Transport Committee on Nov. 1st, 2016

[Ahmed Hussen, Liberal, York South—Weston, ON]

Yes, absolutely. It strengthens that process, but it does even more. It forces the contractor to consult with the community to make sure they know what the community wants and have a plan in place to not only identify what the community wants but also deliver on those commitments.

[Vance Badawey, Liberal, Niagara Centre, ON]

Great.

How much time do I have left?

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

One minute.

[Vance Badawey, Liberal, Niagara Centre, ON]

Mr. Fraser?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Sure.

I guess I'll ask for some of the different kinds of examples, since we kicked off with a discussion about that. In my community, for example, there is a federally funded project, a great partnership between a local community and the first nations community that gave them great training opportunities and helped them join the workforce. That kind of thing may or may not have happened, but the federal government could not have demanded that before. Is that accurate?

[Ahmed Hussen, Liberal, York South—Weston, ON]

Yes. I'll give you a provincial example and use that to say what the feds can and cannot do.

In Ontario there is a particular project that's all across Toronto. The Eglinton LRT project has a community benefit agreement embedded in it because of the Ontario legislation that demands community benefit agreements to be embedded in infrastructure projects. As a result of that agreement, there is an emphasis on hiring locally, training locally, and trying as much as possible to obtain goods and services locally from the particular community. In this case it's the city of Toronto. It has worked to do that. There is a mechanism in place to make sure we measure that and make sure there is delivery of those commitments.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you very much, Mr. Hussen.

Mr. Weir, you have six minutes.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Thanks very much for having me at the transport committee. The NDP certainly supports public infrastructure spending. We also support leveraging those infrastructure investments to support local jobs and training. I was pleased to speak and to vote in favour of this bill in the House.

In terms of the objectives of the legislation, there is a mention of economic and social benefits. I wonder, if there were a proposal to amend the bill to also mention environmental benefits, if that would that be considered friendly.

[Ahmed Hussen, Liberal, York South—Weston, ON]

On the issue of environmental benefits, my sense is that this has been addressed by another bill that is before Parliament to measure greenhouse gas emissions with respect to different projects and to take into consideration environmental issues locally.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Okay.

I also want to talk about what types of infrastructure projects it would apply to. In your presentation, you indicated that it wouldn't oblige the provinces to do anything, and I believe the parliamentary secretary said it wouldn't affect municipalities, that it's only about federal infrastructure projects.

It strikes me that the vast majority of infrastructure projects involve some combination of federal, provincial, and municipal funding. Are you saying that this bill would only apply to some very narrow subset of infrastructure projects that are purely federal, or would there be some kind of process to consult and collaborate with provincial and municipal governments?

[Ahmed Hussen, Liberal, York South—Weston, ON]

The bill is specifically and strictly about federal spending on infrastructure projects—building and repair projects. That's what this bill is really about. However, when you look at the landscape in the country, community benefit agreements are becoming the norm both in law and in practice.

In fact, what this bill is doing is enshrining community benefit agreements in federal jurisdiction. We just don't have that, although we do have community benefit agreements embedded in projects across the country. This is about the federal government in a sense catching up to other jurisdictions, but also playing that leadership role, because it's the largest spender, the largest entity in Canada that spends on infrastructure.

To answer your second question, nothing prevents the federal government from bringing forward its leadership on this, and hopefully encouraging other jurisdictions to follow suit. However, the bill is strictly on federally funded infrastructure projects.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

To be clear, the bill doesn't even require community benefit agreements for purely federal projects. It says that the minister “may” require them, so, of course, the minister could also try to negotiate them with provinces or with municipalities.

I guess that's what I was looking for some kind of indication on. Is the plan to try to apply community benefit agreements to a large number of infrastructure projects—I think that would be a good thing—or is the plan to say, well, if there's any provincial or municipal involvement, then we're not going to do it?

[Ahmed Hussen, Liberal, York South—Weston, ON]

No, absolutely not.

