Industry Committee on March 23rd, 2021

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

Okay. Thank you.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

But I am a little surprised that Mr. Poilievre has questions for Mr. Wudrick.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

Go ahead, MP Poilievre.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

I am sorry to have surprised you, Mr. Lemire, my friend.

Mr. Wudrick, I want to talk to you about a challenge in public finance in general.

Whenever we have these hearings on any subject we get 20 or 30 witnesses showing up asking for more money. We get one witness, usually you, or someone like you, representing the 30-plus million Canadians who have to pay for it.

The 30-plus million Canadians who pay for the price of programs get one witness, and the comparatively very small groups, sometimes representing 10,000 or 20,000 people, get 20 or 30 witnesses.

It's not just this committee. It's every committee. In fact, it was even worse on the finance committee. It reminds me of James Buchanan, who was a Nobel Prize-winning economist, who invented something called “public choice theory” where he pointed out that when governments start to run the economy, the theory is that everything is going to happen in the public interest. In fact, people seeking profit just do so through the government rather than through the marketplace. They show up at committees like this one advocating for their interest group to get a bigger handout from the many millions of people who are too busy working and living their lives to lobby in the other direction. In the end, the concentrated benefit of a government handout is far more politically powerful than the dispersed cost that everyone must contribute to pay for it.

Hence, we have one witness defending the payers here, that's you, and throughout the study we'll have 25 or 30 advocating for more spending.

Do you have any suggestions on how we can redress this balance so that the people who pay the bills in this country, the working class folks who put in the hours and earn their wages, and the small business people across the land, are not continuously outnumbered by those who want to draw from their pockets?

[Aaron Wudrick]

The first thing I'd say is that you should invite the Canadian Taxpayers Federation to committee more often.

Aside from that, I think it's incumbent on the members in the committee and all members of Parliament to remember that fact. I don't want to take anything away from the people who appear at committee. You're all dedicated to your craft. I'm sure all your reasoning is in earnest and you believe in what you're saying, but as you say, Mr. Poilievre, there are millions of Canadians who will never appear before committee. It's incumbent upon members of Parliament to remember that it should not always be the squeaky wheel that gets the oil.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

You're right.

Let me say it for Mr. Lemire's benefit.

In sessions like this, we always have 20 or 30 witnesses who want more money. But 30 million or more Canadians have to pay the bill. At this committee, those 30 million Canadians are represented by one single witness, from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. However, a small group looking for another subsidy, another government loan, is represented by 20 or 30 well paid lobbyists. That is a problem. Groups and organizations, especially from industry, are better organized than taxpayers, who are too busy working. The business groups and companies looking to obtain money are well organized and have the funds they need to hire lobbyists who come here to collect the money. That is not a good balance.

How could we correct the imbalance between all these powerful companies who always want more money, and all the taxpayers who have to foot the bill?

I would like to hear your suggestions on the matter, Mr. Wudrick.

[Aaron Wudrick]

As I said, invite us to committee more often. Maybe speak more often to your constituents and see how they feel about some of these proposals.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

That's a good suggestion.

I want to go to Mr. Donald, who I think also made a very good suggestion. He's saying we should go to competency-based credentials. What can you do rather than just hours-based credentials?

Mr. Donald, do you think this is a principle that could be extended? We have very qualified immigrants who come to this country—

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

MP Poilievre, you're out of time. Could you quickly wrap it up?

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

I'll wrap it up.

We have very qualified immigrants and military veterans who have a whole series of qualifications that don't get recognized even though they are qualified, because they don't have the finances or the time to redo all of their training and get a permit to work in a given profession or trade. Do you think we could extend your principle of competency-based credentials to those types of situations as well?

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

Answer very quickly. Thank you.

[Robert Donald]

Absolutely. You can have an engineer from Lufthansa who's been working there for 20 years on an Air Canada aircraft come to Canada and his credentials aren't recognized by Transport Canada because they can't validate what he studied—not his competency, but what he studied 20 years ago in Berlin.

