Finance Committee on Feb. 17th, 2022

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

We are challenging that ruling. It is an admissible motion from the floor pertinent to the discussions happening here in committee today.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

As Mr. McLean knows, the motion has nothing to do with Bill C-8, so it is inadmissible.

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Mr. Chair, there's a challenge to the chair on the floor. Are you ruling on that?

Can we deal with the challenge to the chair, please?

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Shall the decision of the chair be sustained?

(Ruling of the chair sustained: yeas 6; nays 5)

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

We'll continue.

We're moving to MP Dzerowicz for six minutes.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Thank you so much, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank all the witnesses for being here today at this particularly unprecedented time and very busy time here in Ottawa.

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

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.

I disagree with the member's comments that this is a dire time in our country, because we did try to talk about emergency measures. They want the entire country to believe that this is an emergency, yet we're here to talk about a finance bill.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

That's not a point of order. That's just rudely interrupting me.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

That's getting into debate, Mr. Stewart.

Go ahead, Ms. Dzerowicz.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Thank you so much, Mr. Chair.

I was thanking all the witnesses for being here today. Thank you.

I'm going to start by directing my initial questions to Mr. Agnew from the Canadian Chamber of Commerce.

As we're trying to reopen and move past COVID, can you talk about the importance of rapid test kits for the safe reopening of workplaces and businesses?

[Mark Agnew]

One of the big things we've heard from businesses, whether it's an office environment or a consumer-facing environment, is that confidence is critical to getting people back in the door and back at their desks. There are a lot of different ways in which you can do that, whether it's vaccinations or rapid testing. Having the rapid testing there as a tool to screen out asymptomatic positive cases is something that employers have told us has been critical in getting employees and customers to come back in and to start to have some semblance of normalcy.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Thank you.

Mr. Agnew, part of Bill C-8 is that, if passed, it will authorize the Minister of Health to make payments of up to $1.72 billion for these rapid tests to be sent to the provinces and territories. It's not the first time that the federal government is actually allocating money down to the provinces and territories, and it's to be distributed. They decide on the distribution.

Do you have any recommendations for us? As we're giving money down to the provinces and territories, does more of an allocation need to go to businesses? Do you have any other specific recommendations around the dollars we're sending down and how we should be allotting them to businesses?

[Mark Agnew]

Most of the work the chamber has been focused on has been around the physical sort of hardware kit, and certainly there has been far more demand than there is supply for the business community. What I would say is that chambers, in our experience, genuinely do provide a role, both for their members in the community and for businesses that aren't members, in terms of being able to have a central distribution hub for these things.

It's easy to underestimate the value of having a central hub, but in these communities, having a one-stop shop for businesses to go to get test kits is a really valuable service that is being provided in communities across the country.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

How does it work right now? Do they actually make a request to the chamber? How do they actually get rapid tests right now from the provinces?

[Mark Agnew]

The provinces will receive their test kits from the federal government, and the provinces will then distribute those test kits down to the local chamber in the community. Then businesses will go to the chamber's physical location, whether it's a warehouse or, in some cases, a storefront, and they will physically pick up the test kits from that chamber and bring them back to their workplaces. Then, of course, there is a reporting mechanism back up and through to provincial health ministries with the results from those tests.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Okay. That's helpful.

I really appreciate your recommendation around the hub. I think that's very useful.

Can you talk a bit about what the new tax credit for small businesses to support air ventilation improvements will mean for businesses across the country as we are reopening?

[Mark Agnew]

As businesses are starting to reopen, the cost of everything is going up. Certainly, one of the things the government can tangibly do to help businesses be more competitive and to help them to be safer is having this tax credit, because ventilation certainly has been proven to be one of the ways to reduce a transmission vector for COVID-19.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Okay. Do you provide some standards to businesses so that when businesses are looking to improve their ventilation there's a standard that is recommended? Is that what you do as the Canadian Chamber of Commerce?

[Mark Agnew]

We don't as an organization—I get someone else to do my HVAC work for me, so we're far from experts in that field—but certainly we would point people towards either their municipal or their provincial health authorities for the best place to go about what is the right HEPA filter to have in the workplace.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

In your remarks, you were very positive about the extension of the home office exemptions, because you believe that it's still going to take some time for some to actually return to their original workplaces. Could you talk about the importance of that? Do you have any numbers on whether 50% of people are returning to their workplaces or whether it's 25%? Can you give us an idea of what your data is showing in terms of people returning to their workplaces?

[Mark Agnew]

On the data piece first, we don't have any current data on that, because it's quite a rapidly changing environment at the moment.

In terms of the T2200, this is something we've heard about right from the beginning of the pandemic and the work from the home environment. Whether you're a big business or a small business, it's a huge administrative burden to have to issue individual forms to your workforce. Having the streamlined option, if I can call it that, has been a huge help to take a huge amount of red tape off the plates of businesses that just don't have the bandwidth.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

That's great.

I have one more question. You've indicated that part of Bill C-8 is actually to extend the repayment date for the CEBA loans to the end of 2023. Can you explain, if we didn't have that extension, how would that be impacting businesses across Canada?

[Mark Agnew]

For a lot of businesses that are in the travel, hospitality and tourism industries, cash flow is a big problem. They missed out on the 2020 and the 2021 tourism seasons, which is when they bring in the dollars to keep themselves going through the off seasons. Not having those extensions would certainly further aggravate the credit crunch or liquidity problems that a lot of these companies are having at the moment and get them through at least to the 2022 tourism season when they can start to build up their cash reserves.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Thank you so much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, MP Dzerowicz. That's your time.

We are moving to the Bloc and Monsieur Ste-Marie for six minutes.