HANSARD

 

 

NOVA SCOTIA HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY

 

 

COMMITTEE

 

ON

 

HUMAN RESOURCES

 

 

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

 

 

COMMITTEE ROOM 1

 

Canadian Federation of Independent Business - Re: Labour Standards

& Agency, Board and Commission Appointments

 

 

 

Printed and Published by Nova Scotia Hansard Reporting Services

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

STANDING COMMITTEE ON HUMAN RESOURCES

 

 

Mr. Mat Whynott (Chairman)

Mr. Leonard Preyra

Ms. Becky Kent

Mr. Maurice Smith

Mr. Brian Skabar

Hon. Michel Samson

Mr. Zach Churchill

Hon. Christopher d'Entremont

Mr. Allan MacMaster

 

 

[Mr. Maurice Smith was replaced by Ms. Michele Raymond.]

[Hon. Michel Samson was replaced by Hon. Wayne Gaudet.]

 

 

 

WITNESSES

 

Canadian Federation of Independent Business

 

Ms. Leanne Hachey - Vice-President, Atlantic

Ms. Amelia DeMarco - Senior Policy Analyst

 

 

 

In Attendance:

 

Ms. Jana Hodgson

Legislative Committee Clerk

 

Mr. Gordon Hebb

Chief Legislative Counsel

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

HALIFAX, TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2012

 

STANDING COMMITTEE ON HUMAN RESOURCES

 

9:00 A.M.

 

CHAIRMAN

Mr. Mat Whynott

 

 

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please. I call this meeting of the Human Resources Committee to order. I welcome everybody here this morning. We will go around and introduce our members.

 

[The committee members introduced themselves.]

 

MR. CHAIRMAN: Ms. Hachey and Ms. DeMarco, welcome. We'll begin with our presentation from CFIB. Typically the way we do this, it's a little more informal so we'll try to keep a record of which members of each caucus have questions. Try to keep them, in the first round, around 10 minutes each and then we'll do a second round, if needed, and we'll judge the time accordingly. We'll probably aim to finish up here around 10:30 a.m. because we have some committee business afterwards. Welcome.

 

MS. LEANNE HACHEY: Thank you very much. It's nice to see you all again. We met with you a number of times throughout the years so I'm not going to go through this. The only things I wanted to flag about CFIB are the facts that we are non-partisan, as you all are aware; we are non-profit; and we're also one-member, one-vote. So all of the stuff that I'm bringing to you here today is information that we've collected from our members, all of whom have small- and medium-sized businesses and all of which operate in your constituencies.

 

As Amelia and I were walking through what to talk about today, we could really cast the net incredibly wide because your committee has quite a massive mandate. We decided that we'd spend our formal presentation time talking about the really big picture, end off with all of the areas that we could address, and then leave it up to you to see what information you want to glean from us.

 

 

1

Again, I want to start with that big picture and talk about what the past decade has looked like in Nova Scotia. I say "the past decade" because I've been with CFIB now for almost 10 years so it's a nice time frame for me to share with you what I've seen over the past 10 years.

 

In the past 10 years, our provincial budget has nearly doubled; overall program spending - that's spending on direct programs, so that doesn't include spending on interest to the debt - has increased by 88 per cent. Of course, our debt has increased by $1 billion. Our provincial public sector has grown by 22 per cent and when I say "provincial public sector" I include - this is how the Department of Finance defines it - general provincial government, health and social services, and universities and colleges. Again, that number has increased by 22 per cent over the past decade.

 

Taxes, of course, have increased; we've seen a 2 per cent increase in the HST. We also continue to have bracket creep, which means our personal income tax system isn't indexed to inflation. We also have new tax brackets on the personal income side. We're one of only two provinces, I think, that have five income tax brackets.

 

Also, the minimum wage has increased by 70 per cent since I started with CFIB. Given all of this, we always wonder, well, what have been the outcomes?

 

That is what has been happening on government side. We'd like to know, how has that translated to the private sector and to the economy overall? We all know that Nova Scotia has posted the lowest levels of economic growth over the past decade. We've also posted some of the lowest levels of productivity and productivity improvement over the past decade. We found out from Statistics Canada last week that we also posted the lowest level of population growth in the country over the past decade at 1.6 per cent. We also know that student enrolment has been down 16 per cent over the past decade. These are numbers that the Minister of Finance actually shared with us in a meeting we had with him about a year ago.

 

You may know that we actually have fewer businesses now in Nova Scotia than we did 10 years ago. In terms of what those numbers look like - again, these are numbers from the Department of Finance. In 2001, we had about 29,400 small businesses; those are businesses that have fewer than 50 employees. In 2006 - those are the latest numbers that we could glean as the 2011 ones haven't been posted yet - we now have just over 29,000, so a net loss of about 200 small businesses over the past decade. That trend has continued also on the large business side, so businesses with more than 50 employees. In 2001, we had about 2,800 large businesses in Nova Scotia and in 2006 we posted about 2,650, so again, a net loss of businesses in the provinces.

 

I'm going to pass it over to Amelia to talk about what this means for our members.

 

MS. AMELIA DEMARCO: To give you a sense of what all of that looks like, you may know that we survey our members to get a sense of small-business optimism. One of the things we have seen sort of over the past 10 years, although there have been some ups and some downs in Nova Scotia, the general trend over the past 10 years is that businesses here have been at or near the bottom of the country when it comes to optimism. Although you'll notice in the past couple of months that there has been a small uptick in optimism, one of the things that's really concerning to us is this gap that you can see. There's a large gap, a persistent gap between what's going on here in terms of small-business optimism and what's happening in the rest of the country.

 

One of the numbers that we pulled out here is we also look at employment levels. One of the things that we've seen is that businesses here - the employment numbers that we see here tell a very different story than they do in other parts of the country. So in the Fall, leading up to the holiday season, we had about 18 per cent of businesses saying that they were actually planning to decrease full-time employment levels. That's about twice as many as in other parts of the country and certainly not what we would expect to see leading up to that holiday season, not what we had hoped to see with the news of the shipbuilding contract. Again, our concern here is that even though we have some of these things like the shipbuilding contract, like the holiday season that was coming up at that time, we're not seeing the numbers that we'd like to see and, again, the numbers that we do see are very different from what we're seeing in other parts of the country.

 

We asked our members about what are their main operating challenges, what are their main cost pressures. On the operating challenges we see that about 46 per cent of businesses say insufficient domestic demand - and you may have heard from some of your constituents that business owners say their customers just don't have extra money to come into the business, to go out to dinner, to buy that extra whatever it is. The other one here that I wanted to highlight, as I'm sure it would be of interest to you, is the shortage of skilled labour. Despite things being a little bit slower with what has gone on in the economy, we still have about one-third of our members saying that they're having issues with the shortage of skilled labour. Of course, we expect that to become more of an issue as we go forward.

 

The other thing here on the main cost pressures - yes, the number one is absolutely fuel and energy costs. That's something that we see across the country, probably not surprising to any of you here. Again, we also have taxes and regulations quite high here, that's normally one of the top ones for our members. But the one that I wanted to draw your attention to is wages. We have about 54 per cent of our members saying that wages are now causing difficulty for their business. That is not where we normally see that particular indicator and for us that speaks to what has gone on on the minimum wage side, that after years of successive and really aggressive increases, we are now seeing businesses say, you know what, I'm really at my max, I really hit that threshold where I don't have a lot of room to move on that side and it's causing challenges for me and my business.

 

Part of what explains some of these numbers and some of the things that Leanne has been talking about is our tax picture. I know that in meetings with all of you we've gone through these facts before, but it's unfortunately still true that we are one of only three provinces that don't index our personal income tax brackets, as Leanne mentioned. We are one of only two provinces with five income tax brackets, after we just added that fifth income tax bracket; we have the highest sales tax in Canada; we have the highest corporate tax rate in Canada; we have the third-highest small-business tax and we also have the lowest threshold. We have the second-highest workers' compensation premiums in Canada and we have the fourth-highest provincial fuel tax.

 

Something that you may have seen in the news lately or perhaps even heard about from some of your constituents - we are certainly hearing it a lot more from our members - is this growing gap between what residents pay and what commercial properties pay for property values of the same size. A big part of why that's becoming more of an issue is that provincial cap on residential assessments. While on the residential side that growth has been held down because of that cap, business owners have really seen their assessments growing rapidly over the past 10 years and we're hearing certainly from our members, and you may be hearing from your constituents, that this has had a huge impact on the taxes that businesses are paying.

 

MS. HACHEY: We talk about the tax picture because it's important for us that those we meet will understand that bigger picture. I was asked a question yesterday on The Rick Howe Show whether or not the transit strike is going to cause one of our members to shut down shop. I always have to say, it's not just one issue; it's the cumulative burden of all of it and the compounding impacts that has on a business. So again, that's why we want to paint that picture. We also want to connect the dots for you as to what this means when it comes to the labour environment in small- and medium-sized business; what our tax picture, what the overall picture allows or does not allow business owners to do in their business.

 

We've asked our members, if you had more money in your pocket - in this case we've talked about tax savings because we know we have room to become more competitive - what would you do with that money? Those of you who have small-business owners in your constituency - I'm sure you all do - you likely know that that small-business owner wouldn't stuff that money in their pocket or take a trip to Hawaii; there is no way that would happen. They would invest that money back into their business and here's what our members say they would do: they would increase employee wages. They actually want their employees to earn more money, but they need the ability to make that happen. They would actually purchase machinery and equipment. We all want businesses to become more productive. Guess what? Businesses want to too. If they had the ability to that, that would be one place that they would invest - they would hire more employees.

