Human Resources Committee on Nov. 8th, 2006

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Not the ironworkers. It occurs to me that's not really tar sands type of work exactly.

[Perley Holmes]

No.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

With the economy booming in Alberta, you'd think there were all kinds of things happening as a result. They're probably building buildings, too, and other things, but not to that degree.

[Perley Holmes]

Yes. In the early eighties there were a lot of mines in this province. You had the Mica Dam and Revelstoke Dam, which were huge camp jobs. You had Tumbler Ridge and a lot of golden.... There were a number of mines going on, which were typically camp jobs, making it a lot easier for a person to come from back east or wherever. However, I've worked all over this continent as an ironworker and have not stayed in camps.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

But that helps to explain why in the interior in the Kootenays, as you say, you have a higher level of unemployment among tradespeople.

Again, coming from the perspective of Nova Scotia, we have the impression that in B.C. and Alberta everybody is employed. There's so much work out here that you hear about, that's the impression you get. It's interesting to hear that's not the case in some areas.

[Pat Byrne]

Exactly, and that's part of why we're here, to try to get away from the false impression that everybody out here is working. There are some great opportunities here and a heck of a lot of work to be done here, but unfortunately, we're seeing some people trying to put a spin on things that, gee, I can't find guys, I can't find guys, I can't find guys. What they're really saying is they can't find guys who will work for less than the prevailing rates out here.

Part of the problem, too, in why some workers aren't coming out here is that they may be sitting in an area of Canada where they've got a bit of a depressed economy—there are pockets around Canada where there are areas of unemployment, with ironworkers and some other trades—where they'd be more than willing to move out here to take a job if they could get the price of a plane fare and maybe a week's accommodation in their pockets. That's why I'd like to see perhaps the federal government take a look at that surplus we've got in the EI program. Maybe somehow through that we can provide some type of an incentive where a guy perhaps gets the price of an air ticket and one week's accommodation. He's at least got a foothold to get himself into the area and get started.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

But I think you're saying the employers don't mind paying to have a foreign worker fly in because it's going to be a little less expensive for them, but they won't pay to have someone fly from Newfoundland, for example. Is that what you're saying?

[Pat Byrne]

Unfortunately, I find that's starting to happen.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

I just have a second left, and I want to come back in a few minutes to the whole issue of foreign workers versus getting people to immigrate here, and what to do with people who are illegal workers in Canada. In the U.S. election there was a lot of talk about the guest worker situation, as they call it.

But let me go to Mr. Kramer for a moment. I want to ask him about the issue of wheelchairs. You talked about the cost of your wheelchair as $25,000. Is there an average cost? I'm trying to figure out what the numbers are normally. Frankly, that's a surprising number. I shouldn't be surprised; I should know this, but don't, so thank you for informing us about it. What kinds of costs are you looking at, generally speaking, for wheelchairs?

[Ken Kramer]

First of all, it's a very good question. There is a broad range of costs throughout this country, and it really depends on the individual per se. I represent somebody whose cost is probably at the high end, because my chair has the ability to allow me to tilt and recline, which is really what adds to the cost of my piece of equipment.

Although I don't have any specific numbers to provide you, I would suggest the average cost would be somewhere in the $8,000 to $10,000 range, where you have a basic wheelchair without all the bells and whistles I have.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

That's motorized, I take it?

[Ken Kramer]

It's an electric wheelchair, yes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Okay, thank you very much.

We're going to move to Madame Savoie.

[Denise Savoie, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Thank you very much.

Thank you for your presentations, each coming from different perspectives, which really help with that puzzle of employability, skills, and training.

I was interested in the suggestion to increase the credit for the completion of apprenticeships, because I think it's one of the issues that hasn't occurred in Quebec—although the province does have a good model. Do you want to talk more about the differences between what B.C. did on apprenticeship, and why it created problems, compared with what Quebec did?

And I have a couple of other questions on that.

