Finance Committee on Jan. 31st, 2022

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Thank you so much, Mr. Chair.

As we are engaged in pre-budget consultations, I'm still going to spend the majority of my time on this, because we have such limited time and I want to make sure that we get the best recommendations on the table.

I know that a number of my colleagues on the opposite bench have suggested that perhaps we want to have our Parliamentary Budget Officer back before us for full sessions. I personally support that very much. As soon as these pre-budget consultations are done, it's very important that we have Mr. Giroux back to answer more fully many of the things he has highlighted in his report that has come out today.

There are a couple of things, though, that I do think are important to mention, because there's a bit of a focus on the change around the fiscal guardrails and whether we continue to need stimulus spending.

It's important to note that, as of last summer, we as a federal government have started to drastically reduce and pull back a lot of our supports and emergency supports. It's also important to note that even after we announced the additional targeted stimulus funding in the fall, international credit agencies still confirmed our AAA credit rating.

It's further important to note that Bill C-2 showed that we continued to have targeted, specific support—and as we could see through this recent lockdown across our country, we have needed it.

The last thing is that there's a very fine line between when to pull back drastically on the stimulus and the supports and when to continue to help ease the Canadian economy as we're still trying to get through this COVID pandemic. Much of the money currently being spent is for the child care commitments, it's for the aggressive climate change actions, it's for reconciliation and it's for continuing to support our businesses and economic growth moving forward.

On that, I'm going to turn my attention to the Green Budget Coalition and ask anybody who is willing to respond to this question.

There was a really wonderful report that came out about sustainable finance from our current Governor of the Bank of Canada, and before that, he had worked on a big sustainable finance report. He has made a number of recommendations about the importance of how to bring in private investment to help ensure that Canada achieves its aggressive climate action targets.

From your perspective, what is the role of private investment in our transition to net zero, and how can we as a federal government better support private investment as we're trying to aggressively move on achieving net zero by 2050 and our 2030 targets?

[Andrew Van Iterson]

I appreciate the question. I'm going to turn to Vanessa Corkal again.

[Vanessa Corkal]

Thanks, Andrew.

As I mentioned in one of my previous answers, you will have noted that we don't have extensive recommendations on sustainable finance on this. This file is under development and we have colleagues in other organizations, in particular Environmental Defence and Shift Action for Pension Wealth and Planet Health, who are working actively on this file.

Therefore, I'm going to give some high-level recommendations.

First, we really support implementing the recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosure. A huge way to support the private sector is to ensure that companies are able and are supported to provide climate risk disclosures on their investments. That will help them identify the right ways to go.

Another tool that we have outlined in our document is under a section called “Green Strings”, about how the government can use its money to support the private sector as well. We support encouraging companies to develop net-zero plans in line with Canada's recommendations in order for them to be eligible for certain types of federal funding. That will also help give an extra boost to the private sector to figure out and plan its investments.

Those are two examples I would like to focus on.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

I appreciate that very much, Ms. Corkal. That's very important.

My last question in my remaining time is this. In my riding of Davenport, one of the many recommendations that we're working to address climate change is our goal of conserving 25% of our lands and waters by 2025 and 30% by 2030. We're very serious about that recommendation.

What would be your recommendation about our next steps to aggressively push on achieving this objective?

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Give a short answer, please.

[Vanessa Corkal]

I'm going to pass it to my colleague, Doug.

[Doug Chiasson, Senior Specialist, Marine Ecosystems and Government Engagement, World Wildlife Fund-Canada, Green Budget Coalition]

One of our priority recommendations in this year's document is to provide ongoing management funding to protected areas. The next target and the next protected area are always very important, but we also need to properly provision the government departments and agencies that are in charge of managing and stewarding our existing protected areas.

Instead of making these departments and agencies reliant on three-year or five-year blocks of funding, we recommend building in permanent funding for ECCC, DFO and the Parks Canada Agency to manage and steward our protected areas.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, Ms. Dzerowicz.

Members, looking at the time we have left, I'm going to divide up the time, as we usually do, among the four parties. It will be for two, two, one and one minutes.

We'll start with the Conservatives and Mr. Stewart for two minutes.

[Jake Stewart, Conservative, Miramichi—Grand Lake, NB]

Thank you for that, Mr. Chair.

Back to my earlier questions to Mr. Giroux, I'm guessing that if we ignore the safeguards we spoke of earlier, the credit rating will be at risk of being downgraded in Canada.

Can you tell me why there is no more further need for stimulus spending past 2021-22?

