FINA Committee Meeting

37th PARLIAMENT, 2nd SESSION

Standing Committee on Finance

EVIDENCE

CONTENTS

Friday, November 7, 2003

¸

1400

The Chair (Mrs. Sue Barnes (London West, Lib.))

Mr. Vincent Rodo (Executive General Secretary, Toronto Transit Commission)

¸

1405

The Chair

Mrs. Kira Heineck (Acting Executive Director, Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care)

¸

1410

The Chair

Mr. James D. Bowman (Vice-President Canadian Tooling and Machining Association)

¸

1415

¸

1420

The Chair

Mr. William Easton (Chair, National Professional Association Coalition on Tuition)

¸

1425

¸

1430

The Chair

Mr. William Easton

The Chair

Mr. William Easton

The Chair

Mr. William Easton

The Chair

Mr. Greg deGroot-Maggetti (Socio-economic Concerns Coordinator, Citizens for Public Justice)

¸

1435

The Chair

Mr. Michael Bach (Executive Vice-President, Canadian Association for Community Living)

¸

1440

¸

1445

The Chair

Mr. Rahim Jaffer (Edmonton—Strathcona, Canadian Alliance)

Mr. William Easton

¸

1450

Mr. Rahim Jaffer

Mr. Greg deGroot-Maggetti

Mr. Rahim Jaffer

The Chair

Mr. Michael Bach

The Chair

Mr. Bryon Wilfert (Oak Ridges, Lib.)

¸

1455

Mr. James D. Bowman

Mr. Bryon Wilfert

Mr. James D. Bowman

¹

1500

Mr. Bryon Wilfert

Mr. James D. Bowman

Mr. Bryon Wilfert

The Chair

Mr. Shawn Murphy (Hillsborough, Lib.)

Mr. Vincent Rodo

Mr. Shawn Murphy

Mr. Vincent Rodo

Mr. Shawn Murphy

Mr. Vincent Rodo

Mr. Shawn Murphy

Mr. James D. Bowman

Mr. Shawn Murphy

The Chair

Ms. Judy Wasylycia-Leis (Winnipeg North Centre, NDP)

¹

1505

Mrs. Kira Heineck

Ms. Judy Wasylycia-Leis

Mr. Greg deGroot-Maggetti

Mr. Michael Bach

¹

1510

The Chair

---

CANADA

Standing Committee on Finance

---

NUMBER 104

l

2nd SESSION

l

37th PARLIAMENT

---

EVIDENCE

Friday, November 7, 2003

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

¸  (1400)  

[English]

    The Chair (Mrs. Sue Barnes (London West, Lib.)): Pursuant to Standing Order 83.1, we are in pre-budget consultations. This is the last panel on Friday, November 7, and the last panel of this year's pre-budget consultations.

    We're very pleased to have with us from the Toronto Transit Commission, Vince Rodo, who is the executive general secretary. We look forward to your comments.

    From the Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care, we have Kira Heineck, who is the acting executive director. Welcome to you.

    The Canadian Tooling and Machining Association is represented by the vice-president, Mr. James Bowman. Welcome.

    We also welcome the National Professional Association Coalition on Tuition, and the chair of that committee is William Easton.

    From the Citizens for Public Justice, Greg deGroot-Maggetti, socio-economic concerns coordinator. Welcome to you, sir.

    We also have the Canadian Association of Community Living. Right now we have the policy analyst, Anna Mcquarrie, with us, and we'll be shortly joined by the executive vice-president, Michael Bach, who will probably be here to make his presentation.

    We'll go ahead with our rounds right now and start with the Toronto Transit Commission for seven minutes. Go ahead, sir.

    Mr. Vincent Rodo (Executive General Secretary, Toronto Transit Commission): Thank you, Chair.

    My name is Vincent Rodo and I'm the general secretary of the Toronto Transit Commission, Canada's largest transit system, and the second largest system in North America behind the massive New York transit system.

    It's an honour to appear before the House of Commons finance committee during these pre-budget consultations in Toronto. Mr. Michael Roschlau, president and CEO of the Canadian Urban Transit Association, CUTA, has, I understand, also appeared before the committee to discuss the overall merits of public transit in Canada and its key role in enhancing the quality of life for mobility, economic vitality, and universal access to jobs, education, and health care.

    I'm here to talk about public transit locally, the challenges facing it, and how the federal government can help specifically in the form of the Canada infrastructure program and in allocation of the federal gas tax dedicated to urban transit.

    The TTC is one of the most visible and important infrastructure components in the GTA. Almost 1.4 million riders use TTC each day. We carry one billion riders every 30 months.

    Before I get into what the TTC would like to see in the next federal budget, I'd like to provide you with a brief history of two recent periods in TTC history. During the 1970s and 1980s, what I like to call the golden age of transit, the population of the city of Toronto, then known as Metropolitan Toronto, grew by 9%. In those same two decades, TTC ridership grew from 275 million rides a year in 1970 to almost 465 million, a 70% increase.

    I'd ask you to think about that for a moment. The population grew by 9% and TTC ridership was up by 70%. Talk about a shift in the reliance of the personal automobile to public transit usage.

    How did we do it? The Yonge subway line was extended north, the Bloor-Danforth line went further east and west, the Spadina subway and the Scarborough RT lines were built, and the TTC's bus fleet was expanded by 70%. We proved that for two full decades, predictable long-term funding, fare increases in line with the rate of inflation, and steady expansion of the system will result in large shifts of commuters from automobile to public transit.

    Now let's look at the 1990s. The recession hit. In 1996 the city of Toronto's employment had fallen by almost 15%. TTC operating subsidies were cut in half. Fares were increased, in real terms, by 50% over the rate of inflation. Large service cuts were made. We reduced our bus fleet by 22% and closed two garages. As a result, ridership fell to 372 million in 1996, almost 90 million riders, or 20% from the 1980s highs. We call this a downward spiral. Transit in Toronto was cheaper for governments, clearly. However, there was and continues to be an awful lot less of it.

    The latter half of the 1990s was somewhat better than the first half. The city of Toronto's employment recovered almost to pre-recession levels. However, TTC's ridership had recovered less than half of what we lost. We are currently running at about 405 million riders annually. So for the decade, the city of Toronto's population grew by 9%, yet TTC ridership was down by 11%. Contrast that to the 1970s and 1980s.

    What's next? That's an excellent question. The City of Toronto's new official plan calls for an 18% growth in the city's population by the year 2031, but virtually no new arterial road capacity is planned during that time.

    How will that happen? The TTC has an answer. We have a three-pronged plan.

    One is maintaining the existing system in a state of good repair to ensure the current service and ridership base is protected, not eroded. All that expansion in the 1970s and 1980s is now in the midst of major replacement and rehabilitation. The original subway line is 50 years old next year. That cost, over a decade, is about $4 billion.

    Two is to undertake a ridership growth strategy to expand bus service, provide more transit priorities, expand commuter parking spaces, provide rights of way for streetcar lines, and construct low-cost bus rapid transit systems. This is all designed to speed up the existing system and add upwards of 45 million to 50 million new riders per year, basically getting us back to where we were in the 1980s. The cost: about $600 million in capital expenditures over a decade and upwards of $80 million a year in ongoing operating costs.

