Human Resources Committee on April 24th, 2020

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

I call the meeting to order.

Good morning to those in the west and good afternoon to those in the east. Welcome, everyone, to meeting number five of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities.

Pursuant to the orders of reference of March 24, April 11 and April 20, 2020, the committee is meeting for the purpose of receiving evidence concerning matters related to the government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

As you know, today's meeting is taking place by video conference. The proceedings will be made available via the House of Commons website. The webcast will always show the person speaking rather than the entirety of the committee.

In order to facilitate the work of our interpreters and ensure an orderly meeting, I would like to outline a few rules to follow.

First, interpretation in this video conference will work very much as in a regular committee meeting. You have the choice at the bottom of your screen of floor, English or French. Before speaking, please wait and I will recognize you by name. When you are ready to speak, you can either click on the microphone icon to activate your mike or you can hold down the space bar while you are speaking. When you release the bar, your mike will mute itself, just like a walkie-talkie or the mikes we're accustomed to when we meet in person.

As a reminder, all comments by members and witnesses should be addressed through the chair. Should members need to request the floor outside of their designated time for questions, they should activate their mike and state that they have a point of order.

If a member wishes to intervene on a point of order that has been raised by another member, they should use the “raise hand” function. This will signal to me your interest to speak. In order to do so, you should click on “participants” on the bottom of the screen. When the list pops up, you will see next to your name that you can click “raise hand”.

When speaking, please speak slowly and clearly. When you are not speaking, your mike should be on mute, and as you've already heard, the use of headsets is strongly encouraged. If you have a microphone on your headset that hangs down, please make sure it's not rubbing on your shirt during your questioning time.

Should any technical challenges arise in relation to interpretation, for example, or if you are accidentally disconnected, please advise the chair or clerk immediately, and the technical team will resolve the issue. Please note that we may need to suspend during these times, as we need to ensure all members are able to participate fully.

Before we get started, could everyone click on their screen in the top right-hand corner to ensure they are on gallery view? With this view you should be able to see all the participants in a grid view. It will ensure that all video participants can see one another.

With that, we are ready to begin.

I would like to welcome our first panel of witnesses. We have Graham Flack, deputy minister; Lori MacDonald, senior associate deputy minister of ESDC and chief operating officer for Service Canada; and Benoît Robidoux, associate deputy minister.

We will proceed with the usual 10-minute period for opening remarks, followed by rounds of questions.

Will you be delivering the remarks, Mr. Flack?

[Graham Flack, Deputy Minister, Employment and Social Development, Department of Employment and Social Development]

I propose to waive the remarks to allow the committee more time to ask questions. There are just a couple of things I want to say in opening.

First of all, in a very difficult week for those of us from Nova Scotia, I want to acknowledge how tough what we've been through has been on our families back home.

It's a Friday today. At ESDC we would call that day 40 of the week of March 16. We've been through quite a run.

Because I know members have often asked these questions, I'll give you the latest statistics on the CERB as of last night. Some 7.12 million Canadians have applied for the CERB. That's over one-third of Canada's labour force. About $22.3 billion in benefits have been paid out. Because some people are now on their second cycle, a total of 9.65 million individual claims have been made, and 9.51 million of those 9.65 million claims have already been paid.

I will be happy to answer your questions now. I will not use the 10 minutes I was given, I prefer to leave the time for you to ask questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Thank you, Mr. Flack.

We're now ready to proceed with the rounds of questions, beginning with the Conservatives. I understand that Ms. Dancho is going to lead off.

Welcome to the committee. The floor is yours for six minutes.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to the department officials for being on the call today to answer some of our important questions.

I just want to start with some concerns that I have regarding a recent call hosted by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Employment, and a number of other Liberal parliamentary secretaries. Yesterday they sent out a notice that MPs were allowed to ask questions on an official call with officials. It was going to be a great opportunity for members of the opposition to ask questions on a new $9-billion announcement for student supports, which was made the day prior. As opposition members, we were quite eager to do this.

Unfortunately, I was on the call for about an hour, and the NDP and Green members were given two to three rounds for each MP to ask questions. In fact, an NDP staffer was given two rounds of questions, yet not a single Conservative MP was called upon to ask any questions.

This is quite alarming to me. I was very prepared to ask questions, particularly considering that two weeks prior, we had another one of these calls, and I was not called upon in that call either. Even more worrisome was that the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Employment was informed the day before that I would be leading the questions for the Conservatives.

I'm just wondering if the officials can comment on the viability of a virtual Parliament if opposition members are not able to do their jobs and ask questions.

[Graham Flack]

I think that would be something we would consider out of our scope to comment on as officials. We are here to answer your questions, and I'm happy to say that Benoît Robidoux is on the line. Benoît has actually spearheaded our work around the student benefit and would be happy, if the honourable member wishes, to walk you through the details of the benefit and answer any questions you have.

Do you want Benoît to do an overview first, or do you want to proceed to detailed questions? He could do a short overview if that would help.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Yes, it would be great to be able to ask those questions, but I just want to flag for you and underline that if we're going to be doing this virtual Parliament—and the opposition Conservatives have raised this concern—this technology or what have you is just not allowing us to do our jobs.

I was quite alarmed that even though they were informed, they didn't call on me once. In fact, they gave a staffer more opportunity than a member of Parliament. It's great for my NDP and Green colleagues. I'm glad they were able to ask questions, but I'm sure they would agree that the Conservatives deserve an opportunity as well. I just really want to flag that for officials. I know you're all working very hard to provide these services, but it was very concerning to me.

Could they comment specifically on a couple of things about the program? Could they define “national service”? Would they be able to define what that means?

[Graham Flack]

Benoît, do you want to jump in?

