Human Resources Committee on Nov. 22nd, 2016

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Good morning, everybody. When I left Ottawa on Saturday morning, it was a little nicer outside, so I completely appreciate why we have as many people on video conference as we have today. It has gotten really cold and snowy here in Ottawa.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and the motion adopted by the committee on Monday, June 13, 2016, the committee is resuming its study on poverty reduction strategies.

Welcome, everybody.

From Actua, we have Jennifer Flanagan, chief executive officer. From the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, we have Monique Moreau, director of national affairs. From Momentum, we have Courtney Hare, manager of public policy. Also, we have Danielle Levine, executive director, Aboriginal Social Enterprise program.

Thank you very much, everybody, for being here and bringing your testimony to this study. We're going to get started right away.

Let me ask the witnesses today to keep their opening to about seven minutes. After everybody has had an opportunity to speak, we'll start with rounds of questions.

We'll started with Actua, and Jennifer Flanagan, chief executive officer. Welcome.

[Jennifer Flanagan, Chief Executive Officer, Actua]

Thank you very much.

Hello everyone. I'm pleased to be here this morning to speak to you about Actua and our work with young people who live in poverty.

Actua is a national charitable organization that engages youth in experiences that build skills and confidence in science, technology, engineering, and math. We support a national network of 35 university- and college-based member organizations, who hire 1,000 undergraduate students to deliver programming in 500 communities, covering every province and territory in the country. Actua members offer in-school workshops that support current curriculum objectives, after-school and weekend clubs, and weekend summer camp experiences.

At the national level, Actua is focused on inclusion by engaging underserved and under-represented audiences through national programs for girls and young women, youth facing socio-economic challenges, youth living in remote and northern communities, and indigenous youth.

We're working with many youth who are living in poverty, among many other challenges that they are facing. Engaging youth living in poverty and building STEM skills has both a social and economic imperative. From a social perspective, all youth in Canada deserve equitable access to good-quality educational experiences, both inside and outside of school, to help them reach their potential. From an economic perspective, these groups of youth, who have traditionally been left out of STEM fields, represent our best long-term solution to filling the workforce gaps that are plaguing our corporate sector.

It is well documented that skills in STEM contribute substantively to building resilience and economic independence. The Borgen Project, an innovative U.S. charity addressing global poverty, points to a simple formula for alleviating poverty both domestically and abroad: education, entrepreneurship, and technology. Actua programs are in complete alignment with this formula, and I will share more about our approach in a few minutes.

In addition, as Canada grows its knowledge-based economy, digital literacy and coding skills will be in huge demand and jobs will be plentiful. Just like numeracy and basic literacy, literacy in digital and coding skills has become essential not just for future programmers, but for all youth, regardless of what path they choose to pursue.

A large part of Actua's focus on underserved youth is with indigenous youth, the fastest growing youth population in Canada. We all know the massive challenges faced by these youth—secondary school graduation rates less than half those of other Canadians, food and housing security issues, mental health issues, and systemic racism, to name a few.

Each year, through our indigenous youth and STEM program we engage 35,000 Inuit, first nations, and Métis youth in 200 indigenous communities across the country. We're also engaging other underprivileged youth through a unique initiative involving partnerships with youth-serving organizations. We reach an additional 35,000 at-risk youth through this program. Those are youth facing socio-economic challenges, youth who are new Canadians, and other youth who are not given the same opportunities.

How do we get these youth into STEM experiences? Many of these youth would be unlikely to attend an actual program for a host of reasons. Certainly there is the lack of financial means, but also many have limited history in post-secondary education and a lack of role models who would encourage them to pursue these types of programs. As well, we know that community organizations that serve these youth are challenged in their ability to provide STEM-based programs.

Access is the starting point. How do we reach these youth? We learned about 15 years ago that providing the programs for free is not enough to engage youth facing extreme poverty situations. These youth need to be actively engaged and invited to participate, and they need additional supports that are different from those for other youth.

Our recipe for success has been to partner with hundreds of community-based organizations that serve these youth on a daily basis. We partner with new immigrant associations, family service associations, boys and girls clubs, and others to bring our programs to them, to a space where youth feel safe and where they've already built trust. We deliver our STEM-based programs through these partners, thus building STEM content into a sustainable web of support that these youth desperately need.

