Human Resources Committee on March 20th, 2007

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Merasty.

We're going to move to Madam Bonsant, for five minutes, please.

[France Bonsant, Bloc, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

Thank you very much.

We have a program now called Canada Summer Jobs: formerly known as Summer Career Placement. This is an opportunity for young people between the ages of 15 and 30 to work at their first job. This year, the government cut $10 million out of a $97 million budget, and next year, it intends to cut another $45 million.

I know that many organizations use this program. Could you tell me whether you have hired any young people to help you under the Summer Career Placement program? What is the long-term impact of these cuts, since we're talking about training young people? I would like to know how this has affected you and the future development of young people?

[Gaétan Cousineau]

We work in the area of adult education, so we work with individuals after they interrupt their education; either they dropped out of high school, or are employed and need training. Earlier, we were asked whether

post-secondary education funding would be sufficient to solve it all.

For us, our main clientele won't be helped by the funding, because the funding that's given to post-secondary education in no way helps all the population already at work and already out of school. Those are the four main groups of the population. We're talking about six million people there, 12 million if we include those over the age 65.

Our role is to help people who need educational training at this level.

[France Bonsant, Bloc, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

I am talking about young students who would lend you a hand. I am not talking about literacy, but rather about young people coming to work and teaching illiterate adults.

Do you use high school or university students?

[Gaétan Cousineau]

We have 400 groups. So, surely, among those 400 groups, there are some young people who come to help us, and therefore who are hired for a short period of time. Our funding is uncertain, and it is project-based. So there is a beginning and an end. Often, we need to use people who can work for short periods of time. So, in fact, we need people like that.

[France Bonsant, Bloc, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

Go ahead.

[Karl Flecker]

The Canadian Labour Congress has annually used the program to hire students. I would also add that we top up the salary.

What do the students do? The students have written some excellent papers on global migration and the impacts of that. They've ended up working for different unions. They've ended up working for the United Nations Development Programme. The small stepping stone of a summer internship at the congress, in this small federally funded program, in many cases gives the students an opportunity to take their academic experience and apply it to a concentrated project. It makes a difference in policy, and it ends up making a difference in their careers.

[France Bonsant, Bloc, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

So, the 55% cutback will be a major obstacle to recruitment.

[Karl Flecker]

We won't be having a student this year.

[France Bonsant, Bloc, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

Now I want to turn to Mr. Cappon, whom I have already met.

You're saying here that affordable, accessible, flexible and high-quality post-secondary education is essential for Canada to achieve its socio-economic goals of the 21^st century. That is your main finding.

I remember when you published a report last year, that the Quebec Minister of Education—a Liberal and not a sovereignist—criticized you for meddling. This is another matter. With regard to post-secondary education, Quebec asked for a minimum of $1.2 billion, which equals transfer payments to the provinces for 1994 and 1995. Today, more and more young people are getting education and that education is least expensive in Quebec. We want to keep things the way they are, so that young people can get an education.

Do you believe that, with regard to post-secondary education in Quebec, $5.2 billion to make up for 13 years of cuts would be an exaggeration?

[Dr. Paul Cappon]

Earlier, I answered a similar question with regard to the level of funding. I said that it wasn't really a question that the CCL was going to comment on. In our opinion, no matter how much is invested in post-secondary education, we need to ensure whether or not the desired results are being achieved. We don't really have any comments about the level of funding, be it for Quebec or Canada as a whole.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you.

That's all the time we have. We're going to move to our next questioner.

Madam Savoie, for five minutes.

[Denise Savoie, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Thank you.

I want to come back to the issue of literacy. Mr. Cousineau, you wanted to make a comment and you will have the opportunity to do so.

Yesterday, in the budget, literacy program funding was noteworthy for its absence. Given the relationship between employability, literacy level and federal responsibilities with regard to labour, how to you explain this? How can we implement measures to fill the significant gaps in this area? You raised this question, and Mr. Cappon also did so in numerous reports.

[Gaétan Cousineau]

We want a strategy for action such as the one mentioned by the Canadian Council on Learning. If we get sufficient funding to do the work we need to do, we would cooperate with that kind of strategy.

Currently, we are only meeting 1% of the needs of francophones who need services to reach level 3, meaning the minimum level required in a knowledge-based society. We have to improve those numbers. Even if we hold promotional, awareness and recruiting campaigns, we still have to have the intake structures, and therefore stable funding. Our funding is project-based.

