Finance Committee on May 18th, 2023

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Thank you so much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, MP Vecchio.

Now we're going to the Liberals and MP Baker, please.

[Yvan Baker, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Thanks, Chair.

Once again, I'd like to question the Centrale des syndicats démocratiques.

If you're able to answer, that's [Technical difficulty—Editor].

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Wait one moment, please, MP Baker.

Mr. Bissonnette, I think the question is for you.

Continue, MP Baker.

[Yvan Baker, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Thanks, Chair.

The question is on how in the budget there was an announcement of investment tax credits, some of which have labour hooks, including prevailing wage and a requirement that at least 10% of the tradesperson's hours worked must be performed by registered apprentices in the Red Seal trades.

Are you familiar with this? If so, how do you think this might support your members? Will it support your members? If so, how?

[Kaven Bissonnette]

No. We're not really familiar with this, honestly. I cannot answer your question now.

[Yvan Baker, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Okay. Thank you.

What I want to do, then, is go back to our representative from the Ottawa Food Bank.

I'm wondering if you could talk a bit about what you spoke about in your opening remarks: the increase in the use of food banks. You've seen that in Ottawa. I've seen that in my community in Etobicoke. I think we're seeing it across the country. What is driving that, do you think? What is causing people to come in and rely on food banks in greater numbers than they did before?

[Rachael Wilson]

I think that for many years we saw people who were barely getting by but were able to keep their heads above water. Now they are really struggling. The pandemic has shown that it can take a pandemic, the loss of a job or a broken-down car to send people into having to use a food bank. It's all these incremental things together that are causing more people to have to access a food bank.

[Yvan Baker, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Continuing on that line, I'm not disagreeing with what you've said. I think it's just more that what's astonishing to me is that the number of people has jumped so much so quickly.

I'll throw this out and you can tell me if you agree with it. One of the things I hear from folks in my community is that the cost of food has gone up and the cost of daily essentials such as gas has gone up, etc. That's one of the things I hear from folks who are using food banks and relying on food banks.

Do you agree with that? In other words, is inflation contributing a lot to this challenge?

[Rachael Wilson]

Yes. That's what we're consistently hearing. It's the cost of food coupled with the cost of housing. Also, then, other items, such as gas and factoring in things like child care, make it really impossible for people to afford to live in a city like Ottawa.

[Yvan Baker, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

My community of Etobicoke is a suburb of Toronto. We have.... You're smiling, so either that means you're very aware or you're not aware. Either way, I want to make sure folks at home understand. The cost of living in Toronto is very high as well. All this is to say that what you're saying makes a lot of sense.

You just spoke about the cost of child care. You spoke about a couple of other costs. I'll come back to what I said earlier when I asked questions the last time. I think that's where my colleagues and I are really focused. It's on how we can address what's causing those prices to go up, to the extent that the government can impact that. That's everything from the things that are causing inflation, like supply chains, to the war in Ukraine, which is causing food and energy prices to go up. There are those sorts of things and those root causes. However, we're also trying to provide people with support for those daily essentials.

I know we've talked a lot about the grocery rebate, because that's the recent thing, but I don't want to.... If you look back at all of the targeted assistance the government has provided over the past two years, not just during COVID but since, it's been designed for those who are the most vulnerable. It's not solving all the problems, and I'm not going to pretend it is, but that's been the focus. Let's take the resources we have and put them toward helping folks with the cost of living.

Child care, obviously, there's a major change happening there. There is dental care. Anyway, all this is to say that I want you to know, walking away, that I appreciate.... Obviously, we haven't solved all of these problems, and we have to do more, but we're really trying. We're trying to target those people who are most vulnerable.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you MP Baker.

We'll now go to the Bloc with MP Ste-Marie, please.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My questions are again for Mr. Bissonnette, but first, I have a comment for Ms. Wilson.

I was really shocked to hear you say that you raise most of your funding yourself, that you don't receive any help from the government.

Our food banks in Quebec do tremendous work, but a good chunk of their funding comes from the government. The funding supports their mission. Every year, they push for inflation indexing, which they don't always get. I think that's awful.

After learning that your reality is completely different, I can't help but raise my hat to you, not once, but twice. What you're doing is incredible. Let's hope the government recognizes the work you're doing and gives you some funding.

Mr. Bissonnette, when the Bloc Québécois was created, the first bill we brought forward in the House of Commons sought to close the federal gap with Quebec's labour laws. I'm talking about an anti-scab bill. Quebec has had anti-scab legislation for a long time, and 30 years after such a bill was first introduced in the House of Commons, Canada still doesn't have one on the books.

I know the NDP has often proposed similar legislation. Now, the government is committing to bringing forward anti-scab legislation. Was it the carrot or the stick that finally led to some progress?

I'd like you to talk about how important it is to have legislation that prohibits the use of replacement workers during a strike or lockout.

[Kaven Bissonnette]

It's fundamentally important in the balance of power between management and employees.

It's no secret that the right to associate, to unionize, is constitutionally protected in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The corollary to that is the right to collective bargaining.

