HUMA Committee Meeting

37th PARLIAMENT, 2nd SESSION

Standing Committee on Human Resources Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities

EVIDENCE

CONTENTS

Monday, November 3, 2003

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1535

The Chair (Mrs. Judi Longfield (Whitby—Ajax, Lib.))

Ms. Judith Maxwell (President, Canadian Policy Research Networks)

The Chair

Ms. Judith Maxwell

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1540

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1545

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1550

The Chair

Mr. Brian Pallister (Portage—Lisgar, Canadian Alliance)

Ms. Judith Maxwell

Mr. Brian Pallister

Ms. Judith Maxwell

Mr. Brian Pallister

Ms. Judith Maxwell

Mr. Brian Pallister

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1555

The Chair

Mr. Brian Pallister

Ms. Judith Maxwell

Mr. Brian Pallister

Ms. Judith Maxwell

Mr. Brian Pallister

Ms. Judith Maxwell

The Chair

Mr. Brian Pallister

Ms. Judith Maxwell

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1600

Mr. Brian Pallister

Ms. Judith Maxwell

The Chair

Ms. Diane St-Jacques (Shefford, Lib.)

Ms. Judith Maxwell

Ms. Diane St-Jacques

Ms. Judith Maxwell

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1605

Ms. Diane St-Jacques

Ms. Judith Maxwell

Ms. Diane St-Jacques

Ms. Judith Maxwell

Ms. Diane St-Jacques

Ms. Judith Maxwell

Ms. Diane St-Jacques

Ms. Judith Maxwell

Ms. Diane St-Jacques

Ms. Judith Maxwell

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1610

Ms. Diane St-Jacques

The Chair

Mr. Brian Pallister

Ms. Judith Maxwell

Mr. Brian Pallister

Ms. Judith Maxwell

Mr. Brian Pallister

Ms. Judith Maxwell

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1615

Mr. Brian Pallister

Ms. Judith Maxwell

Mr. Brian Pallister

Ms. Judith Maxwell

Mr. Brian Pallister

Ms. Judith Maxwell

Mr. Brian Pallister

Ms. Judith Maxwell

Mr. Brian Pallister

Ms. Judith Maxwell

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1620

Mr. Brian Pallister

Ms. Judith Maxwell

Mr. Brian Pallister

Ms. Judith Maxwell

Mr. Brian Pallister

The Chair

Mr. Larry McCormick (Hastings—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, Lib.)

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Ms. Judith Maxwell

Mr. Larry McCormick

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Ms. Judith Maxwell

Mr. Larry McCormick

The Chair

Mr. Brian Pallister

Ms. Judith Maxwell

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Mr. Brian Pallister

Ms. Judith Maxwell

Mr. Brian Pallister

The Chair

Mr. Brian Pallister

The Chair

Mr. Brian Pallister

The Chair

Mr. Brian Pallister

Ms. Judith Maxwell

Mr. Brian Pallister

The Chair

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1640

Mr. Brian Pallister

The Chair

Mr. Brian Pallister

The Chair

Mr. Eugène Bellemare (Ottawa—Orléans, Lib.)

Ms. Judith Maxwell

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1645

Mr. Eugène Bellemare

Ms. Judith Maxwell

Mr. Brian Pallister

Ms. Judith Maxwell

Mr. Brian Pallister

Ms. Judith Maxwell

Mr. Eugène Bellemare

The Chair

Mr. Eugène Bellemare

The Chair

Mr. Eugène Bellemare

The Chair

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1650

Ms. Judith Maxwell

The Chair

Ms. Judith Maxwell

The Chair

Ms. Judith Maxwell

The Chair

Ms. Judith Maxwell

The Chair

Ms. Judith Maxwell

The Chair

Ms. Judith Maxwell

The Chair

Ms. Judith Maxwell

The Chair

Ms. Judith Maxwell

The Chair

Ms. Judith Maxwell

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1655

The Chair

Ms. Judith Maxwell

The Chair

Ms. Judith Maxwell

The Chair

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CANADA

Standing Committee on Human Resources Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities

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NUMBER 044

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2nd SESSION

l

37th PARLIAMENT

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EVIDENCE

Monday, November 3, 2003

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

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[English]

    The Chair (Mrs. Judi Longfield (Whitby—Ajax, Lib.)): Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the 44th meeting of the Standing Committee on Human Resources Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities.

    We are resuming, pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), our study on enhancing work/life balance in the federal jurisdiction.

    We are most fortunate to have with us today Judith Maxwell, president of the Canadian Policy Research Networks.

    Welcome, Ms. Maxwell, and our apologies for a late start. We are most anxious to hear what you have to say today.

    Ms. Judith Maxwell (President, Canadian Policy Research Networks): Perhaps you could give me some guidance to start, Madam Chair. You have my short presentation, which has been circulated in advance. I could just keep my remarks to five minutes and let you look through the other parts, or I could try to go over the whole thing, depending on members' preferences.

    The Chair: We normally provide between 10 and 15 minutes for a witness to make opening remarks, and then we follow that with questions and answers.

    Ms. Judith Maxwell: All right. Thank you very much.

[Translation]

    I'm pleased to be here today. I will be speaking in English, but I will be happy to answer questions in French, if you prefer.

[English]

    I want to start the presentation by pointing out that work/life balance is a societal issue. It touches all aspects of our lives, influencing the health of the population, the choices that families are making about whether or not to have a child or another child, the ability of individuals to participate in their community life, and of course--not to be neglected--it affects the productivity in the workplace, the bottom line of employers.

    Although we've talked a lot about work/life balance over the past 15 years, and significant changes in some public policy and some employer practices have taken place, the issue is actually becoming more pervasive as a problem.

    Linda Duxbury and Chris Higgins did a summary study for us. I know that Linda appeared before the committee last week. They documented for us that now 60% of men and women are saying that their lives are overloaded by some combination of work and life pressures. That's up from 47% in the early 1990s.

    So we talk about it, but we have not done enough to make a difference in the trend, let alone somehow be effective in reducing the pressures of the overload of work.

    Fundamentally, I think the problem here is that as a people we are still, in our minds, ambivalent about how we feel about work and life balance. We have come to believe that every adult should work, whatever their family responsibilities. In fact, if you look at the way regulations involving social programs have changed in recent years, they've moved the age downward of when a mother is expected to go back to work. It used to be age 18 of the child. Now there are some provinces where it's six months of age when the woman is expected to go back to work.

