Finance Committee on May 31st, 2024

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

I put out the example of the death of Abdurahman Ibrahim Hassan, who was a refugee with a lengthy history of mental illness. He did die in a segregated cell in a Canadian immigration detention centre in 2015. I noted that the jury's first recommendation was to stop the use of jails for detaining migrants.

In your view, why is the federal government ignoring that recommendation?

[Jenny Jeanes]

I believe the timing is creating—and this is why it's in a budget bill—a sense of urgency. For example, Ontario is where we see the most number of people detained in provincial jails, and that will no longer be possible after June of this year. I think this urgency may be causing the Minister of Public Safety to want to allow this measure. However, again, we would say that these risks, if they exist, can be managed with current facilities, training and investment in other supports, and where that falls short, the mental health system and the criminal justice system can provide tools to manage other kinds of risk.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, MP Davies. We have to move into our second round. I'm sorry, but we're well over time.

In this round, each party will have up to about two minutes, and maybe you'll have an opportunity to ask a question or two.

We're starting with MP Lawrence for two minutes.

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

Thank you very much. It's unfortunate that I only have two minutes. I think you all have had a ton of value to bring here.

I will focus my time on Fintechs Canada. You did a great job with your testimony, and we have such valuable input from all.

I just want to build upon what my colleague said. We're seeing a world where, increasingly, countries around the world are adopting open banking. It might even be, if I'm not going too far on this, real-time rail. A majority of advanced economies have adopted real-time rail, and Canada continues to lag behind.

I know, of course, that in the BIA we have a framework, but we don't have a start date for either open banking or real-time rail at this point. Is that correct? Maybe you can expand on that.

[Alexander Vronces]

It's a great question. Thank you.

We don't have a launch date. One wasn't committed to. It's hard to figure out exactly why, but if you work forward from the bill passing, build in some time for the drafting and passing of regulations and make rosy assumptions about how quickly the FCAC will be able to stand up its oversight capability, we're assuming that open banking will go live no earlier than 2026, so we are still years away.

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

Here we are in the spring or early summer of 2024, and based on the math in your analysis, the earliest we would be starting open banking would be 2026.

[Alexander Vronces]

That's with rosy but realistic assumptions, but one hundred per cent on the rosier side.

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

What about real-time rail? Do we have a launch date for that?

[Alexander Vronces]

The Bank of Canada recently said at a big payments conference that they were disappointed with all of these delays. I don't know why exactly they said this, but they added that we should not worry and that this was going to happen. If I had to speculate as to why they said that, I would speculate that they were responding to a lot of the backroom chatter about how the system might not even launch. It's been almost 10 years and we still don't have a launch date. Is this thing going to die?

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

Thank you. That's my time. I appreciate it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, MP Lawrence.

We'll now go to MP Thompson for a couple of minutes.

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

Thank you.

Ms. Scott, I'd like to speak with you about a couple of the comments earlier. I agree that expanded student loan forgiveness for physiotherapists is really important.

I want to focus on primary health care. I hear in multiple committees and often in debate in the House of Commons that primary health care is seen as being physician-led versus involving health professionals in a multidisciplinary team, with the right person at the right time understanding the skills across the health sector.

I have a small amount of time, but could you speak to the work your organization is doing to try to move away from what I'll call the myth that it's led by physicians? Obviously they're a very important part of the broader team, but it really is about multidisciplinary care. How will expanded student loan forgiveness assist physiotherapists in moving to more rural areas so we have truly comprehensive health care in all regions of the country?

[Kayla Scott]

In preparing for Canada's student loan forgiveness program, we heard from our partners, like the Canadian Nurses Association and the Canadian Orthopaedic Association, which supported the team-based care approach that ensures the right provider can provide care at the right time. We're very proud of the work of the team-based primary care initiative, which has provided physiotherapy funding for team-based primary care research.

In terms of the benefits of primary care, it ensures that Canadians, should they experience an MSK issue, can see a physiotherapist rather than another provider. Ensuring that teams include the right providers is extremely beneficial to Canadians. The Canadian Nurses Association supported the request for student loan forgiveness because of the multi-dimensional skills and expertise that physiotherapists provide. The Canadian Orthopaedic Association also supported that approach, with optimal patient care for recovery and prehab care, because of the team-based approach. We're very pleased about the expansion of the Canada student loan forgiveness program.

