Finance Committee on Dec. 1st, 2020

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

As my last question, how do you think we can address the issue? Do you think it's all going to be addressed internally? Minister Mendicino mentioned an increase in immigration levels. Do you think we're going to be addressing it from some of the internal immigration numbers, or do you think it's a mixture?

[Kathleen Sullivan]

It's both. Part of it is looking at Canadians and seeing if there are under-represented groups in our workforce—women, people of colour, people with disabilities, people from first nations. We can take a look at what the barriers are for them in actually entering the workforce so that we can draw on them. It's also about re-skilling people.

At the end of the day, though, going into COVID we had a labour deficit in this country. We absolutely need to look at our immigration programs and understand how we look not just at the global number of people we're bringing into the country but at what skills we're bringing in. Remember, we don't just need doctors and computer scientists; we need people from across the spectrum. We need to welcome these people in, because we are desperate for them.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Thank you so much.

My next comment, and maybe slight question, is for Mr. Smith.

I just want to say that because I'm blessed to be in a riding where there are tons of artists and people in the cultural sector, I very much appreciate your presentation and your recommendations. You were very clear. You spoke to us about your recommendation one, about reopening. I think two, three and four are quite clear in terms of what you talked about.

Maybe you could spend 15 seconds just on your last one, engaging the private sector and increasing the charitable tax credit. Maybe you could give us a couple of seconds about that, and then I have one last question.

[Charles C. Smith]

Sure.

A number of the arts organizations do work with Business / Arts, which attempts—and quite successfully—to get businesses to invest in the arts. This is really another way of providing funding to the arts: to encourage businesses to do so. There are many benefits for them in terms of sponsorships and so on. Also, some of our artists do workshops within business organizations that really do inspire their workers to be better colleagues and so on and so forth.

Those are kinds of interesting things that we think would be really quite important—not just the reliance on government funding, but the ability to access private sector funding more readily than we currently can.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Thank you so much for that.

My last question is for Mr. Roy.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Be very quick, Julie. We're going to take time from another committee.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

It's very quick, so no worries.

Mr. Roy, there are 15 live venues that have closed in my city of Toronto. Do you have a specific recommendation on how we can address that at the federal level?

[Martin Roy]

I'm not sure whether I understand the meaning of the question. You're talking about locations. The meaning may have been lost in translation.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Fifteen live venues have closed in Toronto. How would you suggest that we address the problem?

[Martin Roy]

It's a disaster.

I think that one of FAME's recommendations is to address the deficits of cultural organizations. It's good to have loans. We welcome them and we appreciate them. However, we also need the government to step in and support cultural organizations. The government must erase their deficits.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Okay. We will have to end in there. I know time is tight. Under our new situation with Zoom, we can't dig into another committee's time.

On behalf of all the members of the committee, I would like to thank the panellists who appeared before us on fairly short notice.

Also, thank you for your submissions in the spring. Both your testimonies today and your submissions will be taken into consideration as we try to make some recommendations for the budget in 2021.

With that, we will see everyone at 3:30 on Thursday for a couple more panels.

Thank you very much. The meeting is adjourned.