 

We talk about job creation; we talk about having more Nova Scotians working, contributing to their community, contributing to our economy, contributing to the tax revenue of the province. Well, small-business owners want to help that as well. About just over a third said that they would convert those savings into profit and we have just under that say that they would invest in employee training. Then fewer say that they would invest in R&D. This is to say there is an opportunity cost when we have the tax picture that we do. There are things that business owners want to do, but simply do not have the ability to do it.

 

What does this mean? A few years ago, CFIB did a study where we tried to quantify how much small-business owners spend formally and informally training their employees, because we know investment in training is one of the best ways to improve your employees' skill set, the business owner's skill set and the business' productivity. We actually have seen a relationship between the tax picture of a province and how much individual businesses are able to invest in training. So, you see here, Nova Scotia had the eighth worst tax system when we did the study back in 2008 and that's exactly where they were when we looked at how much money they invested in employee training. I mention this because these dots are all connected. If business owners don't have the ability to do the stuff we need them to do, it's not going to happen.

 

Another big picture overlaying all of this: we've talked a lot around the pessimism that exists in our small- and medium-sized business community; we've talked about the reasons why that exists; what the outcomes have been in terms of economic growth, productivity, et cetera. We now want to say that adding to all of this is an uncertain labour environment. So, again, we can go back to Bill No. 100; we can go back to the creation of the Labour Management Review Committee; we can go back to first contract arbitration, and that's sort of coming out of the blue for the business community. We can certainly talk about minimum wage increases and the impact that has had in the tax environment we already have, and we are seeing it in increased levels of youth unemployment.

 

You may have known, last year occupational health and safety administrative penalties were brought in - something else the business community was unaware of; they are being affected by those penalties as we speak - and also added regulation. I know I spoke to the NDP caucus not too long ago about the impact of regulation and what happens in a small business when you have the business owner trying to manage all of these things, what they are able and unable to do.

 

Finally again, throwing things into the mix is always every February, the discussion of another statutory holiday. Again, I just say this to say, this is the compounding impact of the environment that we've created and it's not allowing businesses to do the things that we need them to do and that they want to do.

 

What we want, and what our members want, is to grow the economy. We always hear the options in government about, well, we can either increase taxes or we can reduce spending. We think that there's a third way and that is growing the pie; growing the economy so you have more people working; growing the economy so you have more people working and earning more money. One way we believe that can happen is to change the culture of Nova Scotia from creating job takers to creating job makers; creating the next generation of entrepreneurs. What we need for that to happen is a government that fits the size of the province; a right-sized government with wage and benefit for public-sector employees that are comparable to what exists in the private sector.

 

We also need a competitive taxation and regulatory regime, and we need a stable labour environment. We need an education system that embodies entrepreneurship and we'll certainly talk about some of the feedback we provided to the Ben Levin report. We also need education and immigration systems that work closely with business so that they're producing the skills that are needed out there in the workforce. As I said, we just wanted to use our time to paint that big picture.

 

There are so many things we can share with you today, which include our members' perspectives on education; training; immigration; the shortage of qualified labour, which Amelia has already touched on; skill needs and SMEs; their perspective on the immigration system; regulation; taxation, of course; anything under the labour umbrella, which includes occupational health and safety administrative penalties, which I mentioned earlier; workers' compensation; minimum wage; statutory holidays; and, of course, pension issues. Again, we thought we would leave it up to you to see where you guys wanted to take the conversation, so thank you.

 

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much. The first round of questions, I saw the first hand, Mr. MacMaster.

 

MR. ALLAN MACMASTER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My first question has to do - I noticed one of the main cost pressures for businesses is energy. I know the biggest development in the province right now is the move towards getting an energy source through Muskrat Falls. We've called upon the government to do a cost-benefit analysis to make sure that that is the most efficient form of energy that can come into our province and, of course, provide people and businesses with a competitive source of electricity. Would your members approach such an important decision without reviewing the cost benefits of it?

 

MS. HACHEY: I'll take us back to the days of EGSPA - the Environmental Goals and Sustainable Prosperity Act - which I think was supported by all Parties at the time. In it, you may know it had some very aggressive environmental targets because I think it wanted Nova Scotia to be one of the most sustainable economies in communities around the world.

 

What's often missed in the discussion around EGSPA is the fact that there is a second goal in EGSPA, and that was to have economic growth equal to or exceeding the national average. One of CFIB's big concerns - and we sat on the round table on EGSPA - was that there was a whole lot of attention paid to the environmental side, and rightly so. Our members are family members, community members, they care about the environment and we have lots of data that shows that. But they are also employers and they are very interested, or as interested, in that other goal that has been lost, which was economic growth equal to or greater than the national average.

 

We always said we need to know the cost of this, if only so that we can be transparent with Nova Scotians so that they are aware of what we are signing onto. I would say that in EGSPA the piece about economic growth has been completely lost, there has been tons of attention on the environmental side and, as I said, that's not a bad thing. But we do think - our members certainly think - that there needs to be an equal balance of both.

 

The other thing I'll mention about energy, which some of you may or may not know is that the way our energy system works right now in Nova Scotia is that there are different - all ratepayers are not created equally. In our case, small-business owners have taken it on the chin for other rate classes. That's one of the reasons that CFIB fought for a small-business advocate, because we had seen this gap between what every other rate group pays and what small-business owners pay. So there's a revenue - it's called a revenue cost ratio and it's supposed to be about 100 per cent, meaning that any one rate class should pay 100 per cent of the costs or of the services they are receiving in return. The only category that was above paying more than they got was the small-business owner class. Again, that's why we fought for a small-business advocate.

 

So this issue is incredibly important for small-business owners and, again, I do not want to leave you with the impression that they do not care about the environment; that is not at all the case. They want sustainable growth and when they say sustainable growth, it has to balance economic needs with environmental needs and we do need to know the up-front costs.

 

We are seeing now, if we go back a few years, that government had slowed down some of the targets on mercury emissions. That was something that was embedded in EGSPA so, again, there is one example. You may know there are 22 goals or something like that, under EGSPA, which fall underneath the environmental umbrella. That was one goal and we saw how much that was going to cost, so I think we do need to know, and for small-business owners because they do pay more than other rate classes. It's that much more important that they know.

 

MS. DEMARCO: To add to that, we actually did do a survey with our members specifically on electricity. We asked them about, when you have new sources of electricity or energy, how do you prioritize things like cost reliability, whether or not it's renewable? Their number-one concern was reliability. So it was reliability, then cost, and certainly it being renewable factored very high for them, but in terms of their top-two priorities it was reliability and end cost.

 

MR. MACMASTER: The next question I had, I noticed the second-biggest cost pressure was wages, I believe, in the graph you showed. Small-business owners are competing with government in a lot of cases because people can work for government and there are good wages and benefits. The government is also trying to balance its budget right now and, of course, the number-one cost in government - it could be upwards of 80 per cent of the cost to government - is wages and benefits.

 

I guess my question to you is how would you balance the budget?

 

MS. HACHEY: I guess I would use the budget calculator.

 

MR. LEONARD PREYRA: You sound like Graham. (Laughter)

 

MR. MACMASTER: Yes, I sound like Graham Steele. The reason I put it in that context, I guess, is because it has a very direct impact on small-business owners in the province, trying to run their business. It's also an issue for government right now because if they're going to do something to balance the budget, typically you'd look at your biggest cost and you'd try to do something about it. I guess I'd just like to hear your thoughts.

 

MS. HACHEY: Yes, absolutely; I'll answer that in two ways. The first thing that I'll talk very briefly about is the impact of minimum wage increases. Again, the minimum wage has increased over the past decade by 70 per cent at a time when inflation plus population growth equalled about 25 per cent, so we're talking nearly three times the rate of inflation. Much of that has been compressed within three years. The successive and aggressive increases started as our economy was just coming out of recession so the increases could not have happened at a worse time. What has this meant for small businesses? That's why we see wage concerns way up there.

 

First of all I should say that most Nova Scotians do not earn the minimum wage, which is a very good thing and we'd like to say fewer of them earn minimum wage. What we're finding though is that as that minimum wage grows, guess what? Most Nova Scotians are earning minimum wage. There is only so much money that exists in a business, so there are trade-offs or offsets that businesses have to make to accommodate when their wage class grows.

 

We've heard firsthand from a member in the Truro area that when she used to hire people to work in her chocolate shop she would go for the 16- or 17-year-old kid to give them that first taste of working in a workplace and that's the beauty of working in small businesses. Many of us probably got our start in a small, local, independent business. She said though when the wage hits $10 an hour and when you consider payroll taxes on top of that, it equals almost $12 an hour, so we're talking $23,000 a year and the business is no longer willing to take a risk on a 16-year-old who has never worked a day in their life.

 

What they do is they go for the 45-year-old who has lots of work experience, the business owner knows they're going to show up every day, dressed appropriately, knows how to greet customers, and we are seeing that in our youth unemployment numbers. Again, business owners do not want to be making those choices, but those are the choices that they're being forced to make.

 

When it comes to minimum wage, we always say that government itself has much more powerful public policy tools at its disposal to improve the take-home income of Nova Scotians, more so than the chocolate-shop owner who employs three people. They have an entire tax system they can play with. In British Columbia you may know that that government there does not tax, at the provincial level, minimum wage income earners at all. So what happens is that our minimum wage may be about the same level or slightly lower than the wage in British Columbia, people actually take home more money there because the tax system is friendlier to them. So I did want to mention minimum wage first and its impacts and what we're seeing in the business community.