I agree with you completely, Mr. Poilievre.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Let's fix that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

Thank you very much.

Our next round of questions goes to MP Lambropoulos. You have the floor for five minutes.

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I would like to thank all the witnesses for joining us today and answering our questions.

Clearly, the aerospace industry is one that's been through a lot during this pandemic. It has been quite hard hit. Rather than focusing on COVID-19 and what the current state of affairs is, I'd like to focus more on the future to see how the government could support the industry in the long term.

I represent a riding where quite a bit of the aerospace industry is on the territory of Saint-Laurent. It's an industry that I hear from a lot. At the same time, I hear a lot from my constituents when I go door to door. I've heard in the past about bailouts and about how people aren't necessarily happy about the way money sometimes gets thrown at these companies.

I'm all for supporting the industry. I think that the aerospace industry is a strategic one where, if we invest properly or if we support it in the right ways, it can definitely allow us to be competitive on a global scale. It's the future.

I'm looking for ways—other than bailouts—that you would recommend the government use to support. I'm talking to all the panellists here. I'm thinking more in terms of contracts and preferring Canadian companies, for example, over global competitors. I'm thinking about education and ways in which we can help improve the industry and make sure that we're up to par with global competitors, so that Canadian companies are the ones that we want to choose.

If anybody wants to comment on ways forward that go along with that way of thinking, I'm really interested in hearing your suggestions.

[Tracy Medve]

Can I just comment on that? It's near and dear to my heart, and I ran out of time before I could say it 17 times: “Buy Canadian”.

Don't be fooled by the ITB structure, because it's a zero-sum game. If you have a Canadian provider, as we do, providing military pilot training with a full Canadian team, which we've been doing in the country since 1940, giving that work to a foreign competitor and then requiring them to meet these ITB commitments is a zero-sum game.

All you're doing is taking it away from a Canadian company, which is using Canadian companies to do the work, and giving it to a foreign company to then require them to hire all the people you just lost to this company. Don't get sucked into that.

That's all I have to say about that. It's just a simple argument. I'll let someone else talk.

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

Does anyone want to—?

[Michael Arthur]

It's Michael Arthur here. Let me just come in from Boeing, the only foreign company here on the panel.

There are two things. First, the last thing we're asking for is bailouts from government. We're here on a competitive basis. As I said in my earlier remarks, if we win a government contract on the defence side, there's a huge economic benefit to the Canadian economy.

It wasn't us—it was an outside company, Doyletech—who calculated that over 40 years, there's 60 billion Canadian dollars' worth of value into the Canadian economy. That's because the global companies you mentioned just now, such as we are, bring with us a lot of Canadian industry. We work within Canadian industry the whole time. We have 500 suppliers across the country. It's a sort of integrated package that you get.

That's the point I would make from outside.

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

Thank you very much.

You both make valid points. If we were to find ways to incorporate the two and make sure that Canadian companies were benefiting from the expertise that others may have, so that we can eventually have companies that are able to do pretty much the same thing, I think that would be the best way to go.

I don't have any other questions, but if anyone else would like to jump in who hasn't already, you're able to.

Mr. Lyons.

[Dr. William Lyons]

Thank you.

[Michael Arthur]

Could I...?

I'm sorry, Bill. You go first.

[Dr. William Lyons]

Please Michael, you go first.

[Michael Arthur]

I was just going to give another nice example. There's a company called Héroux-Devtek, which makes landing gear. It's one of the world's best landing gear suppliers. If I'm right, it's in the riding of Madam Chair. There's a very good example of how, when a 737 lands in Canada, Héroux-Devtek has helped it land.

[Dr. William Lyons]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

Unfortunately, you're out of time. Perhaps you'll have an opportunity in the next round of questions.

Our next round of questions goes to Mr. Lemire.

Mr. Lemire, the floor is yours for two and a half minutes.