Finance Committee on Dec. 13th, 2021

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Minister, you said in your opening remarks that your party was the only one that spoke of the urgency and importance of maintaining support measures for the cultural sector. I have to correct you, because this has also been a Bloc Québécois hobbyhorse. I couldn't ignore that little jab.

Since you talked about it during your election campaign and we talked about it during ours, we can assume that you already knew that, with the end of the CRB, it would be urgent for the artists who benefited from it to regain some form of support.

We know that this is urgent, and we are very anxious for this support to be paid, of course. I imagine that this support will be retroactive. Is that the case?

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

Yes, this support will take into account the situation.

However, since you took a jab at me, allow me to give you a little one. I've looked at your fiscal framework, which talks about health transfers and our seniors, but it doesn't include any money for transitional measures.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Mr. Minister, since we're talking about money and the financial framework, could you give us an estimate of how big this financial assistance for self‑employed workers might be?

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

In our platform, we have provided $50 million for financial assistance for self‑employed workers. Bill C‑2 has a lot of things for cultural businesses and associations and so on, but the financial assistance for self‑employed workers should be about $50 million. Again, we haven't finalized this support measure, and we're still working on it.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

If I may, Mr. Minister, I would like to ask you a quick question that is bothering me.

We invited representatives of the Union des artistes to appear. The Bloc Québécois talks a lot more about culture in Quebec, but the problem affects the cultural community across Canada.

Are you hearing the same urgency from other provinces?

Do you see solutions for the rest of Canada that are similar to those we could put in place in Quebec?

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

Mr. Champoux, that's a very good question.

Yes, we are hearing about the same urgency because all self‑employed workers are facing the same challenges, whether they are in Quebec, Calgary or Vancouver. We want to put in place a pan‑Canadian program that will take into account the needs of self‑employed workers across the country by working with the UDA, the various unions and the foundations.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

I just have a few seconds left. My colleague spoke to you earlier about the bill to amend the Broadcasting Act, which will certainly be adopted soon. I can't help but ask you how long it will be before we see the tenor of this bill, because we're very anxious to see it come back on the table.

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

I'm just as impatient as you are, Mr. Champoux.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Do you have a date for us?

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

It will be very soon.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Well, I tried. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, Mr. Champoux.

We will now move to the NDP.

Ms. Blaney, you have two and a half minutes.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Thank you, Chair.

Minister, on Friday the committee heard testimony from CRA officials that, on an administrative level, it would be possible to have the CWLB apply to workers in the arts and culture industry regardless of whether or not there was a lockdown in place.

Why did the government not pursue this avenue as a meaningful way to provide income support for workers in this sector?

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

We decided on a series of measures to help the cultural sector, Bill C-2 being one of them, going directly to organizations. The other one, through consultations with the organizations, and also at the recommendation of a lot of those associations—I'm talking about ACTRA, the UDA and others—was that maybe working with them would be the best way to do it.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Okay, but I just want to put on the table again the reality that a lot of these folks lost all of their income on October 23. It's a nice thing to consult, but if you can't pay your rent or feed yourself, it's very hard to have the energy to do that consultation.

I'm just wondering, now that you know the CRA has said very clearly that administratively it can modify this to make it so that people living in this sector would be sort of a class of people...because we recognize that this is a particular group of people who are further behind in terms of being able to get up to speed because of the reality of COVID-19. Could we work with the government to maybe make this work instead of asking these workers to keep waiting?

Right now what I'm hearing is that you have a plan—eventually—but it doesn't negate the fact that there are many people in the sector right now who, as of October 23, have not had any income and are really struggling to make ends meet.

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

We're doing this, Ms. Blaney, exactly for them. Mr. Champoux made reference to this a bit earlier.

Some of these people, as the UDA said when they came here, have to sell their RSPs. Some of them cannot pay their rent. This is exactly why we do it. It is exactly for them that we're doing it. We're very advanced with the program. We're doing it in collaboration with the guilds and the unions, and we'll be working with them to deliver it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

That's the time. Thanks, Minister.

It's over to the Conservatives and Mr. Chambers.

You have five minutes.

[Adam Chambers, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Welcome, Minister. It's nice to meet you. Thank you for coming.

Just before I get into questions, I'd like to perhaps correct, or at least point out, a contradiction from my friend Mr. Baker. On the one hand, we're to believe that Conservatives agreed to support all these measures at one point and in fact voted for all of them, and on the other, we're to believe that we would have done nothing to support workers. In fact, if you look at our track record, in the great recession we ran the largest budget deficit the country had ever seen and then worked incredibly hard to bring the country's finances back to balance within five years.