Through Actua's multi-stakeholder approach, we're providing youth with experiences that not only build STEM skills, confidence, and awareness, but also expose them to post-secondary environments in a non-intimidating way. Many of these students, as you know, would be first-generation university students.

We also engage them with mentors from our corporate sector partners. Companies such as Google, GE Canada, Lockheed Martin, and Suncor are making their employees available as mentors so that these youth can start to imagine themselves in these jobs in the future.

I mentioned digital skills earlier, but it's worth repeating: engaging youth in computer science and coding experiences is not only about making sure that we have more computer scientists and programmers. We live in a digital world in which every aspect of our lives is underpinned by technology. If youth don't learn to code, which is the language of computers, they will be left behind, period.

In October 2014 we launched a three-year project with Google called Codemakers, to transform the way that youth engage with computer science. Codemakers is focused specifically on engaging those underserved youth, youth facing the harshest socio-economic challenges in the country.

We've engaged 80,000 of them to date since we started. We are working hard to solve the challenges of getting more youth involved, such as the ongoing misunderstanding among youth and parents and a lack of awareness of how important these skills will be to the future.

To conclude, STEM careers can absolutely be a pathway out of poverty. We must equip youth in their early years with the necessary skills and beliefs to take advantage of this opportunity.

We are making two recommendations to the committee.

One is to increase federal investments in programs that engage youth in early skills development, especially youth living in poverty and indigenous youth. It is too late to start skills development in upper high school and university. Our skills agenda must start in early elementary school. These programs should also include a parental engagement component.

The second one is, from a policy perspective, to formally recognize that youth engagement is an essential component in the innovation ecosystem at the federal level. The ecosystem typically only starts at university level. This is too late for at-risk youth.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you very much.

We'll go to the Canadian Federation of Independent Business. Monique Moreau, Director of National Affairs, welcome.

[Monique Moreau, Director of National Affairs, Canadian Federation of Independent Business]

Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here to share CFIB's perspective on poverty reduction strategies.

You should have a slide presentation in front of you that I'm going to walk you through in the next few minutes.

As many members know, CFIB is a not-for-profit, non-partisan organization representing more than 109,000 small and medium-sized businesses across Canada. Our members represent all sectors of the economy and are found in every region of the country.

It is important to remember that Canada's small businesses employ 70% of Canadians working in the private sector, are responsible for the bulk of new job creation, and represent about half of Canada's GDP. Addressing issues of importance to them can have a widespread impact on job creation and the economy.

CFIB takes its direction solely from our members through a wide variety of surveys throughout the year. Today I'm going to be presenting data from our training report, published in 2015, that gets into how small businesses train their employees. I have a copy of this report in French and English, which I would like to submit to the committee today. I'm also going to refer to very fresh data from our recent minimum wage survey from this summer.

First, I would like to set the stage and have a look at the state of the economy.

As you see on slide 3, one of the surveys CFIB conducts is our monthly business barometer. Our latest barometer shows that small business confidence dropped in October, sitting at 57.7, down one point from our previous barometer in September. Ideally, we want to see this index between 65 and 70 when the economy is growing at its full potential.

Although employment plans tend to fluctuate seasonally, this October's downward turn was far sharper than usual. As you see on slide 4, the blue line shows the percentage of respondents planning to hire, that is, only 10%, and the red line is those that are planning to lay off, or 21%. Normally we like to see these lines not crossed, as they are, but in fact quite far apart, as they were earlier this year.

CFIB believes the best way to lift people out of poverty is with a job. Many Canadians get their first start in their careers through a small business, and an important component of hiring someone in your business is training them.

As you can see on slide 5, employee training occurs in two forms, formal and informal. Formal training is typically delivered, of course, through courses provided by educational institutions or with a professional instructor. Informal training is provided through on-the-job mentoring by either managers or co-workers, and most often the small business owners themselves.

Small businesses invest heavily in training, spending $9 billion a year on informal training and $5 billion a year on formal training.

Note that the smallest businesses, that is, those with 20 employees or fewer, dedicate more hours and resources on average towards training than any other size of business, on a per employee basis. The reason for this is that the smallest businesses tend to hire a larger proportion of new employees with no previous work experience, and these employees require larger training investments.

