Evidence of meeting #47 for Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities in the 41st Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was industry.
A recording is available from Parliament.
9:15 a.m.
Conservative
9:15 a.m.
NDP
Mike Sullivan NDP York South—Weston, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
My question has to do with areas of Canada where there is high unemployment, particularly high youth unemployment. You may be aware there is a skilled trades council called the Central Ontario Building Trades in Toronto that runs a program called Hammer Heads. It takes unemployed youth who are marginalized in society and who are perhaps turning to crime or other means of getting by. They're part of the 30% unemployed young people who exist in my riding. They take those youth and give them pre-apprenticeship training. It's done without a nickel of federal, provincial, or municipal money. It's all unions that are doing this training, and are doing it in order to deal with a huge problem of youth unemployment. They recognize that they need to do their part, but they have extreme difficulty getting the spenders of money to agree to utilize their program.
The federal and provincial governments are spending up to $10 billion on infrastructure money for public transit in the city of Toronto, and not one nickel of that money is being earmarked for training, or for apprenticeships, or for the use of that money to create jobs in high unemployment areas.
Do you think we could do better with our spending of money?
9:15 a.m.
Executive Director, Operating Engineers Training Institute of Ontario, International Union of Operating Engineers
Yes, we absolutely could do better with our spending of money.
I'm very familiar with the Hammer Heads program. We participate in the Hammer Heads program, and it has been a very successful program for us. You're right when you say that we fund this totally on our own with the help of the other building trades.
It again comes back to spending money. It makes complete sense when you're in a low-demand occupation and you're only working six or seven months of the year: you want to change occupations. The better spending of moneys you're talking about should be to give that individual, whether male or female, an opportunity to immediately access funds to put him or her into training.
I have a document here that states that you're penalized if you haven't been unemployed for 26 weeks. I don't understand that. Why would somebody in a low-demand trade or work environment have to be out of work and on employment insurance for 26 weeks before he's allowed second career training eligibility, especially when this individual could have a three-kid family? No, sir, or no, ma'am, you have to stay unemployed for 26 weeks before you can get the money for second careers.
If we could train those individuals more quickly with the funds they need right away, we could put them into a high-demand trade, one where we're interviewing for foreign workers right now. So yes, we could spend our money much more wisely.
9:15 a.m.
NDP
Mike Sullivan NDP York South—Weston, ON
I was thinking more in particular of the amount of money that we're spending on infrastructure. It comes with no strings attached. It's just a gift to the municipality or to the province—a very tiny bit of it from the government, and most of it from the provincial government—but there is no requirement.
9:15 a.m.
Conservative
9:15 a.m.
Voices
Oh, oh!
9:15 a.m.
NDP
Mike Sullivan NDP York South—Weston, ON
Well, it's not a gift, but there are no strings attached in terms of training, and there are no strings attached in terms of creating apprenticeships. There are no strings attached in terms of utilizing the union training systems that already exist. They hand the money to contractors, and the contractors go about their business. In Toronto, we're trying to convince the various levels of government that they need to actually specify that the 3%, or whatever figure is appropriate, must be set aside in part to train the workforce.
They are touting how this spend will create 100,000 jobs. But if the 100,000 jobs are not in the key unemployed areas, it doesn't do us a service. It doesn't do us as much of a service as it could.
9:20 a.m.
President, Canadian Labour Congress
There is an example of what you talked about. When they reconstructed the Vancouver Island highway, they put as a condition of the contracts they let that they had to hire...it was a formula to hire apprentices. They graduated over 200 journeypersons through that construction project as a condition of the grants to build that highway. So you can do it quite easily.
The construction unions also have a program called Helmets to Hardhats for veterans coming back into the workforce. They will provide apprenticeship training for our veterans as well to give them a start in their lives back in the civilian world.
9:20 a.m.
NDP
Mike Sullivan NDP York South—Weston, ON
Was that a federal spend on the highway in Vancouver? Was that federal money?
9:20 a.m.
President, Canadian Labour Congress
I think there was some federal money and provincial money. Yes.
9:20 a.m.
A voice
Yes.
9:20 a.m.
Conservative
9:20 a.m.
Conservative
Colin Mayes Conservative Okanagan—Shuswap, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and welcome to the committee, gentlemen.
I have a background...most of my life has been in the mining sector, and I was a member of the Union of Operating Engineers at one time many years ago.
That's what puzzles me about a statement made about the fact that there are five people waiting for one job in this country and that the need for labour is exaggerated. I don't agree with that statement.
The Mining Association of Canada reported that there's going to be $500 billion spent in the next 10 years and their sector alone will need 125,000 people. Even for the civil service of Canada, there are estimates, for the same period of time, of 125,000 people. That is not the spinoff of those jobs either. That would probably double those figures.
The issue, I feel, is that there are the opportunities out there, and that people are not trained in the right fields for this economy.
Mr. Georgetti, you mentioned that we need more counsellors. I have to say that counsellors and educators, and even unions, even government, have failed us because they haven't had a vision for what is coming in the future and here we are scrambling.