 

I'll say also, because of the minimum wage, business owners are unable to give that different tier of workers increases so you're finding now, again, that pool of minimum wage earners is just growing as opposed to the business owner being able to give the person who makes $12 an hour an extra 50 cents or an extra $1 an hour. They're keeping their wage flat because they do not have the ability to do both.

 

On the public-sector wages and benefits piece, this is a huge issue for CFIB, but I will say, how many times do you wake up in the morning and read the front page of the paper and there is a story about pensions? It is in the news all of the time now and there are very good reasons for that and I'll tell a little bit of a story.

 

For any of you who have looked at the pension file, you may know that there are two different kinds of pensions, for the most part, that exist out there. One is defined benefit, where you're promised a certain level of payout after you retire; and then defined contributions, so the money that I contribute is my guarantee, but however the market performs is what I get at the end of the day.

 

Defined benefits are pretty much now the sole jurisdiction of the public sector. Defined contributions are very much the status quo in the private sector for those Nova Scotians who have any pension whatsoever, and you probably know that about 67 per cent of your constituents have no pension whatsoever. Defined contribution is a very generous pension. That does not hold a candle, though, to the defined benefit plan. Again, this is really the jurisdiction of the public sector, for the most part, now only.

 

Defined benefit pension plans were brought into the public sector because there was a time when public-sector workers did not earn the same amount of money as those in the private sector, so defined benefit programs were offered as a way to offset any wage premiums that were offered in the private sector - this is about 20 or 30 years ago. Defined benefit plans were also introduced at a time when people's average life expectancy was 70 or 71 years old. The world has completely changed now. People are living to 90 years old, people now are living in retirement longer than they actually worked. It's a completely different ballgame.

 

As well in the public sector, there is no longer a wage premium for working in the private sector. The pendulum has shifted, there's a wage premium for working in the public sector. We've done a study called Wage Watch that looks at identical occupations that exist in both the private sector and the public sector and have determined that there is a premium - not for all occupations and not at all levels of government, but for a great, big chunk of them.

 

What does this mean to one of our members? They're concerned for a few reasons. One is that they have to carry the cost of all of this. That is one of the reasons we have the tax system that we do; it costs money to do this. Secondly, they are competing with government for people. There is no way a small-business owner in your community can compete with the wages and benefits that are offered in the public sector, there is simply no way. Even if they wanted to, and many of them probably wish they could, it is simply not doable. A defined benefit pension plan in the private sector is unheard of for businesses that are the average size of businesses in Nova Scotia, which is about eight people.

 

So yes, wages and benefits in the public sector should absolutely be on the table. We mentioned this to the Minister of Finance when we met with him.

 

You may know, Allan, that in New Brunswick, we all know the struggles that are happening in New Brunswick. They have actually undertaken a review of the overall compensation system for the public sector, to ensure sustainability and cost certainty. One of the killers in a pension file is not the employer contributions - no issue with the employer contributing 10 per cent or whatever you do to salary - it's all of the top-ups that have happened over the years. So, again, that does not provide cost certainty for government.

 

Also, to ensure comparability with the private sector - we're not saying that public-sector employees should not be paid fairly, they absolutely should be. You will not get good public policy if you are not attracting good people, so that's not what we're here to say. We are here to say there should be some comparability with what someone earns in the private sector versus what someone earns in the public sector.

 

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much. We will now go to Mr. Churchill.

 

MR. ZACH CHURCHILL: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thanks, folks, for coming in and providing that presentation; it was well done, as always. I think one the most important things to take from this, or one of the things that I've taken from it, is the fact that business confidence and optimism is down. I have to say that I think after the presentation, mine might be a little bit down too.

 

To me, that seems to be the scariest thing because when people aren't confident enough to invest in a small business or join a small business or spend money here, that's when we have the larger economic challenges that we do have: when people aren't spending then people won't have businesses.

 

I think the third and fourth slides that you presented showed that the public sector has basically been pumping a lot of money out there, bringing in a lot of revenue, but we seem to be doing terrible in every single thing that you mentioned in the fourth slide here: lowest economic growth, lowest levels of productivity, lowest levels of population growth. Has there been a philosophical flaw here when it comes to governing in Nova Scotia? I'm sure there are a lot of other factors that have come into play to ensure that these things have happened, but has there been a philosophical flaw with the way that governments have actually functioned in Nova Scotia? We seem to be spending a lot of money so one would think that outcomes would actually increase, but the opposite has seemed to happen. So what is the problem here?

 

MS. HACHEY: Well, I guess, Zach - and I'll let Amelia take a stab at this one too - I guess what I would say is that clearly, from our perspective, what we have been doing is not working. Despite all of the people that the public sector has hired - 22,000 over the past 10 years - despite taking on more debt as a province, given the fact that we've increased program spending by 88 per cent, that our provincial budget has nearly doubled, we have fewer businesses in Nova Scotia, we have the lowest levels of economic growth, the lowest levels of productivity, the lowest levels of population growth. Clearly whatever we have been doing is not working. Whether or not that's a fundamental flaw or a philosophical flaw, I'll let you be the judge of that.

 

MR. CHURCHILL: What has that been? What have we been doing wrong, is what my question is?

 

MS. HACHEY: I have often described - and to your first point, Zach, about the pessimism in these numbers, let me say that I am tired of telling this story. Nothing would make me happier than to come here and tell a story about prosperity, optimism, job creation, entrepreneurialism, and just really a fire-in-the-belly spirit that Nova Scotians have. I get that feeling when I go to St. John's and I think, gosh, if only I could export some of that here. I will say this isn't a story I like to tell; it's an important story to tell, though, because if we do not face it, we will be facing more of the same.

 

What I say when I describe our economy in Nova Scotia is that it's quite sickly in the sense that we have very large government - and when I say "government" I don't just mean government at the provincial level. Add up all of the governments we have within the municipality and then add up all the spending that happens on the federal level. I'm not here to say that government spending is a bad thing, but there's a sweet spot - too much of it takes away from activity that can happen in the private sector. When you have too much government operating in an economy - and we've done a spending report that shows that government spending at all levels of government contributes about 56 per cent of our overall economy every year. That's higher than Greece, that's higher than Ireland, that's higher than Spain. The only jurisdiction in the world that's higher than us is P.E.I. So what happens when that's the picture?

 

I will say that 56 per cent - and again, I'm not here to say that government spending is a bad thing, not at all, it can actually encourage a lot of economic activity. But there is a sweet spot and economists estimate that sweet spot to be anywhere between 20 per cent or 30 per cent of the economy, so we are way beyond that sweet spot. So what happens? One, you have a private sector that's not as active as it could be; you have a private sector that's not as big as it could be; and you have a private sector that is more dependent on government than private sectors are in other economies across the country.

 

How many businesses do you have in your community that have one large government contract or have two or three smaller ones? Once government starts to shrink, it's not only the public sector that's being affected; it's all of the businesses that are dependent now on a very large public sector for their business. So as I say, we have an imbalance in Nova Scotia and that's why we say we need to right-size government.

 

Again, this is not about getting rid of government. Government plays a fundamental role in our economy in our communities, they absolutely have an important role to play and they are the only institution that can play it, but once you go beyond that sweet spot there are unintended consequences all over the place. As I say, when our government starts to shrink both at the federal level and at the provincial level, we will see the impacts on the private sector more so here than we will in other jurisdictions that have a better balance.

 

MS. DEMARCO: I think on that point, too, one of the things we had mentioned earlier, the Ben Levin report, we provided some feedback. One of the things we have heard a lot from our members is that although many of them would recommend entrepreneurship as a career option to youth, they don't feel that that's being emphasized enough in our school system. One of the things that we have certainly been hearing from our members is that they would like to see a much bigger emphasis on that much earlier in the school years to get Nova Scotians thinking about starting their own business, entrepreneurship as a career. Again, having that emphasis on the job makers as opposed to the job takers, I think that's another piece as well.

 

We often talk about how often probably in your own communities you hear the saying that the only good jobs are government jobs. We want to live in a province where good jobs are in a private sector that's a growing, thriving private sector with opportunities, and I think a big part of that is all along the line emphasizing that this is an option; it's a great option. We certainly know from a lot of the public polling we've done that it's one of the preferred career options for people and that there's a whole lot to be gained from running your own business. That's another thing to add to that, I think.

 

MS. HACHEY: Yes, thanks, Amelia. When we did our response to the Ben Levin report, for the most part we were really pleased with the direction they talked about, improving productivity and outcomes in the education system, and we're very much in line with that. We were very disappointed though that it didn't talk about the importance of entrepreneurship and that it didn't really make a link between the skills and students that we're pumping out there and whether or not they're job-ready, whether or not they're skill-ready for the workplace. So again, that was a gap that we saw in that report.

 

MR. CHURCHILL: It seems to me - and you mentioned in the presentation - one of the fundamental things that government can do to actually create conditions for success in the province is take a look at the tax structure. I don't think it's a secret that Nova Scotia is a very taxed jurisdiction. I hear that a lot from my constituents, from small business and larger business owners in my area. Our caucus has been calling on the government to conduct a comprehensive tax review and I know that CFIB has done the same. I believe that in the 2010 budget, the government actually committed to conducting a tax review. Do we know if anything has happened as a result of that commitment?

 

MR. CHAIRMAN: You have about one minute to answer that because I have a long list of questioners.

 

MS. HACHEY: We do know now, the one thing government has done, which is fantastic, is if you look at the Department of Finance's Web site, they've actually really captured what the tax system looks like in Nova Scotia compared to all others, so they've done the comparability piece. What we've been asking for is to go beyond that. Now we know where we sit relative to everyone else and it's not where we want to be. So what is the road map to get to where we want to go and do we know where we want to go?

