Industry Committee on May 3rd, 2022

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

If I am not mistaken, some measures have been taken in recent years.

[Karl Blackburn]

Yes.

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

However, you say that the measures should be improved. Earlier, your colleague spoke about suspending employment insurance contributions for these workers.

[Karl Blackburn]

That is right.

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

There are elements that could be eliminated. I am an entrepreneur myself, so I know what it costs. All the benefits charged to the employer represent at least 15% of the employee's salary. That is in addition to the salary.

Elements could therefore be eliminated to allow these people to remain at work longer.

[Karl Blackburn]

Yes, absolutely.

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

Okay.

On April 4, if I am not mistaken, Minister Ng announced the launch of the Canada digital adoption program, a federal program aimed at increasing the use of technology in businesses. I don't know whether you saw that, but you said earlier that it was an important element.

Are you aware of that program? If so, has the Quebec Council of Employers examined it?

[Karl Blackburn]

I do not have all the details about that, Mr. Généreux, but there is no doubt that the program, along with specific measures, could be a helpful tool to address the labour shortage. I will ask Mr. Hamel to give a more concrete example because some of the solutions that we proposed are related to training, literacy and increased investment in technology.

For example, unfortunately, we have a literacy problem in Quebec, which hinders technological investments. Thus, in the current context, with specific measures to address this situation, we can achieve very important objectives.

Before turning it over to Mr. Hamel, I will come back to the employment insurance program, Mr. Généreux. The Government of Canada is reviewing the employment insurance program. Given that we have problems related to continuing education and skills, why not make the employment insurance program a continuing education program? That way, when people unfortunately lose their jobs, with employment insurance, they would be required to take training and would keep their skills up to date.

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

That is an excellent idea.

By the way, a reform of the employment insurance program was proposed by the Conservative government over 10 years ago but was forgotten or bombarded with all kinds of negative elements. At the time, the very principle of that reform was to make it easier to match workers with jobs available in the various regions of Canada. Earlier, you in fact were saying that there were more positions available than workers available.

I remember that, at the time, there was talk of a radius of 60 kilometres or less than 100 kilometres to find work. Today, in La Pocatière, teachers at the CEGEP, the Institut de technologie agroalimentaire du Québec, the college and all the other institutions travel 100 kilometres from Quebec City to La Pocatière to work every day. The same is true for employees of Alstom and others.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Excuse me, Mr. Généreux, I know you are on a roll. I didn't want to interrupt you, but all good things come to an end.

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

I will resign from these committees.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

I imagine we'll be able to come back to this topic in other questions.

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

[Iqwinder Gaheer, Liberal, Mississauga—Malton, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to all of the witnesses for making time for the committee.

My first question is for Vivic Research. I just wanted to give you a chance to expand on the comments that you were making in response to Mr. Erskine-Smith's questions.

You mentioned that the way the Competition Act is set up right now, it's like looking at a crystal ball and predicting whether there will be an anti-competitive effect. Is there a replacement system that you have recommended? If there's a problem with that system, then what's better than it?

[Robin Shaban]

I think there's a spectrum of solutions. What I'd like to see from the review of the Competition Act is some deeper thinking on what some of these alternatives could be. This is where my point about stakeholders coming together and finding compromise is really important. We need everyone at the table to sit down and think about how exactly we want to be evaluating anti-competitive conduct.

That's a long way of saying there are lots of potential solutions, but what I'd like to see is our moving more towards a rules-based approach for evaluating anti-competitive conduct.

I don't want to be long-winded, but I will give a quick example. When it comes to evaluating mergers, in Canada you can't say to the Competition Tribunal to please block this merger because it literally creates a monopoly; you need to show that because this merger creates a monopoly, it's going to increase prices. That's just textbook Economics 101. We know that. Why do we need the commissioner of the Competition Bureau to re-invent Econ 101 in front of the Competition Tribunal?

I think integrating things—like if you have a merger to monopoly, it's just blocked outright—is pretty reasonable. That again is more of this rules-based approach to evaluating anti-competitive conduct and its harm. I can see other places where it could also fit in.

I don't have a definitive answer on what I think that would look like today. I think that's for a more open discussion.

[Iqwinder Gaheer, Liberal, Mississauga—Malton, ON]

Great. Thank you.

Just to follow up, I'm thinking back to law school. There are two ways to do things. One side is more of a subjective approach that takes into consideration more characteristics, but it becomes subjective. The other side is a rules-based order, but that can become rigid at times, and certain things will fall through the cracks. Is it a balance that you have to find?

[Robin Shaban]

Yes, I think that we need to restrike the balance. It may have been that in the past the balance that we had before was working. I think that this balance is becoming more challenging, especially in the advent of the digital economy, in particular the impact of big data on companies.

The reason big data is so important is that it can create these competitive advantages that firms in many cases just realistically can't challenge. As a small or medium-sized enterprise, if you're going against a behemoth that has data and can have a bird's eye view of the entire market and essentially swipe you and your customers at any moment because of this data and insight, how do you navigate that? A more rules-based approach may enable the bureau to pre-emptively prevent those sorts of situations from arising, or prevent them from arising in an anti-competitive way.

I think, again, that this balance needs to be restruck, given just the nature of commerce and the evolution of it, particularly over the last few years with digitization.

[Iqwinder Gaheer, Liberal, Mississauga—Malton, ON]

Thank you. I look forward to reading your report.

[Robin Shaban]

Thanks.

[Iqwinder Gaheer, Liberal, Mississauga—Malton, ON]

I want to shift gears a little bit. My next question is for CFIB and Ms. Pohlmann.

We talk about rising commodity prices worldwide. Isn't there a way in which Canadian producers to take advantage of that to their benefit? Supply chains having been disrupted worldwide, and if we can produce some of that stuff here and supply the rest of the world, couldn't that benefit us?

[Corinne Pohlmann]

Certainly, but rising costs impact you either way. It's a matter of being able to actually get out from underneath your debt load, invest in your business and move forward.

I think the nice thing about entrepreneurs and small businesses is that they are innovative and they do try to do what they can to build the business in any way they can. I definitely can see where there can be that advantage, but at the same time, you're also facing all of these other barriers in order to get there, which includes rising prices, inflation, shortage of labour and all of these other things that are affecting them right now—plus the fact that the pandemic has hit so many of them so hard.

There's no doubt there are still opportunities out there. There are going to be many that are going to try to take advantage of those, for sure.

[Iqwinder Gaheer, Liberal, Mississauga—Malton, ON]

Thank you.

Chair, how much time do I have?

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

I'm sorry, Mr. Gaheer. You're out of time.

[Iqwinder Gaheer, Liberal, Mississauga—Malton, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Monsieur Lemire, you have two and a half minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I will address the next question to Mr. Blackburn, from the Quebec Council of Employers.

Quebec is the only province in Canada that is responsible for its own labour policy. An ecosystem has been created with the Government of Quebec, the Quebec Council of Employers, Manufacturiers et Exportateurs du Québec, the Fédération des chambres de commerce du Québec and sectoral workforce committees.

In Quebec, our ecosystem produces all the studies needed to determine labour needs. In my opinion, the labour market impact assessment, or LMIA, is an unnecessary duplication.

Is one solution eliminating these federal LMIAs, which seem to be increasingly inadequate and hinder businesses?