Finance Committee on Nov. 2nd, 2023

[Jessica Oliver]

It would mean that when money is moved, it would land in real time. It would be data-rich payments that would provide end-to-end traceability, which can help reduce fraud and better enable investigations. When you look at the delivery of emergency relief benefits by government, for example, or even just transactions between businesses through supply chains, it would mean that businesses and individuals could put their money to work immediately upon receiving it.

The reality is that RTR—its efficiencies and level-playing-field pricing, regardless of the size of the host financial institution—will come at a cost to large incumbent financial institutions.

Delayed settlement means that the institution that's moving the money accrues interest or is able to otherwise utilize funds when the settlement is delayed. If I send you something at 6:00 p.m. on a Friday and there's a holiday Monday, that money is not going to land until Tuesday morning at 9:00 a.m. When you compound each of those transactions, it's a significant amount and a significant barrier to co-operation.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, Ms. Oliver and MP Morantz.

Now we'll go to MP Thompson, please.

[Joanne Thompson, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm sorry that I'm not there in person today, but I am quite grateful for the opportunity to join you online.

Thank you to all of the witnesses. I really appreciate what you have been able to bring to this pre-budget session.

I'll begin with you, Ms. Nugent. I'm sorry that, because of the technical difficulties, we can't hear your responses to the questions today, but I do appreciate that you're going to follow through.

I want to note that Oceans North is involved in very important research in Atlantic Canada. Of course, I'm coming to you from St. John's East. It is alarming for me to note that this past summer, in August in particular, we saw the highest temperatures recorded in the Grand Banks, which you may know and the others in the room may or may not know is a significant fishery ground, an important part of the marine ecosystem.

Clearly, Ocean North, Ms. Nugent, has done tremendous work on strengthening the link between ocean and climate. Would you respond to the committee on the importance of climate change data in fisheries management? That I would appreciate, and I look forward to that response.

I'll switch now to Mr. Mertins-Kirkwood on child care.

I'm also pleased to note that Newfoundland and Labrador—even though, population-wise, we're quite small—has been able to reach the target of $10-a-day child care two years ahead of schedule. I think that's quite important to note. Even with that significant accomplishment, obviously there are still challenges in this province and, I believe, across the country in child care, through a lack of both infrastructure and workforce. I believe that compensation is an important part of recruitment and retention within the sector.

Could you speak to the provinces and territories that are moving forward on compensation, specifically wages, for early childhood educators? Apart from the wages, what are some of the other challenges that provinces and territories are encountering in being able to ensure that the needs within the provinces and territories meet the demand for child care spaces?

Thank you.

[Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood]

It's definitely something that's near and dear to my heart. I have three young kids, so I'm well acquainted with child care in Canada.

That being said, this is not my particular area of expertise. I would be happy to have our child care expert follow up with you, but I'm not comfortable commenting on that.

[Joanne Thompson, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

Thank you. I would really appreciate the follow-up.

If I could ask you about housing.... Actually, before I move into the question, are you comfortable with a housing question, or do you want me to ask and then have follow-up?

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood]

Yes, I can talk about housing.

[Joanne Thompson, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

I'm sorry. I wasn't being facetious there. I just didn't want to waste the time I have.

Housing supply obviously is key to tackling inflation and affordability in the country, and we hear this repeatedly in the committee. We've certainly heard this over the last few weeks, with some key recommendations: reviving incentives for purpose-built rentals, providing support for vulnerable households, increasing social housing, and revising local zoning and permitting systems, as well as re-evaluating regulations. Of these recommendations, could you provide some insight on the structural issues we're currently encountering in this housing crisis?

[Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood]

Sure. There are a lot of issues. We know that the housing crisis we're dealing with today has been building for decades. It's not the responsibility of any one government, at any level. It's everyone's responsibility that we let it get this bad.

We did hear earlier about how we've stopped investing in social housing. That's one dimension of this problem, but we've decided to try to let the market solve this problem, and it hasn't. We need government to take a stronger role.

That's of course true at all levels. You mentioned zoning. It's a huge barrier at the municipal level, and that's a tricky thing for the federal government to engage in. The federal government has recently started getting back into the game of building housing—or at least supporting housing—and that's absolutely the right direction. We'd like to see more of that and certainly more money moving towards that.

As I mentioned earlier, it's worth noting that when governments build housing, they are building assets, and as long as we retain ownership of those assets, it's not a net cost to the government. That's worth noting on the balance sheet of the government.

[Joanne Thompson, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, MP Thompson.

Now we'll go to MP Ste-Marie, please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mrs. Poncelin de Raucourt, when we think of research, we often think of granting agencies. However, you place particular importance on the ability of government departments to support research to meet needs.

What role do you think government departments should play?

Also, how can we protect the independence of universities that enter into partnerships with government departments with respect to carrying out research work?

Thank you very much.

[Céline Poncelin de Raucourt]

Thank you very much.