We have prepared 10-year plans to catch up to anglophones across Canada, but we want all Canadians, including anglophones, to exceed the Norwegian rate, meaning two out of three citizens. That is what we need in a society like ours, which wants to create jobs, to keep people in their jobs and to be able to compete internationally.

We need people who have finished high school or university. They are considered level 4 and 5. However, we must also maintain our skills throughout our lives now. That is where we come in. Some people have not had basic training, others need to review that basic training and still others need to improve their skills in order to acquire essential skills needed to integrate the labour market. We need to work with people where they are. We need more resources, that goes without saying.

[Denise Savoie, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Thank you.

I have a question for the CLC. A number of you have raised the issue of the need for labour mobility initiatives. Yesterday in the budget we saw some references to money I think being allocated to promote agreements such as TILMA, between Alberta and B.C., to harmonize jobs and labour demand between provinces. In theory, that sounds like a good idea. I know problems have been raised with respect to that. Given that you support labour mobility, I'm wondering how we could be talking about agreements that support good, secure jobs and maintain standards, contrary to what seems to have been the case with that Alberta-B.C. agreement.

Would you like to comment?

[Karl Flecker]

Thank you.

Yes, I was noticing that this morning as well—the labour market training architecture references in chapter 5 of the budget.

Very quickly, it sounds like an interesting idea, but it raises questions about whether this is more of a patchwork of different regional or provincial kinds of labour market agreements. It raises questions about how we ensure that the mobility will be there or that portability of credentials will take place. Let's use the Red Seal program as an example. Our understanding is that we don't have a federally legislated mandate to ensure that the Red Seal program has that kind of portability and acceptance.

The question that came to my mind when I was reading that chapter is how the labour movement will be involved in the development of that architecture. We don't know how to answer some of those questions unless we can sit at the table as equals, as somebody who has something to contribute in terms of ensuring that the issues of portability, mobility, and good wages and conditions are going to take place, or that training and assessment is actually going to be done on a cost-efficacious manner. How do we know it won't be a patchwork of duplicative processes?

Earlier we were talking about foreign credentials for the internationally trained folks. They're looking at 400 different regulatory bodies. This foreign credential recognition process was an $18 million door at one point. I think it's a $12 million door now, and it's being designed as a door that folks knock on to find out what door to knock on next. I'm not sure this is the kind of labour market training architecture that's going to be effective.

The thing is that we need to be at the table to see.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you.

That's all the time we have. We're going to move now to the last round of this round.

Mr. Lake, five minutes, please.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you all for coming today.

I want to start by hopefully correcting the record. I'm not sure if I heard Mr. Cousineau properly, but it sounded as if he said that the CST increase would not impact literacy funding. Obviously the CST does impact funding for provincial education, post-secondary education, and in fact literacy funding to the provinces. So I believe that was incorrect, if I heard it right.

Right now I want to move to disability issues specifically, and Mr. Hinton and Ms. Hicks. I'd say that yesterday's budget was a very good budget for Canadians dealing with disabilities. We have the creation of the Canadian Mental Health Commission; $30 million in the Rick Hansen Man in Motion Foundation to help people living with spinal cord injuries; and the creation of the enabling accessibility fund, with $45 million over three years to improve accessibility for people living with limited physical ability.

We have $140 million over the next two years to establish the new registered disability savings plan. As a parent of an 11-year-old child with autism, I find one of the considerations we deal with is what life is going to be like for Jaden when he's an adult and we're gone. This gives parents and grandparents the opportunity to save for the future increased independence for those dealing with disability issues.

One of the things that have been talked about a lot, and quite favourably, is the working income tax benefit. One thing that I note hasn't been talked about so much with regard to that is the working income tax benefit disability supplement, which is an additional supplement provided for low-income working Canadians with disabilities who generally face greater barriers to workforce participation.

The budget has only been out for 24 hours. Have you had a chance to read it? I'd be curious to know your thoughts on it.

[David Hinton]

Yes, with regard to the mental health initiative, with regard to the Rick Hansen initiative, with regard to the employment initiatives, we have seen those. And I just briefly scanned the issue on the $250 supplement that was in some of the documentation. Obviously those are all good moves forward. Regardless of which government is in place, we welcome those because they are needed.

