Human Resources Committee on June 13th, 2012

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

If I could call the meeting to order and get our members to the table I'd appreciate it.

I might mention that of course today's a bit of an unusual day in our schedule, in that we're going to have a series of votes with respect to the budget, and there may be other unscheduled votes taking place. So I would expect that the bells might start ringing during the course of our presentation.

It is my hope that we will get the presentations done today. We may not have an opportunity for questions and answers; if that's the case, so be it.

Monday we will be discussing where we will go with the study and whether we'll conclude it or go beyond. We'll see how that goes.

We were going to deal with the matter regarding the report today, but I understand from Ms. Charlton that we won't be dealing with that now. It will be looked at in terms of a dissenting report, so we don't have to deal with that matter.

We will be abridging our time with respect to this meeting. Fortunately, we cancelled the second panel in anticipation that there might be some difficulty. We hope we can get through at least your presentation.

With that, we'll start with Mr. Jones, from the Ted Rogers School of Management.

I understand, Mr. Walker, that you will also be sharing some time with him.

We'll go right to it. Go ahead.

[Ken Jones, Dean, Ted Rogers School of Management]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, for the opportunity to address the committee, and a special thank you to the member for Don Valley East for the introduction.

First, I'd like to introduce the team. We have Mark Patterson, the director of the Ted Rogers Career Centre. We have Mr. Doug Walker, the CEO of WhoPlusYou, and Mr. Jay Tanner, the chief technology officer.

I bring greetings from our president, Sheldon Levy, who would have been here but is at convocation.

The context is that Ryerson has a long tradition of dealing with career-based education and with entrepreneurship, innovation, and commercialization. One of our goals is really to have the best university in Canada in terms of connecting our students and recent alumni to work and related careers.

At Ryerson University, we've also established the Digital Media Zone, and that particular enterprise really does foster new innovative ideas and technologies. One of them is the WhoPlusYou system, which is really a new way of looking at the Canadian job market, and it's actually turning it around. We now have businesses driving the agenda, rather than simply having people looking for jobs. It's the reverse: jobs are chasing people rather than people chasing jobs.

The purpose of this presentation is twofold: first, to introduce you to the capacity of the WhoPlusYou system, and second, to give you some ideas of our future plans to develop the system more fully.

I'm going to turn the presentation over to the CEO of WhoPlusYou, Mr. Doug Walker, who will talk about the system.

Doug.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Mr. Walker, I know you mentioned to me that you might have wanted to do a presentation here to show how the system works. Unfortunately that wasn't set up, but if we elongate our study, we might try to get you back by video conferencing and perhaps work something else out. We'll see how that goes.

Go ahead.

[Doug Walker, Chief Executive Officer, WhoPlusYou Inc.]

That would be absolutely tremendous, Mr. Chair. Thank you very much.

Thank you for everybody's time today.

The idea behind this project from the outset was to look for a new way for the right people to get introduced to the right opportunities the first time. When we're talking about “people”, we're talking about individuals, employers, communities, and groups. The idea was to find a way to do that in a way that creates the maximum amount of productivity and efficiency in the process.

The key to that, from our perspective, through a set of technologies we developed over the past four years, was to collect the right information the right way the first time. By “right information”, we're talking about the way in which an individual would profile themselves to talk about what their key skills are and talk about the types of opportunities they're most interested in in the marketplace, the way in which a company would profile a job opportunity they have for the marketplace, or the way in which a group might profile the types of members they're looking for in the marketplace to create the most amount of benefit to all sides.

We've developed that technology, as I said, over the past four years. The idea was to create those matches not only one time but all the time. As an employer or as a peer introduces an opportunity for themselves to connect with the marketplace, that opportunity is in fact activated to go find the right people. That's why the process is reversed from the normal process.

The normal process today, of course, is that people actively look for jobs, and oftentimes technology is getting in the way of those people actively looking for jobs. It's getting in the way because employers are getting hundreds or thousands of résumés for every opportunity they post. They don't have the time to get through these résumés. Oftentimes the people who are looking for the jobs don't get very professional responses from those organizations because the volume is just too high. We're looking for ways to eliminate that, to connect the right people the right way the first time.

