Industry Committee on March 4th, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Mr. Généreux, you have the floor for five minutes.

[Bernard Généreux, Conservative, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would like to give Nathaniel Erskine-Smith five stars for participating in the meeting while looking after his baby. He deserves to be Minister of the Family. I don't know whether he heard me, but that's okay.

[An hon. member]

Yes.

[Bernard Généreux, Conservative, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

Thank you for being there today.

Do they have a French version of Magnet in Quebec?

Are services in French also offered in Quebec under this program, Ms. Ng?

[Mary Ng, Liberal, Markham—Thornhill, ON]

Yes, indeed.

If given the opportunity, maybe I should explain Magnet a little further.

It's a consortium. While Magnet is one player, there are actually many players in this to make sure that these young people all across Canada, including in Quebec, will have the opportunity to participate. There's a consortium that includes organizations such as BioTalent, the Canadian Council for Aviation and Aerospace, the Excellence in Manufacturing Consortium, and so forth. It's really a consortium approach that will provide opportunities for young people all across the country.

[Bernard Généreux, Conservative, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

You may not know, but my partner and I own a company that employs 30 people in the communications industry. We do websites, printing, and all sorts of things. For our Internet services for social networks, for example, we have five full-time employees. We have six graphic designers, but five are dedicated to that area. We try to create jobs, but we are not able to find the young people you are talking about, so they can come and work in our firm at $20 or $25 per hour. So I don't know where you are going to get these 30,000 young people.

By my calculation, businesses will receive a $7,500 subsidy to hire these young people, if I understand correctly. If that is the case, for an employee earning an annual salary of $40,000, at 2,080 hours a year, or 40 hours a week, that would be the equivalent of about 15 weeks' pay.

Will these young people be hired to help the businesses set up their websites and so on, or will they be trained by the businesses to manage it?

What, exactly, will their role be?

[Mary Ng, Liberal, Markham—Thornhill, ON]

Maybe what would be absolutely terrific, because of the benefit of time, is to get you a more technical briefing so we can give you all the details. However, let me say that it is the business that is going to develop a plan on how it's going to move its business digital. It is the business that is going to determine that, through a roster of experts, experts separate from the young people, who will help it with this plan.

When it decides it's going to implement the plan, it can get access to a $100,000 interest-free loan from BDC to implement this plan. It might be a new production line. Then it might choose—some might and and some might not—that it wants to bring on a young person. When it does, it will have the help of a $7,500 wage subsidy to do that.

[Bernard Généreux, Conservative, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

In all sincerity, I'm a bit skeptical.

When we see how things are going in the new technologies industry, whether for video games or artificial intelligence, for example, we see that businesses are competing among themselves to try to get the best talent everywhere in Canada, and even outside Canada, because there are no young people available in this field. It will be extremely difficult for businesses to get people, particularly with the money you are putting on the table for hiring them. It doesn't even give them 10 weeks' salary. That is not going to change the world.

In addition, the question of French in relation to this program is essential to me. I would also like us to be informed about the technical details of the program. At some point, we will have an information session.

Over the last two years, we have created websites and services for businesses because, with COVID-19, people did not have the choice of going online to sell their products. We helped dozens of businesses, with no subsidies. People invested in this because the government and all the government's partners, including the opposition parties, gave people and businesses money during COVID-19 to survive. We provided guidance for them in implementing those measures and people reinvested in this. So businesses still have a lot of money because of the subsidies you gave them.

So what need was there to spend $4 billion, borrowed dollars at that, need I repeat, to enable businesses to make the switch to digital, when it was already possible to do it with no subsidy?

[Mary Ng, Liberal, Markham—Thornhill, ON]

Many businesses have and equally many businesses have not. When we look around the world at our competitors—you heard Minister Champagne talk about how competitive it is out there—it's Canadian companies being able to compete and to be more productive.

This is really an investment in the economies of our communities, of Quebeckers, of your businesses. That's why this investment is so important. It's to make sure that they can compete. In those areas where it is artificial intelligence, a CRM, back-office integration or automating their production lines, they're looking for this. Businesses have told us that's what they're looking for, and that's precisely why there's this investment, so we can help our Canadian businesses compete with others around the world who are competing with us.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Thank you, Minister. Thank you, Mr. Généreux.