[Pat Byrne]

I can tell you this. One of the things that I saw happen was at the time when we knew we were coming into a high period of employment, when we were going to be requiring more people to work in the construction trades, the provincial government of the day walked in and, without any consultation with anybody, essentially kiboshed the entire apprenticeship program, cancelled ITAC, the Industry Training and Apprenticeship Commission, which existed in British Columbia. It's now the ITA, Industry Training Authority. They essentially got rid of the entire system, threw the baby out with the bathwater, without any real road map or idea of what they were going to really replace it with. It has been flying by the seat of its pants. It's taken a couple of years or so, but we're starting to finally get that thing turned around and get back on track, but there's a two-year gap that I see in which we've lost an opportunity to train individuals.

[Denise Savoie, NDP, Victoria, BC]

How are you getting it back on track?

[Pat Byrne]

To be quite honest, the building trades--I'm sure purely through their apprenticeship program and ours--have had to grab the bull by the horns and we're working in partnership with various employer organizations. I myself sit on the Glazing Contractors Association of British Columbia. It's made up of both union and non-union contractors, and we all have a common interest in training the apprentices. We've had to take a look at perhaps changing how our apprenticeship program is delivered. We're moving to more of a module-style program in the glazing trade, which is my particular trade.

Modularized training to some people is a bit of a dirty word, but I don't see a problem with it unless you don't have everybody completing the program and moving through each one of the individual modules. There's a move afoot in some cases to give individuals partial training. You'll get this module and this module and this module. You don't train to the standards of the red seal; therefore you're limited in what you're able to do. We want to be able to make sure that everybody goes through the program, completes the apprenticeship program, and winds up with the red seal at the end of the day.

[Denise Savoie, NDP, Victoria, BC]

That's where we're going with the red seal, because there were some efforts by this government in the last budget on the red seal program in terms of encouraging it.

Are there many other fields where we could develop a red seal right now? How many do we have? It's been suggested at other hearings that there might be up to 300. Is that creating the modular problem of giving a red seal for just partial training, or in your opinion could we expand that red seal program?

[Pat Byrne]

Go ahead, Perley.

[Perley Holmes]

The provincial government has eliminated all compulsory certification, so essentially to get your certification for any trade is voluntary. There is no reason in this province to even pursue that. I personally believe that was all part of a constructive effort to de-skill the workforce in this province. It also works hand in hand with bringing in unskilled foreign workers, because if you have no benchmark or standard to measure a person to...and that's happening right now. The fraud that's going on between citizenship and immigration is just incredible. People are being brought in and are being described as people who are skilled in a trade, but they have no knowledge of that trade whatsoever. That was done, all hand in hand with the compliance team that was set up by the previous government that investigated these kinds of issues. That was the first thing this provincial Liberal government did. They eliminated that compliance team, which was CIC, Human Resources Canada, and employment standards.

[Denise Savoie, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Right.

[Pat Byrne]

If I could just jump back to something we were touching on when you asked your question originally about the completions, that we want to see completions, I'll give you an example. A couple of administrations ago we had a fair wage program in British Columbia. While I wasn't crazy about the fair wage program in its entirety and the wages that were paid, one of the aspects of the fair wage program that I did support was that it required that at any provincially funded projects in British Columbia you had to have trades-qualified workers working on the site and you had to have apprentices registered. That was a great idea, but part of the problem that was happening in that case was they were registering apprentices essentially as cheap labour, and when the job was done, they were cutting them loose.

That's why I see the issue being completions. You want to not only get them into the system—that's a great idea, and I'm glad to see the government is taking steps in that direction—but you want to see them get all the way through the program, whether it be block-release programs or modular-based programs, and get the red seal at the end of the day so that they're employable anywhere in Canada.

[Denise Savoie, NDP, Victoria, BC]

I attended the Canadian Apprenticeship Forum earlier this year. There's what I think is a pretty compelling study that shows the benefits to employers of hiring apprentices, even from the beginning. I like the distinction that was made between foreign workers and new immigrants and new Canadians and supporting those efforts and so on. I appreciated the comments you made about this not being about not wanting foreign workers to come to Canada.

[Pat Byrne]

My father was a foreign worker.

[Denise Savoie, NDP, Victoria, BC]

I think most of us fall into that category, but they should be paid wages that allow them to live decently, not just brought in as cheap labour.