Slide 6 breaks this investment down. Over half of business owners offer both formal and informal training to their employees, while 37% offer only informal training, 5% of businesses offer formal training, and another 5% offer no training at all.

Training costs can vary, of course, depending on an employee's previous work experience. Not surprisingly, the more experienced an employee, the less training he or she needs to be prepared for the job at hand. Slide 7 gets into this detail, showing that the most expensive, that is, a new hire with no previous experience, costs the business approximately $4,200 to train, while a new hire with some job experience costs approximately $2,800.

Entrepreneurs need workers with many different skills in order to effectively run their businesses. As you can see on slide 8, the availability of these skills in the labour market can vary over time and by location. Small business owners were having the most difficulty filling positions that required on-the-job training, 54%, and high school or occupational training, 40%. Only 8% of business owners had difficulty finding staff for a job that required a university-level education.

Governments allocate significant financial resources towards workforce development through both public educational institutions and direct government training initiatives. The employment insurance system funds $2 billion in training through the labour market development agreements alone, approximately seven-twelfths of which are funded by business through their EI premiums.

Unfortunately, the current government model does not fully address the training needs of small business, nor does it recognize the realities of training in a small business. This may be why a majority of 84% of small businesses have not used government-sponsored training programs during the past three years, as you can see on slide 9. Of the few businesses that did access government-sponsored programs, many of them frequently identified apprenticeship tax credits as a program they use.

Another tool governments tend to turn to in order to lift people out of poverty is an increase in the minimum wage. We completed a survey this summer that has outlined our approach on this issue, and you can see the results on slide 10. Our members feel strongly that decreasing personal income tax and increasing the basic personal exemption are better solutions than introducing minimum wage increases.

If governments do introduce minimum wage increases, approximately one-third of our members believe they should do so with moderate regular increases, kept in line with consumer prices. The biggest winner when government introduces minimum wage increases in fact is government. When minimum wage goes up without tax exemptions, so do tax revenues.

When asked about the impacts minimum wage increases have had on their business, if you look on slide 11, you'll see that 38% of business owners stated that minimum wage increases had no impact on their business, but another 37% stated that the experience reduced business profits, and 32% had to increase the prices of their products and services. Approximately one in four also reduced their hiring of youth or inexperienced workers.

I've only scratched the surface today of these two very important issues. In conclusion, we recommend that the federal government consider the following recommendations: Ensure that training investments recognize the realities of running a small business and ensure that government training investments match the skills training employers need. Most important, we'd ask that they recognize that informal training can be better to support the training efforts of small and medium-sized businesses. This can be done through the introduction of an EI training credit, for example. Then, last, we discourage the government from increasing the minimum wage.

This concludes my remarks. Thank you for the opportunity to be here. I'm happy to take your questions.

I can also answer your questions in French.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you very much.

From Momentum, we have Courtney Hare, Manager of Public Policy, coming to us via video conference.

Welcome, Courtney. The floor is yours for the next seven minutes.

[Courtney Hare, Manager of Public Policy, Momentum]

Good morning. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you.

Thank you for all that you've done so far to address poverty in Canada, for example, the introduction of the Canada child benefit, supporting families who need it the most. Thank you for the opportunity to share our expertise and experience with poverty reduction with you today.

Momentum is a change-making organization that combines social and economic approaches to poverty reduction. We've been doing so for 25 years in Calgary, in Alberta. We use a holistic approach to poverty reduction with more than 3,500 people living on a low income annually. Our approach includes financial empowerment, entrepreneurship, and skills training.

At Momentum, everything we do is grounded in the community economic development approach, which means that we work with individuals, businesses, government, and systems to build a more inclusive and sustainable local economy that supports people to build a sustainable livelihood. One of the main ways we do this is through financial empowerment programs.

To bring our recommendations to life this morning, I'd like to share the story of Bulga Janchiv with you. He moved to Canada from Mongolia seven years ago and attended every possible program at Momentum that he could. He started with our trades training program, through which he learned to become a glazier. He began to grow his income and a sustainable livelihood for his family.

At the same time, he attended our financial literacy programs and workshops, learning more about money management. He opened a registered education savings plan for his two children and claimed the Canada learning bond, a grant of up to $2,000 per child for their post-secondary education.