[Benoît Robidoux, Associate Deputy Minister, Employment and Social Development, Department of Employment and Social Development]

I'm not sure I understood the question correctly. I just heard “nationally”.

Could you repeat the question, please?

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Sure.

The government's announcement regarding the Canada student service grant mentions that it will help them gain valuable work experience and skills. It's for young people to help in their communities. It's for students who choose to do national service and serve their communities. The new student grant will provide up to $5,000 for education.

What is national service? How is that defined? Does that go by province for essential services? Who is deciding which volunteer opportunities are a national service, and which ones get the go-ahead and which don't? How is that going to be determined for this grant?

[Benoît Robidoux]

That's a very good question. As we speak, we are in fact designing this new program. It will be directed, as you just said, to national service and volunteering. Again, what was decided is that the reward will be up to $5,000, but it could be lower too.

All of that remains to be designed and set up. Again, we believe we could use a platform that we will launch, which we call “I want to help”, to connect not-for-profit organizations with youth who want to volunteer, to create that matching and to create that program.

To be honest, many of these details need to be defined. To your question, I think we'll have to wait a bit more to get into the level of detail you are asking for.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

When can we anticipate that this legislation will be tabled?

[Benoît Robidoux]

It will not be legislation. It will be a grant program, but the details—

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

I'm sorry. I meant the legislation for the $1,250 monthly grants. I'm jumping around a bit, but it's the other part of the announcement that does require legislation. When will that be available for parliamentarians to scrutinize and to ask questions about?

[Benoît Robidoux]

It's hard for me to tell you when exactly. I worked on it all morning. I will work on it after this call, and it will be available as soon as possible. We're working to have it as soon as possible—

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

I can understand, and I know you're working very hard.

As you know, students have been waiting for over six weeks now, and our official opposition has raised the alarm. I, Dan Albas and a number of others have written two letters to Minister Qualtrough about services for students and have not received a single response from the minister. You can understand that the people we represent and—particularly in my position as the shadow minister for diversity and inclusion and youth—students are counting on us to get these answers, and we're not receiving any of those details. I need a little more from you regarding even an approximate timeline—

[Graham Flack]

I can give you a couple of answers that could help.

The first is that, based on labour force survey data, 43% of Canadian students of the slightly over two million students in Canada over 15 with income over $5,000 would have been working in February. A very significant portion of post-secondary students are eligible for the CERB, and are applying for the CERB, because they would have ceased working as a result of measures due to COVID.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Yes, we recognize that.

[Graham Flack]

The second point is with regard to the new benefit we're putting in place. The government has made a commitment that it will be retroactive to May 1. This is not unlike the launch of the CERB itself. These benefits are being launched in record time, but we want to ensure that the launch date is not tied to when people can get the resources retroactively. It would be retroactive to May 1, but it will take us weeks, and Minister Qualtrough is pushing us hard towards a mid-May launch.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

That's great—

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Thank you, Mr. Flack, and thank you, Ms. Dancho. That's your time.

Next we have Ms. Young for six minutes, please.

[Kate Young, Liberal, London West, ON]

Thank you very much, Chair.

It's great seeing everyone virtually for this very important discussion.

I first want to thank our officials for joining us today and all the public servants who have been working so hard over the past number of weeks to get these programs up and running. What has been accomplished is quite remarkable, so thank you for that.

My question is about calls I've received in my constituency from expectant mothers who have contacted us about the status of their maternity benefits if they are currently receiving the CERB. Some were planning on going on mat leave in June, and others in September. They've been told by Service Canada representatives that if they go on CERB they will be ineligible for their earned benefits unless they have an additional 600 hours banked before they take that leave, which isn't possible.

Can you clarify this for the committee?

[Graham Flack]

Maternity leave and other special leave benefits continue as they were originally structured. That is the required number of hours, and they operate within the current EI system. The government has signalled that if individuals are already on maternity leave, for example, and come off maternity leave during the period when the CERB benefit is in place, they would be eligible for the CERB. However, if an individual does not have enough hours under the currently structured EI rules, they still need to receive sufficient hours to qualify for the benefit. That is something that Minister Qualtrough has said she is looking at.

[Kate Young, Liberal, London West, ON]

Thank you.

I think it's pretty apparent that there is no way that many of these women can get the hours, so it's important that we find a way around this. It's important to keep refining these programs, and I appreciate your hard work.

I'd like to share my time, if that's okay, with my colleague Han Dong who I think is on the line. I'm hoping he will be able to ask a question with the remaining time I have.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Thank you, Ms. Young.

Hang on a second, Han. I see that Mr. Vaughan has raised his hand.

Did you have a point of order, Mr. Vaughan, or did you just hit the wrong button there?

[Adam Vaughan, Liberal, Spadina—Fort York, ON]

This is in response to the concerns about the parliamentary secretary and critic calls, and the order of speaking. We're all feeling in the dark on this one. Zoom etiquette or group etiquette sometimes isn't always well explained or well executed.

I want to apologize, first of all, to MP Dancho for not having her recognized, or for not being given opportunities to question. Those questions come in on a raised-hand basis. We don't assign questions to people. In future, we'll be very attentive to this and make sure that we recanvass so that there are no unanswered questions; I apologize.

On the issue of an NDP staffer sitting in for a parliamentary individual, I believe the individual in question was on another committee and couldn't be in two places at the same time. We allow for those sorts of accommodations in the same way that we have a member of the Green Party here today who has asked to speak. I hope we can find ways in these extraordinary times to include as many voices and questions to make sure that Canadians from all corners of the country are served.

Hopefully, we can find a way to be courteous and extend those privileges. I don't think they should be extended to staff members, necessarily, but I do believe that in a committee setting like this, where we have visitors, being as generous as we can is something that serves all of us, and all of our constituents, in the best way possible.