I would like to say that we could give some credit to our government and this committee for the fact that we're trying to address this issue now and look at solutions. I think Mr. Boulerice's question about who is to take and champion this cause is a good question. Government can't do everything. In fact, we don't do everything very well. We need partnerships. We've seen some great partnerships with the aboriginal people. We've found that in the mining sector in Saskatchewan and the mining sector in the Northwest Territories, 40%, 50% of their employees are aboriginals who have been trained through programs that this government has forwarded.
There are women in the labour force.... Some of my colleagues went to the oil sands where huge 400-tonne trucks are being driven by women. They're better drivers than the men just because they take care of the equipment better.
9:20 a.m.
A voice
Oh, oh!
9:20 a.m.
Conservative
Colin Mayes Conservative Okanagan—Shuswap, BC
That's a fact.
I think we're doing some good things, but the issue is that we need to try to refocus where the jobs are going to be and what the skills are. In British Columbia, which is the province I'm from, there are way too many young people who have been trained as teachers and environmental scientists and not enough trained as carpenters and operating engineers and those types of things.
So I guess the question is, how can we counsel these people, maybe with better counsellors? Who should be counselling? I have a problem with educators counselling students on career choices because educators have a specific interest. I think it should be people other than educators.
I would like some comments on that.
9:20 a.m.
President, Canadian Labour Congress
First of all, I'm sorry I wasn't clear enough. I'm not making a statement about the five jobs for every vacancy. It's a fact. We have a 7% unemployment rate, a 10% real unemployment rate, and about a 17% youth unemployment rate. Those are the numbers in Canada. I agree with you that we've got shortages out there, but the people who are unemployed don't have the skills to fill those shortages. That is the problem.
I'm not arguing for more counsellors in the school. I'm just saying, as you are, that I wish some of the counsellors would give kids good advice to take some of these trades. As you might know, a tradesman in the oil sands now can make in excess of $100,000 with just a little bit of overtime work. They're good jobs, they're secure jobs, and they give you enough credentials to move. I think we have to do more credentializing.
The role that the federal government is starting to play is getting better. Labour market information will be very valuable in those decisions and those discussions.
My challenge is the same as yours, sir: I don't know how we get kids coming out of school to get the proper advice on career choices. Unfortunately, very few are counselled to take trades, and more should be.
We need to actually promote the credentializing of a lot more skills. We have only 38 apprenticeable occupations in Canada. In Great Britain, they have in excess of 100. Those credentials and cards give employers confidence to hire people who have the basic skills they need. You're always going to have to train to the actual skill sets of the operation that you're in, whether it be mining or trades, but we don't credentialize enough training.
9:25 a.m.
Conservative
Colin Mayes Conservative Okanagan—Shuswap, BC
Sorry for interrupting you, but this guy is going to cut me off if I don't.
9:25 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Ed Komarnicki
Your time is up. Thank you. We'll come back to you.
I'm sure, Mr. McBride, you have a comment too, and perhaps you'll be able to make that a little later.
Mr. Cuzner, go ahead.
9:25 a.m.
Liberal
Rodger Cuzner Liberal Cape Breton—Canso, NS
Thanks very much for being here today.
We've heard from other witnesses as well. Certainly when we were out east we heard what became pretty similar to what you were saying. Cliff Murphy from Cape Breton Building Trades echoed your comments that the problems revolve around gaps in mobility. It seems if you have a Red Seal certification, accreditation recognition, you're okay to travel. But recognizing apprenticeship—and the committee is going to delve into this more with a subsequent study. We're losing kids. The success rate of the young Canadians who take a trade and then follow that path through to the end and become a journeyman in a particular trade is not great. Those are the gaps.
How can we look at accreditation recognition before we hit the Red Seal or apprenticeships or whatever? We know the government is going to say this is a provincial responsibility, but there should be some kind of a national role.
Could I get your comments on that, how we tie that together?
9:25 a.m.
Executive Director, Operating Engineers Training Institute of Ontario, International Union of Operating Engineers
A lot of work has been done federally to make mobility across Canada a reality—in particular, the AIT agreement, the agreement on internal trade. That allows individuals who are qualified in one province, whatever that qualification might be deemed to be, to go to any other province and upon landing in that province they're good to go. This is the new reality of the AIT agreement.
I'm going to speak particularly of the trades. What types of qualifications, what types of training, what types of standards have been used in the particular provinces? That's where the vast differences occur. No national standard is used among the trades—operating engineers, crane operators, all have different standards of training. What we're trying to do—
9:25 a.m.
Liberal
Rodger Cuzner Liberal Cape Breton—Canso, NS
Do you think the federal government could play a role in bringing the provinces together to come up with these national standards?
9:30 a.m.
Executive Director, Operating Engineers Training Institute of Ontario, International Union of Operating Engineers
I do, absolutely. Approximately 10 years ago the Construction Sector Council, funded by the federal government, sponsored an initiative called the national occupational standards. They brought together 27 occupations, like bulldozer operator, excavator, crane operator, and tower crane operator, from all across the country, and the standards have been created. Unfortunately, the Construction Sector Council has lost its funding. It got stopped midway through the whole process.
We've taken up the burden of completing this project. It's not slated to be completed for another two years. The operating engineers training—