    The third part of the plan is subway expansion. Once again, we want to start on a program of ongoing expansion of the subway system, expanding the Spadina subway to York University, about $1.2 billion, and the Shepherd subway east of Scarborough Town Centre, about $1.7 billion. These have been ranked as the top priorities for the TTC. We'd build them one after another. The cost over the next decade would be in the order of $1.4 billion.

    How do we pay for this? The City of Toronto is committed to pay one third. The Province of Ontario, through its transit renewal fund—Golden Horseshoe Transit Investments Partnership—and the two-cent-per-litre share of the gas tax promised by the new Liberal government, is being counted on for its one-third share. We're hoping we can count on the Government of Canada for the remaining third. We're here for the “new deal for Canada's cities”.

    The TTC has made an application to the Government of Canada under its Canada strategic infrastructure fund. Modernizing Canada's first subway, which is already 50 years old, and saving the streetcar are two key components of this application.

    Another is the maintenance and greening of the bus fleet, utilizing proven and reliable buses. The federal government has already committed to GO Transit and York Regional Transit projects, and we believe these TTC projects are ideal candidates.

    We've worked closely with Transport Canada and Infrastructure Canada's staff on this application and are optimistic of a favourable reply in the near future. One-time funding, however, much appreciated as it is, only provides a partial answer.

    Paul Martin has talked about the new deal for cities and was quoted on September 25, 2003, at the annual Union of B.C. Municipalities convention as saying, “We are going to provide Canadian municipalities with a portion of the federal gas tax.” That's good news for cities and good news for public transit. A share of the gas tax prorated based on ridership across Canada would constitute the kind of sustained, predictable, long-term funding needed for us to try to replicate the successes of the 1970s and the 1980s.

    For the TTC and the City of Toronto, two different paths face us. One provides the TTC with the opportunity to reduce reliance on the personal automobile and help the city achieve its official plan in an economically sustainable, environmentally friendly way. That's the path we hope for.

    The other is one in which the City of Toronto is unable to provide the TTC with the tools to do that job: funding from senior governments isn't available; the TTC is forced to raise fares and cut service to meet its budget; money simply isn't available to keep the existing system in a state of good repair, and as a result ridership plummets; people are forced into their cars, and congestion and pollution choke this city.

    Please make the right choice. Thank you.

¸  (1405)  

    The Chair: Thanks very much. Now we'll go to the Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care. Go ahead.

    Mrs. Kira Heineck (Acting Executive Director, Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care): Thank you for the opportunity to come to speak to you today to present our case for better child care in Ontario.

    The Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care was founded in 1981 to advocate for universally accessible, quality, non-profit, regulated child care in the province of Ontario. Today our membership includes over 500 organizations and individual representatives from many sectors and diverse communities in Ontario.

    Canada remains one of the few highly developed industrialized countries in the world that does not have a federally led, publicly funded child care policy and sustainable child care system. The majority of Canada's young children—we define those as between infancy and 12 years old—have mothers who work out of the home, and the majority of them are still cared for in an unregulated care arrangement. There are only enough licensed and regulated spaces for 12.1% of Canada's children. Many families cannot afford the current costs of using licensed child care, which can cost as much as a year at university.

    Ontario is similarly facing a child care crisis. Child care services are fragmented. There is no coherent system in the province. There simply are not enough child care spaces, high-quality or otherwise, to meet the needs of families with young children. Again, as in Canada, even when quality regulated services do exist, most families cannot afford them.

    In Ontario today, 78% of women with children under 12 are in the workforce. We have almost 2 million children between the ages of zero and two years; however, there are only 173,000 regulated spaces in the province, enough for just under 9% of children under 12. High-quality regulated child care in Ontario can cost anywhere from $7,000 to $10,000 a year per child.

    We also now provincially, in Ontario, spend $160 million less on our annual child care budget than we did in 1995. The provincial government is mainly responsible for this situation. Its funding cuts and policies of downloading child care onto municipalities have been disastrous, but the federal government has also played a role.

    Let's talk for a second about what early childhood education and care is. This is the kind of child care we are advocating.

    Today we have solid research that shows that early childhood education and care, which I'll refer to from now on as ECEC, is good for children, their families, and society. ECEC means providing high-quality services that further children's development, support parents, support women's equality, help reduce poverty, foster social inclusion, and provide equity for diverse groups in society. The most important of these are government-regulated programs in child care centres, nursery schools and kindergartens, and family day care, provided by well-trained and well-paid early childhood educators.

    The child care community is encouraged to know that Paul Martin is increasingly identifying early childhood education as a top priority, and it is our hope that recommendations made across Canada at hearings such as these today will work to support his commitment, both in funding and in progressive policy.

    We are aware of the current social pressures in urban areas and the many priorities they present to governments. But now more than ever, including consideration for both urban and rural communities, the early years are absolutely critical to the development of healthy, secure, productive Canadian citizens. Public opinion favours investing in child care as well.

    Another reason for investing in ECEC is the promotion of lifelong learning opportunities for all Canadians. This is essential to ensuring the success of Canada as a nation and is also supported by volumes of research.

    Getting to a comprehensive, high-quality system of early childhood education and care means providing leadership and working together. Over the last three years, two separate agreements relating to young children and child care have been negotiated by federal and provincial first ministers, and these are important first steps. Regrettably, however, neither of these agreements has led to the progress Canada's children and families need and deserve.

¸  (1410)  

    First of all, there was the early childhood development agreement, signed in 2000. So far $460 million has come to the Province of Ontario, and not one single penny has gone into child care. Almost another $400 million is still scheduled to come.

    Second, we have the multilateral framework on early learning and child care, signed in March of this year. This is a good next step towards getting the right architecture for a national child care strategy, but it did not define the terms of accountability tightly enough, especially in terms of regulation, something for which we have special concern in Ontario. There must be more federal-provincial-territorial responsibility, accountability, and compliance for spending the money as intended on direct care in provincially and territorially regulated early learning and child care programs and services. Also, the funding levels and transfer arrangements announced for the next five years fall dramatically short of what is really needed to finally start building a pan-Canadian child care system.

    In Ontario we're hopeful that our current change in government will benefit ECEC, and though we have already started to work with the new Liberal government and anticipate a productive consultative relationship, we need the added voice of a strong federal government, setting the stage with progressive policy legislation and budget commitments.

    So to that end, we support the recommendations made before you already by the Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada, our national partner, and our many other sister organizations across the country. There are five recommendations outlined in the brief, but I'll draw your attention to three for now.

    One, commit increased funding to child care. We support reaching the European Union recommended goal of 1% of GDP, which is an eventual goal of $10 billion a year. For this year we stand with our other organizations in calling for a $1 billion investment, working towards, at the end of the first mandate, $4.5 billion a year. You'll recognize that as something already recommended by your own social policy committee.