    Although we have this commitment to having all adults work, we still insist that the caregiving and the community life, etc., are a family responsibility. So what people have in their minds is a total contradiction--that everybody should work, and any parent, or anybody with family responsibilities, should perform those responsibilities. But those two thoughts don't go together. They are in complete contradiction.

    The contradiction is already placing what I think is becoming an unacceptable burden on working families in Canada, whether their caregiving responsibilities are for children or for elders. We have to understand that the contradiction becomes even more unsustainable with the aging of the baby boom generation, so we can't delay responding to this problem much longer without seeing it become more of an epidemic, in my view.

    Why is there more stress in people's lives? People are working longer hours, and when they're in the workplace, there is greater intensity of work. They have work coming at them from all directions--the e-mail, the fax, the meetings in the office, the phone calls, etc.

    More people are able to take their work home now, because all they have to do is pick up their laptop and go, or they have a VPN hookup at home, which means that they can check their e-mail at 2 in the morning, if they're so moved. And I have to tell you, there are people out there who do that. You've probably had the experience as well.

    Also, the way our cities have grown, and with the urbanization of the population, we have much longer commuting times. When I was growing up in the 1950s, it was very common for people to go home for lunch, and now they're spending two hours or longer getting to the office, morning and evening. That consumes time, in addition to actual work, that used to be used for other purposes.

    Of course, with the adults in the household working in the majority of households, there's no one at home to get the dinner ready, to do the shopping, to deal with any plumbing problems or any other issues, or to do the caregiving. At the same time, over the last 15 years we've seen cutbacks in the support that used to come from the way employers organized their work or from the way in which public services responded to people's needs. For example, with regard to practices in the health care system now, there's much more ambulatory care and people are discharged from acute care hospitals much earlier than they used to be.

    The impacts of that stress have become quite evident in the workplace. In fact, I think the predominant issue now behind health care claims on supplementary health insurance and claims on disability comes through stress-related injuries and not through the kind of physical injuries that were typical of the industrial era, where so much of the work was manual work. Now it's carpal tunnel, or headaches, or backaches, or a lot of things that any doctor will tell you are stress-related.

    What happens then is that employers face higher costs of providing supplementary health insurance. We're seeing an incredible increase in the use of over-the-counter drugs to manage pain, manage anxiety, etc. We also see rather high levels of job dissatisfaction in many, many workplaces. When job dissatisfaction happens, when there is a high degree of stress in the workplace, then you tend to see costs related to higher absenteeism, more job turnover, people ready to look for another job, or people ready to organize a union because they wish to look for a way to minimize the stress in their lives. These are all costs of doing business.

    So what you have is people who are not working at peak performance when they're in the workplace because of their stress and/or they're not even there, or they're incurring health costs.

    Now, from an employer point of view, there are obviously things that you can do in order to avoid a lot of these costs. The studies we have done on employment relationships, or what we call “job quality”, show some of the correlations around absenteeism and turnover. In slide seven in this deck, you can see the difference in morale in the workplace or the number of people who looked for work in the past year. Where the employment relationship is weak, you have 39% of people in the workplace saying they looked for another job in the past year. That ratio is less than 20% for those who have what we call a “strong” work relationship.

    You might ask me, well, what is a strong working relationship? It is one where there is good communication and trust and commitment between the employer and the employee. More specifically, that's described as a healthy and supportive work environment, interesting work, receiving the needed training, having the tools to do the job, and a degree of job security and fair pay. But it's interesting to note that the soft issues around the quality of the working relationship are always rated higher than pay and job security. I mean, people don't want to work for less pay than others are paid, but what attracts them to a workplace is those qualitative issues.

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    So what do employers do about this? We have some employers who strive to be employers of choice. The chartered banks tend to feature this as one feature of their workplace, and they would be an example. Typically, though, it would be the very large employers that make this commitment. What they're doing is giving people more predictability in their work, more control over the pace of the work, and those kinds of issues.

    Also, if an employer is really serious about work/life balance and a supportive workplace, they will be reviewing the performance of every manager, everyone who has supervisory responsibilities, on the basis of evidence that they are supportive of their employees. In other words, not only does the CEO and the HR department have the policy of making it a supportive workplace, but people are also walking the talk at the supervisory level.

    It's very difficult if employers are going through a lot of downsizing or reorganizations and people's jobs are being chopped and changed, and their assignments are being reorganized all the time. It's very difficult to maintain the notion of a supportive workplace in an environment where a lot of unpredictable, poorly communicated...and, generally speaking, costly for the employee, when those kinds of things are going on.

    The other question that I know the committee is interested in is what governments can do. Governments can lead by example. They can be employers of choice. The federal government is a very large employer, and you can see by looking at the public service employee surveys and so on that workplaces are quite variable. There are some that are excellent and there are some that are really quite weak on the elements that would go into the job quality. So there is a lot more that can be done there.

    As well, governments have responsibility for employment standards that can set the model, if you want, through the employment standards in the Canada Labour Code, and also, as I'll point out in a moment, on social policies. Work/life balance requirements can be influenced by requirements for family leave or parental leave or compassionate leave, and limits or constraints on overtime by ensuring that benefits are pro-rated for part-time workers. Part time is often the way in which the second worker in the family will manage the work/life balance. The other thing that governments can do is begin to be much more activist in demonstrating the paybacks to the bottom line of enlightened work/life balance policies by documenting costs and best practices.

    On the social policy side, the important things are to ensure that social care systems, whether they are care systems supporting caregiving for children or for elders, are in place. In Canada we have quite a poor track record on this. We don't support early childhood learning the way we should. We don't support parents who decide to stay home and provide the care themselves. We have a care system for elderly people that is very much based on the medical model. You get help from the government by the time you're already too sick to look after yourself, or when the caregivers in the family have already burned out, rather than providing the graduated supports that would enable the family to manage that caregiving with dignity and with effectiveness.

    So there are things that governments can do. There are important things for employers to do.

    I guess I would close by saying that it's also an issue for individuals. I think that we as individuals need to make choices about how much we work, and we need to make choices about how we're going to balance our lives. Sometimes that will mean making some short-term economic sacrifices.

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    I think that society, through government programs, can soften the burden of those economic costs. At the moment, we're leaving too much on the shoulders of working people, but we must realize that families too can make choices in order to deal with this issue.

    All of this is to say that we all have a big stake in the outcome of work/life balance. In a knowledge-based society and in an aging society, you want every working person to be as effective as they can be in their working lives, and we're only going to achieve that when we have dealt with our overburden on the working-age population through the rollover load.

    Thank you very much for your attention, Madam Chair, and I look forward to the discussion.

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    The Chair: Thank you.

