Evidence of meeting #16 for Finance in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was federal.
A video is available from Parliament.
5:05 p.m.
Liberal
Yvan Baker Liberal Etobicoke Centre, ON
Yes.
What I hear you advocating is for federal funding to support those national standards for long-term care for the reason that we want to make sure that this funding, as much as possible, actually goes towards delivering against those standards that we believe need to be set to get seniors the quality of care they deserve.
5:05 p.m.
Liberal
Yvan Baker Liberal Etobicoke Centre, ON
Okay. I know my time is limited, so thank you very much, Mr. Macdonald.
5:05 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Peter Fonseca
Thank you.
We are moving to the Bloc and Monsieur Ste-Marie for two and a half minutes.
5:05 p.m.
Bloc
Gabriel Ste-Marie Bloc Joliette, QC
I'd like to remind the committee that the problem with the health care system is that it has been underfunded by the federal government for decades now. I can guarantee that the governments of Québec and the provinces do not need standards for nursing homes and the whole of care and services; they need Ottawa's cooperation.
When Ottawa creates standards for social housing, fighting homelessness or infrastructure, we note that we have to wait years before the funding granted for them actually gets out the door. This leads to inefficiency and duplication and, in its wake, squabbles over flags. The Bloc Québécois will keep fighting to increase health transfers from the federal government. We are against establishing standards, because we know that the government of Quebec and the National Assembly are able to ensure that the money will make it to the right places.
That said, Mr. Viau, in the document you presented to the committee, there is mention of the circular economy. Could you re‑explain what that is and why a strategy is needed for it?
5:05 p.m.
Director, Government Relations, Équiterre
Certainly.
The basic principle of the circular economy is to transform what is already there. So, we're talking about—
5:10 p.m.
Conservative
5:10 p.m.
Conservative
5:10 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Peter Fonseca
I had Mr. Chambers, Mr. Baker, Mr. Ste-Marie, and then I believe Mr. Blaikie will be up next.
5:10 p.m.
Conservative
Greg McLean Conservative Calgary Centre, AB
Perhaps I missed something here. We got the doubles going earlier, but I thought we had—
5:10 p.m.
Liberal
5:10 p.m.
Liberal
5:10 p.m.
Director, Government Relations, Équiterre
The goal is to use the least possible amount of new resources and use what is already there, to put it back into the economy and develop resources more sustainably. This economy has a great deal of potential for development. We can look at what is being done by the Netherlands, for example. I invite members of the committee and the minister of Finance to take an interest in what is being done in the Netherlands, where they are trying to establish a completely circular economy by 2050. The country is a true forerunner in this area.
We must have circularity indicators for different economic and industrial sectors. We also need to establish circularity targets to ensure that progress is being made in this area. We also want to see circularity in procurement, as well as in the rules for procurement, proximity criteria, environmental criteria. The environmental criteria could impact circularity.
Businesses also need help developing ideas for this economy, whether it's the repair economy or something else. A circularity accelerator is also requested, as well as a labour and employment strategy.
5:10 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Peter Fonseca
That is the time.
We are moving to the NDP and Mr. Blaikie for two and a half minutes.
5:10 p.m.
NDP
Daniel Blaikie NDP Elmwood—Transcona, MB
Thank you very much.
Mr. Macdonald, one of the glaring inequities in the government's response to the pandemic has been the vigour with which they pursued Canadians below the poverty line to repay CERB benefits, and the complete lack of any attempt to recover money from large, publicly traded companies that benefited from the wage subsidy while increasing dividend payments to shareholders.
I'm just wondering if you can speak to how much the government could reasonably expect to get back from Canadians who are living below the poverty line versus the amount they might reasonably expect to get back from some of those large companies that are making big profits.
5:10 p.m.
Senior Economist, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives
Certainly when it comes to CERB repayment, it was an unfortunate feature that at the start of the pandemic, Canadians were encouraged to apply for the CERB and receive that benefit if they needed it, and many of them have been pursued as a result of this, which is unfortunate. Part of this is that there was question as to whether they met the income threshold, which is to say whether they made $5,000 in the preceding 12 months or preceding year. If you're not making $5,000 in the preceding 12 months or one year, you have pretty low income. So if you're making $3,000 instead of $5,000 or there was some form of wage theft that happened that you were paid that amount but it wasn't correctly recorded on a T4 because you were working in sort of insecure employment....
To my mind, it's unfortunate that CERB recipients have really borne the brunt of trying to, after the fact, go back and change the rules in essence of this program. It seems to me that is the way this has unfolded. It didn't have to be that way, but that's the way it unfolded, and that's unfortunate.
On the other side, when it comes to the CEWS program, for instance—and this is very predictable—in the recent report that I did that looked at the most highly paid CEOs in the country, a third of them headed companies that received the wage subsidy. Here you have some of the best-paid people in the country receiving massive bonuses at the same time they're receiving federal support. Many of these companies were paying out dividends to shareholders or declaring profitability over this period. That is an unfortunate feature of that program, too. It was pretty predictable; we could have put constraints in place at the outset. None of this is illegal per se, but it's just the program wasn't designed in such a way that you could catch this early on.
Other countries did. Other countries restricted their wage subsidy programs to medium and small companies or to companies that weren't paying out dividends to shareholders and weren't paying extraordinary bonuses to CEOs. We didn't do that. I'm not sure how much of that money could be recovered after the fact. Clearly there's an attempt to recover it from CERB recipients, but there's really no attempt to recover it from large businesses.
5:15 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Peter Fonseca
Thank you, Mr. Macdonald.
Thank you, Mr. Blaikie.
Now it is your turn, Mr. McLean, and you are up for five minutes.
5:15 p.m.
Conservative
Greg McLean Conservative Calgary Centre, AB
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to apologize to the witnesses here. You heard a statement earlier by my honourable colleague from Malpeque, who said that 98% of benefits during COVID went to the province of Alberta, if we heard that correctly. I want to assure you there is some numeracy involved in the House of Commons finance committee. We got it checked and we want to make sure that's part of the record. I'm certain he will appreciate the correction that we're putting on the record here.
I will now turn to Mr. Viau.
Mr. Viau, I am sorry, I will have to ask my questions in English, because I have to be exact.
You talked a lot about CCUS, carbon capture utilization and storage, and yet every world body says that carbon capture utilization and storage will be essential to meeting our actual decarbonization goals going out to 2050. If every other body in the world is saying this is essential and you're saying we shouldn't participate in it, who do you suppose is wrong?