    Two, provide federal leadership in developing a federal-provincial-territorial social policy framework with licensed and regulated child care as the cornerstone of Canada's family friendly policies.

    And three, require provincial and territorial governments receiving designated federal funds to spend them directly on improving and increasing access to affordable, quality, regulated, not-for-profit, universal, and inclusive child care.

    A comprehensive system of ECE services can only exist in Ontario if all the players work together. The federal government must play a leadership, policy, and funding role and put in place a national strategy. Most governments in most modern nations have already made early childhood education and care a priority. Every child has the right to grow up in a safe and healthy environment where her or his potential can fully develop. It is the shared responsibility of parents, governments, and society to provide these environments. We all benefit when that happens.

    Thank you.

    The Chair: Thank you.

    Now we'll go to the Canadian Tooling and Machining Association. Go ahead, sir.

    Mr. James D. Bowman (Vice-President Canadian Tooling and Machining Association): Thank you.

    I would like to begin by thanking the committee for inviting the Canadian Tooling and Machining Association to address you once again regarding our concerns for the cost of apprenticeship training borne by employers in Canada.

    We welcome this opportunity to share with you information and offer our input into how the federal government can end the systemic shortage of skilled tradespeople in Canada. I know you've had a very long week and I'll try to keep it as short as possible.

    Our proposal, “Making a Case for Apprenticeship TrainingTax Credits”, revision 5, which was presented for the first time to this committee on November 6, 2002, is national in scope and envelops all accredited apprenticeship training across the country, not just those in the metalworking trades.

    Since our last presentation to you, employers who train skilled tradespeople in Ontario have had some very good news. In its 2003 budget the Government of Ontario announced it would be implementing a program of apprenticeship tax credits for those who train skilled tradespeople. Corporations and unincorporated businesses in Ontario will be eligible for a 10% refundable tax credit for eligible expenditures in respect of apprentices in qualified skilled trades. The tax credit would be increased to 15% for businesses with a payroll cost of not more than $400,000. An employer would be eligible for a tax credit of up to $250 per month per apprentice to a maximum of $6,000 over a 24-month employment period. Although this tax credit represents only 5% of the total cost in training a tool and die maker in Ontario, CTMA would like to applaud the Province of Ontario for seeing the wisdom in such a tax incentive program. We look forward to working with that government on expanding the program once positive results are realized.

    The financial cost in training an apprentice is great. A third-party study released last fall that was initiated and funded by Human Resources Development Canada, entitled “The Cost of Apprenticeship Borne by Employers”, conducted by R.J. Sparks Consulting Inc. and WGW Services Ltd., estimated that the net cost to an employer for training a tool and die apprentice is $125,910 over a four-year period. The majority of these costs are front-end-loaded and are incurred solely by the employer. The study also found it takes an average of five years for an employer to fully realize a return on this training investment. The amount of the tax credit initiated by the Government of Ontario only represents 5% of these costs to the employer.

    In 2002 the Minister of Human Resources Development Canada, the Honourable Jane Stewart, committed $6 million towards a national program that would increase awareness of skilled trades to Canada's youth and underemployed. The problem with the program, we believe, is that there is no longer a lack of awareness or a problem with social attitudes pertaining to the skilled trades. As a matter of fact, we believe the majority of Canadians recognize that skilled trades offer an above-average income as well as job security. Our members across the country are bombarded regularly by Canadians in all walks of life looking to start an apprenticeship. Most receive several résumés a week from qualified applicants.

    If private industry needs skilled tradespeople and there are ample numbers of Canadians willing to enter the skilled trades, why isn't this happening? Quite simply, it's because those companies that do train cannot afford to train any more than they currently do. Adding to this problem is the fact that companies that do not train skilled tradespeople poach from those that do. This represents a very substantial loss to the company that provided the training to the skilled individual. The company that poaches can afford to offer higher wages and benefits due to the savings of not training.

    Apprenticeship training is the third pillar of our educational system. In an apprenticeship the employer provides 90% of the training and our college system provides 10%. Currently, a company that trains skilled tradespeople does not have a vehicle for recovering any meaningful amount of these costs incurred by training, yet the college segment of the apprenticeship process is subsidized by educational funding. If the government is willing to subsidize private colleges and universities in their role in apprenticeship training, then why is it not willing to help those who provide the vastly greater part of the trades and life skills learned and also incur the greater part of the cost?

¸  (1415)  

    The apprenticeship system is the only educational system in Canada that has the students contributing to the federal income tax system while receiving their education. When completed, the newly skilled tradesperson has a higher employability, as well as having a higher standard of living. On the other hand, students following a more academic approach to learning employable skills do not have the same level of employment certainty and do not contribute to the tax base.

    To summarize the proposal put forth by the CTMA, we believe that in order to stimulate an increase in apprenticeship training across Canada, an incentive program must be administered under the federal Income Tax Act. This would provide encouragement to firms that are not currently training to do so, and it would act as a stimulus at the corporate level of Canadian companies to encourage them to increase the number of apprentices in training.

    The CTMA believes that any company that trains as part of a provincially accredited apprenticeship program should be entitled to a federal tax credit of up to 75% of the apprentice's basic wage during each taxation year. This would provide an appropriate recovery of some of the costs incurred by that training. The federal tax revenue from the increase in individuals employed, as a result of this proposal, would quickly return the initial investment to the federal government and provide a sound foundation for future income tax.

    It would help Canada to remain competitive in the global economy because companies invest in countries where there's a wealth of skilled people. It would be an investment in the long-term goal of sustaining our skilled trades. It would be an investment in Canadians, in our youth, as well as helping to raise our standard of living.

    I want to thank you for your time and attention.

¸  (1420)  

    The Chair: Thank you very much.

    While you were talking I did get an e-mail. I'll only let my colleagues know that the House stands adjourned until November 17, which means we will start to write later this weekend, unless it prorogues.

    All I'm saying is that we didn't know what would happen today, so I might as well share that with you.

    We will go ahead with the next presentation, the National Professional Association Coalition on Tuition, which is something we've heard about.

    Mr. William Easton (Chair, National Professional Association Coalition on Tuition): Thank you, Madam Chair and distinguished members of the committee.

    Members of the National Professional Association Coalition on Tuition are pleased to once again have this opportunity to present to you our views on Canada's fiscal priorities, with regard to post-secondary education and undergraduate professional programs in particular.

    NPACT is committed to the principle that all Canadians should have access to a professional education and cost should not be a major deterrent. We also firmly believe that Canada's professionals should be as diverse as the Canadian population they ultimately serve. Third, we believe that exorbitant student debt loads may have a detrimental effect on not only new graduates themselves, but on Canadians' access to their services in the future.

    I'll address these issues in more detail within my presentation.

    NPACT is a unique and diverse group of national professional associations. Our members include such well-respected organizations as the Canadian Bar Association, the Canadian Dental Association, and the Canadian Nurses Association, as well as the Canadian Medical Association, among others. In total, we represent the professions of law, dentistry, medicine, nursing, pharmacy, physiotherapy, and veterinary medicine, all of which have been targeted with tuition fee deregulation or significant fee escalation over the past several years.