    We'll start the discussion off with Mr. Pallister, with a ten-minute round.

    Mr. Brian Pallister (Portage—Lisgar, Canadian Alliance): Thanks very much.

    Thanks for your presentation. It was very informative.

    You talked about overburdening the working population. As members of this committee know, I feel that one of the ways we overburden the working population is with an excessively high EI premium. We take hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars out of the homes of working Canadians, without justification, because of these excessively high premiums.

    Does your organization have any interest in this issue, and if so, what's your view of the issue of excessively high EI premiums?

    Ms. Judith Maxwell: I think the problem with the EI premiums is that the workers aren't getting the value for the money they've put in. But if you compare Canada with other industrialized countries, our payroll taxes are actually fairly modest.

    So I don't regard it as a question of the level of taxes, per se. I think the problem is that we're exploiting a lot of workers who are required to pay without offering them any benefits. Obviously, employers are paying similar amounts. There are some industries that exploit the benefits of EI because they have highly seasonal or episodic work periods, and they feel they can rely on EI to carry the workers until they need them again. It's a very old-fashioned view of the relationship between employer and employee.

    Mr. Brian Pallister: Yes. An OECD working group just did a report fairly recently that talked about how our structural level of unemployment is elevated because this EI program is so badly designed.

    Ms. Judith Maxwell: Right. So I would not complain so much about the level of the taxes as I would about the way in which the revenues are being deployed and the kinds of incentives that are built into the program.

    Mr. Brian Pallister: You'll forgive me for complaining about both.

    It always strikes me as kind of interesting that we talk about the stress now in the workplace and so on. When people in this country were throwing hay bales around, or shovelling grain, or hauling pig iron, we had less stress than we do now, and we spend most of our time sitting here.

    I know this only anecdotally, but in some societies they've really gotten into more regular physical activity, giving a little bit of latitude for people to have that time to regenerate their bodies so that their minds and performances will also be enhanced. Would you like to comment on that a little bit?

    Ms. Judith Maxwell: I think there is actually good research to show that a healthy body goes with a healthy mind. If you look at the best-practice employers, they're more than likely to either have a fitness facility in their building, if it's a large organization, or to support people to have memberships at places or have access to fitness facilities. In big cities, this can be....

    It's incumbent on the workplace, it seems to me, to be supportive of this. In small cities, or smaller places, where people can still walk to work or bicycle to work safely and so on, it may not be such a big issue, but there's no question that the counselling that people get when they're in a highly stressed situation is to give their brain a rest and go and get some exercise.

    It's the kind of thing your grandmother would say is common sense, but I think it also is demonstrated to be good practice.

    Mr. Brian Pallister: Speaking from my own small business background, our commuting time in Portage la Prairie, if you live within the city confines, is perhaps five minutes, at worst. We're blessed to have quick access to our workplace. Nonetheless, it's very rare that people in Manitoba in the winter walk much to work, and I am aware of several companies that have instituted.... Actually, in my little company we put in a workout room and encouraged people in our small environ to use it. It does seem, in a society where it seems childhood obesity is an epidemic, that adults also should set the example.

    You cited a study done by....

    Forgive me, I forget the gal's name.

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    The Chair: Linda Duxbury.

    Mr. Brian Pallister: Yes.

    She mentioned that she talked to 30,000 people, but they were all in larger companies, not small- and medium-sized enterprises, which of course exist in much larger numbers in our country. I'm always interested in how our witnesses feel there's a difference, perhaps, with the smaller companies. I know there's a wider range, obviously, given the numbers, but do you see some examples of innovative practices in the small and medium enterprise sector that you'd like to highlight?

    Ms. Judith Maxwell: I think you're quite right that the practices tend to be either very good or very bad. On average, more people in small organizations believe they have a healthy workplace. On average, people are more comfortable working in a workplace with, say, less than 20 employees than they are in one with over 100, or 200.

    Mr. Brian Pallister: What do you attribute that to?

    Ms. Judith Maxwell: Well, I think everybody knows each other, and a really important quality is the social relationships and the social supports--you know, sympathy if a child is sick, or being told, “Take the afternoon off, your child needs you.” Those kind of things can make a huge difference in the feelings of support, to have the flexibility to change the pattern of your life for a day or a moment in time in order to cover the other requirements in your life, the other claims on your time.

    The other part of it is that sometimes you get stuck in a small workplace where the boss is a tyrant, or there's somebody who's working next to you who can be a bit of a bully or all kind of things. So they can be quite trying workplaces as well.

    Mr. Brian Pallister: We have that in the House of Commons as well.

    Ms. Judith Maxwell: Oh, I wouldn't comment on the House of Commons.

    The Chair: And we don't have that on this committee, Mr. Pallister.

    Mr. Brian Pallister: No, no, of course not. It's great here.

    I'm just a neophyte when it comes to these things, but I do know that a large majority of the SMEs in the country are non-unionized, and there's more latitude for managers to give the kinds of latitude to workers that may not be deemed appropriate in a more rigid workplace. Is that a fair observation?

    Ms. Judith Maxwell: There's more room for latitude, that's right. People can get to know each other better. There are not so many layers between the boss and the working people, and often there's more variety in the work, because people will be expected to cover off different tasks.

    On the other hand, I don't want to ignore the small businesses that do exploit their workers. If you think of all of the small businesses that rely on casual and contract workers and unpredictable shifts, and that are not providing benefits.... A majority of small- and medium-sized businesses do not provide supplementary health coverage, or pensions, and that sort of thing, which are important to quality of life as well. Typically, they don't provide the training, and they're slow adopters of new technology as well.

    There's a lot we can do to encourage small- and medium-sized firms to collaborate on things, collaborate to create the fitness centre, for example, in the neighbourhood, and to pool risks across a wider population so that they can provide the group health insurance, not just for the five or ten workers in one workplace but for a wider group. These are things that employers can do that can make a very large difference to the quality of work.

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    Mr. Brian Pallister: Yes.

    A point was made the other day that given the pending shortage of skilled labour that will emerge in the future, these things will get worked out in collective bargaining anyway. Labour will have the advantage in that circumstance, and therefore a lot of these things will be dealt with in collective bargaining rounds, or dealt with through a free market outcome.

    To what degree do you think that this additional pressure on employers that's coming in the next few years will force the issue of work/life balance to be considered, or better addressed than perhaps has been the case?