 

One of the issues that we've raised with the Minister of Finance is outlining a long-term tax strategy. Again, we're realists; we understand that taxes can't be reduced overnight. We understand the fiscal situation of our province, but we do think that all Nova Scotians - particularly our members - need to know where we are going over the next five years or after the next 10 years and what they can expect on the tax side. That piece hasn't been done.

 

MR. CHURCHILL: Is that going to happen?

 

MS. HACHEY: We'll find out in the budget, I guess.

 

MR. CHURCHILL: Thank you.

 

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Mr. Churchill. We're going to go to Ms. Kent.

 

MS. BECKY KENT: Thank you, ladies, for coming in. I actually have quite a bit of concerns and questions that I think I need a little clarity on. Very specifically, it's no secret as it has been noted before - and you would know - that our government is working very hard to get our own financial house in order. Nova Scotians need it, they expect it; it's what we said we'd do and we are. It's a daunting task and all players have to take part in that, including the public and private sectors, the average income earner. However, it's challenging at the best of times and, frankly, when we hear from agencies like yours or advocates on behalf of businesses, we continue to hear this overarching scheme.

 

You have actually brought in buzzwords that we've heard from your agency and your sector before, particularly from your agency. Things like: government has to get an overall arching scheme, we have to grow the pie, and we have to grow the economy. Then I was sort of hoping that you'd come up with something very specific that we can do because we've heard a lot of this before. Here's an opportunity before us today to really put something concrete in front of this group to be able to move forward as something tangible that government can consider. Instead we got "we need a culture change." We know that. This government has very clearly said that out loud. Then we get "we have to right-size the government, competitive and stable."

 

I guess what I'm getting at is it seems that while there are a lot of criticisms for the state that we're in right now, that as you've said, 10 years - it's not just 10 years. It has been 20, 30 years that brought us to this current financial scenario in Nova Scotia. Some of it had to do with outside forces and the general economy and other countries and the whole global economic impacts that affect Nova Scotia and Canada, frankly. I guess I want to hear from you in a way that gives us something concrete to work with, as a committee, to take back to our government and our colleagues in the House, the decision makers, very specifically. I look at this slide that says "Needed: an environment that promotes entrepreneurship & innovation." There's not a person in government, there's not a member of the House of Assembly who would not already know that and agree with that.

 

When I look at all the bullets that you have - it talks about right-sizing government, and wage and benefit comparability. You know very clearly, our government is tightening its belts. There are specific measures within the public sector of the Nova Scotia Government, initiatives that are very clearly, in fact, about that very thing you're talking about.

 

"Competitive taxation" - the 1 per cent reduction in small business tax is a concrete thing that's easy to identify here today; "Education system that embodies entrepreneurship" - the investment that this government and governments of the past, I'll give them that, have done with investments in community colleges, which is not uncommon for entrepreneur training; and the jobsHere strategy. There is very specific evidence that those things are working.

 

Before I get to my question, I think it's important for me - I'm a little confused with this whole government right-sizing. It seems to me - and you can take the time to comment - it seems to me that it's almost, I hear: if we can't have it, you can't either. It seems like take from one sector to give to another sector, and I'm not sure that's a good approach for Nova Scotia.

 

My first question is around, can you take the time to look at that same slide that I looked at - which is right-sizing, competitive, education - and give us something, a very specific initiative - not an overarching scheme, but a very specific thing - that you and your membership and your discussions that you would have, very specific, that this government could potentially consider and do, that could be helpful and productive? We're all here for the same goals.

 

MS. HACHEY: Absolutely, and you may have received those postcards that our members sent to your constituency office that outline five very concrete things that government can do, but I can certainly repeat them here. These are all things that we had talked with the Minister of Finance when we had our pre-budget meeting.

 

So under government fiscal restraint we do think that government spending should be held to inflation plus population growth. We do think there should be an overall review of public-sector compensation and wages, which we talked about with Allan - which is going on in New Brunswick right now - to ensure affordability, sustainability and comparability with the private sector. We do think there should be a tax review, obviously with the goal to lower taxes.

 

We just said a tax strategy because, again, we don't know what the right mix of taxation is to incent the things that we want in this province, which is job creation and higher wages. We do know that certainly adding to the tax burden isn't a way to do that, so we have asked for the elimination of the HST. We've also asked for the elimination of bracket creep. These are some concrete things that we have asked for many, many times.

 

We've also asked - we had mentioned this with the Minister of Finance - about giving politicians a bit of a pressure relief valve so that they can go beyond their current restraints of looking at three, four or five years out. Australia has done this really neat thing called an Intergenerational Report, and it's legislated whereby the government of the day has to take a look every five years at government spending overall and project it out to the next generation, so 40 years out. They do this, they've done it twice now in Australia. It has a great Web site; I definitely encourage you to take a look at it. This is something that we've asked the Government of Nova Scotia to do here. What it does is it allows you to see what your decisions today will mean to my kids and my grandkids. So that's something very concrete that we've asked government to do.

 

In terms of education, we talked about bringing entrepreneurship into the mix so that perhaps we teach entrepreneurship courses earlier than we do now, that we bring entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship awareness to our guidance counsellors. We have also talked about eliminating, or at least doing a review, of economic development as we now know it. We know that economic development clearly isn't working for our members. This is not something that has happened over the past two years or 10 years; this is something that has been going on for 20 years.

 

Clearly all the litany of programs that we have out there - RDAs, CBDCs, ACOA - are not working for our members. If they were, we might see better numbers than we do now. So these are all very concrete measures that we have mentioned to the Minister of Finance. Amelia, I don't know if you have any other ones. Is that what you were looking for, those kinds of concrete things?

 

MS. KENT: That's great, thank you.

 

MS. HACHEY: I will say, too, and we just met with your caucus on this, and that is taking a look at the overall regulatory burden because we do know red tape is one of those areas that government can tackle. We have tackled it successfully in Nova Scotia in the past. There are other jurisdictions that are tackling it successfully, as well, but what it requires is a measurement of how big the burden is and a target to reduce it. We had some great experience in Nova Scotia, from 2006 to 2010, as to how it can be done. If we don't like what we did, there are other jurisdictions that are doing some different stuff and, again, that's something very concrete.

 

MS. KENT: Thank you. Again, I'm just a little concerned around the whole notion of not supporting - you're saying your businesses are not in favour of minimum wage, but yet on the other hand you constantly talk about wage increase, wage increase, wage increase. As a government, of course, we're trying to recognize that Nova Scotians are leaving our province to go get a better wage somewhere else, so an initiative such as increasing minimum wage would be one example of, hopefully, people will recognize and have an opportunity to earn a decent wage and that's minimum. I'm not sure that you can sort of suck and blow at the same time, and on one hand talk about not increasing wages but talk about the fact that you all want to. If you could comment on that a little bit.

 

Also, around the elimination of HST, nobody liked it. Sometimes it's difficult to swallow, but the facts remain that in order to provide for what this province is expected to provide, we had to get our financial house in order; HST is one measure. If you're telling us to take it away, at the end of the sentence, are you saying to replace it with this, because the money has to come from somewhere? So when you're having these conversations with the Department of Finance, that's a big question - what are you saying this is a replacement, because we all know that is the big question out there and our Minister of Finance said that very clearly to Nova Scotians: Tell us what you want us to do and if we do not do this, then tell me what we can do, what we should do - we're listening. At that time that was the overarching choice of the day.

 

The other question I have - just a very quick one - I'm just wondering if you have a pension yourself.

MS. HACHEY: I'll answer that first question. Yes, my employer contributes to my group RRSP. Group RRSPs, in addition to defined contributions are what is most prevalent in the private sector. You may know that with group RRSPs, one of the reasons that small businesses typically don't offer group RRSPs is because any contribution that the employer makes attracts payroll taxes, so any kind of contribution that CFIB makes on my behalf attracts workers' compensation, EI and CPP in addition to that. Does that answer your question?

 

MS. KENT: On that one, yes.

 

MS. HACHEY: On minimum wage, there are two reasons that people are leaving this province. I would say the first is due to lack of opportunity, not necessarily because of low-paying jobs. I don't think that forcing increases in minimum wage is going to do anything to create more opportunities. I would say that's the number-one reason why people are leaving. Certainly that's the reason why a lot of my peers have left.

 

On minimum wage, our members want to see increased employee wages, as well, but there are two different views as to how to make that happen. One, government can force it, which it's doing right now or, secondly, it happens organically because businesses actually have the ability to do it. We may know that Alberta either has the same or slightly lower minimum wage than Nova Scotia, but no one earns the minimum wage in Alberta because it is a prosperous place. That's what we want to be and we fear that these successive and aggressive increases in minimum wage are adding to the problem as opposed to solving the problem.

 

The third piece, the HST piece, we've had the same discussion with the Minister of Finance and we do understand the reason why the HST was increased. Even though we understand, it doesn't mean that we have to agree with it and it certainly doesn't mean that it's not having an impact on your constituents, on our members or in the business community overall. We do believe that some of the ideas that we've brought forward in terms of spending restraint - in particular, looking at public-sector wages and pensions - would be one way to offset some of that money that HST brought in.

 

MS. DEMARCO: I do want to just say on that point, too, one of the things that we have really been trying to make a conscious effort is to be very supportive of a lot of the spending restraints that already have gone on. You may know that we have written letters of support; we have provided that feedback to the Finance Minister because we know that a lot has been going on and we have been trying to be very supportive of some of those changes. I did just want to add that, as well, because certainly we wouldn't want the impression to be that it's all criticism, we are trying to cheerlead when we see good things happening.