On top of that, as we developed these programs over the last several years we learned that more than just matching had to happen in order to actually complete the solution. We learned that, number one, connections needed to happen in a very fast and efficient way. On top of the matching algorithms that we developed, on top of the way we were able to actually bring communities together, we developed communications technologies that will allow for instant communications when a match actually happens.

When we develop the software, it's more than just a typical job board scenario whereby you have somebody advertising a job and somebody looking on that job board. We actually aggregate data from the Globe 1000 public companies, the Globe 350 private companies, the Forbes 2000, and eventually thousands of SMEs. The idea is that we're always keeping track of what's happening from an analytical perspective in the marketplace.

The reason for this is that we're able to give people an understanding not only for why they are matched to something but also for why they're not a match to something. Imagine a world—in just a couple of years, we think—where we're tracking all of these large corporations in North America, and specifically in Canada, we're tracking hundreds of thousands or millions of people, and we're able to actually take a look at the skills banks that we've created to define what the skills are on a by-job and by-industry and by-person basis against all of the data that we're collecting in the marketplace.

The idea, of course, is that we can start to understand from an analytics perspective what's happening with the labour pool, what's happening with industry, and how it's changing—and not a year from now, but now.

The idea is to understand what's happening from a labour pool and job perspective, those jobs in the marketplace, and how the conditions are evolving, and always understand specifically what the individuals are doing in that marketplace in terms of aggregate data so that we can compare those two data sets.

In doing that, there's the communications capability, which is a real-time communications capability so that people can talk on video as soon as they're connected. There's also a presentations capability. We've learned in working with Ryerson that it's more than just about the skills; it's also about how you demonstrate those skills. It's about how you actually demonstrate the value that's associated with the work that you've done. We've developed some advanced but simple-to-use presentation capabilities.

So front to back, we profile, we match instantly, we communicate very quickly. We can do so in such a way that files of candidates are kept for corporations. We present both the corporation's value as well as the individual's value in the context of a series of multimedia presentations. That happens on a 24/7 basis with all of the largest corporations in North America and specifically Canada.

That's what the technology is about.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Thank you very much. I'm sure you'll get some questions, if we get there.

[Doug Walker]

Sure.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

We'll now go to Ms. Joyce Reynolds, executive vice-president of government affairs, Canadian Restaurant and Foodservices Association.

You were actually on the second panel, but you're already here, so we've placed you in this panel.

Go ahead with your presentation. We appreciate that it won't be exactly fitting in with what was just said, but go ahead.

[Joyce Reynolds, Executive Vice-President, Government Affairs, Canadian Restaurant and Foodservices Association]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I appreciate the opportunity to speak to you today about a key issue that's facing Canada's $63-billion restaurant industry, with its one-million-plus employees, and that's the labour shortage. In our most recent restaurant outlook survey, for the first quarter of 2012, 31% of restaurant respondents said that a shortage of skilled labour is having a negative effect on their businesses, and 14% said that a shortage of unskilled labour is having a negative effect on their businesses.

The labour shortage reached crisis proportions for our members in western Canada in the middle of the last decade. The economic downturn provided a reprieve, but our members are again having difficulty hiring workers in different parts of the country, particularly in smaller communities in western Canada. But in the balance of the country, it is a growing problem that will get progressively worse over time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

I'll have to stop you there, Ms. Reynolds.

If we're to continue at all, we'll need unanimous consent. If we don't have unanimous consent, unfortunately we'll have to probably suspend or adjourn.

First of all, do I have unanimous consent to go any longer, given that the bells are ringing?

[Colin Mayes, Conservative, Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Chair, could you tell us whether they're 15-minute or half-hour bells?

[A voice]

It's a half-hour bell.

[Colin Mayes, Conservative, Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Okay.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

We'll need unanimous consent to proceed. Is there unanimous consent? Okay.

Go ahead.

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Chair, can you just clarify for me...? Are we going to be able to get all panellists in and still make it for the vote? I have no problem with asking—

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

I can't confirm that.

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

—Ms. Reynolds to continue and to finish her presentation, but—

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Given the nature of today and all that's happening, it's hard to say whether 30-minute bells actually will be 30-minute bells or whether there'll be a shortening. I don't know that.

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Can I make a recommendation, then?

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Sure.

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

For the panellists who still have presentations to make, would you be amenable to making five-minute presentations so we can hear from all of you, even if it doesn't give us time to ask questions? Are you okay with that?

