy, there was an additional provision added prohibiting related parties. Certainly nobody wants related parties to be able to game the system to obtain access to a subsidy, but it is normal for small businesses with commercial mortgages to have separate entities, a corporation that will own the property and have the mortgage on the property, versus the operating company. Small businesses complain that they are denied access to the rent subsidy program, which is supposed to also help businesses that own their premises.

Can someone explain whether or not this shortcoming has been addressed or whether this has been flagged as a problem? We've been hearing about it for months.

[Andrew Marsland]

Mr. Chair, perhaps I can take that one.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Go ahead, Andrew.

[Andrew Marsland]

It's correct that there are provisions relating to rent paid to related parties.

In terms of the specific question, perhaps I could look into that and get back in writing to the committee or come back to it in a subsequent meeting on the bill. I apologize that I don't have a specific answer to hand.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Okay.

Do I have any time left, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

This is your last question, Pat.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

All right.

The new hiring credit involves much of the same criteria as the wage subsidy and rent subsidy. As I mentioned in my second question, the requirement of a loss in revenue compared with early 2019, or a year-over-year loss, excludes many businesses, including new businesses. Was this a deliberate exclusion in the hiring program? Will new businesses be able to access this program? If not, why not?

[Andrew Marsland]

It's correct that for the proposed hiring program one of the criteria is that the employer has suffered a revenue decline. That is correct. Essentially, the program is focused on recovery from the pandemic and provides an alternative calculation to the wage subsidy. The proposal is that it would not apply where there's no revenue decline as defined under the wage subsidy.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

So a newer enterprise would not qualify.

[Andrew Marsland]

That's correct.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

We'll have to end it there. We are considerably over.

We have Ms. Koutrakis and Ms. Dzerowicz on a split.

Annie.

[Annie Koutrakis, Liberal, Vimy, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I have two questions. In the interest of time, I'll ask them both.

First, on the disability tax credit, can you outline the steps taken in Budget 2021 to improve access to the DTC and comment on the benefit this will have on both Canadians living with disabilities and their families?

Second, how does the new Canada recovery hiring program compare with the wage subsidy, the CEWS? Why was it necessary to introduce this new program in addition to the existing wage subsidy?

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Who's on?

[Andrew Marsland]

Mr. Chair, that would be me.

Essentially, with regard to the disability tax credit, there are two proposed measures. One is to clarify the criteria applicable to qualify with regard to the mental functions necessary for everyday life—and really, that's to make it clearer under what circumstances one would qualify. Again, this is in response to feedback that we received in part from the disability advisory committee of the Minister of National Revenue.

The second area relates to life-sustaining therapy, and this is, of course, where an individual has to undergo ongoing therapy. There have been issues in the past with how to determine the time required to be spent on such therapy. The proposals in the bill essentially expand, to some extent, the qualifying amounts of time that would be required under that to meet the requirements—again in response to feedback the department has received.

In terms of the Canada hiring program and how it relates to the wage subsidy, you look at the reference. You take a reference period in March or April, a one-month reference period, and then apply a percentage to the incremental hiring from that reference period over the months of the program, and an employer can calculate the wage subsidy that the employer would be entitled to or the amount in the hiring program, and take the better of the two.

Essentially, the objective of that is to support firms that have been significantly affected—employers who have been significantly affected—during the pandemic as they enter that recovery phase, so it supports the rebuilding of the business and the workforce in that period.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Thank you, both.

Go ahead, Ms. Dzerowicz.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Thank you so much, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank all of the officials for being here today and for your extraordinary hard work on this huge, huge budget.

My question for you is about skills and training. There's a substantial amount of money in the budget for skills training and retraining, and my question is for whomever is best able to respond. I think it is important for us to be spending this money, but I want to know whether there was an analysis done of why it was important for us to invest so heavily at this time in training and retraining. I think we have about 500,000 new training opportunities in the budget, and I think it's over half a billion dollars that has been allocated.

Has there been an analysis of the need for this and how extensive this support needed to be?

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Who's on it?

Go ahead, Mr. Countryman.

[Galen Countryman]

Yes, I'll take a stab at that.

You're correct to say that there is an extensive amount of support in the budget for skills and training development. I think it goes without saying that these are all important investments that can help young people in particular build skills for the future and help grow the economy in the future. There is an extensive set, a suite of measures, which I'm sure you're already familiar with, in the budget for those things.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

What's different about the investment this time? I know that we typically give about $3 billion to provinces and territories just for skills and training on an annual basis. What's different in this budget? It seems like there's more money been allocated to innovation and economic development as well as to the ESDC. I think that they're spending the money under the programs. Could you talk about the difference in how we're investing this money?