Industry Committee on April 12th, 2016

[Wayne Smith]

No data leaves Canada. It doesn't leave the possession of Statistics Canada, actually. The microdata, the actual responses, we control it completely.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

That's good to hear because at one time I had to fight a campaign when Lockheed Martin wanted to move that to the United States, which would have subjected the information that they kept in-house, at least part of the outsourcing, to the Patriot Act . I'm just wondering if there has been additional outsourcing since that time.

[Wayne Smith]

I'd like to comment on Lockheed Martin, if I could. It was Lockheed Martin Canada. No data was taken out of Canada. It was never planned to be.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

No, it wasn't, because we did a large public campaign, because the plan of Lockheed Martin was actually to assemble it in the United States. That was a part of the original outsourcing. Statistics Canada at that time actually had to get additional funding to maintain it in Canada.

[Wayne Smith]

Well, I challenge the facts; I don't think that's the essence.

They were originally brought on to develop systems for processing, because we were trying to move the processing initially in an entirely different way. Initially, they were supposed to be in the data centre, operating the data centres, but under Statistics Canada management and control.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Yes, under the control.... We can have this debate later.

I am more worried about what else has been outsourced in that, because when they went to do that data management system, part of that component required information going to the United States.

[Wayne Smith]

I am not agreeing with the description of the facts.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

No, you don't have to.

[Wayne Smith]

In terms of the current census and even the one before, nothing has been outsourced. All of the work is being done by Statistics Canada. There are no private sector companies involved, American or Canadian, in the actual processing of the data. It's being done by Statistics Canada. The only new partner in the relationship is Shared Services Canada, which is providing the infrastructure. All of its employees have been sworn under the Statistics Act, and they are subject to all of the penalties of the act if they divulge confidential information in an inappropriate way. So, there is no outsourcing.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Okay.

I have a document here regarding some of the programs that were reduced or cut from 2006 to 2015. Are those going to be restored with regard to that information, and can we get an idea of which ones will be restored after this budget and which ones won't?

[Wayne Smith]

There was no funding in the most recent budget for restoration of any of those programs, the ones that you are referring to, things that we've eliminated in that period.

There are a handful of them, a very small number, such as the residential care facilities survey, where Statistics Canada, working with other partners or on its own, was able to put the survey back in place. It was considered to be too essential. Overwhelmingly, the program reductions that occurred over that period are still.... Those programs are still discontinued.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Is there any possibility of resurrecting some of those that were discontinued for their value for research and for application?

[Wayne Smith]

Within Statistics Canada's own resources the potential is very limited. As I mentioned in my remarks, we actively look for efficiencies, and when we can find them, we reinvest in the program. In some cases that reinvestment might be for resurrection of one of those surveys. In other cases it might be in something that's considered to be an even higher priority.

Essentially, we're talking about programs that were cut in that period worth in the order of $30 million. Statistics Canada does not have the resources to reverse even a large portion of that on its own. It would require an investment of new resources.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

How much time do I have, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

You have about 20 seconds.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Great, now we can sing and dance. No, I'll save it for my next round.

I want, however, to take the 20 seconds I have left here to say thanks to Statistics Canada and the workers for their valuable information development. One of the weaknesses we've had in many sectors is not having reliable information, not only overall but also for backstopping other surveys and information gathering and data management. I'll leave it at that.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

Thank you, Mr. Masse.

We're going to Mr. Jowhari. You have seven minutes.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, panellists. I appreciate your taking the time to give us a briefing on your plans and priorities. Thank you to the other members who joined to help us.

As you know, our government has announced an agenda of growth, specifically focused on the middle class and specifically with significant investment in infrastructure under transit, social, and green development.

To start, Mr. Smith, I have two questions for you.

I was quite pleased to see that for all of the four programs that you have identified in your report on plans and priorities you have key metrics, key performance indicators and targets of what needs to be done.

I also was pleased to hear that you highlighted two of the six sectors to be included in the plan you are putting forward for the next year, i.e., clean technology and agrifood, which were two areas you highlighted. You also identified health resources, advanced manufacturing, digital technology, and resources as areas that your department will be focusing on in the future.