I'd hate for witnesses to come all this way and then not be heard. It just seems absurd.

[Kellie Leitch, Conservative, Simcoe—Grey, ON]

My understanding is that the whips have agreed that if we actually return, they'll actually even shorten the bells among all....

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

I'm sorry...?

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Why don't we do this? I'm thinking that what I'll do is suspend until we find out what happens in the House. We may be able to come back after the vote to at least complete the presentations if the witnesses are prepared to stand by for at least 30 or 40 minutes.

Are the witnesses prepared to do that?

[Jeff Nugent, President and Chief Executive Officer, Contingent Workforce Solutions]

Sure, as long as I can make my seven o'clock flight back.

[Joyce Reynolds]

It's his 40th birthday today. Everybody should know that.

[Applause]

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

All right.

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Stay with us overnight and celebrate.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

To be on the safe side, we will suspend. If something changes in terms of whether it's going to be longer, we'll send a message to you here so you can be sure that you can go. But if we can get it done within a fairly reasonable time, we'll come back to try to conclude. All right?

I'll suspend the meeting.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

I will bring the meeting to order.

Just for the benefit of the presenters, there will be bells shortly. By unanimous consent of all committee members who are here, we're going to proceed into the bells to conclude your presentations, and then we will adjourn. It seems likely the most reasonable thing to do under the circumstances.

Ms. Reynolds, go ahead.

[Joyce Reynolds]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I was just saying that the Conference Board of Canada projects a shortfall of labour in Canada of about one million people by 2020, with 200,000 in our industry alone. All industries are going to be hit, but our industry particularly hard.

One reason for this is our reliance on young people. Of today's restaurant workers, 43%—that's more than 483,000 employees—are 15 to 24 years of age. Restaurants are the number one provider of first-time jobs in the country, providing one in five jobs for youth. Statistics Canada projections indicate that by 2020 the population of those between the ages of 15 and 25 will decline by 300,000.

When the labour shortage hit Alberta in the middle of the last decade, the impact on restaurants was devastating. Employers were working 17-hour days, spending too much time on food preparation and service and not enough time on managing their businesses and training and mentoring their staff. Labour shortages were forcing operators to reduce hours, reduce menu offerings, shut down parts of their operation, and abandon expansion plans. Average weekly wage increases were double those for the average industrial wage earner in Alberta. Despite the huge jump in wages, the average number of employees per restaurant fell from 14.3 in 2004 to 12.4 in 2005, representing a shortage of 13,000 people. For the first time in a decade and a half, the number of food service establishments declined. So the industry actually contracted when food service demand had never been higher.

We need to ensure that there are policies in place so this will never happen again.

What are the barriers to filling low-skilled jobs in particular, and what are the solutions? l'd like to address first domestic workers and then foreign workers.

To attract more Canadians, restaurant businesses have had to become more flexible and creative in their recruitment of workers and to place a higher priority on retention of existing employees. Restaurant operators are increasing benefits and increasing capital investments in labour-saving devices, but opportunities are limited in a service environment. Restaurants are also putting more emphasis on attracting and accommodating under-represented groups such as aboriginals and persons with disabilities, and are looking for new pools of talent, such as older workers.

Because restaurant businesses must provide services when Canadians and tourists want to eat and drink, they are often open seven days a week, and up to 24 hours a day. This situation provides flexibility for some workers, but it creates challenges for others due to family, day care, and transportation needs.

I am pleased to acknowledge that some solutions we identified to government to reduce low marginal tax rates for low-income Canadians and to encourage work in our industry have been adopted. The working income tax benefit, increased basic personal income tax exemption, reduced clawbacks for income-tested programs such as the guaranteed income supplement, and, most recently, reduced clawbacks for EI recipients and new initiatives to better connect EI recipients with jobs all help.

Along the same line, we would urge government to introduce a basic exemption of one year into the employment insurance program, similar to CPP's year's basic exemption, in order to make EI more progressive and fairer for lower-income workers.

But these measures are not enough to overcome the demographic reality confronting the Canadian labour market and our industry. We need to have access to foreign workers and immigrants at all skill levels. Despite the relatively soft labour market in some parts of the country, the industry is experiencing serious labour challenges in many others.

