Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Winnipeg for sharing her time with me and for her work on the committee.
I understand from the records that there were over 300 witnesses. One of the issues that seems to have taken up a lot of time in discussion was how to increase Canada's competitiveness in the world. The overwhelming and predominant message from the presenters was that we should look at competitiveness from a broad perspective.
The committee was told that if it were serious about meeting the very real challenge of keeping Canada competitive in the world economy, it must not take a superficial approach by simply equating economic competitiveness with lower corporate taxes and higher profits. It involves wise economic stewardship, with a strong emphasis on investing in people, together with targeted industrial investment, for example, and investment in the environment.
During the week of November 13, I held a series of meetings in Victoria with my constituents, university officials, elected officials and business leaders, in addition to an open town hall meeting that was attended by a large number of citizens. During these meetings, I collected some key recommendations.
The people of Victoria want overwhelmingly what the rest of Canadians want. They do not want the federal government to withdraw from social policy and wise environmental stewardship. Their recommendations and suggestions included: investment in housing options to face the shameful issue of homelessness in cities across Canada; investment in adult literacy programs; reducing post-secondary education student debt; increasing funding for basic research; and putting in place effective programs to tackle climate change.
There were of course specific suggestions, and if I have time I would like to talk about those as well, but in the end, that is what making Canada more competitive really means. That is what our economy should be for: enhancing the quality of life for all Canadians. That is what Victorians want from their federal government.
I would like to start talking about the economy and in particular the role that Canada's human capital plays in keeping our economy strong and sustainable.
Two recent polls show Canadians' strong preference for greater federal investment in post-secondary education. One poll conducted by Decima Research for the Canadian Association of University Teachers and the Canadian Federation of Students reported that 56% of those surveyed preferred reducing tuition fees to the Conservatives' promise to cut the GST by a further one per cent.
Canadians know that tax cuts do not lower tuition and they do not hire new faculty or create new apprenticeships. They understand that focusing only on tax cuts actually impairs the creation of the human capital that makes our economy run. Canadians know that our human capital requires investment.
The second poll released last week by the Canadian Council on Learning showed that 75% of Canadians believe the government does not spend enough on post-secondary education. And they are right. Since the start of the Mulroney years, federal transfers for post-secondary education have plummeted as a percentage of GDP.
Tax cuts do not magically equip Canadians with the skills and knowledge they need to be competitive. The poll done coincided with the Canadian Council on Learning report which concluded that “Canada lacks mechanisms at the national level to ensure coherence, coordination and effectiveness on key priorities, such as quality, access, mobility and responsiveness”.
The council cites a number of countries in Europe that have begun setting national standards dealing with post-secondary funding: how much we want to spend as a country, class size, library holdings, teaching credentials, et cetera.
Canada has neglected to set any such standards. We just do not have a vision for post-secondary education. We are simply out of sync.
In Australia and the United States, individual states, like Canada, regulate higher learning. Yet that has not stopped their federal governments from creating national post-secondary watchdog agencies.
We now know that 70% of jobs require post-secondary education or training and only 44% of Canadians have this much formal schooling. The CEO of the Canadian Council on Learning, Paul Cappon, said, “We can hardly ask the rest of the world to give us a decade to work out our jurisdictional difficulties”.
Canada now ranks 15th among western industrialized countries in spending on research and development as a percentage, for example, of gross domestic product. The post-secondary education sector is still largely designed to respond to the needs of younger learners.
The lifelong learning requirements of many adults are not adequately addressed. Many barriers still exist that make it very difficult for workers to upgrade their skills or attend college or university. The issue of lifelong learning means concrete support and incentives for adult learners, whether in colleges, universities or in the workplace.
Added to the lack of a lifelong learning strategy in the Conservative program is a lack of a skills agenda in Canada. The Conservatives idea of a skills agenda is a set of tax credits for apprentice tools. The skills agenda must facilitate transition from suffering sectors to booming ones. Transition skills training is key, preferably to greener industries. As my colleague mentioned earlier, cut the huge tax cuts, for example, to the oil and gas sector, which is booming, in favour of other sectors that we would like to encourage.
We need the federal government to play an active role in investing in lifelong learning to help workers overcome the barriers to upgrading their skills. We greatly need sector partnerships. Conservatives cut the workplace partners panel, the only forum for business and labour collaboration around workplace training planning.
There are many issues to address. Clearly, the economic benefit of a strong system of learning is understood by Canadians. It is building our human capital, our skills and our knowledge that improves our standard of living, not single minded tax cuts.
I would also like to address the issue of the importance of basic research and the need to invest in research, in the sciences and humanities. Research councils are losing ground compared to inflation, including Canada research chairs. SSHRC, for example, has lower funding than others. Proportionately the amount it gives, I believe, is 14%, by comparison. Social sciences and humanity students are 67% of undergraduate students and 69% of graduate students in Canada.
Relying solely on commercialized research misses the point of research and progress in the public interest. Commercialized research is largely short term. Marketable results are what is important.
There are important research projects that do have commercial implications or that have very long terms, which the government seems to have forgotten. For example, research on climate change at the University of Victoria has not been funded in three years. There has been some federal funding in the past for research projects of national and international importance called the NEPTUNE project, the northeast Pacific time theories undersea network experiments, and VENUS project, the Victoria experimental network under the sea, both at the University of Victoria. They are very important projects that have implications for knowledge, the knowledge that we may gain about what is happening in our oceans, and also development, giving opportunities to scientists and young students in the sciences.
Finally, we need to speak for urban agenda. We need a real deal for cities instead of an improvised ad hoc approach that weakens the extraordinary efforts of local citizens and weakens what cities are trying to achieve in terms of infrastructure.
