Finance Committee on Oct. 1st, 2024

[Gisèle Tassé-Goodman]

Members of Parliament, I'm sure that seniors under the age of 74 in your constituencies are coming to tell you that they're living below the poverty line, which is less than $22,000 a year. These people are struggling to pay rent, buy groceries and so on.

If the government really wants to save money, and we can see that it does, perhaps it could review the maximum eligibility threshold for old age security.

Should a person who earns between $120,000 and $130,000 a year be just as entitled to receive old age security as a person who earns less than $22,000?

This issue requires serious consideration, and the government could devote more attention to it.

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

Thank you.

In general, do you have any other comments for the committee?

[Philippe Poirier-Monette]

In my opinion, the key message about old age security is that we must look beyond columns of figures. We must look at people's day‑to‑day needs. Some people aged 65 to 74 have urgent needs in terms of housing, food and medication. An extra $70 a month can change their lives. We're asking parliamentarians to think about these people who are struggling to make ends meet.

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

Thank you.

I hope that the government has heard you and that it will act accordingly.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, Mr. Ste‑Marie.

Now we'll go to MP Davies.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Cochrane, I'm just going to ask you two questions, because I only have two and a half minutes, and I'll let you answer as you will.

In your pre-budget submission, you talked about the importance of health care, which I think is very much top of mind as an issue for Canadians. Can you outline what specific steps the federal government should take to defend patient care, reverse privatization and solve the health human resources staffing crisis?

My second question is about something you mentioned in your opening remarks. What does a better fiscal policy for Canada look like to you?

[Dr. D.T. Cochrane]

I'll answer the second question first.

A better fiscal policy, first of all, has to be at the scale of the issues that the government needs to be dealing with, the guidance it needs to be providing and the investment it needs to be making. Health care is one of the areas where that investment should be going. I think most Canadians take a lot of pride in our universal health care system and are ashamed to realize the wait times and to know the hardships that our frontline health care workers are facing in providing the health care that we need.

We have an aging population, and there are an increasing number of long-term debilitating illnesses that people are dealing with. This is going to increase the pressures on our health care system, which we almost all agree should be free at the point of service, and when something is free at the point of service, it gets paid for somewhere and it gets paid for through our social safety net. That's not just about shoving money at the situation. That's also about having the appropriate regulations in place.

Health care, as it is well known, is a provincial responsibility, but the federal government has many tools and pressure points it can exercise in order to return to the universality of access that health care had at its origins and that we need to be defending. Putting conditions on getting access to increased funding needs to be one of the ways we make sure the creeping privatization doesn't continue. It just creates a two-tier system and diverts resources away from the public health care system, giving us the sort of system that I think most of us do not want.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, MP Davies.

We go now to MP Kelly, please.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Thank you.

To the trucking association, do you have any comments about the problems we have with gatekeeping that add expense to dealings between provinces?

[Geoffrey Wood]

Thank you for the question.

We've actually put together an interprovincial trade barriers report. It outlines a host of items that we feel could use some attention. It's fairly lengthy, sir. I'm happy to get into it, if you have any specific questions. There's a whole host of items.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

If I may, I think members might not be aware of the different ways in which costs are added to Canadians and how there are discrepancies around everything from sizes to fuel blends. Do you have just a few quick examples to allow Canadians to understand the depth of regulatory problems that add costs for Canadians?

[Geoffrey Wood]

Sure. Thank you for the question, because it's actually a report that I worked on.

We identified not just regulatory but also operational pieces. The consistency of winter road maintenance standards, province to province, gives us consistency in transit times during inclement weather. We talked about the need to continue to fund truck rest areas and parking so that drivers can get their rest. That brings the national highway system up to the code it's supposed to be—

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

If I may, my time is limited here. Have you raised these issues before with the federal government?

[Geoffrey Wood]

Yes, we have.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Have they addressed any of these problems?

[Geoffrey Wood]

There's been a host of mechanisms around for 40 or 50 years to deal with it, but the most recent round with Minister LeBlanc, I believe, and his efforts on that have gone forward. There seems to be traction there. We're looking forward to participating in those efforts.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Okay.

You've talked about how the CRA is not effective in enforcing the law and the emergence of an underground trucking industry. Canada has existing laws, though, that should protect workers and consumers. Also, the agency should be able to properly collect its taxes.

Do we need new laws or do we need law enforcement?

[Geoffrey Wood]

We need law enforcement. We're not asking for anything new. We just want the law enforced.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Okay.

[Geoffrey Wood]

I could give you some numbers. We say it's conservatively at $1 billion, but it's more than that. It's $1 billion on the evasion side, on the company side, but it's about $5 billion a year on the tax evasion by a number of drivers. It's a massive leakage.

We can't figure out why the laws aren't being enforced. When you talk about that leakage, that's money that should go to supporting hospitals and health care and all of our social institutions. It's not there.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

The CRA is failing to collect taxes from within your industry, while at the same time, as Mr. Chambers pointed out, we see increasing writeoffs for the non-payment of taxes—but they're not collecting. They're not collecting from your industry.

Did you say that they're failing to collect $1 billion?

[Geoffrey Wood]

That's at a minimum. There are two pieces. There's the corporate side of the taxes that aren't contributed from the companies themselves. Then there's a significant portion of drivers who do not file. They don't pay.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Have you raised this at this committee before or raised it in some way to the federal government?

[Geoffrey Wood]

I have for the past eight years.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

They've been in power for nine years, so I guess for the last eight years they've been ignoring your repeated calls to deal with important tax avoidance and tax evasion.