    There are several key messages we wish to bring to your attention today, and they are as follows.

    A post-secondary professional education must be accessible to all Canadians. NPACT urges the federal government to increase targeted funding to post-secondary institutions to help offset some of the pressures that are driving tuition fee increases.

    As the federal government outlined in its 2002 innovation strategy, we also believe that access to post-secondary education is a priority for this country. We'd like to highlight that when we use the word “accessible”, we are not using it in the context of sufficient program enrollment or participation rates, nor by simply the availability of financial support such as loans. Ensuring access is more about who is not in post-secondary studies rather than who is. It also means ensuring that, as much as possible, a cross-section of Canadians is represented in the programs.

    NPACT believes that high tuition fees are one of the key forces that may influence access. For example, Canada's undergraduate university students are paying on average 7.4% more in tuition fees this year than last--the biggest increase in four years and more than double the average of $1,464 in 1990-91. Compulsory fees have also increased, varying from $302 in New Brunswick to $694 in Ontario.

    While these figures are disconcerting, they're not nearly as significant as tuition fee increases in professional programs.

    Ontario undergraduate tuition fees in medicine almost tripled between 1997-98 and 2003-04, from an average of $4,900 to over $14,000, not including additional compulsory fees.

    Dentistry students in Saskatchewan faced the highest average increase in Canada this year, at 55.1%, and pay the highest average annual tuition in Canada, at over $30,000.

    The first-year tuition fee at the U of T law school is $16,000 this year and is expected to increase to $22,000 per year within the next three years.

    Current national average tuition fees in dentistry increased by about 21.% from last year to $11,700, while law programs face a 19.4% increase from last year and it is 16.7% in medicine.

    Other professional program tuition fees across the country this year have also reached unprecedented levels.

    Now that I've highlighted the significant increases in tuition fees in undergraduate and professional programs across the country, I'd like to focus for a moment on the issue of parental savings towards their children's education.

    A study conducted by Statistics Canada found that while the vast majority of Canadian parents hope their children will get some form of college or university education, more than half of these parents have not set aside savings for this purpose. The study also found that the gap between aspirations and savings behaviour was widest in households at the lower end of the income scale.

¸  (1425)  

This finding leads us to the rather unsettling conclusion that if most Canadian families have not saved for their children's post-secondary education, they are not saving for their children's extended studies or second-entry professional programs either.

    This means an increased burden on students, particularly those from low-income families, to finance their education through debt. It is also important to note that fear of excessive debt may influence individuals from low-income families, including aboriginals and others, to not pursue a professional career at all.

    Ultimately, it could erode efforts to ensure that Canada's professionals reflect the diverse society they serve. It could also perpetuate exclusivity among professions such as law where the current composition is already significantly homogeneous.

    As a consequence of the factors I've just highlighted, today's generation of professional program students are graduating with massive debt loads. This leads me to NPACT's second key message, which is that financial assistance currently available to professional program students is insufficient to meet their needs.

    NPACT urges the federal government to increase financial aid to students to reflect increases in tuition fees and other financial needs of professional program students.

    Members of NPACT acknowledge and commend the government for approving in its last budget a number of measures to improve the Canada Student Loans Act beginning in 2003-04. However, much still needs to be done to meet the real needs of students.

    Students in professional program studies have financial needs that are normally different, and much greater, from others. In addition to enormous increases in tuition fees, these include debt acquired from a prior prerequisite degree or post-secondary studies; limited or no ability for family to provide extended financial support; significant cost of books, instruments, and other materials; costs incurred in having to live away from home to attend their studies; and limited or no ability to earn income while in school.

    At this point I'd like to focus on the current government student loan system and its inability to meet the needs of professional program students, using an undergraduate medical student's financial needs as an example.

    For the 2003-04 academic year, the first-year tuition and compulsory fees for a student attending medical school in Ontario averages $15,294. This does not include the expense of books or instruments, which can be significant. This also does not cover costs for the basic necessities of life, food, accommodation, and so on.

    Using only the average tuition and compulsory fee of $15,200, the maximum government loan availability—federal and provincial combined—results in a substantial loan shortfall of over $5,900 for a 34-week study period. That works out to $700 a month, based on tuition and compulsory fees only, not including books, supplies, food, rent, and other living expenses.

    As you can see from this example, the student loans program in this country falls significantly short of many professional students' actual financial needs. This is further supported by a recent study commissioned by the Canadian Millennium Scholarship Foundation, which found that more than 70% of post-secondary students financed their education through debt, and that stagnant loan limits have created serious problems of unmet needs among certain groups of students.

    According to the foundation, these findings beg the question, do our student financial aid programs have the right clients, and are we providing them with appropriate support? The answer is a resounding no.

    The negative by-product of insufficient financial support, coupled with exorbitant tuition fees, is high student debt load, which leads me to the third issue. High debt load may have a negative downstream impact on professional services provided to the Canadian public. This includes the consequences of debt on, among other things, students' choice of practice specialty and practice location.

    While members of NPACT acknowledge that recipients of a post-secondary education enjoy a number of positive individual benefits, we believe that the individual cost of this investment has become unfairly burdensome. The significant increase in professional program tuition fees over the last several years has rapidly outpaced the rate of inflation. Government assistance has been unable to meet students' financial needs, thereby creating the need for students to rely on high interest sources of credit that make their debt load worse.

¸  (1430)  

    The Chair: Your time has expired. Do you want to make a closing sentence?

    Mr. William Easton: Yes.

    The Chair: Go ahead.

    Mr. William Easton: Government has already identified the need to strengthen access to post-secondary education. We need to have this government take steps to ensure that a professional education is accessible to all Canadians.

    The Chair: Thank you.

    I'm not sure if I could have attended the law school I did at these tuition rates.

    Mr. William Easton: I wouldn't have made it to med school.

    The Chair: Okay, let's go to the Citizens for Public Justice. Go ahead.

    Mr. Greg deGroot-Maggetti (Socio-economic Concerns Coordinator, Citizens for Public Justice): Thank you, Madam Chair, and members of the committee.

    Citizens for Public Justice is pleased to be able to participate again in these pre-budget consultations.

    I just want to start by sharing with you a couple of recent headlines that struck me. One was the announcement from the finance minister that the surplus this year turned out to be higher than expected at $7 billion, rather than the $3 billion that was projected. Around the same time, the Canadian Association of Food Banks released its annual hunger count. They reported that, again, in 2002, food bank use in Canada has grown in Canada by 5.5%.

    Actually, neither of those announcements is news, because for six years we've been hearing the same thing—that the budget surplus has been higher than expected and that food bank use has continued to increase.

    The other day, as I was helping out at my children's grade school, just around Thanksgiving time, I noticed a display they had set up where they were collecting food for the Thanksgiving food drive for the food bank of Waterloo region. In the region where I come from, every year about the same time we have a big parade for Oktoberfest. I don't know if you've ever been to Kitchener for Oktoberfest, but I invite you to come. It's become a tradition for the parade to start with an 18-wheeler driving down King Street with a whole bunch of volunteers collecting food for the food bank. The parade ends in the same way.