    Ms. Judith Maxwell: It will probably shift the power in the labour market overall to favour the employee better, but the bargaining power of the lower-skilled workers, the people at the bottom of the ladder, if I can put it that way, will be much slower to move in that direction. We do have a lot of workers in this country who are really powerless. Whether they're unionized or not, they're in workplaces that are very inflexible and unsupportive. It ends up being the worker who is paying the price as well as the employer having probably a lot less productivity than would be possible if there were different practices in place.

    The Chair: We'll get back to you later, Mr. Pallister.

    Ms. St-Jacques.

[Translation]

    Ms. Diane St-Jacques (Shefford, Lib.): Thank you, Madam Chair.

    Good day, Ms. Maxwell. In your opinion, what organizational changes need to be made to improve people's quality of life, both personally and professionally? What areas should we be focussing on first?

    Ms. Judith Maxwell: We need to focus on communication, so that people have all the information they need to understand what's happening in their workplace and to make the best possible decisions in the course of their normal work day.

    Secondly, we need to look at the flexibility people have during the day and during the week. It would be good if people could arrive at their workplace later and stay later. They should have the flexibility to shift their schedule or work a compressed work week. Parents could then keep up with the demands of family life.

    Workers must also enjoy some stability so that they know from one week to the next how many hours they will be putting in and how many hours they can devote to other responsibilities.

    Ms. Diane St-Jacques: On the subject of flexibility, Linda Duxbury stated last week that an additional five personal leave days should be added to the quota already provided for in the Canada Labour Code. I'd be interested in hearing your views on this matter. I'd also like to know if you feel the annual leave provisions set out in the Canada Labour Code are adequate.

    Ms. Judith Maxwell: Generally speaking, I think most workers have adequate leave provisions, but do not enjoy enough flexibility. If a child is sick or if an elderly person has an accident of some kind, someone needs to be there to care for them or attend to their needs. A worker should not have to sacrifice part of his salary each time such a situation arises, which often happens in the case of moderate income earners.

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    Ms. Diane St-Jacques: However, Ms. Duxbury was talking about five personal leave days. A worker could use these days whenever he or she chooses, either to help someone who is sick or simply to take some personal time. Would you be in favour of our exploring this option?

    Ms. Judith Maxwell: I would. I would see this as a positive first step. We'd know in a few years' time if five days was sufficient. However, for starters, it's an excellent idea.

    Ms. Diane St-Jacques: Earlier, you mentioned caring for people who were sick. Compassionate leave provisions will take effect in January 2004. Workers will be entitled to six weeks' leave to care for a sick child or spouse. Are these provisions adequate, in your view? Should they be extended? What is your opinion?

    Ms. Judith Maxwell: Again, it's a positive first step. This would really help people who are faced with these kind of emergencies. However, all kinds of situations can arise that do not fall within the suggested guidelines for...

[English]

    I'll switch to English.

    There are lots of situations that don't quite fit the circumstances for which that leave has been identified. Now, we know that from the point of view of according a benefit to society that you have to create limits, so I don't really criticize it for that. But I think we will need in the long term a definition of compassionate leave, or an approach to variations in work commitment on the part of individual workers that is much more fluid, based on particular circumstances.

    I think it will be important also for the employer as well as the state to be a contributor to those costs.

[Translation]

    Ms. Diane St-Jacques: Still on the subject of compassionate and special leave, as we know, self-employed workers are not entitled to employment insurance. Our mandate also includes looking into the possibility of extending EI to self-employed workers whose circumstances are often similar to those of other workers. Do you feel special leave provisions, such as maternity leave, parental leave and compassionate leave, should also be extended on a voluntary basis to this category of workers?

    Ms. Judith Maxwell: For the time being, one year is fine. What troubles me is that many families do not have access to these leave provisions because they apply only to workers who qualify for EI.

    Ms. Diane St-Jacques: How could coverage be extended to self-employed workers? That's the question I continue to ask myself. Would participation be strictly voluntary? We can't impose it on them, because they would be required to pay both the employer's and the employee's share of premiums.

    Ms. Judith Maxwell: That's right. As you can see from Statistics Canada studies and from Katherine Marshall's paper, women who pay EI premiums stay at home with their babies for one year, whereas women with no EI return to work quickly, often after a month or two, which is too soon for both the mother and the child.

    Ms. Diane St-Jacques: My last question concerns a statement you made, namely that governments should allow families to manage care, but not force them to provide that care. Do you get the feeling that governments are trying to force families to provide care? Basically, it still comes down to a personal choice.

    Ms. Judith Maxwell: The family must...

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    Ms. Diane St-Jacques: Thank you, Madam Chair.

[English]

    The Chair: Mr. Pallister, perhaps five minutes this time.

    Mr. Brian Pallister: Okay.

    Originally, it was put in there--I'm probably oversimplifying--that the employer paid 1.4 times as much because the employer had more control over when a person got laid off or not. But most employers don't have much control over when somebody gets pregnant.

    Well, I suppose they have as much control as anybody does, but not over their employee specifically; that's what I mean.

    We already have this $45 billion overpayment the last 10 years, which means 60% or so came from employers--or whatever percentage that adds up to--that wasn't used for the EI fund. Now we're going to be adding other benefits that, regardless of how defensible they may be, are not really benefits that are incurred as a consequence of a decision made by an employer.

    How do we rationalize keeping this 1.4 times as much contribution in place when in fact, (a) a good portion of the money--the chief actuary says about 30%--doesn't go to EI at all, and (b), the control over the decisions that are made that lead to the triggering of the benefit aren't made by the employer at all?

    Ms. Judith Maxwell: As I was saying to Madam St-Jacques, I actually think that employment insurance is the wrong vehicle to pay for parental leave. It was efficient in the short run because we were able to implement it quickly and piggyback on an existing system of collecting and paying out benefits. So one can see the temptation. The problem is that it doesn't cover all of the people who need this insurance, and it has built into it inequities in terms of who pays.

    I certainly think employers should contribute something. Whether the figure is 1.4, of course, is something you and I could have a longer conversation about. Employers certainly have an interest in having healthy babies born, because they're going to need a workforce 20 years from now, and there is this kind of reciprocity between generations for which we all have some responsibility.

    Mr. Brian Pallister: We have to be careful, though, because we're saying employers have the responsibility for paying for the program now and for motivating people to have more babies. Now, I don't know if it's solely the employers who will benefit from that.

    Ms. Judith Maxwell: No, no, I didn't say it was for motivating people--

    Mr. Brian Pallister: Yes, you did.

    Ms. Judith Maxwell: --but...well, it is indirect. I think for a lot of couples it becomes more possible to conceive of having a child because of the potential to have those care arrangements for the first year. There's lots of evidence that both the baby and the mother will be healthier in the long term. So there are clear benefits to society.

