Industry Committee on May 8th, 2012

[Ryan Cleary, NDP, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

Mr. LeBlanc, it's fair to say, then, that he has yet to start work. He's still in French language training. He has yet to start his job.

[Paul LeBlanc]

That's correct.

[Ryan Cleary, NDP, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

The average cost of second language training for an ACOA employee, from what I understand, is $8,250 a year. So I wonder how much it costs to train Mr. MacAdam in French.

Is he on travel status? Does he get a per diem rate or are his hotels paid for?

You mentioned that he lived here. He is living here, is he?

[Paul LeBlanc]

You raise a very good point and I can see your interest in that point. Please let me clarify.

He was allowed to take on his language training where he resided at the time that he started it, because there was no relocation required for him, there was no travel status required, and he is not paid meals, he is not paid an allowance, he is not paid for a hotel or his apartment, etc. Those are all his personal expenses.

So if you want to really net out his cost of language training it would be as it is for any other federal public servant. It would be the cost of their salary for the time they're taking the language training, and the incremental cost of the actual payment to the language school. I don't have those figures, but I'd be glad to make them available to committee members.

[Ryan Cleary, NDP, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

So there are no costs? There are no travel, no hotel, and no per diem costs?

[Paul LeBlanc]

No, there are no special or exceptional costs because he is in Ottawa versus Charlottetown.

[Ryan Cleary, NDP, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

But he is getting paid up to $135,000 a year for a job that he hasn't started yet.

[Paul LeBlanc]

He is paid for the job because he was found to be qualified, was offered the job, he accepted it, and as a condition of employment he was allowed, as would any other public servant in that circumstance, to go immediately to language training. So for the first part, his job now—and he's being paid for it—is that language training engagement.

[Ryan Cleary, NDP, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

I have to ask, do you know what the status is of the Public Service Commission investigation? It's been a while now.

[Bernard Valcourt, Conservative, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

Well, the Commission doesn't report to us on their progress. They advise us when they are ready to make a decision. That's my understanding, and we haven't heard from them. I guess one day we will.

[Ryan Cleary, NDP, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

Thank you for that, Minister.

There are big cuts coming to ACOA, obviously, as laid out in the budget. Lots of job cuts are coming.

I have a general question. Do you think that patronage appointments should be the first to go with job cuts?

[Bernard Valcourt, Conservative, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

Well, if you want to accuse the Public Service Commission of making patronage appointments, I guess they should answer that charge.

As far as I know, there is no political interference in the hiring of employees at ACOA. This is done according to the rules, according to the law, and I don't take blood tests of employees. I don't know what their political affiliations are, if they have any, and I'm really not concerned about that.

My concern is to ensure that ACOA lives up to its mandate and discharges its mandate in Atlantic Canada, that of trying to improve the earned income of Atlantic Canadians through business activities that create jobs and wealth in Atlantic Canada. That is my concern.

[Ryan Cleary, NDP, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

Thank you, Mr. Minister.

How much time do I have left, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

That's it, we're over time right now.

We're on to Mr. Lake now, for seven minutes.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

And thank you to the minister for coming. It's pretty clear that the NDP policy would be to make personnel decisions on the basis of politics. I'd like to think that we would actually make those decisions on the basis of merit and in the interests of the Canadian taxpayer. Thankfully, I believe that's the case with our government.

But on more substantive issues, in your opening remarks you spoke about further advancing technologies related to mining and energy. That is of particular interest to me, being from Alberta. Energy is a pretty big part of our world out there.

I want you, if you could, to help me understand the scope of the mining and energy sectors in Atlantic Canada. Perhaps speak to the opportunities, the economic impact, and those things.

[Bernard Valcourt, Conservative, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

Well, when we talk about energy in Atlantic Canada, of course, we talk about oil and gas. As you may know, for New Brunswick, for example, with the Irving oil refinery in Saint John, of course, it creates a lot of economic activities.

We have throughout the Atlantic region the oil and gas sector in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, which is producing and creating a lot of economic opportunities for different sectors of the economy in the supply chain. We also have on the books the future development of the Muskrat project in Newfoundland and Labrador.

But maybe the members would be interested in knowing, and I'll ask the president to give you a clear picture of, what the impact has been in the last 20 years of the development of those sectors in terms of job creation and the share of our gross domestic product in Atlantic Canada attributable to that sector.

[Paul LeBlanc]

In first place obviously is the transformation of the Newfoundland and Labrador economy, which has been completely transformed from an historic have-not province to a “have” economy. It's allowed a certain distribution of wealth immediately from the players. Some of them are multinationals.