Last year over 24,000 LMOs were approved for food service jobs. The biggest demand was for food counter attendants, kitchen helpers, and related occupations. This was followed by cooks, food service supervisors, and food and beverage servers. If it weren't for the temporary foreign worker program, some operators would have had to close their doors. The temporary foreign worker program has helped our members to stabilize their businesses and retain their domestic employees and has reduced the chaos that resulted from understaffed restaurants.

We still have some concerns about the high percentage of application rejections of LMOs in some regions compared to others, and inconsistencies in how the program is administered. We need to further streamline the program to allow for bulk applications and more efficient processes.

The temporary foreign worker program, while needed—

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Ms. Reynolds, even though we're a bit pressed for time, you need to slow down a little bit. It makes it easier for the interpreter.

[Joyce Reynolds]

Sorry. I'm really trying to stay within my five minutes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

I know. We'll give you a little extra time. Go ahead and slow up a bit.

[Joyce Reynolds]

The temporary foreign worker program, while needed, is expensive, it's administratively burdensome for restaurant operators, and it doesn't solve their long-term structural labour market needs. We need to better develop bridging programs between the temporary foreign worker program and permanent residency. We support government plans to modernize our immigration system so that it better matches workers with jobs and puts more emphasis on Canadian worker experience, but this must apply to jobs of all skill levels and not be restricted to NOC codes A, B, and O.

Finally, we would like to see the working holiday program expanded through the negotiation of a larger cap and longer permit periods.

To conclude, we appreciate the government's willingness to study labour shortages and barriers to filling low-skill jobs. The numbers of people needed to fill job vacancies in the years ahead are daunting for all categories of workers—skilled, semi-skilled, and unskilled—and we look forward to partnering with government on solutions that will ensure continued economic growth.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Thank you very much for that presentation.

We have heard from a number in the fast-food service industry, hospitality industry, and they've raised some of the issues you raised here as well.

Next we have Contingent Workforce Solutions, Jeff Nugent, president and chief executive officer. Go ahead with your presentation.

[Jeff Nugent]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the member for Mississauga—Streetsville for the invitation.

I'm a little bit new to this process, so please bear with me. I don't represent an association or a total industry; I'm representing myself and my company.

I'm the founder and CEO of Contingent Workforce Solutions. It's a four-year-old entrepreneurial company that helps employers manage the administration and employment and tax law issues around engaging with contract and self-employed workers.

We manage the on-boarding paperwork, the verification of business registrations, time and expense tracking, and invoicing and payment of these contract workers. Over the last four years we've grown organically to over $25 million in sales. Last year we were ranked the fastest-growing company in Canada.

Prior to founding Contingent Workforce Solutions, I had a lot of history in the talent acquisition space. We are a company that is independent of the industry or the position titles of the workers who our employers are hiring. This gives us a very broad perspective on the workforce, the gaps in the workforce, and some of the high or hot skills that are needed in the workforce. In a lot of cases, employers will hire contract workers instead of full-time workers in situations where they can't find full-time workers.

I'm also, in preparation for this meeting.... I'm a member of ITAC, which is the Information Technology Association of Canada; ACSESS, which is the Association of Canadian Search, Employment and Staffing Services; the IT staffing firm association; the CME; Alberta Construction Association; Progressive Contractors Association of Canada; and the CFIB. Because we aren't industry-specific, we've joined a lot of these various industry associations to gain access to the membership and to get an understanding of each of the employers within them, which also gives us this broad perspective.

I'll start in on my presentation by saying that Canada's workforce is changing. Demographically we have an aging population, resulting in potentially a significant percentage of the population exiting the workforce. We have generation Y and the millenniums—that is, those who are highly educated but often very underemployed. Self-employment is now the fastest-growing segment of the workforce.

These facts are creating both opportunities and challenges for employers and government. Employers need to adjust to create ways to get work done in non-traditional ways. Government needs to create policy and programs that support industry in the new ways they are getting work done and in developing the skills that industry needs for today and for the future.

From my perspective, we're seeing what I call “in-demand” skills, very highly sought after and in large numbers, in the skilled trades: engineers, welders, pipefitters, millwrights, electricians, bricklayers, boilermakers, etc.

In ICT, in technology, there's a real shortage of workers.

There's a shortage of general labourers. We're seeing employers being forced through very non-traditional means to attract these types of people.

As we heard from Joyce, in the retail and hospitality sector there's a real shortage of workers.