Again, the minister and the federal government have the discretion to reach agreements with the provinces and municipalities, and they do that all the time. My vision was to make sure that we have a legislative framework to bring, for the first time, community benefit agreements into federal jurisdiction, and that's what I'm doing with this bill.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Now one of the concerns that the NDP has about the Canada-Europe trade agreement that was just concluded, and also the Trans-Pacific Partnership that your government has signed, is that for the first time they really get into provincial and local procurement. Up until now, provincial governments have been able to do these community benefit agreements.

We're wondering whether you're clear that the federal government is going to be able to go ahead with these community benefit agreements and actually enforce them, notwithstanding the trade agreements that it wants to proceed with.

[Ahmed Hussen, Liberal, York South—Weston, ON]

I'll comment on the question on the Trans-Pacific Partnership. In my opinion, nothing stops the government from including community benefit agreements into its contracts when it comes to the TPP. At the end of the day, the contractor is not defined—it could be a foreign or a local contractor—and all that matters is that they deliver the community benefits.

That's my understanding.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Would that be the view of the trade minister as well?

[Ahmed Hussen, Liberal, York South—Weston, ON]

I can't comment on that.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Okay, no problem.

Going back to the objectives of the bill, you've often spoken about a goal of creating jobs and training opportunities for at-risk youth, indigenous people, veterans returning from overseas. I would note that those groups aren't specifically referenced in the text of the bill.

Is there a reason for that, or is that something you might be open to amending?

[Ahmed Hussen, Liberal, York South—Weston, ON]

The reason that is not specifically referenced in the bill is that the bill talks about local job creation. Local job creation depends on the local circumstances of the project. If we're talking about northern Ontario, then you would probably have a first nations component in the analysis for community benefits. It would be a totally different analysis if you're talking about my riding in northwest Toronto, for example. If you start to reference those groups in there, it would be a very long list, and I wanted to be a little bit concise.

Finally, on the issue of groups, I wasn't just talking about this group or that group, but even if you look at the construction industry, women only represent about 4% of the construction industry. That is something that needs to be addressed, and this bill could easily do that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Okay.

Mr. Hardie.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Hussen.

I was there when you visited Vancouver to look into some of the practices there. I know that the City of Vancouver has used these community benefit agreements to increase the number of parks, day care centres, and other facilities. They've been very successful.

I'm just wondering, with the advent of this at the federal scale, if we need to open up some opportunities to take a slightly broader view. There are things that this federal government wants to do. It's pretty activist in terms of meeting greenhouse gas emission targets and getting green and social infrastructure in place instead of just simply looking at a project, a community, and what additional value the project could bring to the community.

Could we not use this model or framework of the benefits to actually ensure we're picking the right project and justifying it? In other words, if we have specific things that we want to do for skills training, indigenous opportunities, or GHG emissions, should we not look at community benefits from that lens and use that as we select the kind of projects and where we want to put them?

[Ahmed Hussen, Liberal, York South—Weston, ON]

When it comes to training—local training, paid training, apprenticeships, and local job opportunities for community members—absolutely. I think this bill emphasizes that, but when you get into looking at this through the lens of the greenhouse emissions that would be emitted by a particular project, I think the bill emphasizes the community identifying its own benefits. I think it would be difficult to fit that into what the community identifies. However, nothing would stop the community from, for example, demanding that the community benefit that they would identify would be a local park that would sort of balance out the environmental degradation that would emanate from a particular project.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

What I'm hearing, in fact, is that you would rather this measure not be overly directive on communities about the kinds of benefits that we would like to see at a national level and basically cede all of the decisions on that to the local municipality.

[Ahmed Hussen, Liberal, York South—Weston, ON]

Yes, to the local community that the infrastructure project would impact.

That local community may be an entire municipality, or it may be smaller or larger, depending on the project itself.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

How do you then coax out the advantages that we are looking for in green infrastructure and social infrastructure? How do you get this out of your bill?