Human Resources Committee on April 13th, 2016

[Yves Robillard, Liberal, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Fine.

[Evan Siddall]

Right now, in the province of Quebec our affordable housing policies are administered through the Société d'habitation du Québec, our partner. They would have a range of programs available to young families, as well as to any families, indeed, or to Canadians who are in need of affordable housing. Those would range from social housing, depending on their income levels, to affordable rentals, which as you know is one of the initiatives we're pursuing through the budget.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you.

Are you sharing your time? You have about three minutes left.

We'll go to Ms. Tassi.

[Filomena Tassi, Liberal, Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON]

Mr. Chair, my question is with respect to the Canadian child benefit. It is understood that it has been well received by Canadians across the country.

I would like to present a couple of quotations.

Campaign 2000 said, “Budget 2016 is a historic step forward in Canada’s battle against child poverty.” The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives said, “The new child benefit actually exceeded our Alternative Federal Budget recommendation”. Also, the Broadbent Institute, Canada Without Poverty, and the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness, to name a few, said that it's an excellent change of tone and a great policy and that it's very welcome.

Can one of you elaborate on how the CCB will help reduce the child poverty rate in a more effective way than the previous government's plan and how it will be implemented?

[Ian Shugart]

The main features of the CCB I think are essentially its advantages. It is, in the first instance, more generous than the previous benefit. Probably the main differentiating feature is that it is more targeted, which is where you get the disproportionate benefit for low-income and modest-income Canadians.

As you know, it replaces the mix of existing benefits with one integrated benefit. In that sense, from the perspective of the family recipient, it is a simpler benefit administratively.

These features are discretionary to the government of the day in terms of setting the level of the benefit, but I think those are the key design features that allow it to be targeted at those families in greatest need and middle-income families.

[Filomena Tassi, Liberal, Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON]

Thank you.

[Filomena Tassi, Liberal, Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON]

With the new CCB, families that are more disadvantaged are going to benefit under this program. More children will be raised out of poverty under this new plan. Is that correct?

[Ian Shugart]

Yes, our analysis shows in the neighbourhood of 300,000 children will come out of poverty as a result of this measure. Of course, we'll be monitoring, measuring, and reporting on that.

[Filomena Tassi, Liberal, Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON]

Very good. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you.

Moving on to Ms. Sansoucy.

[Brigitte Sansoucy, NDP, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

On Monday, Minister Duclos told us that, at the beginning of February, he started consultations with the provinces with a view to developing a Canadian poverty reduction strategy.

Since no support for developing this strategy was announced in the budget, I would like to know what timelines have been set. Does this mean that nothing will happen until next March 31, especially since, at the moment, we know that there is no official definition or measurement of poverty in Canada?

Here is my question: does your department intend to develop such a definition or measurement of poverty in Canada?

[Ian Shugart]

Thank you for the question, Ms. Sansoucy.

We are starting discussions with our provincial and territorial partners. Each level of government has its own poverty-reduction policy and programs.

The government is determined to work with its partners and to act according to its own capacity as the federal government. Some programs were already announced in the budget, such as the Canada Child Benefit and the Guaranteed Income Supplement for seniors, have already achieved their goals of reducing poverty for some Canadians. However, each level of government has its own priorities and programs.

As for having a common definition, we will look at that after the discussions with the other levels of government. The priority is to bring all the programs together, to discuss gaps that presently exist and to consult with Canadians on future ways to continue fighting poverty. That is our national objective.

[Brigitte Sansoucy, NDP, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

It should even be to eliminate it.

Let me make a comment before I ask my question. I hope that, above and beyond consultations, the federal government is going to demonstrate some real leadership in poverty reduction.

On Monday, the Minister replied a little too quickly to a question about temporary foreign workers. We know that a number of exemptions are granted to some industries so that they can call on temporary foreign workers. Which areas of activity did you target before granting those exemptions? What data was the decision based on? Are Canadians going to find out how those exemptions are justified?

[Ian Shugart]

I will ask my colleague Paul Thompson to provide more details about those specific questions.

First of all, I would like to point out that the program affects a very delicate aspect of the Canadian labour market. The objective is to offer work to Canadians in the first place, but at times, situations arise when access to Canadian workers is limited for a number of reasons. The Canadian labour market is very diversified; consequently, the current program must also be diversified. We are studying trends and the situations that arise.

The exemption that has been established is not so different from previous measures. Mr. Thompson will be able to give you more details on the situation. We continue to study the state of the Canadian economy very closely.

[Paul Thompson, Senior Assistant Deputy Minister, Skills and Employment Branch, Department of Employment and Social Development]

I could certainly elaborate on that.

As was indicated, this was an extension to a previous exemption that was put in place to deal particularly with the low-wage stream of the program and the challenges faced particularly by seasonal industries. It was available last year and was extended for this season. It was expanded and modified somewhat to deal with some of the specific needs of industries, heavily driven by the seafood processing industry which was facing the most acute pressures in terms of seasonal worker issues. The demographics of the workforce and the intense seasonality of the workload were some of the underlying factors driving the need.

This was an exemption put in place for seasonal industries on a time-limited basis as the government and this committee, in fact, continue to look at the program and its design going forward.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you very much.

Now over to the birthday boy, Mr. Long.

[Wayne Long, Liberal, Saint John—Rothesay, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to everybody for coming today and for your presentations, which were very good.