By the same token, for organizations such as ours that have had good success in areas such as employment, our employment program—and we keep hearing about funding and that sort of initiative—had good programs in place. As of yesterday, we heard that our funding for a continuation of that program is no longer being carried on in the new fiscal year. That tends to hamstring us and the work we do. Quite frankly, I haven't had a chance to fully review the supplements and that, but there are some initiatives. I believe the government as a whole is now taking people with disabilities, and their needs and what's required for them, a lot more seriously than they have in the past.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

Perhaps when we're done here, you can share with me the concern you have. I'd be curious to hear more.

I want to move on, though, to the employability study. I'd be curious for you to share with me examples of jobs that are best suited for the people you represent—paraplegics—and maybe adaptations that might be necessary to facilitate that participation.

[Ellen Hicks]

I'm a former employment counsellor and professional counsellor as well in the career area, and I have been project manager of our initiative. So I will speak from that perspective.

Again, it depends on the severity, if you will, of the disability and the amount of functioning that the person has left. In many cases it's as simple as needing the desk raised to get a chair under it. In others it means needing to have physical space enough to have a lifting chair, a stand-up chair, various things, in order to accommodate the person's needs. In other cases it's a matter of needing pointers, computer equipment, and so on.

We've had banks, for example, approach us at the provincial level and ask what they can do. They've really wanted to hire. There is no one particular accommodation. It is very individualized, depending on the individual's need.

I would have to say it's the same in regard to the type of work—if you want to call it the job classification—as well. We see people able to do many things that we would think they cannot do, as well as able-bodied people, when we actually look at what they're doing. No, they may not be a roofer anymore, but they may be able to be a supervisor in a manufacturing plant. They may be able to continue working in the field. I met a gentleman just last week, actually, here in Ontario whose spinal cord injury was the result of an accident in the workplace, and he is now in retraining to redefine himself. He is not what is called a high-level quad, but he is very capable of doing many things still, and very independent.

So there's no one solution to that question. It depends on the individual's skills and abilities.

I've listened to my colleagues here address issues of literacy, and in some cases our clientele also have literacy issues, particularly farmers in Saskatchewan who have been injured working in their trade. They may have left school very early. So that's another whole issue—the whole issue of literacy, their own individual capabilities. One of the challenges we've had with our clients is that traditionally our occupational possibilities have been limited by the number of weeks that our people can get training dollars for.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you, Ms. Hicks, and thank you, Mr. Hinton, for helping out there.

We're going to move to our last round of questions. We have Mr. Savage for five minutes, followed by Ms. Yelich for five minutes.

Mr. Savage.

[Michael Savage, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

My question is for the CPA. There are certain monetary issues--training, literacy, grant programs, and things like that--that are necessary, but how many businesses in Canada are physically accessible for paraplegics to work at? I assume the banks, the utilities, governments, but how many small and medium-sized companies are actually able to accommodate paraplegics?

[David Hinton]

It's difficult to come up with a quantitative number for that, and you are making some rather far-reaching assumptions. To say that government is accessible—no, it's not. Quite often government and government buildings and structures have to be changed to at least marginally accommodate people with disabilities. People in wheelchairs probably have the most difficulty.

There is no quantitative amount. I don't know of any study that has been done to actually come up with a number. Even when we deal with things such as CMHC and the building requirements, and the Canadian Standards Association and building requirements, in a number of jurisdictions those are guidelines only; they're not mandatory, and businesses that are building again or new businesses or structures that are being built do not always have to meet those codes. So it is very much a case of the willingness of the owner, the willingness of the employer, to make those standards.

As I said, you would find that a number of government buildings in and around the capital region here are not fully accessible. We could go so far as to say that even some of the ministers' offices or some of their sub-offices may not be accessible and reachable.

That's a problem we face. There are no numbers on those. There is no quantitative amount.

[Michael Savage, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

I'm sure you're correct. There are all kinds of all-size companies. It must be a huge challenge for many people in wheelchairs to actually work in small businesses, let alone in large businesses.

I have a question for Mr. Cousineau.

In Nova Scotia, the Fédération acadienne de la Nouvelle-Écosse had a big issue with child care and how it prepared francophone students in advance of going to public school. I don't remember the exact number. I don't know if Mr. Thibault knows it. But it seems to me that over 60% of francophone children in Nova Scotia actually go to public school without a working ability at that level in their mother tongue, in their primary language.

Is that a big issue across the country?