Finance Committee on April 27th, 2026

[Laila Goodridge, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

I appreciate that. I'm the member of Parliament for Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, and if there is one place that can talk about over-regulation, it's us. We see it full out. We've had more than 10 years of governments doing everything in their power to try to prevent any kind of expansion or any kind of development of the oil sands. We had 10 years of Justin Trudeau saying it's the cousin we should be ashamed of, effectively, and putting every regulation in place to prevent any further government spending in this area.

When I look around my community and I see projects that are choosing to pick up shop and move somewhere else in the world, it's because we have created a space in which companies do not want to invest, so we are left in a very complicated space. What would you recommend that the federal government do when it comes to regulation?

[Daniel Dufort]

It should stop over-regulating the economy and stop coming out with new programs that are straight out of a technocratic fever dream.

[Laila Goodridge, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

I very much appreciate that, and I think it sums up my feeling in a good way.

Ms. Schirle, you've talked a lot about child care. My question for you is, what about all the families? There are so many reports showing that there are more families waiting on wait-lists now than there were five years ago. StatsCan shows that parents are waiting longer and longer on these wait-lists. Ontario's auditor general recently published that 27% of the spaces that were created aren't being filled.

How does that impact the economics if those spaces are not being utilized to their full capacity and families aren't able to access that care?

[Tammy Schirle]

I would want to dig further into the details of the report that you're referring to. If you reduce prices, you're going to increase the quantity demanded. That is a downward slope in the demand curve. It is fairly straightforward.

Finding the right people in the right places has always been challenging and will continue to be so. I'd like to track that over time.

[Laila Goodridge, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

One of the big challenges is that this was an “Ottawa knows best” program created in such a space that it works fairly well for people who work relatively regular hours, Monday to Friday from eight to five. It doesn't work very well for people who work shift work, who have overnights and who do all these other things. There was really no flexibility built into the program in places like Alberta, Saskatchewan or British Columbia—really, right across the country.

We hear from so many parents that the access to the child care they have available to them means that they take a lesser-paying job because they can't get overnight shifts as part of the child care deal. It gets rid of the fact that this is what they need, because it is seen as a luxury and it is explicitly designed out of this program. Do you think that's a policy fail?

[Tammy Schirle]

It's always been a failure in the private markets, actually. One policy fail is this: We haven't yet addressed that there is an absence of high-quality care for parents to rely on when they are shift workers. My family has a shift worker. It is incredibly difficult to find that high-quality care within a reasonable price range. That has definitely always been a problem in the private market.

[Laila Goodridge, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

A large part of this is due to the different regulations that exist. We have a 24-7 day care in Fort McMurray. I'm going to give a shout-out to KPSquared. They had to fight all kinds of—

[The Chair, Liberal, Karina Gould]

Thank you, Ms. Goodridge—

[Laila Goodridge, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

—fights to get through that just to make it work.

[The Chair, Liberal, Karina Gould]

That concludes your time.

We're going to continue with Mr. MacDonald for five minutes. Thank you.

[Kent MacDonald, Liberal, Cardigan, PE]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses today.

Ms. Robson, I'll go back to what you said in your opening remarks with regard to the federal model we're in. I represent the smallest province in the Confederation: P.E.I. We are highly reliant on the federal government for transfers to our province. About 40% of the P.E.I. budget is based on federal transfers, but I don't agree with calling P.E.I. a have-not province. It creates economic activity.

I see that services like the Canada health transfer and the social transfer create friction between the provinces and the federal government. This speaks more to Mr. Garon's earlier point. The general public doesn't understand who's responsible for what.

Could you comment on that? Are there ways that the federal government could attach strings to the funding so that certain outcomes are guaranteed? It would create more friction, but it is something voters would like to see.

[Jennifer Robson]

Let me try to deal with the block transfer issue separately from these other transfers that I spoke about, which are grants and contributions that tend to have more conditions attached.

With regard to block transfers, from a provincial fiscal perspective, predictability and stability of the revenue source are very important. As I said in one of my previous answers, the Canada health transfer is a really interesting example of a case in which we have intergovernmental agreement on some of the basic principles and we have a very well-regulated, rigorous approach so that if there is a disagreement between the federal government and a provincial government over those outcomes—those strings, so to speak—there is a very good way to resolve that dispute.