Since 2015, the Supreme Court of Canada's decision in Saskatchewan Federation of Labour has confirmed that the balance of power hinges on the right to strike. If workers cannot exercise the right to strike, an equivalent mechanism is necessary to ensure the balance of power. Not having anti-scab legislation amounts somewhat to denying the existence of the whole process—the right to associate and to negotiate and the right to have the power to do so.

We have long had that in Quebec, and we don't see how it would be possible to ensure industrial peace and respect our charters and constitutional rights without anti-scab legislation. For us, in Quebec, not prohibiting the use of replacement workers under the labour code would be inconceivable.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Thank you.

Right now, most unions are doing the rounds to educate parliamentarians on the issue. Often, when disputes fall under federal jurisdiction, things can take a lot longer because of the measures available.

I'm not sure whether you've examined this or considered it as it relates to telework, but it's increasingly difficult to enforce anti-scab legislation.

I'll give you an example. I live in Joliette, and the workers at the cement plant there were locked out by an American multinational for over a year. The administrative labour tribunal ruled in their favour, but it's hard to prove that an employer is using replacement workers when the work is being performed remotely. The dispute involved Unifor members.

Similarly, employees of the BMR hardware store chain, who belong to the union CSN, were locked out by their employer. The administrative labour tribunal ruled in their favour as well, but the work was still performed remotely and the CSN members weren't able to prove it.

Can you tell us what can be done to really enforce anti-scab legislation when the work is performed remotely?

[Kaven Bissonnette]

I don't think there's anything in our inter-union platform on that. We haven't taken an in-depth look at that new reality. It's pretty recent.

You're going to say that we may automatically lean towards a presumption, which would be even stronger. I don't know. We haven't considered that question. Nevertheless, it's deeply concerning that employers can get around certain rights and circumvent anti-scab legislation thanks to new ways of working.

Certainly, it's deeply concerning, but rest assured that those of us in Quebec's unions will examine the issue as soon as possible.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

If I can follow up—

Oh, the chair is silencing me once again.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, MP Ste-Marie.

Now we're going to go to MP Blaikie.

MP Blaikie, you will be the final questioner of the great witnesses we have with us here today.

The floor is MP Blaikie's now for the next four-plus minutes.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Thank you very much.

I think Mr. Perkins maybe wanted to ask how many eels are transported by rail from coast to coast over the course of the year. It's a bit of an inside joke for those of us who had to suffer the filibuster.

To our witnesses from the rail industry, I wanted to ask—you talked earlier, and we've heard this from other witnesses around the table—about the nature of the contracts that are signed between customers in, say, the grain or pulse industry and the railways.

My understanding is that the booking of cars can happen up to two years in advance and that railways make investments in capital plans based on projected demand from those growers, grain companies or whomever it is that you're ultimately dealing with in order to move that product.

I'm just wondering what the time horizon is in order to make back the money on that investment and when you would expect to start to see a return on the capital investments you make based on those projections.

[Nathan Cato, Assistant Vice-President, Canadian Pacific Kansas City, Railway Association of Canada]

Thank you for the question.

Mr. Chair, thank you for having us here at the committee today. It's a privilege to address the committee.

I think it really is kind of fact-specific, depending on the circumstances with the individual shipper.

When we look at service, it comes down to demand forecasts, visibility and commitments. For CPKC, when we talk about grain, for example, about 90% of the grain moving on our network in Canada is through our dedicated train program, where you have confidential commercial contracts that are in place between the railway and the customers, and that contract defines the capacity that the customer wants to purchase from us. Then there are reciprocal penalties in place on both parties, so you get accountability and you get discipline. That's really how you maximize throughput on the rail system, efficiency and throughput, because all parties make commitments and are held accountable to them.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

What we've heard around this committee table from those customers of yours is that capacity is negotiated but then not available when they want it or when they need it.

From the railway's point of view, how is that relationship working? I understand that they made investments in order to make that capacity available. Is it the point of view of the railways that you don't have enough capacity in order to be able to meet that demand, or...?

[Nathan Cato]

I would say, when we're talking about grain, and this applies to not just CPKC but our colleagues here from CN, both railways have been breaking records this past crop year for the movement of grain.

A lot of that comes back to investment. A huge part of that success story is about investment. We alone have invested $500 million in new high-capacity hopper cars in the last number of years. That's what's driving these record volumes moving through Canada's grain supply chain.

Combined with some operational changes and our 8,500-foot loop train model, we're getting about 40% more grain on every single unit train with those high-capacity hopper cars, so that's a huge success story.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Is it a surprise to you to hear that you have customers here saying that you're not meeting your commitments or that you're not satisfying the transportation needs of their industries, given the work you've done with them and the investment that you've made in order to be able to accommodate their demand?

[Nathan Cato]

I think we have very good relationships with our customers. There's an enormous amount of collaboration that goes on every single day to make the supply chain work. That's what we need more of. When we talk about—

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

I'm sorry. I have a quick question.

I'm curious, because we do hear about how government regulation can impact investment decisions. What does it mean for you to have a longer regulated interswitching distance in place in terms of confidence for the railways to continue to make the capital investments they've been making in order to move these kinds of products?