Finance Committee on Oct. 24th, 2024

[Adam Chambers, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

Thank you.

I have a final question, with about 30 seconds left.

Obviously, people paying attention to the news saw this very sizable fine against a Canadian financial institution, TD Bank, in the U.S. The question is, would OSFI be able to detect the same activity in Canada with the tools it has today, or FINTRAC?

[Jeffrey Simser]

Maybe.

There were worrying signs about TD, so about four or five years ago, there was a public-private partnership called Project Athena in the Lower Mainland of B.C. It identified that banks were issuing bank drafts to people who were students and homemakers for significant amounts of money, and there were no names on the bank drafts, so it became like a bearer instrument. This was identified for all of the banks, and all of them changed their practice, except for TD.

What happened was that Mr. Justice Cullen, as part of his commission, actually subpoenaed the global chief anti-money-laundering officer to come and testify and explain why. He said they didn't have the resources to make the change, even though it's a massive bank.

[Adam Chambers, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Simser. I have to give time back to the floor.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, MP Chambers.

Now we go to MP Dzerowicz, please.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Thank you so much, Mr. Chair, and I want to thank all our speakers for being here today and for your great presentations.

I'm going to direct my questions to the Business-Higher Education Roundtable.

I'm going to follow up on my colleague's questions. I'm assuming that in the work that you provide or the placements that you do for our students, you work across sectors and you work across the country. Can you just confirm that?

[Dr. Valerie Walker]

That's correct, yes.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Why do you think it's important to provide work to students across sectors across our country?

[Dr. Valerie Walker]

There's a lot of great work helping students to get work experience all across the country. The short answer to your question is because we can reduce the duplication of efforts.

In so much work that happens, especially in local communities, things start from zero. They build a thing from nothing into something, and that, as we know, is the hardest to do, whereas when sectors or different parts of the country work across and have a mechanism through which to coordinate and collaborate—a hub-and-spoke model, if you will, a centralized hub that can create resources for any employer—then we can understand that the specific employer needs in Newfoundland, for example, are different from those in B.C.

We can do the bulk of the heavy lifting and provide those resources to the local community or chamber, and they can customize for that last 20%. Everyone then is learning from each other across the country and building on the work of others without having to always start from scratch.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

I often think that there are a lot of great jobs across the country. I'm not quite sure if we have the right information about where those skills and labour needs are. Do we have the data that we need around where the skills and labour needs are?

That would maybe help us to have our colleges and universities plan a little bit and have organizations like yours plan a little bit about how you can start moving students into areas where the skills and labour needs are.

[Dr. Valerie Walker]

I might ask my colleague Matthew to jump in on this one.

Thank you.

[Dr. Matthew McKean]

Thank you. I get the labour market question.

We see what we do in work-integrated learning as a way to lever young people into the labour market. We spend a lot of time talking to employers in order to try to figure out what their core needs are. That's why we say we need curated programming.

We know economists like to forecast. They're not always right. This is part of the limitation and challenge, I think, in Canada, when it comes to having the data we need. We know that when we talk to employers—particularly the big ones, but the small ones too—they have a pretty good sense of where they're headed and what they need.

Increasingly, employers are looking for skills more than anything. It's skills-based hiring. We're hearing that a lot. Work-integrated learning is a compelling way to help young people to not just get that applied experience but also understand the skills they got while they were doing it.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

What I'm hearing from you is that you have the skill and labour data you need in order to fill some of those needs across the country.

[Dr. Matthew McKean]

At a high level, we know, through working with employers and staying close to the government, where there's a need in the skilled trades and health care. We can navigate AI and things like that at a high level. It's not necessarily at the granular level that you might be thinking about.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

If you have a recommendation about what we could do at the local or regional level, that would be helpful.

You talked a bit about small businesses. Often, when I talk to the Ontario Chamber of Commerce or meet with 50 businesses, they'll all say they have very specific needs, but they don't have anybody to fulfill them.