Government departments do fund research, which is generally of an applied nature, according to their priorities. I would refer you again to the Bouchard report, which clearly explains the difference between research that is freely decided upon by researchers and that which is directed. These are really two important components of the scientific ecosystem.

Universities have particular expertise that can help government departments. For example, the government department might fund research into the restoration and protection of fish habitats affected by mining activities in northern environments, or research into the challenges facing the tourism industry in terms of providing adequate support for small or medium-sized businesses and nonprofit organizations in that sector.

How can this research be made independent?

We must trust in the ethics of researchers. Whatever the origin of the request, whether it comes from them, the community or government departments, they apply ethics in terms of research independence. They are there to analyze the facts, as well as provide conclusions and disseminate them.

We also have mechanisms right now to guarantee what we call academic freedom. These mechanisms are there to ensure that, regardless of the origin of the request, the research remains independent and is carried out fully aware of the freedom of the researcher who is going to provide their conclusions.

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

Thank you very much.

Can you talk to us about funding awards and honours secretariats?

Thank you.

[Céline Poncelin de Raucourt]

This proposal, which we mention in our brief, is related to the raising the profile of scientific careers in French and the need to legitimize them. We attach a great deal of importance to promoting our researchers across Canada. We want to encourage them to submit applications for awards and honours, and promote research excellence in Canada.

In many small and medium-sized establishments, and even in large French-language establishments, teams are needed to work with researchers to help them put together dossiers and present them to such institutions as the Royal Society of Canada. Representatives of this society told us that some large English-language universities submit up to 48 dossiers in a single year, while other universities submit none, or one or two. Having a secretariat to help researchers put together their dossiers is a game changer in terms of the ability to submit dossiers to prestigious institutions and therefore showcase and promote research excellence.

We therefore suggest that grants be set up to enable institutions that don't have a secretariat of this kind to create one so that they can compile and submit dossiers and raise the profile of French-language research in Canada. We could work on this issue with Canadian Heritage or other stakeholders.

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

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, MP Ste-Marie.

Now we'll go to MP Blaikie.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Mertins-Kirkwood, there's a lot of talk on Parliament Hill about the carbon tax, obviously, and not enough talk about the profits of oil and gas companies and the sizable increase in profit they've seen over the last couple of years.

New Democrats have proposed a windfall tax. It's something that's being done in other jurisdictions and across the ideological spectrum. There's a Conservative government in the U.K., for instance, that brought in a windfall profit tax.

I wonder if you can speak to the impact of large oil and gas profits on Canadian household budgets and how a windfall tax might be used to remedy some of that situation.

[Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood]

Yes. First of all, the windfall tax is something that we support. We've included it in the alternative federal budget. We think it's necessary. As you point out, oil and gas companies are raking in record profits, at least over the last three years.

Production is at an all-time high even as employment is down from 2014, so more and more of that money.... We heard earlier, actually, about this issue of productivity. We have the corporate sector—and the oil and gas sector is perhaps the best example of this—sitting on more cash, not investing it in productive assets, not investing it in people, not investing it in training and paying it out as dividends. It's a huge issue, not only from an equity perspective and not only from a climate perspective, but certainly from an economic perspective.

We're at a point where oil and gas profits are contributing to inflation at least as much as the carbon tax is—as much as people like to harp on about that—and we could use that money for more productive things.

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

Thank you very much.

Is it fair to say that the oil and gas sector sees itself as a leader in the Canadian economy but isn't living up to the requirements of leadership when we talk about business investment in Canada?

[Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood]

Yes. The oil and gas sector is one important part of the Canadian economy, but it's only part of the Canadian economy. It's often overblown, I think, how big the oil and gas sector is in Canada. It plays an outsized political role, certainly, but that sector is certainly not helping us when it comes to our climate obligations, and again, as I point out, on a dollar-invested basis, contributes far fewer jobs and community benefits than many other sectors of the economy, despite those enormous profits.

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

One of those other important sectors, obviously, is the care economy. Could you speak a bit to the importance of the care economy in Canada and the value of investing in that sector?

[Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood]

Yes. The care economy is super important for two reasons. One is that care work is low-carbon work, and that's important. We know that we need to move to a cleaner economy, and for people working in health care, in teaching and in all kinds of services—often public services—that's low-carbon work, and that's great. That's how we get economic growth without using more resources.

The other reason it's important is that you can create a lot more jobs in care work than you can for the same amount of money spent in oil and gas, which is extremely capital intensive. It's not very job intensive. Despite the size of the oil and gas industry, we don't need to make up 100% of that industry in other sectors to retain the total amount of employment. We can create far more jobs in the care economy and other sectors for the same amount of investment.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, MP Blaikie.

Now we go to MP Lawrence, please.

[Philip Lawrence, Conservative, Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON]

Thank you very much.

It's always a pleasure to be at committee. We have great witnesses today. Honestly, I wish I could ask all of you some questions, but my questions will be for Ms. Oliver and will focus on open banking.

This is a question I asked a representative from another fintech company: First of all, do you know what time of year it is?