    A few nights later I was lying in bed thinking about this, and I turned to my wife and asked her to tell me whether when she was in school they had food drives every Thanksgiving. I had to ask her, because I grew up south of the border and we did. We always had to do food drives and things like that. She said, no, she didn't recall that. I've asked other folks if they did food drives when they were in school and they don't have the recollection of doing this.

    I find that really remarkable, because if you think back to after the Second World War, our parents and our grandparents worked very hard to build a social security system and an economy in Canada that would make sure that the extremes of poverty, homelessness, and hardship they knew during the Great Depression would be history. It's remarkable that in 20 years things could have gone so far backwards.

    At Citizens for Public Justice, we're actually celebrating our fortieth anniversary this year. So we've participated in a number of pre-budget consultations. In the past, during the era of deficit cutting, we cautioned that we need to be careful about the way in which we go about reducing the deficit. At the time, we put forward proposals that we felt were realistic, that would enable us to reduce the fiscal deficit without creating an even larger social deficit.

    Unfortunately, our advice wasn't taken, to put it briefly. But I'm happy to say that the federal government, along with the provinces and territories, I think, has begun to take some important steps to reverse that trend. I want to mention, first of all, the work this committee did in the report last year, which included a far greater emphasis on the need to address social investment in Canada than has existed for a number of years. I was glad to see, as were the members of Citizens for Public Justice and those with whom we work, that many of those recommendations were picked up in the federal budget.

    More needs to be done. What we would like to suggest and what we recommend to the committee this year and to the government is that the government move forward on all of those initiatives that were started. We point out in particular the amount of funding for affordable housing. It's positive that the federal government has gone back into the field of contributing toward building affordable housing, but much more needs to be done in this area.

    I would echo the recommendations that Ms. Heineck and the Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care have put forward. The announcement of investments in early learning and child care is a very significant step forward for Canada. Much more needs to be done, including increasing the investment and ensuring it goes to high-quality early learning child care.

¸  (1435)  

    On the national child benefit and the Canada child tax benefit, significant progress has been made in building up that Canada child tax benefit. We encourage the government to continue to build a mature child tax benefit.

    The other thing I would note is around the announcement that created a Canada social transfer and a Canada health transfer out of the Canada health and social transfer, and here I would echo the comments of Mr. Easton and the National Professional Association Coalition on Tuition. This is an issue that Citizens for Public Justice has identified: rising tuition costs and the fact that, first of all, it excludes many people from getting post-secondary education, and for many who do get post-secondary education, they enter their family formation years with crushing debt.

    So we would encourage the federal government to increase funding for post-secondary education, and also to take this moment of creating the Canada social transfer and turn it into something more than just an accounting exercise of figuring out how much money is left over from the Canada health transfer that would go for the Canada social transfer. We really need, as a country, to focus on how we are going to build a strong assurance of basic social security for all people so that we can end the need for food drives and for people to have to go to food banks to meet their needs or line up at soup kitchens.

    If you think about it, Canada is one of the richest countries in the world of all time. It's not like we've gone backwards economically. It's quite a scandal that many of our neighbours can't even put food on the table, that mothers go hungry at the end of the month so their children won't go hungry, and that children themselves suffer.

    I don't want to leave on that note because I think there are many positive things that can be done. The committee has made good recommendations in the past. We encourage you to recommend to the government to build on the investments that have been made and for the government to follow through on those investments.

    Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.

    The Chair: Thank you very much. The final panellist this morning is the Canadian Association for Community Living. Go ahead, Mr. Bach.

    Mr. Michael Bach (Executive Vice-President, Canadian Association for Community Living): Thank you, Madam Chair and members of the committee, and my apologies for arriving here late. Thanks also for agreeing to shift us from yesterday.

    You have our brief. I'd like to just highlight a few items in there in my comments this afternoon and talk specifically about some recommendations for the short term, for the medium term, as well as some recommendations around the machinery of government. And I'll come back to those comments in a moment.

    The Canadian Association for Community Living is a national federation of over 400 local associations for community living, 13 provincial-territorial associations, and our national association. Our aim and mission is to represent people with intellectual disabilities, and their families, and to advance their inclusion in all aspects of Canadian society.

    Our brief points to four key areas that we're recommending to this committee and to the government to take forward in the upcoming budget, to build on what we think was a really major and significant step in the last budget, the introduction of the child disability benefit. And we're thankful to the committee for having supported the recommendation for that. We think it's really a huge step. Actually, with the provisions now in the disability tax credit, it means we have a universal system of support for parents who are raising children with disabilities. So it's a huge step. And of course there's also much to be built upon, but at least it's there to be built upon.

    One of the areas we point to in our brief is the need to support families raising a child with a disability or supporting a family member with a disability, and we point to a number of directions that could be pursued in this respect. We're recommending, as a priority, building on the compassionate leave provision in EI that was introduced last year, and, again, we see this as a really important piece of social policy architecture in this country. It recognizes that families and unpaid caregivers are the front line of support.

    In terms of both the children's agenda and the supporting families' agenda, we're recommending that.... This could be looked at in a number of ways. One way to look at it is that we might extend that provision to families who are raising a child with a severe disability or who meets severe disability under the eligibility of the disability tax credit. The problem with that provision as it stands now is that it doesn't address the majority of unpaid caregivers. If the person you're supporting is gravely ill or dying, that's a significant reason for providing this provision, but there are many families who are supporting an individual who has the same needs in terms of severity of disability, yet may not be gravely ill or dying. In terms of the impact on the unpaid caregiver, other than the emotional impact possibly, it's the same kind of demand on care. But I don't think this provision was introduced to support the emotional needs of the family member because someone was gravely ill or dying.

    I think we really need to look at the coherence of that policy provision and look at how we might begin to expand it. If we started with children and unpaid caregivers of children with severe disabilities, we're looking at, in the recent post-census survey, 66,000 children with severe disabilities in this country. So in terms of expanding the provision, if that was the target we're looking at, we don't have the data to know how many of those children have a parent or two parents who are working full-time in the paid labour market. But that might be one way of beginning to cut an expanded provision. We see that as one of the short-term pieces that could be explored.

    Frankly, we think that while it's an important step, the provision as it stands just isn't going to be coherent from a policy perspective. How do you determine who is gravely ill and dying for the purposes of this provision, and how do you appeal it if someone doesn't die for some reason?

    The next piece we highlighted was the community transition fund, and I want to point out here again that we're talking about 12,000 people with intellectual disabilities still in institutions. As a result of investments by the government in the middle and late nineties, we learned a lot about how to close institutions in this country and transition people out. One of the key things we learned is that transition dollars are needed. You need to support an institutional capacity while you build community capacity.

    We think an investment in the community transition fund could be attached with a city's agenda or a community's agenda, much like the homelessness initiative, to really support the capacity of communities to come together to figure out how to transition people out of the warehouse situations they're in.