With regard to the question of whether block transfers should have additional strings added to them, there have been discussions in this Parliament at times about imposing conditions on all block transfers, for example, including what used to be called the gas tax fund, in order to generate particular kinds of housing outcomes. It wasn't just permits but actual occupation levels.

I would caution that the approach of trying to buy policy change when the policy instrument is quite separate from the desired outcomes is likely to really fan the flames of federal-provincial friction.

The examples that you gave.... In our federation, there's a long history of provinces that rely on federal transfers always wishing that those transfers were larger, but I think we are now in a situation in which those transfers have at least attained a level of predictability. They are rising faster than the rate of inflation. As I said, there is an uneven capacity across the federation—I will give you that—but as a whole, the provincial order of government has fiscal capacity that is not insignificant.

[Kent MacDonald, Liberal, Cardigan, PE]

A lot of the negotiations end up at a supplementary agreement for shorter-term funding, and they are contentious, so you might get four or five of those ongoing with different sunset dates. An example I'm quite familiar with is in agriculture. They do a five-year national policy framework. It seems to work quite well. Once the provinces sign on to it and it's negotiated, it seems to work quite well in the program delivery. Each province has jurisdiction over its own program delivery, decides what its priorities are and runs with them.

Could you comment on that?

[Jennifer Robson]

Another area in which you see a similar, I would say, flexible approach to intergovernmental agreements is in workforce development. Frankly, if you look at the details of the early learning and child care agreements that were signed between the federal and provincial governments, there was quite a lot of flexibility written into those agreements.

The question of intergovernmental co-operation in Canada is more often, in my observation, the norm rather than the exception.

[Kent MacDonald, Liberal, Cardigan, PE]

I'm going to cede the rest of my time to Mr. Leitão.

[The Chair, Liberal, Karina Gould]

You have 10 seconds.

[Carlos Leitão, Liberal, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

I have 10 seconds. Well, thank you, Kent.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Carlos Leitão, Liberal, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

That's very generous on your part.

Thank you, everyone.

[The Chair, Liberal, Karina Gould]

Mr. Garon, you have the floor for two minutes.

[Jean-Denis Garon, Bloc, Mirabel, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I would like to give two seconds of my time at the end to Mr. Leitão. Please remind me.

Professor Schirle, sometimes I get a little carried away and I get emotional. I want to assure you that I didn't mean to be rude to you earlier, at the end of my questions.

I'd like to explain what I meant in my previous remarks. You talk about market failures, and regardless of what the Montreal Economic Institute thinks—we'll agree to disagree—it's a way to justify the role of the state. I mentioned a number of programs aimed at correcting market failures that are not interregional. In many cases, the Government of Quebec takes responsibility and corrects these failures. However, programs are being implemented that ultimately encroach on its jurisdiction. The question then becomes: Who is responsible for doing this work?

In many cases, we find ourselves in situations where the federal government interferes in a province's areas of jurisdiction, not to correct market failures or to improve the well-being of Canadians in that province in areas where the province could have done so, but because the ideology or political preferences of the federal government of the day are not the same as those of the provincial government. That's often when we tell people in government, in the House of Commons, that they should run for provincial office, because they would do a better job. That's what this is all about. A lot of questions have been asked here by people who don't understand the subject of the study. That is the real subject of the study.

I'll end with you, Mr. Dufort. You worked for the Harper government. At the time, there was a major agreement on health care. You will recall Mr. Harper's approach, which was to deal with the health care issue without attaching any conditions to the transfers. Can you explain to us why you decided to operate that way within that government at the time?

[Daniel Dufort]

Beyond the agreements, from the perspective of the Montreal Economic Institute, the fact that conditions are attached to health transfers, particularly under the Canada Health Act, hinders health innovation across the country. It's not something that necessarily serves the public interest.

[The Chair, Liberal, Karina Gould]

Thank you.

On behalf of the committee, I'd like to thank the witnesses.

With that, I will adjourn the meeting.