This month is also National Physiotherapy Month, and we're focused on the scope of practice and optimizing skill sets across Canada. We've been meeting with MPs from all over to talk about why physios, for instance, should be able to order an X-ray or diagnostics or provide, with the right training, pelvic care. This, for us, ensures that Canadians have high-quality care utilizing a team-based approach.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, MP Thompson.

Congratulations on National Physiotherapy Month.

Now we will go to MP Ste-Marie for a couple of minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I fully agree with your last comment.

Mr. Vronces, I agree completely with you that it's urgent for the government to regulate the open banking system. You've been asking for it since 2016, and the government responded in 2018 by demonstrating its intent to move forward. However, as you pointed out, it was all repeatedly delayed afterwards.

The previous group of witnesses included representatives of the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada, the FCFA. They told us that the government had informed the FCFA that it would be responsible for the framework just before the budget was tabled.

Does that look totally extemporaneous to you?

[Alexander Vronces]

I don't want to speculate about how organized or disorganized they might be behind the scenes, because I don't have a special insight into how the different political offices work. However, I know that we as an association have been talking to the government for some time about, for example, whether the FCAC would be a good body. For the record, the FCAC is a body that Fintechs Canada endorsed and advised the government to pick in January, so I think thought and consideration were given to which Canadian regulator would be best, and we at Fintechs Canada are happy with the choice.

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

I find it very dubious. Earlier, in response to all the technical questions we asked, they said they didn't have the expertise and that they were going to have to work on it. It's an organization that was mainly dealing with consumer best practices education. Our view of it may well differ.

Under the framework being introduced, all financial institutions subject to provincial regulation, like caisses populaires and credit unions, would have to ask the province to opt out of the provincial consumer protection regulatory systems in order to operate under federal authority. Not a word is said about co-operation with the various administrations. Do you consider that a responsible way of acting?

[Alexander Vronces]

I don't know exactly what the state of the conversation is between, say, the Department of Finance and the provincial regulators, but what I do know is that this framework is being designed in a way that respects the authority of the provinces.

There are many ways that is being done. For example, it's an opt-in framework. We have provincially regulated entities in our membership, and from our conversations with them, they don't think this will create any problems. Provincially regulated entities can always decide not to participate if they don't want to, but for many provincially regulated entities, the requirements they must meet under provincial oversight are already quite high. I don't think they will be superseded or made more onerous by Canada's open banking framework.

I think there could be an opportunity to recognize some equivalency so that certain provincially regulated institutions don't need to jump through a bunch of new hoops, because they have effectively already jumped through them.

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

As it stands, the framework doesn't allow that.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, Mr. Ste-Marie.

For this panel, MP Davies will be our final questioner.

You have two minutes.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Sreenivasan, I would like to pick up where we left off, and I would invite you to complete your thoughts.

[Gauri Sreenivasan]

Thanks very much for the opportunity.

I want to add further to what Jenny Jeanes was saying, because your question was about whether facilities are going to be available in federal correctional institutions for mental health supports. The truth is that there are no guarantees of that. Our questions to the immigration and refugee department were very much to ask if they had been scoping out where such potential zones could be created in federal corrections. We haven't done the map yet. We don't know. Have they determined to what extent mental health services will be available? We would have to figure that out.

It's a high-risk scenario, and it's unclear where in the country they would be creating such places for immigration detention, but since they are identifying a small number of people and the level of criteria they feel they have to meet is high, we can imagine that they could be very physically dispersed. This could mean that the people placed in federal prisons for immigration detention could end up being far from communities, far from services and far from their care providers, so to us, the risk related to access to mental health services is very high.

The other point I want to identify is about the question you spoke to: Why are they doing it now and what is the timing? For us, the main point here is that it is outrageous they are doing it. We have 10 provinces across the political spectrum, with Conservative provincial governments, Liberal provincial governments and Quebec, where I usually work, saying that this is absolutely not on anymore. There has been a groundswell of public outcry.

We have public direction and political direction in the country moving very specifically against putting people in administrative detention in prison, and the federal government is choosing now as the time they are going to do this. We know that federal prisons are the places for people who have convictions of more than two years, and it's much more serious to be placed in a federal prison.