[Yves Giroux]

The economy is running at a healthy pace and recovering at a relatively fast pace after the severe downturn induced by COVID-19. The labour markets have recovered. While this is not the case everywhere and in every single sector, but if we look at the labour market in aggregate, the number of jobs is higher now than at the start of or just before the pandemic. The participation rate is very close, if not at, its pre-pandemic level, and the same goes for the number of hours worked. If it's not at its level or slightly above, it soon will be.

That's why the need for economic stimulus, with the purpose of returning economic activity back to its pre-pandemic level, is probably no longer necessary or will no longer be necessary. However, as I've said before, it's the prerogative of the government to spend if it has other policy objectives in mind. That's not what I'm commenting on; I was commenting on the need for economic stimulus to stimulate demand and return to pre-pandemic levels of employment.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

You have 20 seconds left.

[Jake Stewart, Conservative, Miramichi—Grand Lake, NB]

When government prints this much money, it will always contribute to higher inflation in Canada. That's “Justinflation”.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, Mr Stewart.

We're now moving to the Liberals and Mr. MacDonald for two minutes.

[Heath MacDonald, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Thank you.

I have a quick question for Mr. Giroux.

Has your office done any analysis or forecasts of the $10-a-day child care that are relevant to the economy or labour force by any chance?

[Yves Giroux]

We are in the process of doing that. It's not completed yet, but we are looking at that issue and are hoping to be in a position to release a report before the end of the fiscal year, so before the end of March.

[Heath MacDonald, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Thank you very much.

I want to move on to the Canadian Mental Health Association again.

I want to go back to Ms. Dzerowicz's initial questions. Sometimes I feel that the local associations do get frustrated when they hear of the mental health transfers to the province, but don't always necessarily see where it's coming from or how it's built into their core budgets. How important is direct mental health funding and what impediments can we overcome as a government to ensure that these local associations have direct access to this funding?

[Margaret Eaton]

Thank you so much.

It's a growing imperative. We know that the provincial governments in some provinces have taken some of that federal money and it has trickled down to some of our community organizations, but the need is great. Even some of our largest CMHAs—like Waterloo Wellington in Ontario, for example—talk about the fact that even with their budgets they cannot meet the need, particularly for issues like eating disorders and substance use, which have grown extraordinarily through the pandemic.

If we want to get our country moving again, we have to make sure that people's mental health is addressed, not just in the short term but for the longer term as well. We're quite concerned that the impact on mental health that we see is going to grow over time, even as the country starts to open up as the pandemic comes to a slow close.

[Heath MacDonald, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. MacDonald.

We're moving to the Bloc and Monsieur Ste-Marie for a minute-ish.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Lavigne, in one minute, could you explain to us your requests for infrastructure and the pharmaceutical industry?

[Mathieu Lavigne]

In a word, the pandemic has shown that we need an adequate supply in Quebec and in Canada. In our case, we are talking more about Quebec.

Our main request is to have pharmaceutical production capability at home. The reform of the Patented Medicine Prices Review Board, which has been under way for some years, was conceived prior to the pandemic and is no longer appropriate for today's reality. We know that the federal government has already postponed the changes that the board proposed until July 2022 and we are grateful to it for that. However, we feel that the objective is not to postpone the reform but to look at it again.

We are aware that the system still needs to be modernized. But the basis of that reform must reflect our recognition of the need to have medications produced at home. Importing medications in crisis situations poses supply problems. We would therefore like the reform to be focused on reestablishing the pharmaceutical industry at home, in Quebec. We used to have many companies in the sector and there are still a lot, but real advantages can be gained by re‑examining that reform.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you.

Now we'll go to the NDP.

Mr. Blaikie, you'll have our last question in this session.

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

Thank you very much.

Ms. Eaton, we hear a lot from the government about the national housing strategy, but we know that over six years they haven't really made a dent in what we need to accomplish. We also know that despite their talk about “affordable” housing, the way that's defined means that many people who are in dire housing need cannot access what's being built under the program.

I'm wondering if in 30 seconds you can give us the broad strokes of what really needs to change in the national housing strategy in order to serve the folks you're here to advocate for today.

[Margaret Eaton]

Thank you for that.

Housing is a dire issue. As you know, there's tremendous stigma against people with mental illness, which means that many of them are on disability and struggling to make ends meet, so the housing that we provide through CMHAs locally has been incredibly important to maintain their dignity and support their recovery.

The national housing strategy, we're all delighted to see, but we know that there needs to be greater action and more speed, especially now. What we would like to see is clearer implementation plans and more direct allocation of that funding so that we can actually see, perhaps not even investment, necessarily, in whole new buildings being built, but creative strategies to find infill housing and the purchase of particular units or condos for these purposes, and different ways of getting at this problem, rather than just putting up brand new buildings, which we know can be so difficult and expensive. We want to see a creative implementation strategy.