Finance Committee on Oct. 12th, 2023

[Donald Bureaux]

I think there are two things. Obviously, we need infrastructure. If you look at the training of skilled labour, the training equipment and simulators and tools that we need to train a modernized workforce change very rapidly. A federal investment in the infrastructure backbone of the college system in this country to allow our labour to be at the leading edge would be number one.

Number two, and I agree with Norm, we see our industry partners benefit greatly by a skilled workforce that's coming through the immigration channels. We need to work collectively with licensing bodies to make sure that when they come to Nova Scotia, they are recognized for the training they received in their homeland.

[Kody Blois, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

Thank you.

I have about a minute and 15 seconds left. I want to go to you, Norm.

I would echo everything Rick Perkins said in terms of the contribution of the Lebanese community. We actually had Lena Metlege Diab here earlier. Certainly on the political side she's done great work.

I want to ask two things. The way Rick was framing the questions about the frustration with municipalities, boy, Mayor Savage had better be looking out, given what Rick was saying on the record. We have the housing accelerator fund, which is trying to drive and...“manipulate” might not be the right word, but get the municipalities to start working to build housing quicker. We also put the GST measure in place.

For a developer right now, as interest rates go higher, I have to assume that the available cash flow to continue moving over to the next project becomes more difficult because of the debt financing. Can you speak a bit to how some of those conversations where the municipalities moving to densify the peninsula might help drive those developments that Rick was talking about, but also help finance, with the GST removal, to get you to your next project?

[Norman Nahas]

You summed it up quite well. Interest rates are through the roof, but the HST holiday, I guess you would call it, on both the federal and provincial sides will help with that. You definitely need to be able to thread the needle to be able to finance and bridge the gap to get the project to succeed.

Again, this is even though contracts aren't worth anything anymore. When dealing with an electrical company, if the bundled wire costs $500 in the beginning when they bid it, it costs $2,000 when you're halfway in, so the costs continue to escalate weekly. During COVID, it was unbelievable, especially when dealing with metal and things coming from abroad.

I agree with what Rick is saying. We have this issue, and I feel that some of these things are definitely going to help. They're going to enable people to roll the dice and see if they can go and proceed with them, because a lot of people put the shovels up over the past bit, with the uncertainty in the market and with rates continuing to creep up, announcement after announcement.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, MP Blois.

We'll turn now to MP Ste-Marie, please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.

My questions will be addressed to Mr. Bureaux, but before I ask them, I'd like to say that we're very grateful to you for being here and that we're taking a lot of notes. Everything raised here is very interesting and varied.

Mr. Bureaux, I really enjoyed your presentation, which focused on the importance of the colleges you represent. In Quebec, the CEGEP system is very different. I also liked the fact that the institutions you represent are close to the people. Often, the first generations to access post-secondary education go through your institutions. There's also a whole network between the technical needs of certain industries and the training you offer.

Can you briefly explain again how the federal government can better recognize and support colleges?

[Donald Bureaux]

We've benefited greatly over the years from the federal government investment, as I mentioned earlier, in infrastructure. We are a place-based training environment in which, yes, we can do learning virtually, but it's still largely a hands-on environment. That is not to say that technical advances in virtual simulations have not been critically important.

Number one would be a continued look at the federal government's investment in the infrastructure, because the return on that investment is very high.

From a human capital perspective, research tells us that a young person's decision about what career to go into or what education to pursue is still predominantly determined by their parents. It's a conversation that happens at the dinner table, not in the guidance counsellor's office at school. Twenty-five years ago, there was a public policy decision in parts of this country that hands-on technical training and technical careers were less important. When I hear Norm speak, that keeps me up at night. We've lost a generation of people in this country who think it's cool and a great career option to become a skilled tradesperson.

Imagine if we had a national campaign, like we had years ago around Participaction, to make every Canadian feel that a healthy lifestyle was a valued lifestyle. Imagine if we created a national movement whereby young people in this country thought it was, in fact, a calling to pursue a career in building this country from the ground up.

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

Thank you.

Do colleges need student residences? There are housing shortages everywhere. Is this a problem for college students?

[Donald Bureaux]

Absolutely. We are seeing impacts on enrolment, which is going down because students cannot find affordable housing. If you think about students who are not staying in a university or college residence, those who can find housing are taking housing from the public inventory, so we are in a build mode right now.