 

MS. KENT: Thank you.

MR. CHAIRMAN: I'm sorry; I have to do some time management here. We're going to go to Mr. Gaudet.

 

HON. WAYNE GAUDET: Thank you, ladies, for coming in this morning. Leanne, in your opening comments you made reference to challenges and pressures on your members. You also talked about the bus strike and that businesses have little control.

 

I want to basically start off - I'll ask you several questions and then I'll come back. I guess what I'm looking at is what are you hearing from your members? What kind of impact has the bus strike had on them so far? Is the entire area being affected or is there one area or certain areas that are being affected more than others? Are there some businesses looking at or doing cutbacks on the hours of operation? I'll start with those, please.

 

MS. HACHEY: Great, and again I'll invite Amelia. We recently surveyed our members on the bus strike, actually. We sent out a survey to about 1,000 of our members operating in HRM; we had about 180 people respond. We do find - well, we know - there's about 40 per cent of our members who responded who are not impacted whatsoever; 55 per cent said that they were either somewhat or strongly negatively impacted. When you peel back the layers there, you find there are certain sectors being impacted more than others. So we do know that the retail sector, the hospitality sector, the social services sector, would be those areas impacted the most.

 

In terms of how it's impacting those businesses, it's impacting them in two ways. One is their employees getting to and from work. Again, one of the reasons that I am so proud to work for CFIB is how this small-business community has really stepped up to help their people. We have small-business owners who are literally driving to employees' houses, picking them up and bringing them to work. We also have members who are paying taxis in full or in part. We have members who are arranging carpooling schedules in their workplace. The most popular way our members are trying to help their employees is to rearrange work schedules to make it easier for them to accommodate their schedule.

 

The other way they're being impacted is, of course, their customers. Some customers are not able to make it to their business operations when they normally would. Again, a concrete example of what that could look like is we do have a hair-salon owner in Dartmouth whose customers would sort of spread themselves out throughout the week, so some would come during the week and some would come on the weekend. Because their customers don't want to be battling the traffic during the week, they are all moving their appointments to the weekend. Our business can't accommodate all of those that have wanted to change their appointments, so they have had to turn away - in one weekend they had to turn away $6,000 worth of business. Again, that's not something that that business owner wants to have happen.

 

In terms of the way that businesses are managing this strike, this is not the ideal. They say that certainly picking people up to and from their home is not sustainable over the long term. Our members, though, are very clear that they want the buses back on the road, number one, but number two - and it's right up there with number one - it can't be at any cost. So in other words, there has to be cost certainty provided to the municipality.

 

We already see what's going on with municipal tax rates. Again, there have thankfully been a lot of stories finally exposing the growing gap between residential and commercial taxpayers. Certainly members do not want that to grow due to the fact that the municipality gave in to demands that it simply can't afford or that its taxpayers can't afford.

 

MR. GAUDET: Especially the businesses that are being affected in the retail or hospitality sector, have you heard if any of these businesses are considering laying off people at this time?

 

MS. HACHEY: Someone asked me that question yesterday. We haven't heard that, so the answer to that is no. I don't know if that will be the same answer if the strike drags on for another month. I would imagine that the longer the strike drags on, the greater the negative impact the strike is going to have.

 

As I said yesterday to the person who asked me this question, again, it's just one more thing that adds to the very difficult business environment we currently have.

 

MS. DEMARCO: I would just add to that, too, we do know with our members that they tend to - having to lay off staff is the absolute last thing they would ever want to do. I've been talking to a few business owners who say, you know when you have good people, you re going to do everything you absolutely can to keep those people. So as Leanne said, right now they're just trying to find ways to cope because they don't want to lose good people. They're hoping that it's not going to be a really long-term situation but something that they can cope with in the short term. We did ask them about what might happen if this were to drag on for a little while and, again, I think most of them said that while certainly the impacts would become more negative, I think they will try to hold onto their people as long as they possibly can.

 

MR. GAUDET: Have some businesses indicated if they're looking at maybe cutting back the hours of operation?

 

MS. DEMARCO: We did have a few comments of businesses talking about changing - not even necessarily cutting back. For example, they're saying that because of traffic now, their customers' schedules have been pushed back and people aren't getting home until later, so they're not able to go out until later. So some were saying that they may have to just shift their hours, so maybe opening a little later in the day so that they can stay open later so that they can accommodate what's going on with what their customers are doing.

 

MR. GAUDET: I guess not knowing, if the strike continues, have members indicated to you what actions some of them may actually be forced to take?

 

MS. HACHEY: No. We did have a lot of comments about what they're doing right now isn't sustainable over the long term, but as Amelia said, it is very difficult to find good people and laying people off or reducing hours is a very difficult decision for a small-business owner to make and it would be their very last option. Mind you, we did survey our members, Wayne, about a week into the strike. Again, we may hear some different comments now if we were to survey this week or next, but at the time that we surveyed, we didn't hear that sort of thing.

 

MR. GAUDET: My last question. Depending on the length of the strike, assuming it goes weeks from now, have you heard from your members if there is a need for your organization to lobby the government to call the House back to order to bring legislation forward to put an end to the strike?

 

MS. HACHEY: We did ask our members whether or not a transit worker should be declared an essential service and, therefore, they'd fall under the umbrella of binding arbitration. There was a real mix within our membership on that as a potential solution, and here is why. Our members are employers. They understand that the decisions they make with their employees, they have to pay for. The challenge with binding arbitration is that you've got someone that has no skin in the game whatsoever determining the terms of an employment relationship. This comes to the very core of our issue with first contract arbitration. Our members believe collective bargaining is the way to go: you get both groups at the table and they work it out themselves because they are the ones that are going to have to live with it; on the employer side, they're the ones that are going to have to pay for it.

 

Again, our members do want the buses back on the road, but they don't want that to be under forced arbitration unless the arbitrator comes with conditions. That is, you have to take into account taxpayers' ability to pay and comparability with the private sector - what transit operators make in the private sector and ensure some comparability with the public sector. Again, I don't know if any arbitrator has ever worked under those conditions, but those conditions are the only ones that our members would accept.

 

MR. CHAIRMAN: We're now at about 10:05 a.m. on my clock, and I've got pretty much everybody who hasn't asked a question and everyone who has asked a question again. I've asked that we finish up at about 10:30 a.m. So I'll ask all members to keep their questions short and ask the presenters to keep their answers short, so we can ensure that we get through this and give everybody an opportunity to ask those questions and hear the answers. I will go with Mr. Preyra, then Mr. d'Entremont and then I'll let you know who is up next after that.

 

MR. PREYRA: Welcome to the committee. You've given us a lot to chew on and I really don't know where to start, and with the chairman's admonition already I don't know where to go. Let me just start with a couple of comments. I made a number of notes and I did get the postcards, as well, at my constituency office. Some of those things have already sort of made their way into government, as you know - the cost of living for example. The government is saying 1 per cent which many people argue is well below and we're trying to hold all of the wages and by and large, except for arbitration, so we've held the line. The deficit has been cut quite significantly and so we're working on balance.

 

I take your point on tax review, but every budget is a tax review in a way and the last budgets have seen a cut in the small-business tax from 5 per cent to 4.5 per cent, I believe. The jobsHere strategy has had productivity incentives and cuts, and digital animators have got it, so there has been a taking up of those suggestions and you've been a good partner with us on that. On the regulatory burden, I'm delighted to say that one of my constituents won the Canadian award; a bureaucrat, I think, for the first time won an award for cutting red tape in alcohol and gaming, so that red tape initiative has been fairly successful. So there has been a fair amount of progress on that front.

 

Also, on education, I have a comment because I have questions as well. The latest report from the Department of Education essentially talks about preparing people for the jobs that are coming. There is a new manufacturing course, for example, a number of courses have been cut, distance learning. There are entrepreneurship programs; I don't know much about the other schools, but certainly at Citadel High School in my constituency. There are a lot of courses including sociology courses where entrepreneurship and not-for-profit management and those kinds of things are already . . .

 

MR. CHAIRMAN: Do you have a question, Mr. Preyra?

 

MR. PREYRA: I thought I had five minutes.

 

MR. CHAIRMAN: Well, you know . . .

 

MR. PREYRA: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

 

MR. CHAIRMAN: You're welcome.

 

MR. PREYRA: So in those areas there has been a lot of progress. There are two areas I want to comment on, one is a subject very dear to my heart and that is immigration; we've been very good partners on that. Small business, I read the reports very carefully talking about the challenges small businesses have, especially when it comes to succession and also in attracting things. The challenges have been on both of our sides: the federation has had a hard time getting members to buy in, mostly because, as you say, they're struggling themselves, but also the government has had a hard time reaching small businesses. We've been part of that round table in trying to improve it and there has been a brochure for small businesses, there have been trade missions for attracting small business, so there has been some progress in there, mentorship connections is another one of those.

 

I did want to talk about energy which was what you started with and I'm surprised that you appeared to be so critical about it. EGSPA is about environmental sustainability and about economic development and it's about getting low-cost energy, it's about getting clean energy, it's about stable costs, it's about getting reliable energy. The projects that we have embarked on have been both on the environmental side, but on economic growth as well. If we look at Muskrat Falls, if we look at the tidal energy, if you look at solar, if you look at COMFIT, if you look at wind, all of those I would say are relatively successful programs for small businesses that tapped into it. There isn't really that much of a contradiction between saying we want environmental sustainability, but we also see clean energy as an economic growth area for us. I'm wondering why there would be such a difficulty with looking at those energy initiatives in that cluster as being a negative thing.