    I think for employers, the bottom line drives them to be fairly short term in their focus on benefits, but the fact is that in a knowledge-based society, we have to be investing as much as we possibly can in human capital, and the first year of a child's life is very important.

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    Mr. Brian Pallister: And short-term thinking isn't exclusive to small business or medium-sized business. There's lot of it around here in government, too.

    Ms. Judith Maxwell: Yes, there is.

    Mr. Brian Pallister: That said, to be fair, there are trade-offs. A lot times with government programs there are these perverse outcomes--unplanned sometimes, and sometimes just ignored. In the case of extending additional benefits, I wonder if your organization has done any study on the consequences...and not just to a business' profitability. One would argue that there's no security in a money-losing business, and that productivity in a business is related to job creation and also to job security.

    That said, have you evaluated what the consequences are for young women, for example, looking for work if benefits are added that would make it therefore potentially more likely that an employer would have to do without the person they're hiring for a certain period of time--as a perverse outcome?

    Do you know what I'm alluding to here in terms of consequences? For example, with parental leave, I know a small business, a metal bending business, with fewer than ten employees--I think in this case it was seven, if I remember correctly--where five men, last year, took parental leave at the same time. That business was placed in great difficulty as a consequence of that. That is, I expect, a rare case, but perhaps not.

    So I'm also concerned about the potential disruption or perverse outcome of some of these measures that we should take into account. If they make it harder for women to get into a work position, we should evaluate that. Has your organization done research on that issue at all?

    Ms. Judith Maxwell: No, we haven't done a specific study on that. But don't forget that, first of all, EI was carrying part of the salary cost for those people who took their leave. So that frees up part of the salary budget to pay for the replacement.

    Mr. Brian Pallister: Yes, if you can find a replacement who wants to come in and work temporarily, for a short time, in a skilled position, which is very unlikely.

    Ms. Judith Maxwell: I also think it's very reasonable for an employer to ask employees to give them notice and to insist on a little bit of planning. I mean, to lose five-sevenths of your workforce simultaneously seems like an extraordinary coincidence in conceiving children, among other things.

    Mr. Brian Pallister: Well, it's a wonderful thing, on the one hand, because there are more babies in the world, right?

    Ms. Judith Maxwell: This is true, but I think that couples also typically have some control over whether the father takes his leave in the early part of the year that they have access to, or in the later part of the year. So there should be some room there for negotiation about which weeks are taken.

    Mr. Brian Pallister: Right.

    Ms. Judith Maxwell: But beyond that, this is still a new program. It's only been in existence now for coming up to two years. What we should see happen is that employers will begin to anticipate this as an issue and begin to think in terms of having some backup staff. Also, workers who are looking for a job would realize that this is a great opportunity to get some training and to test out a type of work that they might wish to get into more.

    So you can see it as contributing to better planning on the employer's side and more fluidity in local labour markets.

º  (1620)  

    Mr. Brian Pallister: I guess we're all creatures of our own background and experience, naturally. I come from a smaller rural community, where small and medium enterprises are our main employers, so I'm always concerned that we look at the consequences as well as the immediate benefits.

    When you tell me that you haven't done any research on this one, this tells me that maybe there's too much short-term thinking in your organization, too.

    The other issue, though, is the differential impact that these kinds of measures have on government or on larger corporations and companies versus small- and medium-sized ones. Have you done any investigation into how these types of measures will impact differentially on smaller companies if enacted by government?

    Ms. Judith Maxwell: There's no question in my mind that smaller companies have more trouble adapting to these things, just because they don't have what we call the “internal” labour market, the array of skills and the number of people to call upon.

    Mr. Brian Pallister: Sure.

    Ms. Judith Maxwell: It's much easier for a large organization to adapt. Yet we can see lots of big organizations that haven't really made the necessary steps at all in this direction.

    Therefore, again, I think having more collaborative approaches to how we manage this issue, within a group of firms in a small town or in a particular neighbourhood and so on, and more awareness of where the skills are in the marketplace, with perhaps some help from a community college to be doing part of the training....

    There are things you can do to mitigate effects; that's what I'm saying. And I don't think we've reached that stage in our response to what is a fairly new change in public policy.

    Mr. Brian Pallister: Very insightful, thank you.

    The Chair: Mr. McCormick.

    Mr. Larry McCormick (Hastings—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, Lib.): Thank you very much, Madam Chair, and thanks to the witness for being here.

    To my honourable colleague who just spoke, I have a hard time sometimes when we're debating, because my background is also rural and small-town Canada and small business.

    As well, just to take the opportunity to speak about the benefits for maternity leave, I've talked to many small business people, and they're very happy with this, but it's just the bottom line that's the biggest challenge. I think they could even find the people....

    Perhaps to share a smile with my colleague across the floor, in my preamble, I've worked a lot in Manitoba in the last three or four years, and more in Saskatchewan. The riding I represent is between Kingston and Belleville, Ontario, which is quite a rural area but along the 401 corridor. There, our people don't seem to realize that we're very close to having a shortage of every trade and every worker there is. And I share with them when I go to Manitoba and the west--for things that have a lot to do with agriculture, on different task forces and so on--and it's amazing how in those provinces the people are so aware that we do need to get some people into this country.

    So here we are, we need the immigration, we need the birth rate to go up, and yet we have the challenge of how to pay for it.

    In terms of small business, the global world is getting so much smaller. I'm thinking about a small company by the name of Wal-Mart. I studied Sam, long before he became...and he's not with us any more. He and his dog have gone on to look for new frontiers. At any rate, they're going to build many, many dozens of stores in Canada. That's good. It will make jobs and so on. But the bottom line....

    I'm wondering who's going to pay as we move forward with the work/life balance. There's such a need for this. When I see that we're going to study it, and we are studying it, I think that's great. It makes me think about the stress that's related to those of us who sit around this table. I mean, we fit right in there, with the challenges.

    We're looking at employment insurance. Fine. I spoke favourably about lowering the rate every year for ten years, more than what we have. Not all Canadians are benefiting from it. I'm really glad to see our witness recognizes that fact with small businesses and small towns, because in many, if not most, of the studies we hear around these committees, the people have never looked outside the urban cities.

    I even want us to include the rural workers and the migratory workers. We have so many people who get no benefits in this country at all, and the government doesn't seem to be aware of it.

    I'm thinking about retail, where often the gender is female. Many more females work in retail than do men. Often chain stores are owned by major companies that own many stores under different names. Our daughter has worked there. It's a good job for people, but I'll tell you, they get just about minimum wage. They don't get the benefits. They don't even get what you're legally entitled to, because that's just the way that type of business operates.