Then he went on to take our matched savings program. Every month he saved as much as he could, and Momentum matched his savings four to one, such that he was eventually able to purchase a house.

Bulga then was able to build a sustainable livelihood in Canada.

We believe there are some key investments that can be made to support someone like Bulga. We also believe there are key policy changes that require no cost or investments and that can remove the barriers for someone like Bulga to build a sustainable livelihood.

We believe that poverty is always about income, but it isn't only about income. We think that the quote “without income you can't get by, but without assets you can't get ahead” reflects the required approach to sustained poverty reduction efforts. The national poverty reduction strategy needs to ensure that Canadians living on a lower income can grow both their income and their assets.

Our recommendation for this first problem of the quotation—not enough income—includes ensuring an adequate income for all Canadians. Living in poverty is a full-time job, going from program to program, from the food bank to the ticket transit office and many other programs. There can be little time for education and training. We must have a basic income to be able to meet our basic needs in order to get ahead, and such income supplements as the child benefit or the guaranteed income, aligned with other provincial benefits, can serve as a basic income for families, if they are expanded.

These programs can address an increasing trend of precarious employment, but only if families file their income taxes. We must ensure that all low-income Canadians file their taxes. The CRA volunteer tax program here in Calgary is a great example of ensuring that Canadians are accessing the much-needed income and benefits that they can only access by filing their taxes.

In conclusion of this recommendation, we are also supportive of research advocacy and current considerations under way for a guaranteed annual income or basic income pilots across Canada.

Our next recommendation is about jobs training for unemployed and vulnerable Canadians for stable and well-paying jobs. The current skills training environment does not do a good enough job of supporting these kinds of opportunities. Improvements and increases to the labour market transfer agreements and associated programs will help support skills and employment training for vulnerable Canadians, which is Momentum's area of expertise and focus.

A return-on-investment study indicated that the government's investment in our trades training program was returned in just three years through higher taxes paid by graduates.

In particular, though, the Canada job bank has not benefited those who experience barriers to employment. In Alberta, 98% of the Canada job bank funds have been used to support individuals who are already working. The Canada job fund agreements require an increasing proportion of transfer dollars to be allocated to the Canada job grant, so this mandated allocation is actually shifting funds away from existing programs like Momentum, where demand already far exceeds supply.

The federal government can strengthen training opportunities for vulnerable Canadians in provinces such as Alberta by amending the Canada job fund agreements and dismantling the Canada job grant program.

To address the second problem of the quote, which is about not having enough assets, we ask that you approve a financial empowerment framework for the national poverty reduction strategy. Financial empowerment is an evidence-based approach to ensure that people living on low incomes can reduce debt, increase their savings, and ultimately build assets through program and system-level interventions.

Our first recommendation in this area is to ensure that financial products and services are affordable for all Canadians. The increased use of fringe financial services across the country, such as payday loans, makes it very difficult for people to move out of poverty if they are trapped in debt.

We have the experience in Alberta of working to tighten regulations on payday loans, as well as working with financial institutions to develop more affordable alternative products. We recommend that the federal government work with the Canadian Bankers Association to update its 2014 low-cost account guidelines to align with new voluntary national bank account standards established in the United States, so that more Canadians can better access safe and affordable financial services that grow their financial well-being instead of erode it.

Our last recommendation is to invest in asset-building programs for low-income Canadians. The registered disability savings plan and the registered education savings plan are two examples of excellent federal tools that support this work. However, only 14% of eligible Canadians currently hold an RDSP. The Canada learning bond, a grant for low-income families to open an RESP, represents roughly $3 billion in unclaimed funds that over 1.5 million children could be using to further their post-secondary education.

At Momentum, we've seen first-hand the value and impact of these asset-building programs in supporting families to access an RDSP or an RESP, and the Canada learning bond. We know that these outreach efforts we have conducted have played a large role in increasing the Canada learning bond uptake. For example, when Momentum's Canada learning bond program launched in 2008, the uptake rate in Calgary was 21%, and as of March 2016, it is now 42%.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Ms. Hare, I'll ask you to wrap up. We're just a bit over time, but I'm going to give you a few more seconds to conclude. Thank you.

[Courtney Hare]

Thank you.

