Human Resources Committee on May 15th, 2007

[Jean-Pierre Blackburn, Conservative, Jonquière—Alma, QC]

If you had kept your word, the bill would already be in the Senate for consideration. There is nothing preventing the Senate from considering amendments that you put forward and determining whether they are appropriate or not. If the Senate decides that your amendments are in order, then it will probably refer them to the House of Commons and the Parliament can then decide. You don't want to do this, you are blocking this bill on purpose because you insist on—

[Carole Lavallée, Bloc, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

No, I am very, very sorry.

[Jean-Pierre Blackburn, Conservative, Jonquière—Alma, QC]

—when—

[Carole Lavallée, Bloc, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

On the contrary, I persist on asking you to table it.

[Jean-Pierre Blackburn, Conservative, Jonquière—Alma, QC]

—the bill reflects the unanimous will of the House of Commons.

[Carole Lavallée, Bloc, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

No. Two points. First—

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

That's all the time we have right now, Madame Lavallée.

I would point out that it was the committee that gave the invitation for both of you to attend together. We have a very fulsome agenda. I realize you didn't request to be here together; it was an invitation by the committee. I wanted to state that for the record, because I know you haven't been to some of our meetings. We welcome you back, but you haven't been here for a little while.

Mr. Martin, seven minutes, sir.

[Tony Martin, NDP, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

Thank you very much.

Thanks for coming, Minister Solberg and Minister Blackburn. We appreciate this opportunity to talk with you about issues of great concern to us and the people we represent.

You noted, Minister Solberg, that you've travelled the country over the last while to see firsthand how your department touches the lives of Canadians. I commend you for that.

I've also travelled the country over the last nine months, looking at the question of poverty. I have seen some things that were alarming and quite troubling, particularly in this land of plenty. We have great prosperity--nobody will argue with that--but on the other hand we have people who aren't participating.

We obviously have some differences of opinion on what programs are working and on approaches to actually resolving that kind of thing. In its wisdom this committee has agreed to actually have some hearings in the fall on the issue of the prosperity gap and poverty to see if we can't, in a non-partisan way, come up with some real solutions to some real issues out there.

Studies have indicated that the average income gap is $125,000 a year between the richest 20% and the poorest 20%. That's too much. There are 650,000 working poor. We can debate the definitions of poverty until we're blue in the face, but I think the opportunity in these hearings is to break through that to determine, by way of poverty indicators, basic rights, necessities for all Canadians, recommendations for a national plan.

This is something I spoke of in the House and that you actually listened to recently and responded to. We didn't agree at that time that we should actually have a national anti-poverty strategy. Perhaps these hearings will get us to a point where we agree that there are some things we might be able to do together.

I'm suggesting that we look at other jurisdictions in Canada. Newfoundland and Labrador and Quebec have laws and programs to reduce poverty, as do countries such as Britain and Ireland. For example, Ireland has reduced its poverty from 16% to 5% over the last ten years.

What I'm looking for is your ministry's approach to that. Would you support that initiative? I would like your thoughts on it.

[Monte Solberg, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

First of all, let me say thank you for your commitment on this issue. We have talked about this before, and I appreciate the good will in wanting to approach this in a non-partisan way. I do support this. We've had this discussion in the past.

I was recently in Calgary. We have a huge homelessness issue with people coming to look for work only to find that they can't find a place to live. We have all kinds of challenges. I would recommend that the committee take this up in a serious way and look at the big picture.

You've been working on an employability study. I think it's appropriate to take some of the conclusions and build on that. Frankly, I think you should look at the role of markets in helping to alleviate poverty. Obviously we also have to look at ways in which government can help directly and do more than we're doing. I think those are all laudable ideas. I think we should look at other jurisdictions. Why make the same mistakes others have made when there's already a pathway provided by the experience of other jurisdictions?

[Tony Martin, NDP, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

Some of the new announcements in your budget, however well intentioned, really aren't hitting the mark--for example, the program to supplement the working poor. I don't know if you're aware, but an analysis has been done of that, and a family with two people working full-time and making minimum wage actually makes too much money. They're making minimum wage. It has been determined that you can't really look after yourself at $8 an hour, even with two people working, because of the costs for child care and other needs. They don't qualify for any of that money. A single person working full-time on minimum wage is not making enough to hit that target either. You have two huge groups of people in our country who will not benefit, by one cent, from that program.

[Monte Solberg, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

If I can just respond to that, the point of the WITB, the working income tax benefit, is to reduce the effective tax rate that people face as their incomes increase and the benefits they receive decrease so that there is an incentive to continue to work and earn more and stay attached to the workforce.

Now, I admit that these programs are always imperfect. There will always be examples of people who don't benefit as much as they can. But I don't think that's an argument about principle. It may be an argument about tinkering with how it's done. Officials always review these things to make sure they're done correctly.

I take your point. I think we can debate whether it actually achieves that goal, but it will certainly help thousands and thousands of people.

[Tony Martin, NDP, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

A number of studies have been done, Minister, over the last year or two to look at this growing concern of the working poor--people working full-time on minimum wage. In fact, the numbers were crunched. We thought your government was going to respond to that because you want to support people who are working. There are literally thousands and thousands of people out there now, and more every day across the country, who can only get a minimum-wage job. And they're working full-time at it. I don't think anybody would disagree that if you're working full-time you shouldn't be living in poverty--and they are.

This new program is missing the mark in two instances. A couple who is working full-time and making minimum wage will make too much money to get any money from that program, and a single person working full-time at minimum wage won't either. So I will leave that for you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you, Mr. Martin. That's all the time you have. We'll have to catch you on the next round.