    So we could do a lot about all this, but I really do wonder where the money is going to come from to do it. I know there are savings in the health...and so on.

    It's a two-part point I'm trying to get across to you and also my colleague. Fine, we cut the employment rate down, but then we don't have the money. And as soon as we do that, everybody is going to realize that we don't have the money to solve some of the challenges. We need to make some real changes to employment insurance, and we need to do it for the self-employed workers.

    Where do you recommend, Ms. Maxwell, that we put our attention as a government to focus on how to change some priorities of the money that we would invest in programs? Again, with these small businesses, there are going to be tens of thousands of them affected by just one or two chains moving into just about all the towns in Canada. Towns of 5,000 to 15,000 are going to have a box store, and the challenges are going to be immense.

    Thanks, Madam Chair--and for letting me talk on and on.

º  (1625)  

    Ms. Judith Maxwell: There's no question that the arrival of these major new merchandising operations is very testing for small towns--for what happens, actually, on Main Street as opposed to what happens out along the highway, where the big-box store tends to be--in terms of the nature of employment, because those people will move from being employed by small, locally owned businesses to a much larger enterprise where things could go either way for them. I mean, from a work quality point of view, this may be an employer that does commit to more supportive practices, and it will pay benefits for part-time work, and it does offer some flexibility to negotiate your shift, and that sort of thing. On the other hand, there's no guarantee of that. Because it'll be a much bigger workplace, there'll be a greater distance between the individual worker and the boss, so to speak. So it's hard to predict up front what the overall impacts will be on the quality of employment.

    I think from the point of view of who should pay for the benefits that we need to offer to workers, regardless of where they work, access to training would be high on my list, as well as more flexibility in the employment standards to take account of work/life balance issues.

    We really underutilize the capacity there should be in part II of the Employment Insurance Act. My comment, when the act was introduced, was that if you're going to call it “employment” insurance, then you have to be providing training to people who are employed. It shouldn't be necessary to be unemployed in order to qualify. But I think what we did was that we changed the name without changing the meaning or the scope of the act.

    So I would agree that there is a lot to rethink in the Employment Insurance Act. I think that who pays will always have to be a combination of government, employer, and employee. Together they are the beneficiaries of good programming, and together they need to pay the cost, in my view.

    Mr. Larry McCormick: I did like your comments on the fact that small businesses could get together and form a group to provide some of the benefits, and the options and the services. We do have national associations, such as the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, and I was sitting here awhile ago, wishing that...and they're an excellent organization. They're in the government's face, and we need that. And yet they also need to look at people such as your organization to see how, together, small business could accomplish more. They could certainly end up keeping their employees longer if they were more satisfied and so on.

    Down the road, I know, you need more challenges, but there'd be a great need to make this type of presentation to these national organizations, which need to focus on this for the livelihood of our small business communities, I think.

º  (1630)  

    Ms. Judith Maxwell: Well, I think also one of the challenges here is that collaboration among small businesses has to be very much local. It has to be within a particular community within a neighbourhood, or within a relatively contained region. Where these arrangements for collaboration do exist, often the local community college can be the catalyst, or the key service deliverer, if I can put it that way.

    You need these kind of aggregate institutions at the local level to help make things happen. If the problem is training, then a college may be the best place. If the problem is flexibility in terms of finding workers to fill in when people are on their parental leave, for example, then you may want to do that actually through a local board of trade, or a chamber of commerce, or even a rotary club, where most of the employers in the area will be members.

    But you need an activist. You need a champion locally to make it happen.

    Mr. Larry McCormick: Madam Chair, just in closing, the community colleges across the country have been growing greatly, as I travel this country. They're wearing many hats and offering benefits for many facets of life. I think I like what you're saying about getting everybody involved in the opportunities, from the chambers to the colleges. You need that leader.

    Do I have any more time, Madam Chair? No?

    Thank you very much.

    The Chair: Mr. Pallister, one brief question.

    Mr. Brian Pallister: Just as an observation first, I think a lot of the training we did, from my experience in small business, was informal training within our workplace. I hired people, and many small business people do, with few skills but with the potential to learn. As a team, we upgraded their skills, and subsequently, of course, in too many cases, lost them to the competitive forces that exist--in particular, to government, hiring people away from us in our small communities and so on.

    That said, what role do you think the federal government or our labour standards should play in encouraging that atmosphere of lifelong, ongoing learning and training? What kind of role do you see the government playing in that respect?

    Ms. Judith Maxwell: I'm not one of those people who argues for a training levy, where everybody pays, everybody has to perform, and you get a discount if you perform a high degree of training. I think it's very difficult to measure training, because a lot of it is informal. I also think that you end up with the training levy paying people for what they would have done anyway, so you don't get the incremental value to society at large.

    Then you have to fall back on less coercive measures, and I think an important element is to use employment insurance, part II, to support programs where the employer needs to go beyond the informal training--for instance, needs to expose people to new technology, needs to train them on new software, needs to bring new skills into the workplace. Better to teach the people who know your business than fire them and try to find the skill out there in the workplace.

    There should be a way, therefore, in which there can be some cost sharing or some support for individuals in particular who are seeking to acquire more skill, or where a group of small employers can demonstrate that there is a need. Through the community college they can organize it if some supports can be given. Everybody wins if the skill levels are higher, in the long run.

    What we see is that about one-third of the workplaces in Canada are actually already what we would call “learning” organizations, and then two-thirds are not. So we have a long way to go in order to build that culture of lifelong learning into the employer community as well as into individual workers.

º  (1635)  

    Mr. Brian Pallister: I guess my supplementary question is far too complex to be dealt with here today. I'm very interested in developing a better understanding of how this is best done, how this is properly done. I understand that the EI program has expanded, in many different ways, far beyond its original intention. You seem to be implying that we should continue to look for ways to use that money, because we have it. And that, in a way, is a defence for the rates being higher, of course.

    A couple of times you've alluded to the benefits to employers of having employees trained. I think employers understand that. I think most employers do, maybe not to the degree we might want, or perhaps not uniformly. Still, I think most employers understand that, whether they do it or not. But isn't there also a benefit to society, generally?

    Again, what I'm alluding to how is it fair or right...or is it the best structure to take the EI and put it into general revenues, when all of society benefits, not just those who pay into EI, not just the employer and employee who pay into EI? It seems to me it's not transparent when we do it that way. We're claiming it's for EI, but we're using it for whatever--for jets, let's say, or I don't know.... I don't want to get political here, but it's being used for other things. It's not being used for EI.

