Finance Committee on Nov. 2nd, 2023

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

I'm glad you raised that. That certainly is going to be a huge barrier to the industry with regard to being able to utilize this program that's supposed to be there to help the industry. It will do nothing, unfortunately, so thank you for raising that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, MP Richards.

Now we're going to MP Dzerowicz, please.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Thank you so much, Mr. Chair.

Thanks to all of the presenters for their outstanding presentations. I wish I had time for all of you, but I do not.

Ms. Potter, I will not be asking you questions, but you made excellent recommendations, particularly around a tourism stream where you could bring in some newcomers. That's very much something that I know there's a lot of discussion on, as is the thing that you just talked about in terms of a trusted employer. I think that's something that we're very much also discussing. Visa processing has been the bane of all of our existence. I really appreciate your mentioning those.

I'm going to be directing most of my questions to Mr. Gray.

Mr. Gray, a million thank yous to you for making some very productive recommendations around how we tackle the productivity issues. You were quite clear around simplifying the tax code and following best practices globally. You talked about modifying regulations. You also talked about internal barriers and eliminating them. This committee knows very well that I've been pushing a motion to try to get it to consider that we study how to start tackling those internal trade barriers.

My question to you is this: How do we get started on it? I think it sometimes feels like it's an overwhelming thing. How do we get started? What would be your recommendations on how we get started on that?

[Alex Gray]

Federalism is a tricky thing. It's the bane of all of these recommendations that we put forward.

I think the role of the federal government is twofold. Primarily, it is to serve as a convener for the provinces and in some cases municipalities, to set the stage for that dialogue. It's laying out the costs of these internal trade barriers to Canadians and attempting to reconcile between some provinces or other provinces why they exist, what the costs and the benefits are, and trying to smooth that out, if you will.

The other thing that we've recommended before and that I would still like to see is a public registry of what these internal barriers to trade are and what they cost. Some of them are quite ludicrous, like certain tires being on certain trucks and that kind of thing.

That grabs headlines, politically speaking. That's what people will pay attention to, and that's what people will read. They shouldn't exist.

It's a good starting point. Obviously, that's a simple issue. Truck tires won't fix the internal trade barriers, but work is needed and we'd love to see it happen as quickly as possible.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

I think that's an excellent recommendation. Sometimes you need to see the full list. Sometimes we get caught with some of the bigger items, like beer and wine. If you take those off the table and see the million other irritants, like the tire conditions or that the material is different in Nova Scotia versus Quebec, you're sitting there thinking that this is crazy.

Anyway, that's a great recommendation.

I'm going to move on. We talked about productivity. I'm going to talk about business investment.

Business investment is very low in Canada. Even though this isn't happening now, we used to have very low interest rates. Even at that time, business investment continued to be low. There was low money in terms of investment, equipment and training. We're talking a lot about training right now.

The federal government has actually put a colossal amount of extra money into training or retraining. We've sent it down to the provinces, which is where they design the programs, but our businesses need to invest as well.

Do you have any recommendations about how we can incentivize business investment into equipment and training?

[Alex Gray]

We've recommended extending capital cost allowances, for example, to make it more attractive for businesses to invest in the capital that makes them more productive.

When we talk about productivity as an issue, I think it sometimes comes across as thorny to people. They think, “I'm working 12 hours a day; I don't stop, and you're telling me I'm not productive,” whereas the substance of the matter is that the people are not as productive because their businesses don't necessarily invest in the tools, capital or software that could make them more productive.

For example, some people at smaller companies get bogged down in filing their quarterly expenses. There's probably better software out there that would allow them to file it more quickly, but it's an investment. It's not necessarily something all businesses can afford, so they stick with the older system. It costs employees time.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

For anything beyond the CCA, if you have any recommendations, kindly submit them to us. I think we are looking for the best ideas.

For the last thing I want to talk about, I know Mr. Morantz is very concerned about our entrepreneurs. I think we all are. We want to make sure that they feel supported.

As someone who's spent a lot of time with entrepreneurs, I can say that we have excellent funding at the regional level, like FedDev Ontario. There is a lot of money through Futurpreneur and through ISED programs.

