Evidence of meeting #159 for Finance in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was number.
A video is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Adam Chambers Conservative Simcoe North, ON
Thank you very much.
Just quickly, before I move on, I want to confirm something with a brief yes-or-no answer.
Your testimony was that 50% of those impacted by the capital gains tax would otherwise make less than $117,000 a year and that we would see a loss of $90 billion of GDP and an increase in unemployment of about 400,000. Do I have correct?
President's Fellow, School of Public Policy, University of Calgary, As an Individual
That's correct, yes.
President's Fellow, School of Public Policy, University of Calgary, As an Individual
I should add that there's a paper of mine that C.D. Howe is going to put out that gives a lot of the references and detail, and it will be available. That's in answer to Mr. Sorbara.
Conservative
Adam Chambers Conservative Simcoe North, ON
Thank you very much.
Mr. Butler, thank you so much for coming back. It's wonderful to see you. I regret I don't have more time with you.
Did I hear you correctly? In four years, the number of homes that will be built within the 416 area code will be 1,500. It's not 15,000, but 1,500.
Mortgage Broker, Butler Mortgage Inc.
That's correct. By these big condo towers, it's easy to graph when they're completed within about an eight-month cycle. There are no new ones being developed, so at that point, you end up with no homes.
Conservative
Adam Chambers Conservative Simcoe North, ON
That's based on the current economic environment today. That's what the result is going to be.
Conservative
Adam Chambers Conservative Simcoe North, ON
When the finance minister says that her economic plan is working, do you think that's what she means?
Mortgage Broker, Butler Mortgage Inc.
I don't know what she means, but I can tell you factually that there's going to be significant unemployment in the construction industry in Ontario within the next two years, and there will also be this catastrophic fall-off in developing units for people to buy.
Liberal
Liberal
Joanne Thompson Liberal St. John's East, NL
Thank you.
Mr. Couillard, I'll begin with you.
Often in this committee, when we speak about primary health care, it's through the lens of a single provider, physician-based, so thank you for expanding that conversation to the true multidisciplinary team-based collaboratives, because I firmly believe that is how we're going to meet the primary health care needs of Canadians in rural, obviously, and in urban areas, understanding that there is a real challenge in urban areas in Canada. I certainly believe that the loan forgiveness—and I hear you clearly—needs to be expanded to other professionals. That's been one really important piece of this.
I also wanted to centre on the historic health care transfers the government has made to the provinces and the territories. I certainly can speak to my province of Newfoundland and Labrador. It's been topped up by significant transfers.
One of the challenges for me is the lack of movement toward true team-based approaches to primary health care. I would ask you to speak to that and what it is you feel that your organization can do or what you're seeing across the country. Is there a movement toward these multidisciplinary teams, or are we still looking for a physician-based solution?
Chair, Extended Healthcare Professionals Coalition
We think there's movement. We hope there's movement. It's not huge, but there's a little bit of movement, so what we're looking for is to amplify the momentum of that movement.
The associations, the professionals we represent, really work on the margins of the current health care system. The current health care system is all about hospitals, doctors and nurses, and our members work on the margins. Because they work on the margins, they're not part of the health care networks at the provincial level or at the national level, so they don't have a voice.
When you're president of a hospital, you have a lot of political power. You have a lot of voice, and it's easy to get money in. When you're an individual dentist, optometrist or pharmacist, you don't have that voice. You're an individual running your little business. Intuitively, it makes sense to find a way to better integrate all these professions so that we can work together. There is some collaboration, of course, but we need to do it at a systematic level, sharing information, sharing data about patients and outcomes.
Liberal
Joanne Thompson Liberal St. John's East, NL
Thank you.
I don't have a lot of time, but this is very important to me. I agree that the data piece is critical. Again, in part of the conversations we've had over the past year in this committee, I've heard colleagues in other parties talk about dental care as though it's not part of health care, which I find frightening. I certainly want to give a shout-out to how important that program is, because it is about health outcomes.
What are the barriers, and how do we break down those barriers within society, within governments and within the professions that are really part of this multidisciplinary team? How do we break down those barriers so that we are stronger when we work together and so that we have the right person at the right time? It is efficient. I know it works, because I was part of those systems, but there are clearly challenges in moving this forward.
First of all, what are those challenges, and how do we overcome them?
Chair, Extended Healthcare Professionals Coalition
I think if you look at some of our coalitions—I mentioned Heal and ours at the EHPC—we get together on a regular basis and we find a way to agree on those priorities. We're able to say, on an annual basis to government, what we think are the three or four things they should focus on right now. We've been very consistent. Heal, which represents 40 national associations, has identified mental health, home and community care, and health human resources as their priorities. Everybody works together. These meetings are at a bigger table than this. Everybody agrees. We all write documents together. It's not a fight.
What I'm saying is that a good start would be to listen to these tables. Listen to the EHPC. Listen to Heal. You have one-stop shopping. Instead of listening to only one profession that is trying to get more money for their own members, or another profession, listen to these coalitions. You get the common ask and you get the priorities.