In terms of Canada's reputation, we just had UN detention experts visiting Canada. They were appalled that this was happening. It is a radical departure. “Why are they doing it now?” is really more a question of it making no sense that they do it. The provincial contracts are ending in a matter of days, so we know, even the BIA aside, that we won't have the ability.

There's obviously already a plan in place for how to manage the fewer than 30 people who are left in provincial jails. There is capacity in immigration holding centres. There is no reason to radically shift Canada's paradigm. Clearly, across the spectrum and across the country, we're opposed to putting people in administrative detention in federal prisons. It must be summarily rejected, especially in the context of slipping it into a budget implementation act.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, MP Davies.

We want to thank our excellent witnesses. Thank you for coming before the finance committee on Bill C-69. We appreciate your testimony and wish you the best with the rest of your day.

Members, we are now suspended as we transition to our next panel.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

We're back with our final panel for today. This is our fourth panel today, but our eighth panel altogether of witnesses.

We have with us, from the BGC East Scarborough, Utcha Sawyers, chief executive officer. Welcome.

From the Financial Data and Technology Association of North America, we have executive director Steven Boms with us.

From the Public Service Alliance of Canada, we have the director of the negotiations and programs branch, Liam McCarthy, and the national president of the Customs and Immigration Union, Mark Weber. We also have Ms. Michele Girash.

I apologize, Ms. Girash, that I don't have your title, but you're welcome to let the members know what title you have with the PSAC.

With that, we are going to hear first from BGC East Scarborough for up to five minutes, please.

[Utcha Sawyers, Chief Executive Officer, BGC East Scarborough]

Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for providing us with this opportunity to share a bit of what's happening for us. We're an example of the potential that can be replicated across the country from investing in a club or organization like ours.

This is a very historic moment for BGC East Scarborough. I'll share a bit about who we are and what we do.

BGC East Scarborough is a children and youth organization that focuses on supporting children and youth with their development needs from cradle to career. One of the essential, key programs embedded in our fabric is our food program. We provide snack student nutrition programs and morning and breakfast programs, and we cater all of our daytime meal programs for licensed child care and EarlyON services. For our youth programs, we are mandated to have food as a part of every program we offer to the broader community, and we're serving over 6,500 children and youth monthly. We also service the community with community food programs for those who are vulnerable, isolated and in need.

For us, food is definitely a central point of how we show up to the table in servicing the community. With this historic moment in Canada and this investment, we'll join other G7 countries and industrialized countries around the world in establishing a national food program.

We've been part of the Coalition for Healthy School Food for many years now. As a collaborative, we've been working diligently on sharing our data and the impacts of these supports with the broader collective, which has representation across Canada.

This investment is an excellent social and economic policy that will support children and youth in schools across the country to be well nourished and ready to learn and to have equal opportunity to succeed. It will also help families by reducing grocery bills and will support women, parents, farmers, food systems, jobs, economic growth and communities across the country.

We sent in data from the World Food Programme meeting earlier this year in Paris, and it said, “All the evidence shows that school meals programmes, along with other social protection initiatives, are one of the smartest long-term investments any government can make.” We see that long term. We follow children from, as I said, cradle all the way to career. We see first-hand the impacts of not only providing food but also providing access to nutrient-dense, quality food and food literacy as part of the ongoing journey.

In Ontario today, a major announcement was made about financial literacy in schools. We strongly believe that through student nutrition programming, food literacy in schools will help us curb a lot of the social determinant impacts or negative impacts on the long-term lives of children and youth across the country. We see it first-hand in east Scarborough.

BGC East Scarborough looks forward to working in collaboration with all levels of government. We are currently provincially funded, but we receive just under $10,000 to serve a large number of children and youth each year. That works out to about 25¢ per snack and $1.10 per meal. You can see how, for us as a non-profit charitable organization, this layered-on investment will help us shore up these programs and have a sustainable way of providing them.

Right now, we are dependent on other revenue sources, and with the economy and all of what we're facing from the global economic impacts coming out of COVID and from the transition through a time of austerity, we are so excited for and very much in support of student nutrition collaboration across the country to layer on supports for clubs like ours and for schools and community spaces that are providing alternative meal programs. As part of the coalition, we definitely look forward to being consulted on and supporting this particular investment as it is being rolled out across the country.