    So that's what I'm having trouble with, that concept.

    Ms. Judith Maxwell: I think a lot of Canadians have a high degree of discomfort with the fact that EI funds are not being used for EI purposes. I guess my pitch would be that we're underinvesting in a lot of the things that we could do with the EI funds. We're using the EI program, in the case of parental leave, to do something that would be best done as a more universal tax-based benefit, or something like that, or as a parental allowance based on income prior to the birth of a child, which is more the model that's used in Quebec.

    Mr. Brian Pallister: Was it C.D. Howe that advanced a model a few years ago--

    The Chair: A second supplementary?

    Mr. Brian Pallister: A supplementary to the supplementary.

    The Chair: You are stressing me. You're pushing this.

    Mr. Brian Pallister: Well, it's an interesting topic, and we do have an expert who has some expertise, Madam Chair.

    The Chair: I'm allowing it.

    Mr. Brian Pallister: I could be wrong in my paraphrasing of the model they proposed, but I think it had something to do with the fact that the employer contributions would be used for benefits. There would be a transparent manner of dealing with how that money was taken and how it was used for actual benefits. I think maybe “type 1” benefits is how they proposed it. Members of the committee are probably far more familiar with this proposal than I am. The employees would be “levied”, for lack of a better word, a certain amount as well, and that could be used for the types of programs that I think you're alluding to. There would be a clear understanding, a transparent understanding, that employees would be levied on things that they could benefit from, that they could see, and that the employers would be levied for the benefits. And perhaps there's room for some hybrid proposal.

    Would you like to comment on that? I think transparency, obviously, is an advantage in the delivery of these programs, but....

    Ms. Judith Maxwell: I think it's very productive to have different models on the table for discussion. At some point, whether it's the next mandate or the one after that, we're going to have to open up that act and really think about what the right model is for a post-industrial society.

    Mr. Brian Pallister: Thank you.

    The Chair: Having been through Bill C-2 and beyond Bill C-2, I'm hoping there will be someone else in the chair when we reopen the act.

º  (1640)  

    Mr. Brian Pallister: I will not apologize to members of the committee for finding this topic interesting. I'm saddened that more of our colleagues don't.

    The Chair: No, I do as well, and that's why I've allowed some latitude in the questioning.

    Mr. Brian Pallister: Thank you, Madam Chair.

    The Chair: Monsieur Bellemare.

    Mr. Eugène Bellemare (Ottawa—Orléans, Lib.): Madam Maxwell, we've been talking about employee benefits regarding work/life balance. I believe we're all in agreement, philosophically; it's just a question of how you do it.

    I think we're missing the employer section. Should there be, and could there be, employer benefits? I'm not thinking of the large employers, who see a benefit in creating a community where they have a pool of people who keep on coming to work for them. I'm thinking in terms of what my colleague, Mr. McCormick, mentioned about small businesses, that, gee whiz, if they start giving benefits and they can't get employees to replace these people while these people are absent--if it's for a long period of time or even a short period of time, especially if it's at the wrong time of the year, according to the employer--should there be, and could there be, some benefits?

    Let's say I'm a small employer, and I'm agreeing with these programs. I'm letting my community do their thing so that they feel better and they do better, and there's better productivity. Should it be financial, or how could it be...?

    We have to think of the balancing act. How do you benefit from the EI program, these very small employers, such that it would encourage them to do that? You know, it doesn't hurt them, because if they talk only of bottom lines--“Oh, they're not with it,” or “Work, work, work,” or “If you're not ready to work, get out, and the next person can come in,” etc.--they're just brutes who think bottom line only, and production.

    So coming back to productivity, how could you create an incentive so that they would be moulded toward being happy to give the benefits to their employees?

    Tough question?

    Ms. Judith Maxwell: Well, there's not a quick, straight answer to it, let me put it that way.

    First of all, I don't like paying people to do things that's in their best interest to do in the first place. It seems to me that somehow you have to invest in awareness, in public education here.

    As I was saying to Mr. McCormick, I think a lot of these problems should be solved locally. The question is, who is the natural local champion to do this? In this case, it might be the board of trade, where you could actually have a little bit of research done. For instance, how many weeks of parental leave were taken in this community last year by both mothers and fathers of new children? What does that add up to by way of lost weeks of work from the employers' point of view, and what was the skill mix for that group of people? Then you can start to think about other things. Are there retired people who could fill in here? Are there young people who are underemployed and who could use this as a nice internship to learn a new job, or to learn some skills and understand what a different workplace looks like?

    I know that while labour markets are getting somewhat tighter, especially in western Canada, there's still a lot of talent around that can be deployed. It would be like the old-fashioned labour exchange. You could actually create benefits for people that they might really enjoy, where they knew they didn't have to make a full-time commitment to a job but would get three or four or six weeks of work in a business where they could learn new things.

º  (1645)  

    Mr. Eugène Bellemare: To shift my question from the small employer to the very large employer, it would appear...and I'm being prejudicial here, I admit that right away. But the large employers, the Wal-Marts or the McDonald's of this world, appear to, or seem to, exploit the working community by paying them minimum wages and making sure there's no union involved. These people have no benefits. I notice a lot of them working there are either kids or else retired people trying to bring home an extra dollar and a half a week, to do something.

    Could the government, or governments, force them, if not by law at least philosophically, to provide services to their employees? For example, in the federal government they have time off for this, time off for that, whether it's to bring their kids to the dentist or whatever. And they would be forced to give the same benefits, pro rata or whatever; I don't know what the formula could be.

    I mean, the way the Wal-Marts of this world are coming, they're eating up all the small businesses. They say they create jobs. I don't believe that, because they wouldn't be in business if they were only to create jobs. If there's a small business that employs ten persons and it goes out of business, and there are ten more like it, that's 100 employees. If Wal-Mart takes over the food industry, the hardware company, the clothes store, and so on of a small village, boom, you just have a Wal-Mart. Instead of having 100 employees, you probably only have 50, and they're all getting $7.50 an hour, with no advantages.

    Should the government start thinking about saying to the McDonald's and the Wal-Marts of this world, “Okay, guys, from now on you have a responsibility to workers--yes, on a pro rata basis, but you have to start doing that”?

    What are your thoughts on that?

    Ms. Judith Maxwell: Well, Saskatchewan has a law that says with all part-time jobs, you have to have benefits pro rata. I don't think it applies to every industry, but I can't remember what the....

    Do you know, Mr. Pallister?