I don't know whether there's something you want to say. Then I have one last question.

[Dr. Valerie Walker]

I might, Mr. Chair, quickly jump in on this.

This is in fact why we work so hard on the curation of our partnerships. It's to ensure that we can flow the funding through to the local chambers of commerce, which are best positioned to have that granular, localized labour market information. That's so we're able to help them help their community.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Thank you.

In Europe, they have a youth guarantee. I think they did it in France. Basically, if a youth comes out of a university program and can't find a job, the government somehow guarantees a training program, work placement or additional training.

What do you think about a youth guarantee? Do you think that would be effective?

[Dr. Valerie Walker]

We know there are examples in Canada of individual institutions that provide that kind of guarantee. I don't know if it's still current, but the University of Regina has one.

I'm not the best one to speak about that, but I know a lot of institutions and students are looking for that backstop. What form it takes and who should own that responsibility are things I couldn't speak about with any real authority at the moment.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Okay. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, MP Dzerowicz.

Now we'll go to MP Ste-Marie.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Bosco, you have two and a half minutes to answer my question about the AdapT Institute's one-stop-shop model.

[Éric Bosco]

Okay.

If I remember correctly, the question was about the potential outcome of expanding the model beyond Quebec.

I'll tell you a little more about what we do in Quebec. As you may have understood, we play a facilitating role. We meet with representatives of various levels of government, businesses or civil society. We first try to understand the nature of their challenges in adapting to climate change. We then turn to the university network to try to find the necessary resources and get these people to work together.

To achieve this, we take action in four ways. First, we put people on the ground to proactively facilitate business development. They meet with people from municipalities, businesses, and so on, to understand their needs. Afterwards, they have the expertise they need to find resources.

Second, as I mentioned earlier, we organize theme days where representatives of various backgrounds are invited. We try to understand their needs and find creative solutions with them.

Third, as I mentioned earlier, we issue calls for projects. That generates interest among people who have challenges and want to find solutions.

Finally, we increase research capacity. We have research chairs, and we are hiring new professors in those areas. Right now, we are working to invite international experts to our universities in order to acquire expertise here. As we are academic institutions, we obviously offer training, from bachelor's degree to graduate degrees.

Everything I just mentioned is currently being done in Quebec. If we had funding that enabled us to become a national one-stop shop, all these activities would be available across the country.

Regionally, I want to mention that the Cree Nation Government is one of the founding members of the AdapT Institute. We are currently working with it to develop a number of projects.

We feel it's very important to work in remote areas, especially those further north. As you probably know, the further north you go, the greater the impact of climate change. So research is becoming interesting. The knowledge we acquire in northern regions can normally be used elsewhere, including in regions located in the southern part of the province, for example.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, Monsieur Ste-Marie.

MP Davies, go ahead, please.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Cheliak, I've done a little bit of research here. Natural gas, according to my research, is essentially 70% to 90% methane, with small amounts of ethane, butane and propane. Is that correct?

[Paul Cheliak]

No. The natural gas you use in your home, for example, would be over 95% methane.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Thank you.

I went to NASA's site. This is what they say about methane:

Methane is a powerful heat-trapping gas. An estimated 60% of today’s methane emissions are the result of human activities.

Methane...is a powerful greenhouse gas, and is the second-largest contributor to climate warming after carbon dioxide (CO2). A molecule of methane traps more heat than a molecule of CO2....

Methane comes from both natural sources and human activities. An estimated 60% of today’s methane emissions are the result of human activities. The largest sources of methane are agriculture, fossil fuels, and decomposition of landfill waste.

The concentration of methane in the atmosphere has more than doubled over the past 200 years. Scientists estimate that this increase is responsible for...30% of climate warming since the Industrial Revolution (which began in 1750).

You've made a case for the economic impact of selling the product. Is it your testimony here that you think Canada should be expanding our methane emissions? What would be the economic impacts on Canada of the resulting climate change problems that this would create?