I mentioned earlier that we have 17 locations in Nova Scotia, 13 of which are called campuses. Of those, five right now have either residences or on-campus housing, or soon will. There are literally hundreds of students who are currently living in an apartment who will now be living in an inventory of rooms dedicated to students.

It's impacting our enrolment; it's impacting our ability to provide the labour market of tomorrow, and it's impacting the public stock of housing. We have wait-lists for those residences right now.

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

Thank you for those answers.

Do colleges receive many students from abroad? Are colleges having problems with the Department of Citizenship and Immigration when it comes to that?

[Donald Bureaux]

Yes, it's kind of an unknown surprise to some people that colleges do have a number of international students. For colleges in some parts of the country—Ontario, for example—70% or more of their enrolment would be international students.

In Nova Scotia our enrolment is around 10% of international students. Our strategy is to encourage international students to come, study and remain in Nova Scotia upon graduation. It's very important that we connect them to the job market as quickly as possible. We have a program called study and stay. We do a wraparound to connect students so that they stay after they complete. In fact, in Nova Scotia we have over 78 countries represented in our international student enrolment.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, MP Ste-Marie.

MP Blaikie, you have six minutes.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Thank you to all our witnesses for joining us here today. It's lovely to be able to consult people in their home community. I'm very glad to be here in Halifax this morning.

Ms. Corbin and Ms. Roberts, we've certainly heard on other files, such as housing, that money is quick to be announced but slow to roll out. The process for accessing funds can be quite cumbersome.

I'm glad to hear of the good work that's already happening here in Nova Scotia on school meal programs. I'm wondering if you have some advice for the committee on how best the federal government could become a partner without disrupting the good work that's already going on. How could we be there to supplement what's happening in a way that doesn't create a lot of extra administrative work for your organizations, which are already helping to fill that need, so that you could simply focus on expanding your operations to serve more people?

[Lisa Roberts]

I'll begin by saying that in Nova Scotia, Nourish was created 10 years ago with a lot of support from the provincial government, in large part in order to support school food programs. We have the mechanisms and the relationships in place such that, for example, during COVID, when there was emergency food support for schools made available through Agriculture and Agri-Food, that money flowed through the Breakfast Club of Canada to Nourish. We cut the cheques. We cut cheques on a regular basis and work with public health on a formula related to not just population enrolment but also need.

In Nova Scotia, if federal dollars arrived, the federal dollars would be distributed very directly and quickly. They would make a difference on the ground very quickly.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Whether it's infrastructure programs or housing programs, often money will flow first to provincial governments. Then provincial governments will flow that money out and have a pretty substantial say on the conditions upon which that money flows. Do you think sending the money to the provinces makes sense, or do you think having a more direct relationship with the federal government in some cases makes sense? What do you think should be in the minds of federal officials when designing a national school food nutrition program?

[Lindsay Corbin]

This is a question that the Coalition for Healthy School Food has talked about at length. Our position is that the funds should go through provinces and territories, and directly also to indigenous communities. We do recommend that the agreements be struck with those provincial and territorial governments.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

What do you think are some of the metrics that should be used to evaluate the success of a federal program? What do you think are some reasonable outcomes for the federal government to set as goals for its funding and reasonable reporting back requirements to give some sense of accountability for that federal funding and whether it's accomplishing the intended purpose?

[Lindsay Corbin]

At this point, I would love to have a more detailed answer for you, but I can say that on some of the topics along those lines we have discussed, we don't have a specific position on exactly what those should be at this point, but certainly, having standards that are in line with Canada's food guide, no marketing to kids, things like that.... We want to make sure of the quality of the food. We want to talk about both the quality and the quantity of food that's getting into schools, so certainly metrics around whether the foods that are getting into schools follow Canada's food guide, whether there is no marketing to kids and that part of the agreement.... Those would be two very key standards that we'd like to see, and, of course, the number of meals served is absolutely a great metric.

In Nova Scotia, I will say, as Lisa mentioned, that we have a very strong breakfast program. It's not perfect, but most students in Nova Scotia, if they go to school, can access breakfast for free with no stigma. Having no stigma is a huge piece of this as well. We do not want any child to feel singled out or shamed for accessing food. The way to do that is through a universal program that is open to all students and really creates a welcoming, inclusive community within the school.