 

MS. HACHEY: If it sounded negative it wasn't intended. It was that EGSPA has two goals: the environmental piece and the economic-growth piece. One of the reasons we actually had come out initially and supported EGSPA is because it took that balanced approach and that's very much where our members are.

 

Right now we have the lowest level of economic growth in the country and we have had for the past decade. One of the goals of EGSPA is to have economic growth equal to or greater than the Canadian average and we have seen no progress made on that front whatsoever. It's just an observation that we have been focusing an awful lot on the environmental energy side and on the other piece of EGSPA, which is a very big piece, we've remained virtually silent. Again, it's meant to say if this legislation is as important as we say it is, we need to be focusing on all of the legislation not just bits and pieces of it.

 

I did want to say on the restraint side, Leonard, you're absolutely right. As Amelia has said we have recognized your government for its massive efforts on keeping spending under control, and not just within the province. When I go to other provinces, I talk to other Finance Ministers about the job that we've been doing in Nova Scotia on restraining spending. So again, wherever possible, we have been as supportive as possible and will continue to be, particularly keeping the wage growth in line.

 

On the immigration piece, one of the areas that your government is pushing, and again we very much support, is doubling the amount of immigrants we can bring in under the Provincial Nominee Program. We have members who have taken advantage of the Provincial Nominee Program and, as well, we have members who have taken advantage of temporary foreign workers, and by all accounts any interaction immigrants have in Nova Scotia businesses has been entirely positive.

 

We have some fantastic stories from members who have brought people in, who had thought they were doing something kind of for their business but also for someone else, to find out that it has not only benefited their business but it has improved productivity in their business and it has added to the culture of their community. So there are many added benefits and we would like to see those numbers grow.

 

We realize we have a lot of heavy lifting to do in the small-business community, to ensure that more business owners are taking advantage of it. But to come back to our initial message, business owners need to be in a space where they actually can grow, where they want to grow, in order to take advantage of some of these opportunities.

 

Finally, on energy, I will say we have given our Minister of Finance credit on this as well. He recognized the gap between energy costs, between small businesses and other rate classes. It was his piece of legislation which brought in the small-business advocate for energy, which we are very grateful for.

 

MR. CHAIRMAN: Great, thank you. Mr. d'Entremont.

 

HON. CHRISTOPHER D'ENTREMONT: Thank you very much. In trying to leave more time for the answers, rather than the questions and mini speeches, I want to ask you a question about red tape and the downgrade from a B to a D, and maybe some anecdotal data from first contract arbitration where we're now in a new world on this one. What are you hearing from your members and what's the impact of it?

 

MS. HACHEY: As Leonard had mentioned, before I talk about the bigger picture of regulation, we do want to say that there has been some progress made with specific initiatives - I think it was under Service Nova Scotia and Municipal Relations. There was a streamlining of liquor licensing which has taken time and money off the business community, as well for government; it has been a win-win on both sides. So just because there hasn't been that big-picture piece doesn't mean that there haven't been specific initiatives that have been very successful.

 

Why it was downgraded from a B to a D is because we measure regulatory progress in certain - we have certain criteria, which are: do we have a measure; have we set targets for reduction; do we publicly report our progress; do we have ongoing political leadership talking about the importance of regulatory reform; have we legislated ongoing accountability when it comes to regulation? In most of those areas, the answer in 2011 was no.

 

We measure the progress on the regulatory burden in Nova Scotia the exact same way we do it across the country. Between 2006 and 2010, we had yeses in a bunch of those categories. That was the reason that we had been giving government higher marks for its rigour around regulatory accountability.

 

MR. D'ENTREMONT: First contract arbitration.

 

MS. HACHEY: First contract arbitration. So when we look at what happened in 2011 - and, again, we do link it back to not having a plan - we have a plan now called Better Business. We are hopeful that it will bring us back to where we were. It has talked about setting measures, it has talked about targets, and it has talked about public reporting. That's all the language that we want to hear, so we will see at the end of the year if it's doing what it said it was going to do.

 

In the absence of a plan, though, a bunch of stuff was brought in, a bunch of regulations were brought in; some affected the business community and others didn't. An example would be tanning bed legislation, so now someone who owns a tanning shop basically has to card people when they come in to get a tan.

 

Again, it's not to say that we dispute the evidence that these things are bad, the question is, how was the regulation brought in? Was it brought in with consultation with the business community? Were the regulations brought in in a way that made sense for the business community, so that they could comply in their business at the least amount of cost as possible?

 

An example that I threw out to the NDP caucus a few weeks ago was the one-metre rule between bikes and cars. That's a rule we now have on our books, presumably the police have to enforce this rule. I have never seen a police officer yet run around with a yardstick but maybe I'll see it one day. This is an example of what happens when you're not keeping your eye on the big picture of regulation.

 

Other examples would be the Scrap-metal Dealers and Recyclers Act, and you may have heard of this from some businesses in your communities that run scrap-metal shops. Again, it wasn't that the stealing of copper wire isn't an issue. The question is will the solution that we've brought to the table actually solve the problem; will we know if it solves the problem and what happens if it doesn't solve the problem? Will we see the removal of that rule? Right now, for scrap-metal dealers, every time someone buys a piece of copper metal wire, they have to fill out forms and they have to pick up the phone and call a cop. There are hundreds of these transactions happening every day, so our question is whether or not that's going to (Interruptions)

 

First contract arbitration is another example of something that we brought in that we saw no reason for. We were not trying to solve any problem. By all accounts - including the department's account - there was no issue with getting that first contract. So that's another example of a regulation that was introduced without a problem to address.

 

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you. Mr. Churchill.

 

MR. CHURCHILL: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I take exception to the fact that some of the goals that you refer to today are actually referred to as buzzwords by the government. I don't think they're buzzwords. I think they're overarching, strategic goals that you've outlined and I think your organization has done a very good job at actually pinpointing the objectives that we need to go after as a province to reach some of these, so I want to thank you for that.

 

I think that sort of speaks to an attitude problem that I've seen since I've been a member, which is that we've had a government that sometimes is very dismissive of the concerns of small business and employers in the province. We've seen that now with both the labour bills that have come in, and more close to my heart, we've seen that with funding the Yarmouth ferry when businesses across the province urged the government to do that. I think, when it comes to business optimism and having employers and entrepreneurs that are excited about investing in the province, at the very least they're going to want a government that's going to listen to them.

 

I have some specific questions about economic development and I'm glad you brought that up. It has been difficult for me to pinpoint what the economic development strategy is for the province. It seems, for the most part, we go in heavy-handed and perhaps bail out some big companies that need money and then we also have this jobsHere program, according to the Minister of Economic and Rural Development and Tourism, which has no measurable targets or set outcomes.

 

That's a problem for me because when it comes to bailouts - I'm not saying that's a bad thing or not, it's probably needed - it seems the government is picking and choosing winners and losers in the province; where a large company gets up to a $50 million to a $90 million bailout, smaller businesses that are having just as much of a difficult time making ends meet don't necessarily receive any support. Around those, what are your members' impressions of governments going in and providing these large sums for bailout money to cover losses for companies?

 

Secondly, in terms of the jobsHere plan, I've seen it plastered all over CTV News, it's being advertised everywhere. For me, when you're actually putting a strategic plan in place where you want to create jobs, you should at least have some targets in place so at the very least you can be accountable to the public and to the House of Assembly and be honest about whether you're meeting those goals or not and whether the plan is working. Is the jobsHere plan the answer to the economic challenges that we have now and what have your members' impressions of the bailouts been?

 

MS. HACHEY: On the bailouts, I guess businesses across the province - there would be different pockets of businesses that think differently of the bailouts, depending on whether or not they may be directly impacted. I would say overall, our members think of it in terms of what could have been done with $50 million to the benefit of all businesses rather than one or two larger businesses: could we have eliminated the small-business tax altogether like they've done in Manitoba; could we have eliminated bracket creep so that every year Nova Scotians don't get a tax increase that they may not be aware of? Those are the terms that our members look at those things.

Secondly, they do ask if this is a long-term strategy for economic development in the province. Is that industry one that we see a real future in the long term for and if it's not, would we not be better to help those communities transition to economies that are part of the future? Again, I don't have those answers, but those are some of the questions that small-business owners across the province would ask.

 

MR. CHURCHILL: Those are good questions.

 

MS. HACHEY: On the jobsHere question, again, we very much appreciate the thrust of jobsHere, which is to improve productivity and we've said that all along. There is no doubt our productivity in this province needs work, so anything that focuses on that is absolutely a good thing. The question is whether or not it's meeting the needs of our members and you may know, Zach, that portions of jobsHere not only don't include small businesses, they actually exclude a great number. So, for instance, retail, restaurants, if you're in one of those areas - there are lots of businesses in your communities that are in those areas - you aren't eligible for aspects of the jobsHere program.

 

Secondly, we've raised this issue with the department and they did listen by lowering the threshold for the PIP program from $50,000 to $25,000. The threshold, even still at $25,000, is too high for many small businesses. A business of two or three or five employees - which is the majority of businesses in our province, the majority of businesses in your constituencies - wouldn't know what to do with $25,000; $10,000 is a more appropriate limit. That's one of the reasons that we've really supported the innovation tax credit, or voucher - what is it, the voucher program?

 

MS. DEMARCO: I can't remember exactly.

