Finance Committee on May 17th, 2023

[Meghan Nicholls]

While we haven't done studies extensively on that work, and we look to our colleagues at our provincial and federal food bank associations to do that kind of work, what I can say is that food banks are the starting place for many people experiencing the social safety net for the first time. When they come to us, they have no idea about any of the programs, and there are a lot of them to try to get people acclimatized to in order to figure out which ones meet their needs.

Purely from a logistical standpoint, enabling people to access a more single source of support would eliminate the amount of time and effort people already dealing with challenges would spend trying to piece all of those piecemeal things together to make a livable income.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Thank you.

[Neil Hetherington]

We do wholeheartedly support an income-based income supplement versus a credit approach in those scenarios. You know that those funds are going to be spent and stimulate the economy, particularly when they're directed to low-income Canadians.

We fully support the continuation and the expansion of the File my Return program so that we reduce barriers as much as possible for low-income Canadians, who would then be able to achieve that benefit.

Those are the types of things that if you really want.... They have the wonderful advantage of being targeted. You can target it. You know where the funds are going to be spent. You know that you're stimulating the economy in the lowest income bracket, and it makes radical common sense.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Right on.

Thank you very much for that. I appreciate it.

Do I have a little more time?

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

No, that's the time.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

I'm sure you'll have more time here in the second round—and we are into the second round.

We're starting with MP Hallan for five minutes, please.

[Jasraj Singh Hallan, Conservative, Calgary Forest Lawn, AB]

Thank you, Chair.

I'll direct my questions to Mr. Hetherington and Ms. Nicholls.

I want to thank you and your organizations for everything that you do.

Contrary to what we hear from the government about everything being just fine here in Canada, it honestly feels as if, in the last eight years, Canada is really broken. I don't think we need to look further than both of your testimonies to feel that there's something wrong in Canada and that something isn't working anymore.

I came to this country as an immigrant. We lived through really harsh poverty, but we were able to succeed by.... We could work an extra job. We could pull things together. Today, I don't know how newcomers can survive.

As you said, Mr. Hetherington, people are working one, two or three jobs, but because of the cost of living and the inflation that we see here in Canada, people aren't able to survive.

We know, through testimony in this committee, that it was the massive spend by the government that made inflation go up. To counter that, the Bank of Canada had to raise its interest rates, and it's still doing that. This is the most inflation we've seen in the last 40 years. These are the most increases in rates from the Bank of Canada we've seen in the last 40 years.

Mr. Hetherington, you talked about unemployment going up. It's a huge concern. It's a concern for a lot of people.

My question to both of you is this: As a long-term solution, would it not make more sense to help more people out by lowering the deficit, lowering people's cost of living and helping to lower the tax burden on people, not increase it? Would that not be a better long-term solution, so that if someone is wanting to pick up another job, they wouldn't be getting hit and slammed by more taxes?

[Meghan Nicholls]

I would say that 30% of our clients receive provincial social assistance. I realize that this is not the mandate of this particular body, but it is a significant portion of what makes up our clients. For them, taxation isn't the issue—it's incomes. Their issue is housing.

From my vantage point, investments in making housing affordable would do far more than doing anything that will impact taxation for those folks in the really lowest quintile. We have negative math situations. I don't know how people are paying it when their income is so much lower than their rent truly is.

[Jasraj Singh Hallan, Conservative, Calgary Forest Lawn, AB]

Is not having enough housing supply an issue for them?

[Meghan Nicholls]

The issue is not enough supply of actual affordable housing.

[Jasraj Singh Hallan, Conservative, Calgary Forest Lawn, AB]

Mr. Hetherington, do you have anything to add?

[Neil Hetherington]

I agree with the comments from Ms. Nicholls. We're not here to provide a commentary on eight years, or a report card. We're trying to give you on-the-ground, real-time information about what is happening in the city of Toronto, in Mississauga and replicated across the country with our colleagues. What's on the ground should be terrifying. I thought about what word to use, and I use that sincerely.

Yes, the availability of affordable housing and making every effort to support the national housing strategy and the poverty reduction strategy will be fundamental to being able to ensure that the lineups outside food banks are reduced.

[Jasraj Singh Hallan, Conservative, Calgary Forest Lawn, AB]

Would you agree that the increased cost of food is a factor for a lot of these people who are using the food banks?

[Neil Hetherington]

It is a factor. I think you need to look at both sides of the ledger. What are the costs of affordable housing and the costs of food at the rates they're currently at? I know that the government has gone through committee to dive into food cost escalation, and I think that is an important examination.

Then you have to look on the other side of the ledger in terms of the income side of things. I think it is fundamentally wrong that the promise we used to talk about—that if you get an education, you work hard and you get a job, you'll be fine—is gone. Too many, one in five Canadians according to Stats Canada in 2021, indicated that they would be having to make use of charity to be able to get by. That's wrong in this country.

