Human Resources Committee on Oct. 24th, 2006

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you. That's all the time we have.

We move to Madam Savoie for five minutes.

[Denise Savoie, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Thank you.

I have a question for Susan Nasser. You referred, I believe, to supplements for those who are struggling with poverty but working full time. This is a hard sell to a government that looks strictly for market solutions. I wonder if you could develop that, and how would you present that? I've met quite a number of people who seem to work harder and earn less and have an impossible time in making ends meet, and that includes couples and single parents. I'm wondering if you could elaborate.

[Susan Nasser]

I'm not an economist, so I don't know how to make it happen. But the minimum wage being so low means that people earning the minimum wage are living in poverty in our country. So that means that even the people who are working and meeting that sometimes unspoken standard of our society, that being employed is the all-important thing, aren't able to make ends meet.

Certainly I've heard a lot of talk in the circles I travel in about a guaranteed liveable income--a guaranteed annual income; it's called different things. That's probably even a harder sell than supplements of some kind. But it recognizes that people need a certain amount of money to live on. And people who are in these minimum wage jobs, or precarious employment where they might lose their job any day, or are only working part-time and don't have any benefits to go along with their job are not able to make ends meet. They're not making enough money to maintain themselves above the poverty line. And I'm not sure how to make that work better. If minimum wage were raised, that would certainly be a help. But it doesn't necessarily address the people in precarious employment. I think it's a broad picture. A lot of the employment that has come to Nova Scotia recently is a call centre kind of job, and many large employers like that prefer part-time workers to full-time workers because it's more cost-effective for them. But that has an effect on the workers as well who aren't able to get full-time employment and are stuck in this system that doesn't allow them to pull themselves out of poverty to make a decent living.

I don't know what the answer is. But I think it's just a recognition that even people who are in the labour force and are working hard are struggling because of all these factors we're talking about. It would be great if somehow we as Canadians made a commitment to address that issue in some way, be it with a guaranteed liveable income, supplements for people who are poor and working, transitional funds when moving off social assistance into paid employment, that kind of thing.

[Denise Savoie, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Thank you. I was looking less for the how you do it than how do you convince a government focused strictly on market solutions that maybe there is no market solution in this case, and there is need for transitional help. But thank you for those comments.

[Leo Cheverie]

Just briefly, social investment, or investment in early childhood education, or interventions in what you suggested, are investments in the future because lessons cost down the road. If you want to look at cost-effectiveness, then we know that in terms of investing in education, you're not investing in prisons down the road, in certain ways in the long run. So it's a question of how do you make sure that with early childhood education and any dollars spent there in terms of making sure a child gets adequate nutrition and nourishment and grows up in a home where these needs can be met, you're paying less down the road? That has to be borne in mind. One thing about getting employers involved in education and training, we know that in most organizations people at the top are more educated, are the ones who are more apt to get more education later on, not the people at the bottom getting basic skills or education.

But we've also seen a structural adjustment in our economy. We've seen it move away from longer-term and permanent jobs, particularly in manufacturing, toward short-term, contingent, or contract positions. And we find employers have less commitment to reinvest in those workers if they're poaching them from someone else or hiring them for a short period of time. We've seen a huge migration of workers from my province to Alberta. And we're training them or they train themselves, and they're going elsewhere. We really need a pan-Canadian solution because structural changes in the economy and the growth of things like call-centre jobs has put the onus on employees who may already be poor and already less successful, whether they be women or not, to get that training, and having fewer funds to do so. Since the economy has changed, those investments by employers aren't there. It may have been the case when you had a longer-term strategy for industrial development, whatever. So we may need to look a strategy that uses our resources to reinvest in long-term employment, rather than precarious employment, which we've seen the growth of.

That's part of the equation. Certainly out-migration means that provinces like P.E.I. have many people leaving and going where there are jobs, but they're not permanent or full-time jobs. They're contracts for a short period of time. And that creates added burdens on both those areas. That's why we need a really strong national solution. But also, investment in people just means you're going to pay less down the road in other types of costs. And that has to be kept in mind.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you.

We're almost out of time. I know Mr. Warkentin wants to ask a couple of questions before we wrap up and get ready for the next panel.

[Chris Warkentin, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

Ms. Nasser, you had talked about a tax credit or a tax cut for low-income earners. Could you just give us a few sentences about that? It was of interest to me, so I just want clarification on that.

[Susan Nasser]

Again, not being an economist, I don't know the financial details about how that might work, but I think often tax breaks and tax credits tend to benefit the higher-income earners rather than the low-income earners. We feel that there must be some way to work within the tax system to provide greater tax breaks for those who are the low-income earners and who might not be eligible for some of the tax breaks that come along.

It's not related to employment, but what I'm familiar with is the tax credit for caregiving. For people who have very low incomes, it's not a refundable tax credit, so they don't have enough income to be spending the money to get a tax break back again. It just doesn't exist for them. Again, I think we need to be plowing through the tax system and finding those areas where there could be tax breaks for low-income people so they can benefit from them.

[Chris Warkentin, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

Yes. Thank you very much.

I shouldn't get into a discussion here, otherwise I think we're going to be here all morning. So I'll just cut it at that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you, Mr. Warkentin.

I just want to take the time to thank the witnesses once again for being here today. The issue of employability is very important to our committee. We certainly appreciate you being here to offer your suggestions.

Committee members, we're going to be reconvening again at 10:15.

The meeting is adjourned.