Finance Committee on Nov. 13th, 2023

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Good morning, everybody. I call this meeting to order.

This is meeting number 116 of the Standing Committee on Finance. It's for our pre-budget consultations in advance of the 2024 budget.

We are delighted to be here in Quebec City. Some of you may know that we are going across the country. We've done the Atlantic provinces and now we're moving our way through the country until the end of this week, when we will be in Vancouver. We're then going back to Ottawa to put our report together on pre-budget consultations.

We have received a record number of submissions. Over 850 briefs have come in to our portal, which is tremendous. It's amazing. It's great. It shows the interest and that everybody wants to say what we should be doing in budget 2024.

This committee is also a pioneering committee. Because there is so much interest, we have the opportunity for what is called an open mike. You can see the deputation, those who will be making a statement, behind the people at the table. At this open mike, each of the persons or organizations will have up to one minute to make a statement. I will ask the clerk, Alexandre Roger, to call out each of you as you come up to the mike and make your statement for one minute.

I'm delighted to be here with my colleagues from all different parties, as well as a whole team of technicians, interpreters and analysts, who will capture everything.

With that, we're going to get started.

Mr. Clerk, please go ahead.

[The Clerk of the Committee, Mr. Alexandre Roger]

First of all, I will ask Thomas Le Page-Gouin to make his presentation.

[Thomas Le Page-Gouin, As an Individual]

Good morning, everyone.

My name is Thomas Le Page-Gouin, and I am the executive director of Camp le Manoir and the Centre écologique de Port‑au‑Saumon, which are located in the Charlevoix region. For some years now, I have also been president of the Association des camps du Québec, which represents all the camps in the province.

I would like to address two very important topics.

First of all, I want to discuss the Canada summer jobs program. This program is vitally important for the survival of organizations such as ours, as it affects most of the camps that are offered in Quebec.

We have observed a decline in available funding in recent years, since the special measures were introduced during the COVID‑19 pandemic. That decline has hit organizations like ours extremely hard. It's not that it has become harder for young people to find jobs. On the contrary, I think they now have more choices. However, it is virtually impossible for them to function without the financial assistance provided through the Canada summer jobs program. And that's not counting the quality of the experience that we enable young people to acquire. I believe that these jobs are extremely rewarding and formative for young people.

The second topic I want to address is infrastructure. Our sites are very old. Most were built in the 1960s. There are many programs designed to develop new facilities, but virtually none intended to renovate existing infrastructure or to maintain it in good condition. This is a problem.

Consequently, we need programs designed specifically to improve the quality of infrastructure that we already have, instead of letting it deteriorate and having to shut down camps.

Those are the major issues for our industry that we would like to bring to your attention.

Thank you.

[The Clerk]

Thank you very much, Mr. Le Page-Gouin.

I now invite Joany Boily to take the floor.

[Joany Boily, As an Individual]

Good morning.

My name is Joany Boily Renaud, and I represent Les services de main-d'œuvre l'Appui, which works with immigrants.

Today I would like to talk to you about two issues that we experience with our clientele every day.

The first issue is the time it takes to process immigration files.

People waiting to be granted status live under considerable stress. I'm thinking, in particular, of parents of young children who don't know what their future holds. People who are waiting for permanent residence or who want to extend their work permit so they can remain in Canada unfortunately face very long delays in the processing of their files, which cause them considerable stress.

The other issue I want to discuss with you concerns the resources of community organizations that work with immigrants and, more specifically, with vulnerable workers.

In some instances, the closed work permits system requires temporary foreign workers to stay with an employer who forces them to live in a toxic environment. Fortunately, they can request an open work permit in those circumstances. However, the support these workers receive to complete the paperwork associated with the open work permit application is inadequate, even virtually nonexistent. In some instances, they have to wait two or three weeks to get that assistance. These workers are distressed, living in toxic and unhealthy environments, seeking assistance and forced to endure long delays in the processing of their files.

I sincerely ask you to take that into consideration.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you very much.

We want to hear from everybody. We have limited time, so we're asking that you really keep to the one minute that was allocated to each of you. There are 15 different participant groups.

Go ahead, Alexandre.

[The Clerk]

Then we will ask the next speaker, Anne-Marie Dufour, please to stick to one minute.

Ms. Dufour, are you here? She doesn't seem to be. Then we'll move on to the next person, who is Marie-Hélène Gagnon.

You have the floor for one minute.

[Marie-Hélène Gagnon, As an Individual]

Mr. Chair, members of the committee and Ms. Desbiens, good morning.

I am the director of the Office municipal d'habitation de Baie-Saint-Paul. Today I want to shed some light on the significant and urgent need to increase the core need income threshold, the CNIT, used to determine social housing eligibility.

To qualify for social housing in rural areas, applicants must have incomes of less than $23,500, whereas the threshold in Quebec City, for example, and other major centres, is $34,500.

In my job, I am regularly required to tell people working 30 hours a week for minimum wage that they're too wealthy to qualify for social housing. I would sincerely prefer not to have to tell heads of single-parent families with two dependent children and incomes of $31,000 that they earn too much money to be live in low-cost housing.