¸  (1440)  

    Again, we would recommend an additional $5 million just to get that initiative off the ground and to create the partnerships and transition plans to support that population. Certainly the community supports would have to be picked up by the provincial and territorial levels of government, but the federal government could make an investment for the transition.

    On the employment front, while the recent multilateral framework agreement on employability for persons with disabilities is an important step--we have an agreement on public reporting across the provinces, territories, and the federal government--we think that in terms of really moving the employment agenda forward there needs to be an investment of $150 million to $200 million in that agreement. It has not been increased in the last number of years, and now that we have a coherent framework agreement, we think it's time to make another investment.

    As well, we're suggesting that the federal government should become a model employer for people with disabilities, in crown corporations and those federally regulated. We're seeing more people with disabilities leave the paid labour market than enter it. While it's clear that a comprehensive labour market agreement has not been able to be worked out with the provinces and territories, the federal government could show leadership within its own sector.

    Finally, disability support is a key item. And I don't think this is short term; I think it's going to be longer term. The reality is that whether we're talking about a lifelong learning agenda, a post-secondary education agenda for people with disabilities, an employment agenda, a training agenda, or a child development and children's agenda in this country, none of them will work without increased and enhanced supports to people with disabilities.

    We've been hearing about the Canada social transfer. We think, again, this is an ideal opportunity to look at how we could create either a designated transfer fund, much like the early learning and child care funds, or employability assistance for people with disabilities. That would be another example. Provinces are saying they cannot move forward on this agenda without increased investment by the federal government. Now, take that how you will, but that's the reality....

    I'm finished? Okay.

    Thank you.

¸  (1445)  

    The Chair: Thank you.

    Mr. Jaffer, go ahead. You have up to six minutes.

    Mr. Rahim Jaffer (Edmonton—Strathcona, Canadian Alliance): Thank you, Madam Chair.

    Thanks to all of the presenters this afternoon. You gave us some very useful information. Unfortunately, having only six minutes, it will be hard for me to really get through much of it and ask a lot of questions, but I'll do my best to address some of the areas where I had questions come to mind.

    Mr. Easton, on the issue of rising university tuition for professional designations, this is a significant problem we're faced with. We have to look at ways for at least the federal government to try to coordinate better, I know, because that is still a big challenge, how to coordinate education issues from the federal government down to the provincial level.

    One of the things I would like to get your feedback on is with regard to offsetting rising tuition. I'm wondering whether you or your organization have thought about what amount of investment we would have to consider at the federal level to try to offset those fees. I know we would have to try to coordinate that, as you've suggested, with the provinces, but do you have an idea of what dollar value we're looking at as a form of investment? I don't know whether or not you've thought of that, but I thought I'd ask anyway.

    Alongside that, one of the things I think we could do almost immediately, from the federal government's position, is look much more at what could be done on the student loans side. It seems to me that in trying to work with the provinces to direct more funding attention toward post-secondary institutions in that area, if we had a more flexible loans system--for instance, looking at a student in the current situation, perhaps we could increase the size of a loan and then show, more importantly, more flexibility in terms of loan payback at the end, perhaps on an income-contingent basis or something along those lines--then at least we wouldn't be leaving out those people who potentially could be getting into these professional programs but who are having to wait until something can be done more effectively to get that money directly to post-secondary institutions to cut tuition.

    I'd just like to hear your thoughts on those issues.

    Mr. William Easton: Thank you.

    Let me respond to your second point first. I think flexibility, at least at this point in time, is going to be absolutely critical. One of the things that NPACT has put forward as one of its principles is the requirement that students' financial resources be proportionate to the level of tuition they are paying. So the flexibility should be in the repayment end of the scale, but I think it has to be tied, in some measure, to the actual costs the student is facing--tuition, books and instruments, living expenses, and so on.

    Clearly, there is at this point, at least, and I suspect for the foreseeable future, a huge disconnect between an undergraduate arts degree and dentistry in Saskatchewan. So it's going to have to be tied to the actual costs the student is paying, and I'm pleased to hear that the government is prepared to move on revamping the financial aid programs immediately. The entire loan structure for post-graduate secondary education in this country is, dare I say, dangerously out of date, and it needs to be looked at in terms of the current reality, the numbers that people are actually paying.

    With regard to the first point you made, we do not have a number in mind, for the simple reason that the numbers vary widely across the country. First-year medical tuition with associated mandatory expenses at the University of Toronto is in the order of $16,000; at McGill it's more in the range of $3,500. That's partly because Quebec has mandated control over all tuition programs.

    So we don't have a number, but we do have a need for government support of research to target these issues and come up with the data through HRDC or StatsCan, both of whom we have been approaching and working with to a certain extent, as well as the Millennium Scholarship Foundation people.

    I think you need the numbers. I think we need the numbers. I think we should work together to try to get them.

¸  (1450)  

    Mr. Rahim Jaffer: I appreciate that.

    Mr. Maggetti, I didn't get a chance to look closely at your brief, but I know you spoke specifically about the child tax benefit. You may have included what I think you called the mature-child tax benefit.

    Did you determine what that should be in your brief? I didn't have a chance to see it. It may have been in there.

    Mr. Greg deGroot-Maggetti: Yes.

    We're recommending that the child tax benefit, when it's completed, reach $4,400 for the first child--the same recommendation as has come forward from Campaign 2000 and the Caledon Institute. That's the figure that's been deemed to be a mature-child benefit.

    Mr. Rahim Jaffer: Okay, I appreciate that clarification.

    I don't know how much time I have; I don't think I have much, but, Mr. Bach, if I could ask you on that same issue, I know that families with children with disabilities sometimes face high costs when raising their children, and the costs vary depending on the severity of the disability. I became a little more familiar with some of the issues when people came to my office with a great amount of stress from the challenges they had to go through in the whole process of reapplying for the tax credit. I thought it was just incredible.

    What can we do, what advice can you give us, to look at ways to be more flexible on that disability tax credit when it comes to trying to take into consideration the reality of the costs people face, because obviously it's much different--

    The Chair: Mr. Jaffer, let's get an answer before there's no time, okay? Let's leave some time to answer.

    Mr. Michael Bach: In terms of flexibility, the reality is the federal government can do only so much with the tax system in terms of responding to the support needs of people with disabilities and their families. It's really a blunt instrument. It can't respond to the diversity and variability, which is why people get stressed out. So I see the tax system as providing a floor, through both the disability tax credit--if we could make it refundable, it would be better, obviously--and the child disability benefit.

    That's why we need the federal government to make an investment at the provincial and territorial levels, because it's there that you have the planning and coordination systems in place, where you can figure out how to bring community supports, disability supports, and family supports together. It's really at the local and community levels that more detailed work needs to be done.

    It's terrific that the federal government is building the architecture in a tax system. But again, it's blunt; it's base.

    The other instrument we need is a transfer or an investment to the provinces to provide the resources for a more flexible approach. It could be through a transfer, or the federal government might take up the income side, much like the child benefit--because 30% of the welfare roll is people with disabilities--and release those dollars on the provincial end for the provinces to reinvest, if you could get reinvestment agreements.