[Tony Martin, NDP, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

Okay, thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Now we're going to move to the last MP questioner of this round. We have Ms. Yelich.

I believe you're going to be splitting your time, but you have seven minutes.

[Lynne Yelich, Conservative, Blackstrap, SK]

Yes. I believe it's with Mr. Chong and then Patrick.

I'm just going to make a comment and then I'm going to allow the questions to be asked.

In that the Liberal critic likes to bring up politics, I would like to mention that in the last election, the Prime Minister, the Right Honourable Stephen Harper, and our party did make a commitment. We had a platform and we made a commitment to introduce a family support policy that gives parents two choices in child care. We listed off universal child care, as the minister spoke about, continuing tax benefits and deductions for low-income people, and we helped employers create child care spaces.

I find it very interesting that she holds everyone to such a high standard when her own party doesn't have a very good record. The Liberal deputy leader at the time, Sheila Copps, said the last Liberal agreement saw some provinces raking in millions without creating a day care space. Yet our party has. We have commitments for Ontario, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Nova Scotia. I want to assure the member that with respect to child care spaces, we have a commitment to Canadians and we have fulfilled it. I think we're doing a very good job.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Mr. Chong.

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

When I directed my questions to the minister on Friday last week, Statistics Canada released the latest labour force survey, and it showed that Canada's unemployment rate remained at an historic 33-year low in April. Not only that, but when that labour force survey was adjusted for comparability with the United States definitions, employment growth for the first four months of the year was stronger in Canada than south of the border.

In light of this tight job market, the tight labour market, liberal mobility among Canadians is becoming an increasing concern for many people. So my question is specifically for the minister or for the deputy minister of HRSD. I note that one of the program activities you have is the workplace skills program. It includes a number of programs, one of which is the apprenticeship and labour mobility initiative, which has a mandate to work with provinces on labour mobility issues, including recognizing credentials and licences issued by various provinces so we can remove these barriers in labour mobility issues and so we can address them, I understand, by April 1, 2009.

Can you provide this committee with an update or an idea of the status of this program activity?

[Monte Solberg, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

Sure.

Thank you very much for the question. It's an important question, because if we can make progress on this, it will mean that people who today are locked into certain provinces because their credentials aren't recognized will be able to move freely and work and see their wages rise.

And you're right, we're in a very hot labour market, but because of those inefficiencies, sometimes we can't fill jobs on the one hand, and people who have skills and abilities unfortunately can't use them to the degree they could. So we lose out, and it's probably something worthy of a discussion by this committee.

We are doing a number of things. First of all, under Minister Bernier's and Minister Flaherty's leadership, discussions are going on with the provinces with respect to labour mobility. Our department is also taking steps. One of the things we announced in the budget is new labour market agreements with the provinces, which will ensure we provide them with $500 million a year in new funding to help them reach people who don't have access to employment insurance and create programs that will allow those people to succeed.

We will also be talking to the provinces at the same time about the need for them to work with us to drop these barriers so when people get these skills and abilities they can move more freely around the country and realize their life goals and become successful. I think it's our obligation as parliamentarians to work toward that.

So there are a number of different initiatives under way.

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

I'm going to share my time with Patrick Brown.

[Patrick Brown, Conservative, Barrie, ON]

Okay, thank you. I think this is a first: we're sharing it three times.

I have two questions on seniors I wanted to ask the minister. I know there have been some great benefits for seniors in the most recent budget on two fronts with the tax fairness plan. Could you expand a little about the billion dollars in tax savings for seniors through the age credit and the pension income splitting? But also, I was at a senior citizens home in my riding, the IOF. They recently received a New Horizons grant and they were showing me some amazing things they're doing there with seniors with the support of the Government of Canada, so maybe you could talk about the new funding that's available for the New Horizons program for seniors as well.

[Monte Solberg, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

Thank you. Those are important questions.

Obviously, more and more of us are becoming seniors. The baby-boom generation is moving into its senior years, and I think it's really important that we not only start to orient programming toward making sure that seniors are well looked after, but also that we have good input from seniors. So we've launched a couple of initiatives with respect to that. First of all, the Prime Minister has appointed a secretary of state for seniors, the Honourable Marjory LeBreton. Although I'm pretty biased, I'd say she's doing a terrific job at this and is very aggressive in going out and seeking input from seniors. We've appointed a seniors council. We've also appointed a panel on older workers that is chaired by a former senator, Erminie Cohen. Their job is to go around and study the impact of job loss on older workers and find ways to engage and get them into the workforce.

But to your question, pension splitting is extraordinarily important and helpful to Canadian seniors. This was a very important step the finance minister took and will mean that so many more seniors will be able to live in some degree of comfort in their senior years. That combined with the improvements on the age credit means a pretty big step forward in terms of take-home pay for Canadian seniors. I think that's laudable, and I think we all support that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

You have fifteen seconds.

[Patrick Brown, Conservative, Barrie, ON]

Fifteen seconds? Okay.

I know there have been significant resources put into child care spaces. The Liberal premier in Ontario was given $97.5 million, but for some reason he only invested $25 million. Have you had any talks to convince the Liberals that child care is important and that we shouldn't abandon it?

[Monte Solberg, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

Well, I appreciate that. I've discovered that I have 55 provincial counterparts in my new job now.

I actually do talk to the provincial ministers, and I have talked to Minister Chambers. Along with the new transfer to the provinces for child care, which escalates at 3% a year, by the way, and is a new feature, we will be talking to them about how this money will be spent and about accountability measures. That's part of the discussion we're having right now.