 

MS. HACHEY: Anyway, it's to help smaller businesses do some research and development and innovate in their firm, at a level of $15,000, in partnership with universities or colleges. We think this is a fantastic program. Right now I think only a few hundred businesses are eligible for it. That is one we know works because we've talked to members who have used it and we would love to see it expand.

 

Again, there are elements of jobsHere that we very much support, again that push to become more productive, but whether or not it speaks to the majority of businesses that are out there, we don't think so, but there are programs that do.

 

MR. CHAIRMAN: Okay, thank you and thank you, Mr. Churchill. We now have Ms. Raymond and Mr. Skabar, and then I think we're going to wrap things up after that.

 

MS. MICHELE RAYMOND: Thank you very much for coming in. In the interest of time, I won't even ask you to find answers for some of these things, but I am quite curious about the CFIB's role, and so on, and the composition of it as well. I'm wondering about things like whether all members are, in fact, incorporated.

 

MS. HACHEY: No, most businesses in Nova Scotia aren't incorporated.

 

MS. RAYMOND: Okay, so a large number are not, in fact, incorporated. So this puts personal responsibility on a number of these people. I'm wondering whether there are any franchisees amongst your members.

 

MS. HACHEY: Independently owned, yes.

 

MS. RAYMOND: Okay, so they also have the licensing costs which they're dealing with, as well as the cost of compliance with the licence source. Those are some very significant costs in many cases, I must say, so to include that amongst your membership is perhaps a little bit skewing.

 

The other kinds of questions that you probably couldn't answer right off the top of your head are about the percentage offering benefits because, of course, there are a variety of things. One of the things that I am concerned about, though, is that the slide in which you talk about what members would do with savings, because the numbers don't exactly add up, of course. Presumably what it's talking about is what members wouldn't do with their savings, because these members say that yes, if we had the money, we would do all these various things.

 

I note that a very small number of people would, in fact, invest in R & D if they had the unlimited resources; 39 per cent of people wouldn't invest in increasing wages is also concerning. A large number wouldn't be concerned with purchasing machinery and equipment. These are things that really suggest that perhaps even with unlimited resources, these are not enterprises that are necessarily concerned as much.

 

I'd like to know more about how that question was framed because it does concern me that this is so very low on the radar. I guess leading to that again, you talk about entrepreneurship training - is this something that CFIB offers? Do you talk about equity financing? Do you negotiate insurance? If you don't, who does?

 

MS. HACHEY: Your first point about franchisees, they might be one per cent of our membership, so they wouldn't at all be skewing the numbers - I wanted to address that.

 

MS. RAYMOND: Okay.

 

MS. HACHEY: On the tax savings piece, the question was to select as many as apply, so that's why they wouldn't all add up to 100.

 

MS. RAYMOND: So very few would, in fact, see R & D as important.

 

MS. HACHEY: Well, you have to remember what R & D - so you're a business with two or three people. Again, the average size of a business in Nova Scotia is four or five; 75 per cent of businesses employ fewer than five people, so think of research and development for a four-person shop. They may think of it differently than you might. They may say no, I'm not going to link up with a university and work on how to improve the manufacturing processes in my business - it may not even be in their realm of reality - but I will put in a customer suggestion box to help me innovate and improve in a way that makes sense to my business. It may just be how R & D looks to that business. It doesn't at all mean that innovation isn't important. Research and development means something very different for a very small business than it would to Michelin.

 

MS. RAYMOND: Is that part of your role, to educate people in what R & D can mean if you're the corner store, that it can mean investigating other products that might come into the store? Do you work on educating members like that?

 

MS. HACHEY: We do have some role in education so just to give you a sense of what our office looks like - you're looking at it. This is the full staff component of CFIB. (Laughter)

 

MS. RAYMOND: For Nova Scotia.

 

MS. HACHEY: Yes, for Nova Scotia. We do have teams of district managers that go out and their job is to meet with our members every day, so we meet on average with about 200 or 300 small-business owners in Nova Scotia every day. We catch them when we can - it could be Sunday night after dinner, it could be Monday morning before their shop opens - and we walk through what we're doing on their behalf because we promise accountability to our membership. We also take that opportunity to walk through with them some pieces of education.

 

Again, you have to appreciate that you have lots of small businesses in your community. They're very busy people and they don't have time to sit down for three or four hours and hear about this program or that program. In our face-to-face meetings we tell them what we can; we also offer on-line courses, free for themselves or for their staff, on everything from entrepreneurship to managing employees to how to hire. We also offer programs for group insurance so that our members get the benefit of economies of scale, so we do those sorts of things.

 

In terms of Amelia and I doing education, I would say that the biggest piece of education that we do is in those face-to-face meetings. We do provide them with lots of literature, we do give them lots of resources and probably most importantly, I should mention, we have a business resource counsellor line, so any member of ours who had a question about EI premiums, has a question about if there's a specific government program that might be able to benefit my business, they can call our office and we do that research for them.

 

MS. RAYMOND: The fact that 83 per cent just aren't registering, as you say is not reflective, I am concerned and just one more point. I would like to know at some point about what percentage of your business owners actually own homes and what percentage of their employees own homes. These are things, as well, that do reflect on the ability to cope on the wages available and so on. Maybe at some point we could talk further.

 

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Ms. Raymond. We'll go to Mr. Skabar.

 

MR. BRIAN SKABAR: We've spoken a number of times and you did address caucus, and many of my concerns you had explained and I think you know my position on some of them. You mentioned 56 per cent of the economy is driven by government and you included universities in that. I've always kind of thought of universities as more of a business in their own right.

 

MS. HACHEY: That 56 per cent is government at all levels, and it would include municipalities, it would include the province, and it would include the federal government.

 

MR. SKABAR: But you did include universities.

 

MS. HACHEY: Absolutely.

 

MR. SKABAR: Why universities in there as well?

 

MS. HACHEY: Because it is government funded; it's one place where tax dollars go. Again, to give you a sense of that number, 56 per cent, that number - except for the Maritime region - is off the charts. Again, we do this comparison not just across the country, but internationally as well. As I said, it's not that government spending is a bad thing, not at all. It's at what point does it start to harm the private sector or take away opportunities from the private sector and we've already said . . .

 

MR. SKABAR: I got that and I also understand that the sweet spot might be closer to 30 per cent or 40 per cent, it's in around there. There also seems to be somewhat of a contradiction when you mentioned that when you shrink government that small businesses, in particular, and business take the biggest hit first. You've got your chicken and you've got your egg there.

 

MS. HACHEY: No, no, I probably didn't explain it well enough. My point is that over the decades we've created a very large government and not just at the province, government at large: federal, provincial, municipalities. That has created a private sector that's somewhat dependent on government and that's not a good place to be when government is looking at shrinking; nor is it a good place to be when the economy is growing.

 

I always find it interesting when we take a look at numbers during the recession and the Maritime Provinces are usually the first to wave the flag to say, wow, we're faring the recession very well. Well, that's no surprise. We have so much government here and government is pumping in money all the time during a recession, of course we fare well.

 

MR. SKABAR: Oh, don't thank us.

 

MS. HACHEY: Well, what happens though is when the recession ends, every other economy starts to spring back and we don't. It's not to say that universities don't add to the economy; that's not what I'm saying. The question is how much is too much? I think that's a question that needs to be explored.

 

MR. CHAIRMAN: One more question, Mr. Skabar.

 

MR. SKABAR: When you mention the lack or shortage of skilled workers, how would that affect the 75 per cent of your targeted population in terms of small businesses that have five people? What kinds of skills would they need and how could we as a government - or NSCC who, by the way, I'm very proud of for being responsive and agile . . .

 

MS. HACHEY: Absolutely. And actually, when we've asked our members about how responsive different kinds of educational institutions are to their needs, the community college typically ranks number one. The community college has done a better job than others to respond to the business community. I know that's in large part due to all of the effort that has been placed within the community college to do a lot of outreach to the business community. We don't see that same connection between universities and our members, universities and small businesses.

 

In terms of the skills that small-business owners need, we categorize them into two different areas. One, it's the skills that the business owners need because they still need to grow, learn, and develop so that they can grow, learn, and develop their business; but also the skills they're looking for with employees. Number one - again, we talk an awful lot about workplace essential skills and we often hear numeracy and literacy thrown around, which clearly are very important. Up there for our members, as well, are customer service skills. It's a testament that when we talk about those essential workplace skills, customer service usually doesn't make the list, even though that's the number-one skill - in addition to numeracy and literacy - that small businesses are looking for in their employees. They're also looking for technical skills and marketing skills.

 

They tend to be looking for those skills that are offered in the community college system as opposed to the university system. That's not to say there isn't a portion of businesses that are looking for MBAs, B.Com.s, lawyers or engineers, but generally businesses are looking for skills that we would see come out of the community college system.

 

MR. CHAIRMAN: Great, thank you. The last question goes to Mr. Gaudet.

 

MR. GAUDET: In your opening comments you pointed out that there is a growing tax gap between residential and commercial properties due to the assessment cap. Have you or has CFIB considered approaching government to maybe ask to consider introducing legislation to put a cap on commercial properties?

 

MS. HACHEY: We've provided feedback to the review that just went on the assessment cap and we did talk about the impact that it's having. We don't know what the solution is. It could be removing the cap altogether; it could be implementing a cap for the commercial sector. Again, government is in a much better position than we are to know how to address the problem. What we have done - and we did this at the very beginning - is to say, you are going to be creating a problem here and that is very well-known from way back when it was introduced. We, again, flagged it when they did the assessment cap review. So what we have done is identify the problem; we believe it's up to government to help identify a solution, and it could be a bunch of different things.