In terms of filling the demand for these skills, it's really a “build or buy” scenario. The building part is creating domestic skill sets, and the buying part is immigrating in the skill sets that we need to help industry have the skills they need to get the work done.

We need to have a better understanding of where the hot skills are, and where the needs and the demands are, prior to just moving forward and hearing from different groups or industry-specific groups that are always demanding for themselves and really not looking at the broader spectrum. I guess that's your job here, to listen to everybody and then decide how to allocate things.

I think it really comes down to needing that demographics data and the data of where the future needs will be, and then creating policy to create better links among industry, education, and government policy.

For action items or recommendations, I'll read from a briefing note that I have submitted. It will be translated and you will receive it shortly.

Some recommendations that I see in creating those better links include developing quarterly tracking of industry skilled workforce demographics today, and what job postings are out there and the actual hiring that happens, in order to gain a better understanding of the trends in the workforce and the future needs. Also, I think discussions like this one and other round tables should take place on at least a quarterly frequency among industry, education providers, and immigration leaders, to discuss trends in industry skills needs and to adjust policy as required.

On the domestic skills development front, we really need to create better awareness of what the in-demand skills are, both at the institutional level and at the individual resource level. With better awareness of the in-demand skills, educational institutions can change their curricula to develop those skills we need, as well as counsel students at a youth level to move them towards where the in-demand skills and jobs are.

Also, one of the areas that I see being of particular interest is the area of funding additional educational programs—outside of the traditional educational system—that allow students and youth to try jobs requiring in-demand skills. I was in the U.K. last July. The City of Westminster actually funded four to five crews of skilled workers or tradespeople who, in vans filled with power tools, went to the high schools and did projects in which students built things using their hands. They've been seeing a real influx of people in shop class and those types of things because they've allowed people to try it.

Last on the awareness side of things is the creation of mass media awareness. We're in this world of social media, American Idol, and those types of things, and the perception of what's a cool job and what isn't can be created by enhancing awareness. Skills Canada holds a skilled trades competition each year at the regional and then the national level. The winners at the national level go on to the world event and are treated like rock stars. Who's the best welder? Who's the best pipefitter? They do those types of things.

So by looking at having federal funding for such programs and having more awareness around the programs, even by broadcasting them on the CBC, it will create awareness—“hey, that's pretty cool”—and as a byproduct, you'll probably also hear them talking about what high-paying jobs there are in Saskatchewan and Alberta for these types of skills. That will result in an influx of people for those in-demand skills.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Briefly wrap up if you could, please.

[Jeff Nugent]

Yes, no problem, Mr. Chair.

In my brief I have other recommendations for providing tax credits and subsidies to individuals and/or industries that train workers for in-demand skills. There's a real need, if you can't develop the skills, to buy the skills or immigrate the skills in. I've talked about ways of streamlining the LMO and the visa-granting process, and also about allowing for mobility of workers within the temporary foreign worker program through the use of staffing firms, which will allow for mobility of those workers between employers. I also recommend providing funding to landing service programs that help newcomers integrate into Canadian society.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Thank you for that presentation.

We'll hear from Lindsay Kennedy with the Canadian Literacy and Learning Network. Go ahead.

[Lindsay Kennedy, President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Literacy and Learning Network]

Thank you very much.

I almost feel as though I should title my presentation “And Now For Something Completely Different”.

As the title of our organization—the Canadian Literacy and Learning Network—indicates, my focus in speaking with you this afternoon will be literacy and essential skills.

First of all, I'd like to thank you for the opportunity to present to you today and indicate that I find it very easy to address both of your study subjects, as they are so inherently connected. The foundation of strong literacy and essential skills is now absolutely necessary to enter the labour market at any level, and no workforce can acquire the skills without that foundation set of skills.

I'd like to point out that low job skills, as we used to know them, no longer exist. Most of them have really disappeared. Most of them have been automated in the last decade. The gap has occurred where we have not equipped those who have traditionally held those positions with the skills to continue to work in those positions. What's emerged is the fact that we have an ever-widening gap between high- and low-skilled Canadians.