Under each one of these or in all the programs, do you have the specific key performance measures and indicators defined to help the government and help us measure the growth so that we can figure out where the gaps are or whether or not we are excelling in that area? Do you have those measures, or if you don't, how fast would you be able to put them in place so that we can leverage your resources and expertise to monitor our progress?

[Wayne Smith]

We have in place a broad infrastructure that allows measurement of growth down to individual industries and to reconstitute....

To use clean tech as an example of what we're able to do, part of the proposal around clean tech is.... This is not a standard industry that is defined by Statistics Canada, so our first problem is that we have to define it. We're currently working with Natural Resources Canada and Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada to define that industry, to define what types of businesses belong in that industry.

Once we've done that, we have a wide range of information from surveys and tax data that allows us to calculate estimates of the output of that industry, for example, and to track that output through time. We can then create in principle a baseline of what the situation was before a government policy and can track the development of that industry over time.

For businesses that have benefited, for example, from development loans from the federal government, we also have the ability to look at them individually to see how their business has developed over time and compare them with a control group.

The capacity is thus there, but generally speaking much of the actual work of exploiting the data is done in the departments and granting councils and agencies rather than by Statistics Canada.

My view would be that, depending on the granularity of what people are looking at, we have an infrastructure in place that would allow us to address those kinds of needs.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Help us understand. For a dollar invested in pick any company within the clean technology sector, how did it help us in our growth of GDP?

[Wayne Smith]

Well, I'm prohibited by law from divulging any information about an individual business. What I can tell you is that all of the businesses in that industry that actually received money from the federal Business Development Bank, for example, did they do better than businesses that did not, or did they do the same or worse. In principle, if they've done better, you have some suggestive evidence at least that the program was effective in promoting the growth of that business. We can do that, but we have to do it for groups of companies and not for individual enterprises.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Okay.

This is on a totally different topic, foreign investment, especially in the hot markets of real estate, and Toronto and Vancouver are prime examples. Budget 2016 proposes to increase funding to Statistics Canada so it can collect data on various topics, including the purchase of Canadian housing by foreign buyers, and clean technologies—let's focus on the foreign buyers—and adhere to the International Monetary Fund's special data dissemination standard plus. What's this special data dissemination standard plus? Why is it important to meet this standard? Does Statistics Canada have the expertise and resources necessary to carry out this new mandate?

[Wayne Smith]

SDDS plus is a series of measures that have been proposed by the International Monetary Fund to measure the financial health of countries. There was an initial round called SDDS, which stands for special data documentation standard. What it is, as I said, is a series of measures that when you look at them can say that a country is in good shape financially, or there's some serious issues developing in terms of the financial system.

With SDDS, yes, Canada signed onto that proposal, and we made changes to our statistical program to be able to publish everything that they wanted us to publish and in the time frames they wanted us to publish it. SDDS plus is an embellishment of that standard. It requires us to publish more data than we were publishing and in greater detail than we were publishing previously. We were funded to do the additional work. This isn't taking money away from any other program. We were given money in budget 2016 specifically to do this. Given that we have the money and the financial resources, it represents no problem for us to carry out the work. It's relatively straightforward. We know exactly what needs to be done and how to do it. We will be able to, relatively quickly, create things that are necessary. The one area where it's going to be a little more challenging is that we need to create an index of retail, resale, and new housing prices, including condominiums, a comprehensive index. At the moment, we're producing a price index of new houses only, excluding condominiums. We have a fair bit of development work.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

Sorry, we're way over. I don't mean to cut you off. Thank you very much.

We're going to move to Mr. Lobb. You have five minutes.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

Thanks very much.

Mr. Pinto, I have a question for you.

With the agenda on innovation and growth of the economy, etc., obviously there's going to be some investments from NSERC, and there has been for many years and will continue to be so. One of the complaints I've heard for many years is the time it takes from when a business comes up with a concept that wants to partner with NSERC, to the time the project works its way through the public service and the granting arm, to the time it is approved to go. Whether it's automotive, software, hardware, or what have you, this is a concern I've heard over and over. What is the average time—I know you can't pin it down on one specific item, but maybe an average—from when you work with a project until it's actually granted?