    So much like we have on the children's side, we might look at the federal government taking up the income piece for people with disabilities, or a significant portion of it, and releasing the dollars that way. That way you don't have to enter another open-ended transfer agreement and the feds would have a direct relationship with people with disabilities.

    The Chair: Thank you.

    Mr. Wilfert, please. You have six minutes.

    Mr. Bryon Wilfert (Oak Ridges, Lib.): Thank you, Madam Chairman.

    I think the next time we do these, if we do them again, I'd like us to put a dollar up on the wall, or a pie chart, and say this is where generally the money is going, and then ask everyone who comes here how they would reallocate the money, because, quite frankly, I guess $100 million doesn't go as far as it used to. The word I keep hearing is $1 billion, from practically everybody who has shown up in the last while.

    Quite frankly, we don't have $1 billion. In fact, the $7 billion you referred to was for last year, 2002-03. This year it's $2.3 billion, and with the Prime Minister's announcement it will probably be less than $300 million.

    So obviously reallocation within the federal $180-billion budget that we have is going to be extremely important. But it also seems to me, regarding the federal government, that I keep hearing about leadership, policy, and money. From the provinces, I hear implementation and money. They have the same fiscal capacity as the Government of Canada, and don't let them tell you otherwise; they do. In fact, I'd say they have more than we have, yet they are always failing to do the things that need to be done, it seems.

    On the TTC, the Prime Minister’s caucus task force on urban issues has recommended a national transportation strategy. Obviously we have to look at the appropriate math.

    The gas tax...I'm kind of fed up with talking about it. As a former FCM president, I never supported it. I still don't support it without the proper mechanisms to get it to municipal governments. Quebec does not allow that, so that's our first stumbling block. What we do for one area of the country we'll have to do for the other.

    The Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care said $10 billion over 10 years. You know, one of the things that I think we have to look at is maybe something like the five principles for health care and having a real hammer. If we're going to in fact develop a strong national policy and principles on this particular issue, we need to know that the provinces are putting that money where it's supposed to go. That's why I favour splitting it up into silos for post-secondary education--to answer one of the issues here--and social services.

    On housing, we're not getting it. I don't agree to give a nickel more to anybody until the money we have put on the table is utilized. When Nova Scotia puts 15 units on the table, it's a disgrace. When Ontario sits around and puts up municipal rather than provincial dollars, it's unacceptable.

    To the Canadian Tooling and Machining Association, I very strongly agree on the issue of apprenticeship. I'm not sure I heard in your presentation, though, on this federal tax credit of up to 75%, how much this is going to cost generally. What ballpark? How many, roughly, are you looking at in terms of apprentices going through? What would be the impact on the national treasury?

¸  (1455)  

    Mr. James D. Bowman: That's a very good question. The way we look at this is that of the entire apprenticeship program, the people who are putting in the vast majority of the cost and the content of the education are absorbing all these costs without any kind or a very minimal amount of assistance, yet the academic process is subsidized.

    The Canadian Tooling and Machining Association runs a program called Moulding Youth for Industry. This is a program for which we're being honoured next week at a gala for the Yves Landry Foundation. This is a program that runs in Windsor and in the Kitchener-Waterloo area. It's a pre-apprenticeship program. We're doing it in cooperation with HRDC.

    Mr. Bryon Wilfert: As you know, we didn't do a labour market agreement with Ontario, with the last government, for many obvious reasons. I do believe many of the unions, whether they're tool and die, the plumbers, or others, have great colleges or the schools to deal with, and I think dealing directly with many of those, as the drywallers particularly have, I know, and will continue to do, would be very useful.

    But I'm always interested, because as a parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Finance, when I go and talk to him about some of these presentations, if I tell him we have $1 billion.... Where? How much? What program?

    Mr. James D. Bowman: Perhaps I could finish my answer on the other point.

    This program is very successful. We have kids and the underemployed who are trying to enter into this program. We cannot find employers who will pick them up because they don't want to pick up the extra cost.

    Your second question was about the centre. There is one that was opened this year in Windsor called the Ford Centre for Excellence. It's at St. Clair College. It's an excellent facility. It's also in cooperation with some private industry.

    When we put out the 75%, it was only a proposal.

¹  (1500)  

    Mr. Bryon Wilfert: You'd like to see my dollar up on the wall there, so you could figure that one out.

    Mr. James D. Bowman: Exactly.

    Mr. Bryon Wilfert: In the last two presentations, a coherent policy approach is what I got out of your message. You talked about compassionate leave, but then you talk about all these other issues. You talked about extending coverage of the Canada Pension Plan issue and that type of thing.

    I think that is one of the things that we seriously need to do. Again, we have to get the buy-in from the provinces. That's where you could come in to help us out.

    The Chair: We're over time.

    I'm going to go to Mr. Murphy.

    You could incorporate some of your comments into Mr. Murphy's time. That's fine. I can't run this meeting over. People have planes to catch.

    Mr. Shawn Murphy (Hillsborough, Lib.): I have very few questions, Madam Chair. I'll help you out there since it's late in the day.

    I have a question for Mr. Rodo. On page 5, part of your presentation is on how we pay for this. This is really a clarification.

The Province of Ontario through its Transit Renewal Fund...and the 2¢/litre share of the gas tax promised by the new Liberal Government....

    Is that a promise made by the McGuinty government?

    Mr. Vincent Rodo: That's correct.

    Mr. Shawn Murphy: Do you expect that McGuinty may have any problem fulfilling that promise? He's been having some problems in the first two weeks.

    Mr. Vincent Rodo: Not to put words in the Minister of Finance's mouth, but they obviously have a larger deficit than was anticipated. They are making plans. They will stick to their promises, but the timing of those promises may be what's at issue here.

    We fully expect the province to live with its 2¢ per litre gas tax commitment by the end of its term. We were hoping for some fees out of that. We're certainly optimistic that we'll get something in the very short term.

    Mr. Sorbara was asked by the local press the other day whether or not the gas tax is a firm one. He said their commitments on transportation are firm. That was the statement that was made.

    Mr. Shawn Murphy: That was just for clarification.

    My second point is that, again, McGuinty is going to have his problems, and of course I know Mr. Martin has made statements in this regard too. They're out there in the public domain, which I think you may have incorporated in your brief. I've heard them many times here in the last two weeks.

    I don't think they're going to let Mr. Martin forget his statements. I think he's going to have problems financially to try to bring it all together, as is McGuinty.

    The only way I see this working is with the increase. It does make sense to get some money into the municipalities. It does make sense to get money into public transportation. We're talking right now not only about the congestion of the cities, but we're also talking about major Kyoto initiatives.

    Do you have any problem if they raise the excise tax 2¢ or 3¢?

    Mr. Vincent Rodo: I don't. I drive an automobile of my own. It's not uncommon for me to drive by a gas station on Thursday and see the price is at 64¢ and then drive by on Friday and see it is at 72¢. I'm not sure that adding 2¢ or 4¢ to a litre of gasoline is something that is going to have a very lasting impact on automobile usage. I think people get used to it pretty quickly.