In that sense, Minister, you mentioned people breaking the law and that they should be pursued. Does it concern you that there seems to have not really been a lot of verification activities as to whether people had broken the law? We had testimony last week that indicated there haven't been any post-payment verification audits on CERB, and very few on the wage subsidy. We're also not asking for any kinds of medical certificates or doctor's notes for sickness benefits.

As a minister in this government, are you concerned that we're not actually trying to identify where there have been challenges or incorrect payments made?

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

Mr. Chambers, first, thank you for the question. It's nice to meet you also.

I think that more overall and general question probably has been discussed with my colleague at finance and maybe my colleague Carla Qualtrough. What I can tell you is that as far as the cultural world is concerned, which includes a lot of money too, we do it through organizations and through channels that are normal for us to use. We're used to working with them, and we have a way of doing it. It's full of mechanisms for accountability. That's why we're quite confident about what we've being doing.

[Adam Chambers, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

Thank you.

You mentioned encouraging people to get back into the workforce, but we also heard testimony last week about the severe labour shortage and the challenges for many stakeholders, in particular those in some of the industries we're talking about today, of finding people who are available to work once they open back up. In Bill C-2, we don't really see much of anything with respect to labour shortages and trying to help these organizations find workers.

Do you have any comments on the labour shortage?

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

The labour shortage is a challenge. It was before the pandemic, and it still is in many industrialized countries, not only in Canada.

One of the challenges we see, Mr. Chambers, in the cultural sector, especially with the travailleurs autonomes is that a lot of them—because they cannot live from what they do, their music or their writing—go and get another job. Too often, we lose them. They don't come back. That's why we're putting this program in place, to make sure that they stay. It's fundamental that we're able to do that.

[Adam Chambers, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

We also had some information last week about the hiring recovery benefit. It has a very low take-up, with about 10,000 approved applications.

If we're trying to convince people to re-enter the workforce, should we be concerned? In Bill C-2, we're asking to extend the Canada hiring recovery benefit program, but we're extending a program that seems to not really be that effective.

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

As far as the cultural sector is concerned, this is definitely going to help the organizations, cultural businesses and others. The part that is also necessary, which is not through Bill C-2 but what we're doing now, is to help the gig workers, the independent workers. It's absolutely necessary, and we're doing it right now.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, Mr. Chambers.

Minister, we are going to the Liberals now for five minutes. This is going to conclude the first section of our meeting here today.

For the Liberals, we have Ms. Chatel.

[Sophie Chatel, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

Good morning, Minister, and welcome to the committee. It's a pleasure to see you this morning.

I would also like to thank your colleagues from the Department of Canadian Heritage, who have indeed done an extraordinary job during this pandemic.

I wanted to quickly come back to what some of my colleagues from the Conservatives have mentioned. Minister, I don't want you to leave with the wrong impression here. We called FINTRAC as a witness. In their testimony, they concluded that in the standard that this government has developed over the years to ensure accountability when there is something suspicious about any of our programs, there are checks and balances in the system to red flag it and immediately move toward an investigation.

We heard that banks, very early on, identified some suspicious transactions that were, by and large, very small numbers of payments. Immediately, it went to FINTRAC, which launched an investigation. The collaboration between FINTRAC and the Canada Revenue Agency went very well.

Minister, I want you to understand that the witnesses said the system and standards in place for all of our programs are very good. This is supported by the Auditor General report that investigated those systems and concluded that, through the program we had in place, the money went to the right person and abuses were taken care of.

I will ask my questions in French, because, as you know, the arts and culture sector is very important in Canada from coast to coast, and particularly so in Quebec. This is also the case in my riding.

I am very pleased to hear that our programs really helped the sector during the pandemic.

Also, I am very interested in the summit you are going to organize. I'm also hearing concerns that the arts and culture sector needs to receive financial support quickly.

As you mentioned, Minister, Bill C‑2 will go a long way to help organizations, businesses and employees in the sector, who will benefit from maintaining the employer-employee relationship. There is still a need to help the self-employed in the sector and I am very pleased to hear you say that help will be available to them.

I believe I understood that no new legislation will be required to provide assistance to these workers, as these programs are already in place.

Can you give us more details about this aid? Will it get to them more quickly as there is no need for a bill?