So our interest has been to help SMEs get into this activity, for the local Newfoundland and Labrador small businesses to be suppliers to this globalized industry. We have firms now that are producing material, engineering know-how, and informatics-based systems suited to cold ocean and deep ocean research that we didn't have before. They are selling to big multinational corporations, and then they're off selling in Iceland and Norway and off the coast of Mexico as well. Our objective is to create a whole deeper economic activity among our SMEs, using them, their technology, their know-how. And the minister has invested a lot in universities and colleges, in university-based cold ocean exploration with a view to commercializing this. So we see the Newfoundland economy truly transformed in that way.

On the minister's reference to the Atlantic gateway, our efforts with that gateway are to get the four provincial jurisdictions aggressively looking at how we can get a better integrated energy system in Atlantic Canada. And the Nova Scotia-Newfoundland Muskrat Falls project is a classic example of that. So with better transmission networks, more harmonized regulation frameworks among them, the region will have an energy network that will bring energy throughout Atlantic Canada at a much more competitive price, with greater reliability. It will be cleaner for commercial and industrial use in the region and an important asset for export into the northeast U.S. market, which is a very important market to look to for the medium and longer term.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

It's interesting that you brought up harmonization of regulations as part of what you were talking about. Of course, one of the things that we've said is critical to the continued growth in the economy in Canada is this responsible resource development, the balance between resource development and the environment in a way that has some common sense behind it.

Maybe you could speak to the importance of the measures contained in the budget implementation act, that is, the budget, in that regard for the Atlantic Canadian economy.

[Bernard Valcourt, Conservative, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

An important aspect of ACOA's activity in Atlantic Canada is all of its support for innovation, research, and development. We have a specific program dedicated to innovation, research, and development with a view to developing ideas and products, new services, and new products into market.

What is happening right now, from what I gather and can see, is that a lot of research is taking place at the university level, along with the private sector, in regard to the natural resources we have in the north. I'm talking about the Arctic. I'm talking about Labrador and the rough north Atlantic.

A lot of research and innovation is taking place that will yield, I'm sure, results that will allow us as a region to tap these natural resources and exploit them in a sustainable way with a strong commitment to protecting the environment at the same time. That research is geared and is developing towards ensuring that we can innovate to sustainably develop these natural resources in the north. I think that augers well for the future.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

In terms of the harmonization of resources—and I'm not sure which one of you would want to answer this—there does seem to be a lot of redundancy at the different political levels, at the provincial government and federal regulatory levels, with timelines that don't match and processes that need to be undertaken two or three times.

Again, maybe you could speak to that. I don't know if you have specific examples of that that you could speak to, but how do we get that balance, how do we ensure that we're protecting our environment without making industry jump through two, three, or four of the same hoops in the process?

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

I'm sorry, minister, and Mr. Lake, but we're over time there. So we will have to save that and hopefully jam it into another round.

Now over to Mr. Regan for seven minutes.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Minister and Mr. LeBlanc, thank you for being with us today.

Minister, I want to continue with the questioning started by my colleague, Mr. Cleary, who talked about Mr. MacAdam. The position of director general, regional operations for P.E.I., was a new position created in the fall of 2010. You're aware, of course, that you had 42 positions cut from ACOA last fall, and 65 more by this budget. We've got a position here for Mr. MacAdam that didn't exist more than a year and a half ago. It has yet to have a full-time employee performing it and may not for—who knows?—maybe another year.

So is this job more critical than the hundred or so that have been cut by your government in the last year? That includes auditors, by the way, the five or six auditors who were cut in this budget, who, I would think—in terms of accountability—would play an important role.

[Bernard Valcourt, Conservative, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

I don't want to personalize staffing issues at ACOA. What I know is that, in the face of our government's commitment to spend taxpayers' dollars more efficiently and effectively, we want to eliminate the deficit because we think that the fiscal advantage of Canada must be preserved for the benefit of Canadians. In that context, what I insisted to our officials was that whatever reductions we would make to ACOA's budget, they would first be internal ones to gain efficiencies in how we deliver our programs. Unfortunately, as a result of our identifying those efficiencies, certain positions have become surplus, as will others. But the test to me is ensuring that the small and medium sized businesses, the communities of Atlantic Canada, will still get the same, or a better, level of service—

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

I'll come back to that in one moment.

[Bernard Valcourt, Conservative, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

—because that is the issue to me.