In short, our final recommendations are to dedicate funding to community-based promotions of the Canada learning bond, RESPs and RDSPs, and to ensure that Service Canada promotes the Canada learning bond and RESP information when distributing social insurance numbers. Last, without adding any additional costs to the Canada learning bond program, and potentially even reducing costs, money could be shifted away from the Canada education savings grant to the Canada learning bond.

Thank you so much for an opportunity to contribute this morning.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you for being here with us.

Via video conference again, we are going to what my colleague keeps referring to as the best riding in the country.

[Dan Ruimy, Liberal, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, BC]

Oh, absolutely.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

I don't know if I buy that.

From Maple Ridge, Danielle Levine, the next seven minutes are all yours.

[Danielle Levine, Executive Director, Aboriginal Social Enterprise Program, As an Individual]

Good morning. My name is Danielle Levine. I am the Executive Director of a newly formed organization, the Aboriginal Social Enterprise initiative, a grassroots national initiative that works with indigenous people and communities to develop entrepreneurs and local economies.

I would like to thank the members of the standing committee for the opportunity to present on the topic of aboriginal financial literacy and poverty reduction strategies. I hope that sharing my personal and professional experience as an educator and advocate and as an indigenous person will be helpful to you in your work to create a national strategy.

It has taken me a lifetime to get here today, and I'm so excited to be here. In terms of my background, I am Métis, and I grew up in Winnipeg, Manitoba. As a child growing up in Winnipeg, it was obvious to me that there was a disproportionate number of indigenous people living in poverty and, unfortunately, as we all know, that is still the case today.

Ten years ago, I completed my Master of Business Administration degree, and the final project I did was on aboriginal financial literacy in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. Since graduating with my MBA, I have taught business, entrepreneurship, and financial literacy in the indigenous community and at various post-secondary institutions.

Unfortunately, financial literacy programming is not a captivating topic in the communities we are most trying to reach. Worse yet, it is not something that anyone can fix without the individual's effort or buy-in. Escaping poverty takes work, diligence, and persistence. I would say that the theme of my career has been focused on economic reconciliation, and I believe that financial literacy is just one tool that can help lift individuals and families out of poverty.

Here is an illustration of our current challenge as Canadians. Recently I was at a meeting, and a young indigenous person was explaining to me that in her community there is about 95% unemployment. It is absolutely incomprehensible to me that we still have communities in Canada with such high unemployment. What must it be like to grow up in that community? Unfortunately, this story is not unique. When I was teaching aboriginal business education, I heard it all the time.

In communities with high unemployment, poverty alleviation is not about becoming financially literate. It is my experience that the indigenous people I know who live on income assistance are excellent budgeters. They are resilient and resourceful. They are smart. The problem is that there is just not enough money, and there are no local jobs or economy.

In the past 10 years, there has been a lot of progress in the areas of aboriginal financial literacy training and programming, including the work done by national organizations such as the Aboriginal Financial Officers Association, the Native Women's Association of Canada, financial institutions like the Vancity credit union and TD Bank, and many NGOs that are doing truly excellent work. I do believe that these programs work and do help indigenous people increase their overall financial literacy, but one thing I have learned is that there is a disconnect. People may learn concepts, but they may not have the interest or the ability to apply them in the real world.

I would now like to talk about some general considerations in financial literacy programming.

Number one, financial literacy is personal, not one size fits all. Primarily, programming that is available across Canada is group-based training and is not geared to the individual.

Number two, indigenous people are often not receptive to talking about their personal financial circumstances in a public forum.

Number three, indigenous people who are interested in financial literacy are generally motivated by the circumstances of their individual lives.

Number four, indigenous people should be involved in the development, design, and delivery of the programming that is developed for them.

Finally, my fifth point, and the most important one, is that the road to financial literacy is a long one. Becoming more financially literate will take a lifetime. One course, one program, or one degree is not enough. Becoming completely financially literate is also a non-existent state. The end goal should be financial resiliency and being able to withstand changes in the market or unexpected life events such as divorce, death, or illness. Financial literacy is about applying principles to your own life and being able to develop a financial plan that enhances the well-being of individuals and their families.

The road to financial literacy is more complex now than ever before. My own personal growth towards financial literacy and escaping poverty helped me to persevere when at times things seemed absolutely hopeless and dire. Without this knowledge and these skills and abilities, I might be another statistic.