My riding is Saint John—Rothesay in southern New Brunswick. We're a riding of two stories, if you will. There's lots of wealth and success, but there's also many people in need, and many people who are using or need unemployment insurance.

My question to start is for Mr. Shugart.

I have a very good friend who recently needed EI. He called Service Canada, and he waited and waited. In my MP office, we get constituent after constituent coming in looking for help. My colleague across the room here was talking about the wait times and how long people have been waiting to get a response.

What I did after that was a bit of checking. Under the last government, service standards were really decimated. There were 600 positions cut from EI processing, EI call centres. I did some more investigation, and 100 out of 122 processing centres closed. Two remained open, obviously, MP MacKay's and MP Keddy's.

Two out of 12 call centres closed, and again, that's the 600 service positions eliminated. Service standards were dropped from 95% answered within three minutes to 80% answered within three minutes. They didn't meet the reduced standard, so in 2014 it went to 80% answered within 10 minutes, and they only achieved 45% success even with that lower standard.

My constituents are asking me, my friends are asking me, what's going to be done?

So I ask you, what can we do as a government to correct that?

[Ian Shugart]

Mr. Chair, I'm going to ask Louise Levonian, the chief operating officer, to elaborate on this.

We have been concerned about the call centre situation in particular, because this is how people increasingly find out what their status is or raise concerns. As you know, the budget did provide increased funding for us to buttress the capacity specifically in our call centres. That is a direct answer to your question as to what is going to happen, but perhaps you'd permit Louise to elaborate a little on the situation regarding call centres.

[Wayne Long, Liberal, Saint John—Rothesay, NB]

I will jump in quickly. It came to light...and, again, I'm new to it, but my constituency office is becoming the de facto service centre. I can't believe the amount of people. We want to help everybody, but we're back to calling the same 1-800 numbers they are, and it's the same thing. It's wait after wait, and people are extremely frustrated right across the country.

[Louise Levonian, Chief Operating Officer, Service Canada, and Senior Associate Deputy Minister, Department of Employment and Social Development]

We are definitely concerned about service to Canadians. In particular we're very concerned about the call centre wait times and accessibility. There are two layers of data that you can look at. You can look at how long people wait once they get in the queue and whether or not they even can get in the queue. Accessibility has been not what one would want it to be over the last while.

We have strong service standards. We have them for the Internet, we have them for the telephone, and we have them for in person. We focus on things like access, timeliness, quality, and cost. There's no question that the funding that was provided in the 2016 budget is going to go a long way in putting the accessibility back to a reasonable level.

I believe right now accessibility fluctuates, depending on the time of year and what the demand is. It can fluctuate between 40% and close to 20%. What we're hoping to accomplish with this additional funding is to get us closer to 60% or 65%. There are other actions that we're taking to help that as well. We're putting in a new telephony system that's going to help us be more efficient as well in answering questions.

[Wayne Long, Liberal, Saint John—Rothesay, NB]

Thank you.

Back to Mr. Shugart.

The Prime Minister's mandate letter to Minister Mihychuk outlines 31 changes he wishes to see within the mandate. With the recent tabling of the budget, many of these changes have been made. The wait times, unfair acceptance, entrants, and re-entrants have been dealt with, along with several more. What do you foresee as the most difficult points of the mandate letter to get through and why?

[Ian Shugart]

I would say that a number of measures have already been taken in the area of student financial assistance, which I think are going to be significant. Some early steps were taken on EI, the new entrants and re-entrants, and those who faced a higher hurdle but who had been contributing. We think from a policy design perspective, the ability of those, frequently, young people to form attachment to the labour force, which is so critical at that stage of their lives, is going to be good for the economy, as well as for individuals in the long term.

We don't tend to think about what is going to be particularly hard versus something else. We just follow our instructions and get on with it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Excellent, thank you.

Mr. Ruimy.

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

Thank you all for coming. I'm sure this whole room belongs to your team, right.

I have a couple of comments. I'm going to echo my colleague's sentiments. What I'm noticing in my riding is that some people are starting to realize if they come to my office they might get a quicker route to what they need to get done, which is not good for my staff.

Another comment is that during the pre-budget consultation process that we had through the year, I held my own. I separated the groups into low income and seniors, middle class, and small business.

In the middle class I had a smart gentleman, an executive, whose family made probably in the neighbourhood of $140,000. He was quite irate because we're cutting taxes, we're cutting the disability tax credits, and about everything else that went on. He was upset about all of that.

Last week, back in the riding, he made another appointment. He came in, and he had done his numbers. Surprisingly he comes out about $2,500 ahead. He was ecstatic about that, and thumbs up. I think that's working.

I'm going to move my comments now to Mr. Siddall. Yesterday Minister Duclos spoke about increased investments in social and low-income housing. In my riding of Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, we're currently facing an unfortunate increase in the number of homeless people in our community. This is an unfair reality for too many Canadians.

Could you please provide further information about the increases in investments to the homelessness partnering strategy, as well as how this money will be most effectively allocated and utilized to provide homeless Canadians with the support they need to escape poverty?

[Ian Shugart]

I would clarify, for the committee, that the homelessness partnering strategy is a program that is run within the department of employment and social development. The affordable housing and so on is the...so I'll ask Kathryn to provide the detail on that.