Those are a few of the key aspects of metrics that we would want to see. In Nova Scotia, for lunch we have some pilots going, but we could benefit greatly from additional funding to create a lunch program.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Where there are bountiful and reliable resources provided by the public sector for food in schools, it's important for the federal government to set as an objective that they work with community organizations, putting emphasis on scratch-made food and trying to build food-making and food-preparation capacity in communities.

I think there will be a temptation for companies like Chartwell and others to say that there are potential contracts up for grabs. Do you think we should also see this as a community capacity-building exercise, not just as trying to deliver something to eat at the lowest cost?

[Lisa Roberts]

Here in Nova Scotia, the Auditor General did a report on healthy eating in schools. That came out just over a year ago. The findings were quite conclusive that only 9% of meals sampled from privately run—predominately Chartwell—cafeterias were in compliance with the school food and nutrition policy.

Again, in some ways, we're in a privileged position in Nova Scotia, even versus P.E.I., which I know the committee visited just yesterday. P.E.I. has a universal pay-what-you-can lunch program, which is amazing, but they actually don't have a school food and nutrition policy. One thing that was shared with us by the executive director when we hosted a webinar with them is that their lunch program can be undermined, challenged or competed with by a “hot dog day” done as a fundraiser for a school team, for example, whereas in Nova Scotia we already have a policy that this sort of thing shouldn't happen. Either the actual cafeteria services are not available, as is the case in Halifax, where more than half the schools don't have kitchens or cafeterias, or they just don't perform in compliance with the policy in regions where they are run predominantly by Chartwell.

We have great examples of success in Nova Scotia. Halifax, with older infrastructure and a huge population increase, including a population increase in schools, is struggling to meet the performance of the Annapolis Valley, where the population has been a bit more stable and schools were built with cafeterias, etc.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, MP Blaikie.

We are moving into our second round.

We have MP Perkins, please, for five minutes.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Bureaux, I remember that when the shipbuilding strategy was announced by Peter MacKay—I think Premier Dexter was the premier back then—there was a massive amount of excitement in the city. There was also an incredible collaboration that went on: “How do we find and train the people to actually work at the new shipyard in the trades that are needed for that?” It really was a great partnership, I think, of a lot of groups that got us there.

I think we're facing a similar situation now when it comes to housing, and I don't see that level of working with the community college, working together as business and with everyone else, to try to figure out exactly what the need is in terms of skilled trades and the best way to go about producing that for the community. If we're going to address this problem over the next five to 10 years, we really need a lot more skills than we have now. Do you feel the same thing, or is NSCC being left on its own?

[Donald Bureaux]

No. I would argue that there is a considerable amount of work being done.

Let's take the apprenticeship program in the province of Nova Scotia. We had a ministerial panel that recently put together recommendations from any representatives in the province of Nova Scotia—private industry, post-secondary institutions, trade unions, etc.—as a way to make a dramatic change in the apprenticeship pathways, for example, both to move people more quickly through the system and also to have higher completion rates on those who start the apprenticeship work. We work very closely with agencies such as the Construction Association of Nova Scotia on ways to make sure young people are considering a career in the construction sector.

There is a lot of activity happening right now. We're doing a lot more work in the public schools, as I mentioned earlier. There was a generation that was lost, with people not considering this to be a viable career, but we have many more of what we would know as industrial arts shops being placed back into high schools, for example.

The difference, though—and I think perhaps you're on to something, Mr. Perkins—is that the shipbuilding contract or proposal was a focused single project, and it created this coalescing force with a one-time bid and 30 years of activity. That call to action, that kind of war room mentality that we need, I think, could perhaps be missing.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Who do you think should lead that? The federal government, the provincial government, the industry...?

[Donald Bureaux]

Yes, yes and yes: I think it should be everyone at the table.

That's what happened with the shipbuilding contract. That was a table much like this, with 30 people who said, “This is our single focus; winning is the only option, and winning is getting that 30-year contract.” Well, winning for housing is that no Nova Scotian or Canadian lives without a roof over their head, and we all should be in it together.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Thank you.

Mr. Nahas, maybe just to follow up, I was speaking earlier in the week with another developer who has been working for a few years to try to develop 4,000 housing units and who said that the process, besides being tremendously long with the municipality, is tremendously costly to get through.

In his case, he said that their estimate on those 4,000 units for municipal costs from beginning to end in the process is about $150,000 a unit. I don't know when you're developing, including the infrastructure and everything that goes in and the multiple changes.... They're not at final approval yet. I wondered if you had any thoughts on the cost part of it.