 

Again, we do know - and, it's well-known - there is a growing gap between what's happening on the commercial side and what's happening on the property side. It's exacerbated by the fact that not only is the assessment growing for businesses where it's kind of being held down a bit for residents, there is also a gap between the tax rate in every municipality across the province between what residents pay and what commercial pays. So that, again, compounds the problem.

 

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much. A very good discussion today and I appreciate you coming in. Are there any quick closing remarks?

 

MS. HACHEY: I just want to say thank you very much. It was a great discussion as always. (Applause)

 

MR. CHAIRMAN: I think that's the first time we've had clapping at the HR Committee. (Laughter)

 

We're going to just have a one-minute recess and we'll call everyone back to do some committee business.

 

[10:34 a.m. The committee recessed.]

 

[10:37 a.m. The committee reconvened.]

 

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please. I call the meeting back to order. We have a very quick ABC list today. We have one ABC before us, so I'll ask Mr. Preyra if he would talk about Service Nova Scotia and Municipal Relations.

MR. PREYRA: Mr. Chairman, I so move that Mr. William J. Laurie be appointed as a member of the Board of Registration of Embalmers and Funeral Directors.

 

MR. CHAIRMAN: Is there any discussion? Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.

 

The motion is carried.

 

We have a letter from ANSSA - the Alliance of Nova Scotia Student Associations - asking to come before the committee. I would remind everyone that it was either at the last meeting or at the meeting prior to that, we also had a call from CFS asking to come to the committee. The committee said that we had talked about post-secondary education issues three times last year at this same period, so we kind of said no to them because we already had our agenda set for the remainder of the year and, therefore, we wouldn't bring forward CFS. So I would say that if it's okay with the committee, that we do the same with ANSSA. But we can have some discussion on this. Mr. Churchill.

 

MR. CHURCHILL: I'm personally not okay with that. I think this time last year we weren't dealing with a new MOU that was signed. That's important; there have been a lot of high-profile issues around post-secondary education on the public's mind right now. I know that I get calls a lot about university and college education in my home constituency.

 

I think in terms of moving into this year's budget, our post-secondary institutions are one of the greatest assets we have, as a province. I think that going into this budget we should definitely be hearing from any stakeholders from that sector who wish to share some specific thoughts on the most recent announcements around post-secondary education in the province. I would urge the committee to support ANSSA's, and perhaps reconsider CFS's, request to present here.

 

MR. CHAIRMAN: Okay. Mr. d'Entremont.

 

MR. D'ENTREMONT: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I would support the member's thoughts on that. When our meetings here at HR tend to be an average of seven and a half minutes, it's nice to have a presenter that we can actually accomplish something at this committee meeting. I think with ANSSA and CFS, and whoever wants to talk about post-secondary education, it's a good opportunity to hear it here at this committee. So I would support having them come to present.

 

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Preyra.

 

MR. PREYRA: Mr. Chairman, we have had meetings with ANSSA and CFS as caucuses, I know we've had a lot of interaction at the committee level as well. If the idea is to do something budget-related, I think both groups have met with the Minister of Finance and both have met with departmental staff. It's unlikely that we can do this at this committee anyway, given that we only have one meeting between now and the budget. So if the issue is the budget, I would say we're welcome to meet with them as individual caucuses and see what the next round of committee meetings looks like.

 

MR. CHAIRMAN: We have opinions from all three caucuses, so what are we looking for here? Are we looking for a motion to deny this or let it go forward?

 

MR. CHURCHILL: I move that we accept ANSSA's request to present to the committee and that we reconsider the request from the Canadian Federation of Students to present as well.

 

MR. D'ENTREMONT: I'll second that.

 

MR. CHAIRMAN: Do any of the caucuses want to discuss that independently? Mr. Preyra.

 

MR. PREYRA: I think what we said was that we would put them on the next round and get them on the list in the normal rotation. They're obviously an important group and speak to an important sector, but it's a question of whether we can do it in time to get . . .

 

MS. RAYMOND: If it's an emergency or not.

 

MR. CHAIRMAN: Is it fair to put them on the list for the next witness? When I said that about CFS, I actually meant that we did add them at the end of the witness list because we had already put our witness lists forward. Mr. d'Entremont.

 

MR. D'ENTREMONT: I'm just wondering what our witness list looks like, who's next up?

 

MR. CHAIRMAN: Next meeting, I understand, is the Office of the Fire Marshal and then the Liberal caucus had asked for the Department of Education on the budgeting process. Then the NDP caucus asked for the Department of Education around the Succeeding in Reading program. (Interruption) Those are set for our next meetings.

 

MR. PREYRA: Those will take us to the summer.

 

MR. CHAIRMAN: And typically in the summer we don't have witnesses.

 

MS. RAYMOND: If it's an emergency we can.

 

MR. CHAIRMAN: Yes, if it's an emergency. So we have a motion on the floor. Would you be willing to add something to the effect of adding that to the end of the witness list? (Interruptions)

 

MR. CHURCHILL: It doesn't satisfy me and I don't think it's going to satisfy the stakeholder because it does happen after the budget. I'm going to let my motion stand as it is.

 

MR. PREYRA: Maybe the Liberal caucus will give up the Department of Education topic.

 

MR. CHURCHILL: Or we could have another meeting. I was going to come up here from Yarmouth to make a motion for one appointment today; I'll come up to listen to ANSSA and CFS if you bring them in.

 

MR. PREYRA: Would it make more sense to drop a topic and do ANSSA if it's that important? Why don't you substitute the topic then?

 

MR. CHURCHILL: Another member of our caucus suggested that those people presenting are not prepared to suggest we switch with them. I'm suggesting perhaps the committee is willing to have another meeting.

 

MS. KENT: Maybe you should go back and see if they would be willing to do that.

 

MR. CHURCHILL: There is a motion on the table, Mr. Chairman.

 

MR. CHAIRMAN: Okay. Is there further discussion?

 

MR. PREYRA: There was a friendly amendment to that.

 

MR. CHURCHILL: There's no such thing as a friendly amendment; the amendment wasn't friendly.

 

MS. RAYMOND: What's the motion?

 

MR. CHAIRMAN: The motion was to invite ANSSA and CFS . . .

 

MR. PREYRA: At a future meeting.

 

MR. CHAIRMAN: At a future meeting.

 

MS. KENT: I need clarification to be sure. Is that what you're asking, Zach, that it's at a future meeting? (Interruptions) I think it's important to define "a future meeting." If we just say . . .

 

MR. D'ENTREMONT: The future could be September.

 

MS. KENT: Excuse me. If he has an expectation that it's going to happen at the next session, I would not be in favour of that motion. If he has a will and an expectation that they will be added to the list, I'm happy to support that motion. I need clarity on what that motion is. I think all around the table there is a willingness to have them come.

 

MR. CHURCHILL: Would you like me to make a - has that motion been seconded?

 

MR. CHAIRMAN: It has been seconded - it doesn't need to be seconded anyway.

 

MR. CHURCHILL: I so move that the HR Committee meet before the next session of the House of Assembly with the Alliance of Nova Scotia Student Associations and the Canadian Federation of Students Nova Scotia.

 

MS. KENT: That's a new motion, it sounds to me. It's a different one.

 

MR. CHURCHILL: You wanted me to clarify timelines; that's what I'm doing. I would suggest that we meet with both of those groups before any sort of voting on the upcoming budget.

 

MR. CHAIRMAN: The motion has been changed to reflect the fact that the Liberal caucus would like to see ANSSA and CFS come to the HR Committee prior to the House of Assembly sitting on March 29^th. (Interruption) Right, is it an additional meeting or is it in substitution?

 

MR. CHURCHILL: An additional meeting.

 

MR. CHAIRMAN: An additional meeting, okay.

 

Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.

 

The motion is defeated.

 

Ms. Kent.

 

MS. KENT: I would be happy to move that we express to them that we would like to have them come to the committee and we would put them on the list, as we have our witnesses identified, and we would be happy to bring them to the table as the witness selection comes forward.

 

MR. CHAIRMAN: Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.

 

The motion is carried.

 

Our March meeting date - the 27^th has come up as a conflict for many people in the NDP caucus, as a lot of us will be in Toronto for our federal convention and we just don't know where and how people (Interruption) A lot of people are going in our caucus. So we're wondering, because it says in the House Rules that the HR Committee has to meet every month, my question is - the week prior to that the NDP caucus is also on retreat and the week prior to that is March break. According to Jana we can't meet during March break because of . . .

 

MR. GORDON HEBB: I would have to look at the Rule Book. I know the House can't, but is the committee (Interruptions)

 

MR. CHAIRMAN: I think there's an understanding that we won't. So the week prior to that, which is really next week, that we do meet next Tuesday on the 6^th from 9:00 a.m. until 11:00 a.m. and have the Office of the Fire Marshal, which they are able to make - is that fair? We do have to meet in the month.

 

The Committees Office is able to get the appointments list out because we have to give seven days' notice. They can get it out today to all the members so everything is in line, so if it's okay with everyone, March 6^th will be our next meeting date for the month of March and then we'll go back to our regular scheduled meeting for the end of April.

 

MS. KENT: Do you need a motion for that?

 

MR. CHAIRMAN: I would say let's do that just to clarify.

 

MS. KENT: I'll move that.

 

MR. CHAIRMAN: Ms. Kent moves that we have our next committee meeting on March 6^th from 9:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. in lieu of the meeting on March 27^th, to have the Office of the Fire Marshal there.

 

Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.

 

The motion is carried.

 

Are there any other questions? The meeting is adjourned.

 

[The committee adjourned at 10:49 a.m.]