What would be most beneficial to those individuals who do want to get out of poverty is to have access to professional planners or coaches for individual advice. A major barrier to moving out of poverty is not having good advice, especially when it is most needed. It is most unfortunate that the best financial advice that some individuals get is the advice from a bankruptcy trustee. Ideally, there would be several intervention points before bankruptcy or a consumer proposal.

I believe that the government should continue funding existing programming but should invest in some strategic investment areas, including asset development, through initiatives such as matched savings, affordable home ownership, and micro-finance. In the indigenous community in particular, you may want to consider focusing on indigenous children who are aging out of foster care, Canada's northern communities, and indigenous women.

My steps forward will be in further developing the Aboriginal Social Enterprise initiative and focusing on communities that have the highest unemployment relative to the rest of Canada.

In closing, I would like to thank you for allowing me to present to you today.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you very much.

Before we move to questions, in case I forget at the end of the meeting, I want to mention to the members of the committee that there has been a request to televise the next meeting. We are going to be able to accommodate that request. We're going to have our Thursday meeting in Room C-110, which is, I believe, in 1 Wellington. Unfortunately, because we have a video conference as well on that day, we can't do it at Centre Block. They can't accommodate both at the same time. That's just a housekeeping point for you.

Now, for six minutes of questions, we'll hear from Pierre.

It's all yours.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

I'd like to start with the Canadian Federation of Independent Business.

Recently, a finance department briefing was made public, which showed that the minister was briefed that higher payroll taxes would lead to less hiring and less work. It makes sense that if you tax work and hiring, you get less work and hiring.

Have you found in your research with the small businesses that are members of your organization that increased payroll taxes lead to less hiring of people who live in poverty and more layoffs for people who will consequently fall back into poverty?

[Monique Moreau]

Over our years of research, we certainly have been told by our members that the biggest impacts on them for hiring are payroll taxes; that is, from the members' perspective, they are profit insensitive, and you have to pay them whether or not you make any money that year. That can be a challenge. We have had data points that have told us that they do impact small businesses' plans to reinvest in their business and plans for hiring.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Anecdotally, we all know of stories of people who have escaped poverty by starting their work experience at a small business. Do you have any data to show what percentage of people get their first job through a small business employer?

[Monique Moreau]

I don't have the specific figure off the top of my head, but we certainly have a sense from our membership that they do train a big number of youth in particular, who are getting their first jobs. Also, because our members offer a lot of part-time work, many individuals start in that part-time mode and then move on to full-time work. I would be pleased to find this figure for the committee and come back to you with it.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Sure. Perhaps the analysts or clerk could follow up with the CFIB to get any data they might have on that particular question.

The number one complaint I get from small business in my riding is about red tape and the amount of paperwork it takes to run a business. They sometimes feel like they're working for a government paper mill rather than working for their customers. Do you believe that these extra administrative burdens detract from small businesses' ability to give employment opportunities to people who are in poverty?

[Monique Moreau]

Red tape certainly impacts all business owners. We know from our research that the impact on the Canadian economy was pegged at about $39 billion a year. That can be anything from filling out a complicated form to bad customer service or waiting on the phone trying to get through to call centres, for example. Any small business owner will tell you that they do the vast majority of that work very late at the end of the day or first thing in the morning, when they could be looking into opportunities to hire from various groups that require jobs, advertising for new positions, or looking at reinvestment in their business.

We do have quite a bit of research on red tape and the impact it has on the business community, and we would be pleased to provide that.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Do you represent small businesses that build housing?

[Monique Moreau]

Yes, we do have a significant proportion of construction members, and members will see in the “Business Barometer”, that's one of the breakouts.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

There is increasing evidence that the main cost driver for housing is municipal and provincial restrictions and administrative costs on building. Is that something that your members have experienced?

[Monique Moreau]

I can't speak to that direct commentary, but I would imagine that anything that requires applying for a permit.... Usually a small construction company will have had that experience.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Do I read your “Business Barometer” correctly, on page 4, that in October, 21% of your members were considering laying off employees, but only 10% were considering hiring new ones?

[Monique Moreau]

That is correct. That's their full-time staffing intentions for the next three months.