I'll now turn to MP Fillmore for five minutes.

MP Fillmore, the floor is yours.

[Andy Fillmore, Liberal, Halifax, NS]

Thank you, Chair. I appreciate that very much.

Thank you, ministers Champagne, Ng and Hutchings, for your time today and for your work in these challenging times that we are living in. I very much appreciate it.

I would like to start with you, Minister Hutchings.

You and I have had the privilege of sitting together in the Atlantic caucus for about seven years now, and we have both been able to bring diverse perspectives to the issues of the day. You have been such an incredible advocate for rural communities. As you know, I am a city planner by profession, and what I think we have found is that people in rural and urban areas share many of the same needs, particularly around access to effective transit and housing, but the solutions and challenges are not exactly the same for urban and rural communities.

I wonder if you could talk to us about the challenges and opportunities for transit and housing for rural Canadians and the work that you're undertaking on those issues.

[Gudie Hutchings, Liberal, Long Range Mountains, NL]

Thank you, my friend and colleague. It's always great to see you, and it's been wonderful spending these seven years with you.

First, I want to give a little history lesson. The previous government used to have a rural secretariat, and our government believes in rural so passionately that we now have a fully funded department of which I am honoured and humbled to be the minister.

You're right in that the one-size-fits-all doesn't work in rural and urban. We've developed so many programs and policies all throughout our government in various systems, and the ones that you've touched on are so true, like housing. The housing program of 1,000 units in downtown Toronto is not the same as a rural 10 units in my part of the world, so we need to make sure that the programs are tweaked and actually have that rural lens applied to them.

For transit, as you know, we've just announced a rural transit fund, and I think folks have until the middle of March to get their applications in. Rural transit is different. There's no Uber in my province. I have communities that have no taxis, and I have communities that have no bus service at all, which is typical of rural and remote areas. We need to take our time and develop programs and policies that will be effective to address the needs, especially with climate change, especially for aging communities, but especially for growing our communities. We need to make sure that people see, as I do, that rural has phenomenal opportunities.

I think one thing we've learned from COVID-19 is that people want to move. In your home province of Nova Scotia, you've seen a boom in your population. People are moving to rural areas, so we need to help them build these communities and have a strong, healthy infrastructure, which includes housing, transit, waste water, roads and connectivity. If you have high-speed, affordable Internet, you can work from anywhere. That's the number one priority in my department. That's my number one priority. If you have have high-speed Internet, you can work from anywhere.

I challenge this committee when you're looking at other things to study and peruse to make sure you put a rural lens on it, please.

[Andy Fillmore, Liberal, Halifax, NS]

Thanks for that, Minister, and you've provided a good segue.

Today in question period, you answered a question about the rollout of the rural broadband program. You only had 30 seconds, and I had a feeling you could have used a lot more time. What would you like the committee to know about how that program is going?

[Gudie Hutchings, Liberal, Long Range Mountains, NL]

Thank you again.

You're right. I could go on and on about the universal broadband fund and connecting the country. As I said, since 2015, we've connected 1.7 million households. By 2026, we're going to connect another 1.2 million households.

We have many tools in our tool box, to use my colleague's term. We have the connect to innovate program. We have the CRTC broadband fund. We have the Canada Infrastructure Bank. Of course, we have the universal broadband fund and we have our low-earth orbit satellite. Between all those programs, we are going to get every Canadian connected by 2030 and 98% by 2026.

With the rapid response stream that we put out in response to the pandemic, we knew we had to get people connected. I'm so proud of the department. The first project went out within six weeks. As I alluded to earlier, they have just under 2,000 programs now and applications that they're assessing. We'll make sure that we put on the affordability lens, the best hardware that can be scalable as our speeds go from 50/10 and higher.

I'm proud of the work that's being done. I know that we are going to honour our commitments to get Canada connected, and I hope we can say it before 2030.

[Andy Fillmore, Liberal, Halifax, NS]

Thank you for that, Gudie.