There's a lot for Canadian innovators in the first and second stages. Where they get stuck is when they're trying to build their company at the third or fourth stage.

One thing we learned at committee is that only 4% of our Canada pension plan is actually invested in Canadian businesses. It's 50% in Australia and 75% in the United States.

Do you think we should be making some adjustments to our Canada pension plan in order to make investments in our entrepreneurs and innovators?

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Please give a very short answer, because we're well over time.

[Alex Gray]

Sure. It's very common in other jurisdictions to do that. Four per cent is startlingly low.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, MP Dzerowicz.

Now we go to MP Ste-Marie, please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Today, my esteemed colleague and the Bloc Québécois science and innovation critic, Mr. Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, is at the Quebec City Convention Centre to attend the Semaine mondiale de la Francophonie organized by the Quebec government in cooperation with the Agence universitaire de la Francophonie.

Mrs. Poncelin de Raucourt or Mr. Colleret, in your opinion, what types of initiative can the federal government take to ensure the vitality and promotion of research and scientific production in French, in Quebec and in francophone communities outside Quebec?

[Céline Poncelin de Raucourt]

Thank you very much.

I've just arrived from this wonderful week. Speaking of which, I urge you to read an article in this morning's Le Devoir by Quebec's chief scientist, Rémi Quirion. Dr. Quirion celebrates science in French and talks about what's being done right now and what more could be done. I believe he can rely on the excellent cooperation and support of Canada's chief science advisor, Mona Nemer.

The place of French in science must be defended. It is losing ground in a major way in the scientific community. In his article, Dr. Quirion states that almost 90% of the world's scientific articles are now published in English, compared with 60% in the mid-1950s. French and the plurality of languages are important, firstly to enable researchers to have a career in their natural language, and secondly to give people and entrepreneurs access to the latest knowledge in the language in which they are most accustomed to working.

Now more than ever, we must support the French-speaking scientific community to show that French has its place in science and that it is possible, and even desirable, to have a scientific career in French. To achieve this, researchers need to be able to do their research in French, apply for grants in French and publish in French as well.

For example, we need to support the various science popularization initiatives such as Québec Science magazine, the Savoir média organization and the media organization La Conversation Canada. Science must be accessible in French to promote the discoverability of scientific content.

There are also services, like the Service d'aide à la recherche en français established by the Association francophone pour le savoir, or Acfas. I'd like to point out that the federal government has made an investment through Canadian Heritage. Through these initiatives, we believe that we must also support francophones living in minority communities.

It's about making sure that grants are equally accessible to those who want to research in their language, making sure that they have instruments for disseminating research in their language and making sure that we support the whole industry and all the mechanisms for simultaneous translation so that plurilingualism is celebrated.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, Mrs. Poncelin de Raucourt.

I'm sure there'll be other opportunities for you to expand on that. Thank you.

Now we're moving to MP Blaikie, please.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Gray, a curious thing happened on Monday. I was in the House for debate on the Conservative leader's housing bill, and my colleague, Jenny Kwan, who is our housing critic, asked him a question about the importance of building more social housing. Of course, we know that Canada is in a housing crisis, and we need housing at various ends of the spectrum. She cited a number from a Scotiabank study, actually, which is that Canada's social housing stock is about 3.5% of Canada's housing stock right now. Scotiabank has said that we need to at least double it in order to be within the OECD average.

In response to my colleague's question, which was why the Conservative leader never talks about building social housing, he said, “We do not need a Soviet-style takeover of housing.” Do you agree with the Conservative leader that Scotiabank is recommending a Soviet-style takeover of housing in Canada?

[Alex Gray]

I believe it's the report by Rebekah Young. I think it has very important fiscal implications that everyone from all parties can appreciate, which is that if we don't create more social housing, if we don't lower the cost of housing, the cost of government transfers will necessarily have to go up, because that's a big part of people's expenditures.

The report is absolutely correct. We do need to increase that stock.

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

You don't feel that the report is the thin edge of the wedge for a Soviet-style government in Canada.

[Alex Gray]

No. I didn't quite read it that way.

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

Thank you very much.

Mr. Mertins-Kirkwood, do you have any thoughts on this matter? Do you want to talk a little about the importance of building more social housing in Canada?

[Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood]

I'd be happy to. Thank you.

We've heard a lot about productivity so far today, and housing is a huge drain on productivity. We heard that, in the tourism context, if people can't live where they want to work, it's hard to get the workers we need; it's hard to attract the workers we need.

Housing is a huge issue, and social housing is the answer for a lot of reasons. One is that it's actually affordable. It's one thing to just provide more market-based supply, which is going to be more high-end housing that people can't afford. It's another to provide actual affordable housing, especially publicly owned housing. It also makes a lot of sense fiscally, because if governments are building housing, they own assets, and it's not necessarily a net cost to the government. That's really important.

It is also an opportunity to build more green housing, thinking more about how we design our cities in a more thoughtful way than just allowing sprawl, which is not going to solve many of our problems.

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

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, MP Blaikie.

Now we have MP Richards again.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

I'll go back to you, Ms. Potter.

I mentioned that I have a couple of questions for you. We have time for one, but that's okay. I was able to steal some more time here, so we'll get to the second one that I wanted to ask you about.

One challenge for industry in Canada, at least in some parts of the country in particular, is trying to lengthen out our season. We know that often, for some parts of the country in particular, the summer season is so critical. If we can lengthen out the season, of course that helps.

One way to get a longer a season and to get some business during the shoulder season is some of the convention business. I think you referenced it a bit earlier, but I wonder if you can just speak to it a little.

I know the challenge can often be that this business books two, three or five years out. We've had a bit of a bump coming out of COVID, but I'm hearing from many in the industry about concerns over the next few years in terms of the amount of business that will be booked or is booked.

I wonder if you can speak a little to the impacts on your industry of some of the uncertainty that was created by things like our country's being one of the last to remove border restrictions coming out of COVID. People felt.... Would the border be open or would it not be? There were things like how difficult visas have been to get and some of the chaos we saw at our airports last summer.

These are all challenges that have been created because of our current government.

I wonder if you can just speak a bit to some of the impacts that this has had on the ability to attract that convention business over the next few years. What kind of impacts will we see on that? Maybe even speak to how important that business is to the industry in attracting people.

[Beth Potter]

Business events and business travel represent 40% of our industry. That would be the equivalent of the entire tourism industry in Ontario. If we took Ontario out of the equation, what would that look like for our industry here in Canada?

Business events book out several years in advance—in fact, up to 10 years in advance. The business events that have been on the books coming out of the last few years are events that were re-booked because they had been booked during the pandemic. Looking forward in our calendars to 2025, 2026, 2027 and beyond, we are very thin on the bookings here in Canada.

Part of that is reputationally related. Is Canada still hard to get to? Are we still a difficult country to get into?

We've been working very closely with IRCC on visitor visas for business events and trying to get that system streamlined, but it is still causing a challenge.

We've been working very closely with CBSA on their CARM initiative and making sure that a regulation that was meant for new product coming into the country didn't adversely affect product coming into the country on a temporary basis.

It is an important part of our business in that it's extending the shoulder season, as you correctly said. Business events tend to take place in the fall—I'm in Vancouver today because I am attending a business event—and in the spring. These are the months when hotels would typically be slower than they would be in the high season of the summer.

They're an incredibly important part, but they also contribute to the wealth and well-being of the local communities they come into. They are vital for helping to keep businesses like restaurants and retail open and profitable.

Not only do we need to continue to market and promote Canada as a destination of choice for business events, but we need to make sure that the processes around how those delegates come into the country are streamlined and working properly.

Modernization at our border and access into our country is another area where we would like to see technology become more a part of the process for getting folks into and out of the country. Things like biometrics and digital passport controls are technologies that are being used in other countries around the world and in some places within our own competitive set. It would certainly help to elevate Canada as a destination for business events in the future.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, MP Richards.

We'll now go to PS Bendayan, please.

[Rachel Bendayan, Liberal, Outremont, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to ask the Université du Québec representatives a few questions, and the first one is about student loans.

Last year, our government stopped charging interest on Canadian student loans. We transferred funds to the Quebec government so that interest on Quebec student loans could also be eliminated.

Would you like to see the Quebec government eliminate student loan interest for our Quebec students?