Finance Committee on Nov. 16th, 2023

[Chris Gallaway]

That's fine. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, MP Baker.

MP Ste-Marie, go ahead, please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to welcome all the witnesses.

Mr. Breton, regarding federal regulations, why is it important to regulate the sale of zero-emission vehicles, including trucks, buses and other medium and heavy vehicles, and to have strict standards for exhaust emissions?

[Daniel Breton]

It is very simple, in fact. According to a study published in 2019 by the International Energy Agency, Canada's vehicle fleet is the worst in the world when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions per kilometre driven. It is not complicated: when it comes to green house gas emissions, we come in last. That is the first thing I wanted to say.

Second, everywhere in the world, almost all auto manufacturers are opposed to regulations concerning greenhouse gas emissions or the number of electric vehicles to be supplied to Canada. That said, they were also opposed to air bags and antipollution systems in the past, and even to seatbelts, in the 1960s. So it is nothing new to see manufacturers, in general, opposing regulation: it is a matter of principle.

When we look at everything involved in the zero-emission standard, we see auto manufacturers everywhere in the world making it their priority to ship electric vehicles to countries where there are regulations.

As we say in English, they always complain and they always comply.

Regulation is therefore extremely necessary. At present, a majority of the electric vehicles sold in Canada are in British Columbia and Quebec. In Ontario, in the Maritimes and in some provinces, none exist.

If a car dealer wants to sell electric vehicles but there are none to be bought, and the dealer has sales targets to meet, they will try to dissuade the buyer from buying one in order to sell them the gas-powered vehicle on their lot.

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

We see the same thing in Quebec, unfortunately.

[Daniel Breton]

That may be because the standard is not strong enough.

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

Yes.

Why should the federal government adopt an action plan for electric vehicles?

[Daniel Breton]

At present, there is an action plan for the electric vehicle supply chain, that is, for everything relating to critical minerals, batteries or assembly, in particular. Announcements have been made by the federal government. A few days ago, there was an announcement in British Columbia and there were also announcements in Ontario and Quebec.

There are very good things being done all over Canada, but there needs to be an integrated plan for electrifying transportation that also includes infrastructure.

In fact, there is one area that not enough gets said about, and that is education and worker training. Two of our members are Unifor and the FTQ, the Fédération des travailleurs et travailleuses du Québec. There is an extremely important transition that is going to happen in jobs. The young workers I talk to say they do not just want to have a job, they also want to feel they are doing something tangible to promote zero-emission vehicles. Whether they are cars, trucks or buses, whether they are electric or hydrogen-powered, these young people want to feel they are making a positive contribution to the economic future of their region. I have heard this in Quebec and in Ontario and even here in Edmonton, where good things are happening, like the streetcar project.

A lot of things are going to be happening in terms of technological innovation and zero-emission vehicles.

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

Thank you.

When it comes to the supply policy, is the federal government up to the job?

[Daniel Breton]

For everything referred to as the critical minerals supply chain, one of the challenges that arises is the amount of time it takes for projects to be approved. There is a balance that is not easy to achieve: on the one side, you want to make sure the projects move forward as fast as possible, but on the other, it has to be done in partnership with the first nations. You can't do what was done in the past and show up on their land and ransack it with disrespect and even racism. There is extremely important work that has to be done in that area.

Someone asked me how we could speed up the approval process at the Department of the Environment. My answer was that cutting staff in the department was certainly not going to speed things up. The department has to be given the resources to do its job. I am a former minister of the environment. At the time, we had almost no budget and almost no staff. I know exactly what happens. It is all very well to talk about respecting the environment, but that takes employees on the ground to do the work.

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

Thank you.

You said that rail transportation could be electrified. If I understood correctly...

[Daniel Breton]

When it comes to rail transportation, we are 50 to 75 years behind the rest of the planet. Forgive me, but we look ridiculous in North American when it comes to electrifying the railway system. Sometimes, when I compare our system to what is being done in Europe or Asia, I get the feeling I have gone back to pre-war days, when I board a train in Canada. It is a bit pathetic.

Take the example of the rail link between New York and Montreal. Once the Amtrak train crosses the border between the United States and Canada, its average speed is 16 km/h between the border and Montreal because of the poor condition of the rails. I think there is work to be done.

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

What can be done to support electrification of the transportation used in the mining industry?

[Daniel Breton]

More and more mining companies, some of which are members of Electric Mobility Canada, are interested in critical minerals supply.

I am going to say something extremely important: from a geopolitical perspective, critical minerals supply is in everybody's mind these days. I remember speaking with the federal government and with American politicians a few years ago. The American politicians did not think critical minerals were important, until we talked to them about having control of the critical minerals supply for national security and military reasons. All of a sudden, they were listening. They realized that it was not just an environmental issue. Some people could not care less about the environment, but it is another matter when you talk to them about national security and critical minerals supply.

Where I have a problem is when President Biden came to Canada last year or a few months ago. In the House of Commons, he said that since Canada had critical minerals, he was going to take them home to process them. We cannot find ourselves once again in some kind of neocolonial system of natural resource extraction, and not make value-added products in Quebec and Canada. I believe that is a mistake we have made too often in relation to oil, lumber or aluminum. I think you learn from your lessons and you do not get a second chance to do it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, Mr. Ste-Marie.

We'll go to MP Blaikie.

Go ahead, please.

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

Thank you very much.

Mr. Gallaway, I just want to circle back on the question about pharmacare.