Chair, how am I for time?

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

You have 28 more seconds.

[Andy Fillmore, Liberal, Halifax, NS]

Minister Ng, in 20 seconds, what would you like to say to Canada's small businesses about the work you're doing to ensure their long-term recovery coming out of this pandemic? What's your message to them?

[Mary Ng, Liberal, Markham—Thornhill, ON]

My message to them is to grow and to grow internationally. Don't be afraid to do it.

We have lots of tools in place, from the trade commissioner service to the Business Development Bank of Canada and Export Development Canada. It's what I call the trade tool box. Let's help them and hold their hand to get into those markets.

Those agreements are only good if we can get them growing, and that's our plan. We're going to get them growing.

[Andy Fillmore, Liberal, Halifax, NS]

Thanks so much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Thank you.

Mr. Lemire will now have the floor for two minutes and 30 seconds.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My next question will be for Ms. Ng.

Ms. Ng, as you know, I asked you in the House about the softwood lumber crisis and its impact on the forestry industry in Quebec. Can you quickly tell us more about the current situation and where we're at?

Regarding the matter I talked to you about in Washington, the question of benchmarks, could we distinguish Quebec's benchmarks from British Columbia's, for example? We can agree that the problems we are accused of are not the Quebec industry's problems.

[Mary Ng, Liberal, Markham—Thornhill, ON]

Thank you so much, Monsieur Lemire. It was really terrific to have us in Washington as team Canada, when we were down there before the end of last year, showing Canadian strength and how we are all working together for this very important sector. I know how important this is to Quebec and your riding.

What I would say is that we are going to continue doing that work, but I`ll mention what else we are doing. My mandate is also about creating new markets and helping businesses diversify so that they can look beyond what is a good market south of the border and to new markets.

I think about this really terrific company in Sainte-Thérèse, Quebec. It's a producer of flooring and lumber products. Recently, back-to-back trade shows in Canada and India, through the good help of our trade commissioner service, resulted in an initial purchase and a shipment of rotary-cut veneer in 2020. That's an example of one company. It's important to make it about people, the companies, and what we are really doing.

This study is about my mandate. My mandate is to help our businesses diversify, find those markets and help our businesses—like those really great Quebec businesses in softwood lumber—to find those additional markets and diversify.

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

I do agree and I encourage you on this point, because one of the solutions is to not just send structural lumber, but also to enable the industry to go green by processing or adding value.

In my opinion, this should be done close to the resource, in the regions. I dream of seeing the creation of a Quebec IKEA at La Sarre, for example. Unfortunately, the programs, including Canada Economic Development for Quebec Regions programs, CED programs, are poorly suited to this type of infrastructure in the regions. The three ministers will perhaps enlighten us on this subject.

What is being done to help our businesses get infrastructure and get investment in the regions? For example, in agriculture, Abitibi-Témiscamingue wants a slaughterhouse. Des Praz is a company that can't do business with CED because there are no suitable programs. How can these companies be helped to make this transformation close to the resource?

[Mary Ng, Liberal, Markham—Thornhill, ON]

That's a very good point. Maybe what I'll do is draw your attention to how we're helping businesses, including those in Quebec, to take advantage of those international markets. It's not like they're going to go to Vietnam all of a sudden, for example.

We have this really great program called the trade accelerator program. Almost 1,000 businesses have gone through that. Some 30% of those businesses have seen actual increases in export revenue, and 18% have seen additional revenue growth to their bottom line. They've grown jobs. Half of the exports went to the United States, but they also exported to Latin America, Europe, Africa, the Middle East and the rest of Asia.

There are some other things that are really great about this. Women businesses make up 39%. Young entrepreneurs make up 24%. Visible minority businesses make up 19%. Indigenous businesses make up 4%. When we say that in 2021, GDP in Canada grew by 4.6%, that's because Canada is a trading nation. Trade makes one out of six jobs and two-thirds of our economy.

Helping them grow is absolutely essential. I have numbers—at least initial numbers—that tell us we're on the right track.

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

Thanks to all three of you for being here.