This is 2023, and it's high time we acknowledged that maintaining such a large gap between the CNIT for large cities and the one for rural areas isn't justifiable or fair for everyone. It's essential that action be taken to solve this problem, and I'm very much relying on you to ensure that message is heard.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you very much.

[The Clerk]

We will continue with Marie-Pier Gravel, from La bouchée généreuse.

[Marie-Pier Gravel, As an Individual]

Good morning.

My name is Marie-Pier Gravel, and I am the assistant manager of La bouchée généreuse.

The situation of food banks in Quebec is critical, as it is in the rest of Canada. Calls for help are skyrocketing, vastly exceeding available resources.

Ten per cent of the population of Canada now relies on food banks to feed themselves. At La bouchée généreuse, the organization where I work, 350 families relied on food aid every week in 2019. In 2023, that number has tripled to 1,000 families a week. Requests for assistance are constantly rising, endangering the capacity of food banks to help every family in need. What resources will those families have when they are no longer able to feed their children? Will they be forced to consider stealing?

You should be outraged by the figures I'm giving you. It's essential that quick and effective action be taken. It's shameful that so many families and individuals go hungry in a country as wealthy as Canada. The funding that governments currently provide are paltry compared to the scope of this crisis. It is the duty of every elected member to guarantee that the public be able to feed themselves appropriately.

I encourage you to visit the food banks in your constituencies before the next budget is adopted.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, madam.

[The Clerk]

Julie Bernier, from the newspaper Ici l'info, now has the floor.

[Julie Bernier, As an Individual]

Good morning.

My name is Julie Bernier, owner and editor of the newspaper Ici I'info.

I'm here this morning to tell you about the media crisis. We never received subsidies during the COVID‑19 pandemic because it was too complicated to apply for them. I can't complete and submit the applications on my own. I need outside assistance, but that's too costly. For that reason, I can never file for subsidies.

As you are also aware, we are being cannibalized, as it were, by the online media. Advertising revenue is the only thing keeping us afloat. If everyone goes onto the Internet, our advertising revenue will dry up. However, local news is important, and even critically so for democracy and for people. It's important for everyone, not just seniors.

Consequently, I would ask you please to simplify the process or make someone available to help us complete subsidy applications without us being required to pay out astronomical amounts of money.

That's more or less what I wanted to say, but I think I may have forgotten most of it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you.

[The Clerk]

Roseline Roussel, from Pignon bleu, now has the floor.

[Roseline Roussel, As an Individual]

Good morning.

I am Roseline Roussel, general manager of Le Pignon bleu.

In 1989, the parties in the House of Commons said that child poverty was a national horror, a national disgrace, and committed to eradicating it before the year 2000.

Today, one in four children in our region suffers from food insecurity. That's worse than ever. We are the only G7 country that does not have a universal food program for children.

Current funding to address food insecurity is inadequate. We hope that serious efforts will be made this year and that budgets will be accessible and allocated not to targeted trust companies that charge management fees and accumulate surpluses, but to the actual local players on the ground.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you.

[The Clerk]

Éric Trudel, from the Fédération régionale des OBNL d'habitation de Québec et Chaudière-Appalaches, now has the floor.

As he doesn't seem to be here, we will go to Christian Hébert.

[Christian Hébert, As an Individual]

Good morning.

My name is Christian Hébert, and I am the president of the Union des producteurs agricoles de Portneuf.

I want to tell you that climate change is making our lives harder. This summer, we saw very high precipitation levels in the Portneuf region and elsewhere in Quebec. The government will have to step in and support farmers.

A quick action that the Canadian government should consider in addressing farmers' flagging cash flows is to delay the repayment of loans that farms received under the Canada emergency business account program during the pandemic. That would reduce the financial burden borne by farmers during this uncertain and turbulent time. We think the government should consider delaying repayment for at least two years to allow farmers the time to recover from the economic situation and the environmental context caused by last summer's poor weather.

I have left a copy of my entire statement, which contains all the details and figures, with MP Caroline Desbiens, who can forward them to you.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thanks to the entire committee.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you.

[The Clerk]

It is now the turn of Paul Crête, former Bloc Québécois member of the House of Commons.

[Paul Crête, As an Individual]

Good morning, everyone.

I'm taking part in this consultation today as a citizen, and more particularly as a father and grandfather.

There is a fundamental choice to be made in this next budget, and that is whether to combat climate change. The budget must absolutely afford future generations, our grandchildren, a chance to live on a healthy, clean and tolerable planet. In the short term, that means a stop to partisan battles over issues like the carbon tax. You must absolutely present a budget that will enable you to say, in 10 or 20 years, that you were there and that you did what had to be done to meet the objectives in the fight against climate change. Those objectives are essential, and not only for Quebec and Canada.

I would like to make one final point: we have to stop arguing that other people elsewhere in the world aren't doing their part. If your house is on fire, you don't look to see if the person in the living room is doing his job. You reach for a fire extinguisher and put out the fire in the room you're in.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you for your service.

[The Clerk]

Thank you, Mr. Crête.

It is now the turn of Michel Côté.