I am glad to hear you say single-payer, personally. I know there are still folks out there who think Canada should take a stopgap approach and just have a plan for people who don't currently have coverage.

I'm wondering if you can speak to what the challenges and the cost of that are versus those for a single-payer system.

[Chris Gallaway]

Absolutely.

That's something that comes up all the time. There's kind of this idea that, if we just try to find a way to fill the gaps for that one-third or so of Canadians who might not have coverage, that will be cheaper and it will somehow work out, but we lose all of the savings of a single-payer system if we just add new programs. We already have thousands of drug plans in this country—employer plans and public plans. They're costing us a lot of money. We're already paying to not have single-payer pharmacare when we could simply do it through one system, through a national program, through our medicare system. We could save money and provide the medicines people need to everyone.

It's clearly laid out. There's report after report that shows this: the Parliamentary Budget Officer, Dr. Hoskins.... There's so much that can be looked at to show how clearly it is true that the best model is a single-payer system, fiscally as well as in terms of the outcomes for health, so we should simply do it.

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

I think we know that one of the risks people face by having their prescription drug coverage tied to their employment is that they can end up with gaps in employment. If they change jobs, even if they're fortunate enough to go right into another job, or if they might be laid off for a period of time, there's usually a certain amount of time that they have to spend paying into the plan before they're eligible for benefits. Can you speak to the virtues of a fully portable prescription drug plan?

[Chris Gallaway]

It's something that folks in Alberta know well. We saw that through the pandemic across the country, with people losing their benefits. We have the boom-and-bust cycle of oil and gas here, where people have employment and then they don't. That's happened many times in my lifetime and in Alberta's history. If people's medicine and the drugs they need to stay alive—their health—are tied to their jobs, we don't think that's fair and okay. As part of health care, they should have access to them when they need them and where they need them.

We're this strange country where we have this universal health care system that doesn't include drugs outside of the hospital. It's costing us a lot. People end up back in the hospital. It really shouldn't be tied to the idea that you have a job for right now. You retire and suddenly your benefits change, or the provincial government changes the drug benefit plan for seniors. Whatever it might be, people shouldn't be at the whim of employment, different drug plans or different programs. There should be one system whereby everything is covered and people know that they can get what they need when they need it, no matter where they live in the country.

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

When it comes to health human resources, it seems like we're stuck in a zero-sum game. We don't have enough health care professionals—of all kinds—and the provinces are developing their own health human resources strategies in vacuums. Often, that means looking at other jurisdictions and creating incentives for people to move to other jurisdictions, but not enough emphasis on training to ensure that wherever you live in Canada you're living under a health system that has an adequate supply of health human resources.

I wonder if you could speak a bit to the importance of developing something among the provinces. I don't think it should be Ottawa-led, but Ottawa-convened and Ottawa-resourced. Talk about the importance of having a national strategy in that regard.

[Chris Gallaway]

There's such a need for national leadership on health care staffing, both because not every province is doing it—Alberta doesn't really have a workforce plan currently for health care—and, also, you're right that we're in this race-to-the-bottom mentality, whereas we really should be having a strategy that looks at retention, at how we keep the skilled health professionals that we have working in the systems where they're working, and that also looks at recruitment, the training, the immigration, whatever those other pieces might be, to ensure we have the workforce we need going forward.

Instead, we're seeing some provinces doing more than others. As part of my job, I read a lot of things online about health care, news stories and stuff, but now what happens to me is that I get lots of ads on health care—my phone thinks I'm a nurse half the time—ads like, “Do you want to work in Atlantic Canada? Here is your incentive to move.” We're poaching from each other rather than looking at the system across the country.

The newest one I've seen is actually for anesthesiologists—that's my parents' wish, but that's not my employment. Provinces are desperately looking for folks to keep their operating rooms open. If we're simply moving people from Alberta to B.C. or from Saskatchewan back over to Nova Scotia, where people might have grown up, that's not solving the bigger issue. It's costing us more because we're putting in all these expenses. We heard from the rural municipalities in the last panel that doctors are such a big thing, and we're seeing rural municipalities pony up all sorts of money in trying to recruit a doctor to their towns—an incentive or whatever it might be. They're just competing with each other for the same doctor and spending more money to do it, rather than our having a national strategy. I think it's crucial if we're going to solve the problem we're in.

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

Thank you very much.

Do I have a little more time, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

You have one minute.

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

I'm happy to continue.

I guess what I wanted to ask about is maybe stepping back a bit. You mentioned that there were some negotiations going on in the follow-up to the announcement of health care funding, but what the Liberals didn't do, which they had campaigned on in 2015, was bring back the national health care accord approach, where you get provinces around the table, you set priorities and you develop metrics. I wonder if you could speak a bit to what was lost in turning away from the model of a national health accord, and what you think we need to be doing as a country in order to get those benefits back.

[Chris Gallaway]

That is something we called for at the time, along with groups across the country. We needed to do a new national health accord where everyone was on the same page, because it should be one medical system, one health care system—medicare—no matter which province you live in. We shouldn't be having one-off deals with every province, with different levels of service and coverage. It's about getting that buy-in at a national table for the money that needs to be spent.

We do think that the federal government needs to pay their share—and that share has decreased over time—but also, there needs to be some agreement on what that's going to be and what we're delivering to Canadians and Albertans as part of that. That is the moment when the federal government has the power to look at outcomes like long-term care centres, like buy-in for pharmacare or whatever it might be. If it's at that table where everyone agrees and everyone has signed on, it's much easer than signing 12 or 13 different agreements across the country, one at a time, on all these issues.