On the internationally recognized scale of literacy and essential skills—and Canada was a participant in two separate studies, in collaboration with the OECD—level three has been established as the level Canada's workforce needs to function at in order to allow Canadian businesses to stay competitive in a national as well as a global context. I don't want to risk oversimplifying things, but on a scale of one to five, levels one and two are the levels you're at when you're learning to read and you're gaining your foundational skills. Once you attain skills and you're functioning at level three and up, instead of learning to read, you're reading to learn. So there is a transition in how you use those skills and how important they are to you. Requiring skills at level three is the case not only for the knowledge-based economy but really across all sectors of industry. Moving into the future, it is ever more evident that people need to continuously upgrade their skills.

The difficult reality we're facing as a nation—and I know this is perhaps not news to some of the committee members—is that 43% of Canadians have literacy levels below level three. As I just indicated, level three is that kind of cut-off point, such that if you have skills lower than level three, you have difficulty functioning.

In terms of numbers—because 43% is just a percentage of what?—this means that for 9.8 million adults in this country, according to the 2011 census, who are between the ages of 16 and 65, the ability to fully participate in life, community, and work is severely compromised.

Looking for a long-term approach and opportunities at this critical point in time, CLLN recently conducted research that explores the potential of an investment in adult literacy to reduce government and business expenditures on employment insurance, workers' compensation, and social assistance benefits. We compared literacy statistics, income and earnings statistics, and information about people in receipt of payments under those benefits programs, and we found a strong correlation that suggests that the lower your level of literacy, the more likely you are to have accessed these programs.

We'll be releasing a detailed analysis later this month, but here's a quick preview of some of the more striking findings.

It would cost $16 billion to increase literacy levels of all working age adults to level three. However, the return on this significant investment would be, in our view, rather compelling: individuals' earnings could rise, due to an increase in labour productivity, by as much as $83.9 billion annually.

Employment insurance, workers compensation, and social assistance payments could drop by as much as $2.917 billion annually. This combined annual increase in savings does not include government savings and increased revenue from income tax rolls.

The Canadian Chamber of Commerce has said that more people with advanced skills are needed for Canada to compete and prosper in a global, knowledge-based economy. In our opinion, you can't build a skilled labour force without the basic foundational literacies and essential skills. Investments in those with low skill levels will provide a long-term solution. Investments in raising the literacy and essential skills levels will provide a greater return on investment than moving people up between the higher levels and will ensure that more Canadians have what is needed to fill the skills gap.

To fulfill Prime Minister Stephen Harper's promise that he made in Davos—namely, that the Canadian government will move ahead with “transformations necessary to sustain economic growth, job creation and prosperity now and for the next generation”—we need a pan-Canadian human capital strategy. This strategy must have the goal of a Canadian workforce with advanced skills at its centre, and that goal can only be built on a strong foundation of literacy and essential skills.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Thank you very much for that.

I guess we have been able to conclude all the presentations. If there's anyone else who was a presenter and would like to add to anything they've said, this would be a good opportunity. We're going to close without having the usual round of questions, but first I'll see if anyone else wishes to add anything.

Mr. Jones.

[Ken Jones]

Yes, I have a couple of points.

Certainly, in terms of the system we developed, it's active. It's not a dream. We have 5,000 individuals on the system essentially looking at approximately 215,000 jobs. So on the issue that was raised here, jobs are available.

However, what we do need, I think, if we look forward as a country, is that we need to translate this system into French. It's an English-based system, so it has some disadvantages for a country like Canada. Also, we need to build some additional heuristics to really data-mine what we have there. Data-mining would allow us to look at the Canadian labour market virtually in real time, every 48 hours, in terms of what's happening by sector, by job type, by skills requirements, by region, by small town and big town, and in terms of north, south, east, and west.

Given that data, we'd be able to identify labour and skill gaps that exist now. We'd be able to translate those into potential skills or training activities across the country more quickly. Also, we'd be able to inform policy, because ultimately we'd be able to develop data metrics about the Canadian labour market, which everyone could use more effectively.

So I'd just like to make the point that the data is there and it's real, and we could really start to address some of the fundamental problems about jobs and employment in this country.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Thank you very much.

Anyone else? No?

All right. I'd like to thank all of you for attending. My apologies for the disruptions and for having you stay here past the allotted time. We certainly appreciate your indulgence.

With that, we're going to adjourn and make sure that Mr. Nugent can catch his plane.

And a happy birthday to you, Mr. Nugent.

[Jeff Nugent]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

We're adjourned.