    Mr. Brian Pallister: From what I understand, it's very difficult to provide some benefits pro rata, such as disability and extended health benefits and so on.

    Ms. Judith Maxwell: Yes.

    Mr. Brian Pallister: It can be difficult to do.

    Ms. Judith Maxwell: I think it's a limited range of benefits that's mandatory, and it's not for 100% of the workforce.

    Nonetheless, there are countries, and there is a province, where that would be the normal thing to do. And you could legislate through employment standards the five days a year of family personal leave, etc., that Madam St-Jacques mentioned earlier.

    So there is all kinds of scope to do these things, but you have to first build the consensus that it's the right thing to do. The employer community that would be most affected, clearly, would be retail trade, small sales and services, accommodation, etc. And I think there's every good reason in this society to truly legitimize part-time work, because it is such a good way for families to manage their work/life balance.

    Mr. Eugène Bellemare: Madame la présidente, could our researcher look into the Saskatchewan model?

    The Chair: I'm sure he could.

    We also have to remember that any recommendations that we make have to be made in terms of where the federal responsibility is, and we're talking about federal jurisdiction. The examples you've been raising in the retail sector and some of those are not under federal jurisdiction. The Employment Standards Act is--

[Translation]

    Mr. Eugène Bellemare: Just a moment.

[English]

    The Chair: Yes.

    Mr. Eugène Bellemare: I know of one company, Loblaws, that's in the banking industry and in the insurance business.

    The Chair: But only that portion of their business is in the banking industry, under the...and those portions of that company would be regulated, I would suspect, but only to the extent that it....

    Yes.

º  (1650)  

    Ms. Judith Maxwell: If I may, Madam Chair, I think the importance of the federal Labour Code is that it sets an example.

    The Chair: Precisely. And I was going to ask you to talk about what the federal government can do. I do think we need to lead by example, and you talked about having standards that reflect work/life balance. You mentioned family leave, parental leave, compassionate leave. What are the appropriate levels, from your perspective?

    Ms. Judith Maxwell: Of leave?

    The Chair: Yes.

    Ms. Judith Maxwell: Let me go back to my notes, and we can go through the list.

    For family leave or personal leave, I would start with five days. For parental leave, I think, as I said earlier, one year is excellent. The real problem is coverage, because there are too many families that don't have access to this benefit.

    The Chair: So is this something that you'd like to see extended to self-employed workers?

    Ms. Judith Maxwell: They would be the biggest example.

    The Chair: Yes.

    Ms. Judith Maxwell: But even in a family where the children are close together, it may be very difficult for the mother to build up sufficient hours to be fully qualifying before the second child is born. Or for reasons of illness or something, the mother may be out of the workforce in the period prior to the conception, and therefore the qualification period is shortened, etc. There seems to be a lot of discontinuity in people's lives that can put them in a difficult position.

    In terms of compassionate leave, I think we should experiment with the six weeks that's proposed. I think we need to look more at the European models, at the way they handle these issues, and have a more comprehensive look at the issue of social care and how we're going to organize ourselves to support that, because it connects with the way that health care systems are organized, the way that disability programs are organized.

    There are a lot of things you have to take into account to come up with the right answer there.

    The Chair: And should that be under EI, or should we be looking at it in terms of tax policy?

    Ms. Judith Maxwell: I think to the extent that you require employment standards, they should be in the Employment Standards Act, in the Labour Code. But beyond that, I think these are societal issues. It's a serious question of whether you limit them.... Well, if we fix EI, then maybe it's okay to leave it there, but my guess is that with parental leave you'd rather drive it off a different base.

    The Chair: Okay.

    In terms of limits to overtime, what do you think are reasonable limits?

    Ms. Judith Maxwell: There are limits that exist now, but they only apply to people who are governed by the standards. And the standards aren't necessarily being enforced, if you look at the whole workforce, in ways that provide the necessary protection to the workers.

    The Chair: So you think the current levels are appropriate, it's just the enforcement, or the application, that needs looking at.

    Ms. Judith Maxwell: I would start with the enforcement.

    The Chair: Okay.

    And then you talk about the benefits of pro-rated part-time work. I think there's certainly a role for the federal government in terms of contract workers and part-time workers. We don't disagree there.

    In your next slide you mentioned that governments need to “update social policy principles to place a higher value on care giving”. I agree with the support for early childhood learning. I think that's absolutely critical, and I think money that's spent there is money that's saved throughout the lifetime of the child.

    Would you suggest that this should be through tax policy, that we support early childhood in terms of what the federal government can do?

    Ms. Judith Maxwell: I think that would have to be through some kind of a cost-sharing arrangement with the provinces. I mean, originally the vehicle for funding the federal share was the Canada Assistance Plan, but we know what happened to that. We've never come up with another vehicle, and we haven't yet adjusted our thinking to an era when 70% of mothers with young children are working.

    So I don't think we can just apply the old model. I would like to see, for three- and four-year-olds, that actually be part of the education system, and therefore be funded through the education budget. But then there's still the question of crèche and other services for very young children that needs to be thought though.

º  (1655)  

    The Chair: And again, from the federal perspective, there's the constitutional problem about whose responsibility it is. I agree that when you can come up with an appropriate cost-sharing arrangement that works...but we do have provinces that believe the federal government is stepping into areas of provincial jurisdiction. I also believe that's not a good enough reason for the federal government to wash their hands of it, and that we need to find another way.

    Ms. Judith Maxwell: I think it would be very hard for the provinces to do this fully on their own. We can see already that there is quite a serious debate in Quebec about the sustainability of the commitment they have made. The federal government is contributing a very small portion of the cost of the Quebec program. So Quebec has made a quantum leap forward in the supply of child care spaces, and in quality. I would hate to see it backtrack either on supply or quality at this point, but a new funding formula is needed in terms of both the parental share and the federal share.

    Of course, the federal government could, as a result of an agreement with the provinces, provide a voucher that could be used to cover the cost of child care. That tends to be a pretty efficient process. Or it could be through a refundable tax credit. But we need to start those conversations as soon as we can and actually come to some sort of consensus about what the appropriate funding vehicle is, and what the respective roles of the federal, provincial, and education systems will be.

    The Chair: Good.

    Thank you very much. You have given us a great deal to think about and a great deal of information. I thank you for coming to be with our committee. We will keep your name handy if we should need any further information. Thank you so much.

    Ms. Judith Maxwell: Well, thank you. This is an issue that's very close to my heart, and I'm glad that we had a chance to talk about it.

    The Chair: Great.

    Meeting adjourned.