[Jasraj Singh Hallan, Conservative, Calgary Forest Lawn, AB]

I agree with you. We hear that one in five people are skipping meals. There are 1.5 million people going to a food bank in a single month. There are more and more people borrowing money and going further into debt just to afford food.

I want to get your opinion on this. Does this seem like something that a country that's supposed to be prosperous should be seeing? I don't feel that, coming here as an immigrant.

[Neil Hetherington]

There are challenges that we know you have the power to alleviate. We are giving you those opportunities so that collectively we can walk back from the limb we're all on.

It's all levels of government. It's not just the federal government. It's the province and our city.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, MP Hallan.

Now we're moving to MP Dzerowicz for five minutes.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Hello and thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank all the presenters today for their outstanding presentations. I'm really grateful that we have an opportunity to hear from you. I don't have as much time as I'd like to have in order to ask every single one of you questions, so I'm going to focus on two. Unfortunately, I don't have any time to respond to the ridiculous statements my Conservative colleague is making. I'm going to focus on trying to get to some answers.

Mr. Lafontaine, I have two quick questions for you. I'm a big fan of yours. I think you're a very thoughtful leader who has proposed some excellent solutions to us. I really appreciate your leadership.

In my riding of Davenport, they're absolutely worried about any type of step that looks like private delivery of health care services. In your opinion, what would be the rule of thumb around private delivery of services while ensuring that it continues to be maintained as part of our health care system? For example, my mother goes to an eye clinic here in Toronto, but it's very much integrated into the local hospital. I find it's a very efficient and effective treatment system for her.

Do you have a rule of thumb that you might be able to share with us?

[Dr. Alika Lafontaine]

That's an excellent question. The way that I answer it is twofold.

First, if we truly want equity in health care, we have to have public financing at its core. Studies have been done across the world: If you do not have significant public financing, even in hybrid systems, equity of access to care suffers. That's one rule of thumb that I think is easy to kind of lean on.

The second rule of thumb is to remember that the largest market mover in any economy is usually the federal, provincial or territorial government. They're the largest purchasers of goods. They're the ones who define legislation. Any single action can transform the way we practise within the health care system in the sandboxes that we live in. Having federal, provincial and territorial governments at the table as you create these rules is central in making sure the rules work properly.

Now, as far as private care goes, we are launching a national conversation around public and private care that's going to be led by the Canadian Medical Association, so that we can help folks actually realize what we're talking about. I think there's a difference between private provision of publicly funded care and pay-out-of-pocket care. Paying out of pocket in the form of copays, added fees and other barriers to access does have a negative effect on patients' utilization of services. It often makes it quite a bit more acute when they actually do apply.

Private provision of care can have a mixed track record depending on how intervention goes, but once again, the data we use to guide whether or not our assumptions are correct is going to be very important as we create these rules.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Thank you.

I'm now going to shift over to Canada's Building Trades Unions.

Thank you so much, Ms. Walsh, for your excellent presentation.

Thank you, Ms. Rahmati, for joining us.

You talked about just transition legislation and moving as quickly as possible on that, and you said there's a need for labour market data. How can we at the federal level help with that?

[Rita Rahmati, Government Relations Specialist, Canada's Building Trades Unions]

Thank you for the question.

We think the federal government could do a better job through mechanisms that already exist—like Statistics Canada—in gathering data not only on employment currently but where we forecast employment to be in five years and 10 years, particularly when it comes to the energy sector.

We know that the government has made a lot of investments and commitments in transitioning away from the traditional oil and gas, which is primarily more active in certain parts of the country like Alberta or Newfoundland. In order to be able to accurately know how we need to retrain workers and where they'll be able to move, we need the government to work alongside us in tracking where we think energy needs will come from in the future and where those workers will need to move.

I think we can use programs like Statistics Canada, but there may also need to be external resources used as well, and that might be something we might be able to work on together through the new sustainable jobs secretariat.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Thank you.

The other thing that was mentioned is that there's a need for more skilled trades workers. Do you have an idea about the different types of skilled workers that are needed, both now and moving forward, and what parts of the country might actually have a need for those workers?

[Rita Rahmati]

Yes. That's something we've been working at gathering more information on, and we should have more information to share with you and the committee in the coming weeks. What we have gathered from speaking with our board members, who represent 14 different international affiliated unions and over 60 different trades, is that there are certain parts of the country—such as Ontario and British Columbia—that are most in need of workers and, in particular, trades workers.

One organization we know of that requires a lot more workers right now is LiUNA, the Labourers' International Union. They have stated that they could use over 20,000 workers, starting immediately and mainly in Ontario. That includes bricklayers, demolition workers, restoration workers, the heavy civil sewer and water main sectors, high-rise residential and railroads. That's information that we've been collecting. I'd be happy to share that in more depth with you following this.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

If you could just formally submit it to this committee, that would be really appreciated.

Do I have any more time, Mr. Chair?