I don't know if that's helpful. Putting that into operation at the local level and the provincial level is a different challenge.
Liberal
Joanne Thompson Liberal St. John's East, NL
Thank you for highlighting that, because I think that's a real barrier.
Ms. Libralato, I'm a real supporter of the arts as well. In Newfoundland and Labrador, we love to tell our stories and we love art in all forms.
I do want to highlight that our government has doubled the budget for the arts, with $1.1 billion in new funding and $180 million ongoing, which I think is incredibly important. Again, there's that same theme today of sustainability. In terms of your organization, certainly, but I'm thinking of my province as well, how do we as a federal government also coordinate with provinces, with municipalities and within the sectors in the communities to really maximize the funds that are available so that we don't see some groups able to thrive while other groups fall to the side? How do we somehow come together and ensure that by working together we don't leave groups behind?
I think it's all so important now in terms of how we build our stories and our understanding of who we are within our communities.
Liberal
Executive Director, Toronto Biennial of Art
Thank you, MP Thompson, for your words.
I think the way forward is always partnerships. The Toronto Biennial of Art was built on partnerships. We partner with everyone, from local community groups and artist-run centres to the National Gallery of Canada. That is our way forward—sharing resources, sharing knowledge, sharing ideas.
I think that's how we move forward. That also falls within the levels of government in terms of how we partner.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Peter Fonseca
Thank you for that.
Members, I'm just looking at the time. We don't have time for a full round, but we still have a significant amount of time. We have about 20 minutes. We're looking at about five minutes for each party to ask questions in this final round.
We'll start with MP Hallan.
Conservative
Jasraj Singh Hallan Conservative Calgary Forest Lawn, AB
Thanks, Chair.
Dr. Mintz, our friend Mr. Sorbara, in his lecture or cabinet audition—I couldn't tell which one it was—painted a very rosy picture that Canadians have never had it better. Something that I think the Liberals continue to mislead Canadians about is that they've never had it so good. We know, because the Bank of Canada has confirmed it, that Canada is in a “break glass” productivity crisis right now. GDP per person is on the decline. We also know that private sector job growth is flat or declining.
I just wanted to give you some time to respond to Mr. Sorbara and the Liberals about what is, in our opinion, a very misleading fact that Canadians have never had it so good, and what that means to Canadian standards of living, which we know are declining.
President's Fellow, School of Public Policy, University of Calgary, As an Individual
First of all, I really wish I could agree completely with Mr. Sorbara that it's wonderful and that this is going to be a great decade that's going to come. In fact, tomorrow I'm giving a speech at eight o'clock in the morning, which is why I'm here, that will be exactly on this topic.
To be very brief, our per capita GDP has now dropped so much below the U.S. The U.S. per capita GDP is now 50% higher than that of Canada. I think it's the biggest gap we've had for quite a long time. Huge amounts of pressure come with that. I just saw something today that Ontario's per capita GDP is now equal to Alabama's. That's not great.
We have to understand that we'll start losing many people, young people particularly, who feel they don't have an opportunity here in Canada when the incomes are much better there. In fact, right now I'm working with somebody on some very interesting immigration data. We're finding that one major factor that influences Canadians to move to the United States—this is just over the past few years—has been better economic opportunities in the United States, more so than family, which surprised me. By the way, taxes also play a role, but not as big a role as simply the much higher incomes that are available. We also asked people how they're doing and whether they're disappointed with what they ended up with in the United States. It's quite the opposite. It's turned out better than they expected, on the whole.
I think we need to be very worried about this. If our standard of living is declining, it means we won't have the income and we won't have the taxes to pay for many things, such as art. I'm very concerned about the food issue. I think that's a major issue. It's the richer societies that can afford to pay for these things. It's the poorer societies that have a lot more difficulty.
I won't go into all the details now, but I think the next five years will be very challenging for Canada. I wish I could agree with Mr. Sorbara, but I don't.
Conservative
Jasraj Singh Hallan Conservative Calgary Forest Lawn, AB
I remember that in 2014, I used to read articles that had headlines saying that the American dream had moved to Canada. That was under a Conservative government. Just up until last year, there were headlines saying that the Canadian dream was gone. Can you explain a little bit about that? I know you talked about youth and why they're moving out of here, but can you talk a little bit more about that? Does that have to do with economic issues or with investment? What changed?
President's Fellow, School of Public Policy, University of Calgary, As an Individual
Well, we've had very poor private investment now for almost a decade, since the 2014 crash in commodity prices. We have to remember that we are a resource-based economy, so it's very important, but many of the sectors have not done very well in investment. We're not growing. Businesses are not adopting the latest technologies. In fact, our research and development has actually dropped in the past decade.
When you look at some countries, even in the United States, it's far more than what we have here. Of course, we've seen with the United States that the technology industry has really been a huge factor underlying its growth.
Conservative
Jasraj Singh Hallan Conservative Calgary Forest Lawn, AB
What are some of the barriers that are stopping that investment from coming into Canada? Why is it going the opposite way?