    It wasn't so long ago that gasoline in the Toronto region was about 50¢ a litre, for a very long time. You can't possibly find it for 50¢ a litre now, yet I don't think the sales of gasoline have gone down too much.

    I think the benefit you get in terms of transit, if we're able to replicate what we did in the 1970s and 1980s by removing congestion from the cities, getting people out of their cars, and getting them on public transit...the benefits are so enormous that I think the relatively small amounts you'd be adding to a fuel tax would be worth it.

    When we do our polls around the city and ask if city of Toronto residents and GTA residents would be prepared to pay additional money for transit, the answer comes back as a resounding yes, almost all of the time.

    Mr. Shawn Murphy: My last point is to Mr. Bowman.

    Mr. Bowman, I read your presentation. It sounds great. I assume that if the government in its wisdom extended this tax credit, it probably would have to do it to a lot of other sectors, the construction trades, and everything else. Would it not? It wouldn't be the tooling industry. It would be right across the board.

    Mr. James D. Bowman: That's the way I understand it, yes.

    Mr. Shawn Murphy: I have no further questions, Madam Chair.

    The Chair: Ms. Wasylycia-Leis.

    Ms. Judy Wasylycia-Leis (Winnipeg North Centre, NDP): Thank you, Madam Chair.

    My question is for Kira. I'd like to ask about day care. I know when people hear the figure $10 billion, they're aghast, but they forget that the idea of a national day care program has been around since I think the 1984 election, actually the Mulroney government, and it's the longest running broken political promise in the history of this country.

    So my question to you is, how do you address that kind of concern about where the money will come from? And how do you answer the need to invest in children for the future?

¹  (1505)  

    Mrs. Kira Heineck: Thank you for the question. You're right, it does at first sound like a lot of money and people do get startled by that. But again, we say in the beginning that it's merely 1% of the GDP. If you think about the entire GDP or the entire budget of the country, it's still a relatively small amount.

    There are also strong arguments that have been backed up now by decades of research and experience that investing in the early years of a child's development has a huge payoff in terms of the outcomes in their life, but also in terms of the social and economic benefits to society. A conservative study says that for every dollar invested there are two dollars in savings. But we've seen studies from the United States now where they have done longitudinal studies of children who benefited from high-quality child care and it's $4, $5, $6 in return, and the numbers are going up as the studies come in. So that's one argument we use.

    We also talk about the fact that many other modern nations have found a way to prioritize high-quality early learning and care spending, and many of those countries have smaller budgets than ours and are poorer countries than we are. But again, they have taken a longer-term vision and approach as to how they invest the public's money and have decided this is a sound way to do it.

    Another way we look at this.... There are many, but I think those are probably the two main ones.

    Ms. Judy Wasylycia-Leis: Thank you.

    To Greg, having been born and raised in the Kitchener-Waterloo area, I know what you mean in terms of the shift in events like Oktoberfest, where years ago one didn't see collections for food banks and now you do. I think we've seen quite a shift in the last 10 years in terms of the gap between the rich and the poor, the growing poverty and a thousandfold increase in food banks. Partly that's a result of the fact that we had to eliminate the deficit and we had to give tax cuts. Now we're being told we've got to focus on debt reduction.

    I guess the question I've been asking everyone all week is, isn't it time to start investing in communities, in programs, in people? I'm not saying don't worry at all about the debt, because others would like to interpret it, but I think we need to have some balance and start putting emphasis on these areas.

    I guess this is a question for anyone. How do we make that case, or do you agree or not?

    Mr. Greg deGroot-Maggetti: Thank you for the question and the comments. It's a very good point. When we talk about our concern about the debt or deficit, we have to think about what debt and what deficit. There's a fiscal debt and a fiscal deficit. But in the community I live in right now, we have a real problem with a doctor shortage. People move into the community and can't get a family doctor.

    If we look to the future and the problem with tuition and access to education, it doesn't do me any good if 25 years from now we've wiped out the federal debt and there are not enough dentists, doctors, people to care for me in my old age. I can have pension income out the whazoo, but if nobody is there who's trained and educated to take care of me, it doesn't do me any good.

    So it's really essential that we do make these investments, and it has to start at the earliest age. I mean, CPJ's concern with poverty, particularly child poverty, is that it is one facet of understanding that we have to be concerned about human development and social development in its entirety? For example, the investments in early childhood education and care and child care, the preschool programs, are crucial. There is tons of evidence. Most industrialized advanced nations already have it and have figured out that we need these programs.

    That creates the basis, the developmental assets, and they have to be done inclusively to make sure everybody in society can participate. That's the building block on which in our school system we can enable people to develop more fully, and then when you reach university age, you have to have access to post-secondary education. So I think it's holding in balance the fiscal situation on the one hand and the real social and economic situation on the other, and we can't ignore either one.

    Mr. Michael Bach: May I make a quick response to that?

    In relation to the child agenda and family support agenda, the most recent census figures show that for over 50% of parents raising a child with a disability, the unpaid caregiving impacts directly on their employment situation. We see almost 30% have turned down work because of the responsibilities of caring for their child, over 30% say their work hours are affected in some way, and almost 20%--17%, 18%--have to turn down job promotions and career development. So there is a direct relationship.

    As long as we keep families entirely on their own without support of communities and without family support, we're excluding them from the labour market. I think we'd all rather they were taxpayers supporting their families in supportive communities than having to go on social assistance. The reality is, if you have a child with a disability you're twice as likely to be on social assistance. So there's a direct link, obviously, between social investment and an economic agenda in this country.

¹  (1510)  

    The Chair: Thank you, everyone, for your participation today.

    In order to give you that $10 billion perspective, Indian Affairs and Northern Development has about $5.2 billion in their total envelope. On top of that they can get into other departments for about $2.3 billion, so that sort of pegs the resources, what you're talking about here. We all know we haven't finished the job on our aboriginal community either.

    What strikes me is the billions of dollars that get bandied around here, yet no one does come forward and say “Take from us so you can do this.” That's the exercise: because the individual communities that come to us asking for more aren't doing it for us, we're going to have to do it for everyone. That's a difficult exercise. We've been through it once before and there's no....

    I would love to grow the economy totally, and that's how we get our net GDP down, but it doesn't always happen that way, as we saw with this situation. So we have to do a little bit, and there will have to be some balancing priorities here. Hopefully, as a country, we don't look at only the bottom line but include all Canadians and all the people wherever they live, urban, rural, whatever. I think this process has helped to outline the choices and the avenues we can take together.

    Thank you very much for your participation. This is our last pre-budget hearing here. I want to thank my colleagues from all parties for participating. They will find an e-mail in their offices from me, through the clerk, saying please get your thoughts into June by 5 o'clock on Monday.

    I also want to thank our support staff, not only in Ottawa but all the 500-plus witnesses before us on the road. This is a difficult exercise to accomplish and I think we've done it well. Thank you everyone.

    The meeting is adjourned.