Human Resources Committee on Oct. 4th, 2012

[Aleksandra Popovic]

For the most part, what we have seen is that adults who are today struggling with low literacy and essential skills for one reason or another—and certainly there are multiple factors—did not get from the school system what they needed.

Changes that are occurring in the Canadian school systems have been significant in trying to address the issue of the traditional academic approach to learning, the system that educated the adults who today struggle with those literacy and essential skills. An example might be some of the high school diplomas and the variations of diplomas that are available. An example that comes to mind, although it's not my area of expertise, is the high skills major, which offers individuals with a particular employment goal a diploma that helps to hone their skills around an employment goal in a broad job cluster or sector.

To answer your question, there is great effort to improve our K-12 results, and today I would say that we can look forward to youth down the road being in a different position from the adults of today who were in the more academic programs. We didn't serve their learning needs and their learning styles in the day that they were there.

[Ryan Cleary, NDP, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

Ms. Popovic, you mentioned that our education system is one of the strongest internationally. I find that interesting, given the 42% rate of low literacy that you mentioned. Is it still accurate to say that in education, we are still among the better nations of the world?

[Aleksandra Popovic]

I think the data shows that we have a very high number of people completing graduate and post-graduate school on a national basis, so maybe that's a more accurate statement.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Mr. Cardozo, do you have any comments you wish to make?

[Andrew Cardozo]

I would only add that this is an important issue and I think that part of it is making high school relevant to everybody. A large chunk of students graduate from high school with great marks and great literacy and lots of science and math and so forth, but a considerable number of kids are struggling. Some of them may be lower-income students, but lots of them are not and simply don't want to be in high school, so how do we make high school more relevant to them? I think there's a real awareness in school boards' understanding that they really have to serve them too. They're not there only to serve the ones who are getting As, but to serve all kids.

Part of what we've been doing is to make high school more relevant to kids and therefore more relevant to their employability.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Thank you.

We will now move to Mr. Shory.

[Devinder Shory, Conservative, Calgary Northeast, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, witnesses. I hope the sun is shining as it was when I was in beautiful British Columbia today as well.

Mr. Cardozo, I will follow up on what you were saying about the education we are providing being education aimed at places where not too many jobs exist. There are not only shortages in the high school category but shortages in the low-skilled categories as well. During our study, that's what we all learned. I believe your organization has some members with requirements for low-skilled workers, and there is a shortage of them as well.

I would like you to elaborate on that. Can you tell me what kinds of services you are talking about? Are they food services or agricultural work? What are they, and how does your organization address those issues?

[Andrew Cardozo]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Shory, you would certainly be aware that in your province, for example, where the economy is red-hot, there is a range of shortages, both high-skilled and low-skilled. To give you an example from tourism, you have several locations across the province of Alberta where you might have a Tim Hortons that has to close at 6:00 p.m. because it can't find workers to work there, or there may be hotels that can't use all of their rooms because they don't have enough staff to work those rooms. There is a considerable shortage of people in lower-skilled areas.

I think what we're trying to do is match people up better. The temporary foreign worker program, for example, has provided some relief in that area, and certainly mobility across the country. One of the things we should be looking at, in terms of temporary foreign workers, is ensuring that lower-skilled workers can come under those programs, especially the provincial nominee program, which tends to focus on higher-skilled workers.

I don't want to suggest that we don't want to encourage everybody to have higher levels of literacy and essential skills. As my colleague was mentioning, there are really very few jobs left in which people can operate without a decent level of literacy because of everything from having to read a safety notice to having to record by computer a lot of different things that people work at. Regardless of where you are in the system, I think people need to have some basic level of literacy and computer literacy.

[Devinder Shory, Conservative, Calgary Northeast, AB]

The way I look at the temporary foreign worker program is that it is a temporary foreign worker program. If we can find another way to find Canadians to work.... For example, we have a huge workforce available in aboriginal communities. Have any of your organizations ever considered how to encourage that workforce and get them involved in work? At the same time, is it to the benefit of the private sector to have a proactive role in not only encouraging aboriginals but in also having some sort of training or some sort of apprenticeship, etc., to encourage the workforce to improve their skills and move to the next step, or to start from the beginning and move upward?

[Andrew Cardozo]

Let me share with you two programs that two of the councils have put in place. One is the ready to work program put in place by the tourism sector council. Especially in smaller communities in northern parts of British Columbia and Alberta, there are a number of small hotels that have worked with kids from aboriginal reserves on a one-to-one basis. It's a one-to-one mentorship program, which they've called the ready to work program. They mentor a young person to integrate him or her into the workforce. In some cases, they're coming from a family situation where they haven't worked and their parents haven't worked, so there really isn't a culture of working. You might have somebody with a low level of education.

The ready to work program works on everything from training and essential literacy skills to issues around the work ethic—showing up to work on time, working with your boss, group work, and those types of things. That's one program.

Another is a woodworks program—

[Devinder Shory, Conservative, Calgary Northeast, AB]

Mr. Cardozo, how successful is this program when there is a partnership between employees and private sector employers?

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Thank you, Mr. Shory. Your time is up.

Mr. Cardozo, you can reply to that, and we will give Ms. Popovic an opportunity to make a comment if she wishes. Go ahead.

[Andrew Cardozo]

It is successful. It's quite labour intensive, and it takes quite a while. It is a one-on-one program, so employers have to be prepared to do that one by one. The number of people who benefit from it is relatively small, but it is successful when it's done.

The other program, just to mention it quickly, is a woodworks program by the Wood Manufacturing Council. They have developed programs for, basically, grades 11 and 12 to help young people be ready to work when they come out of school. They may not be that interested in staying in high school, but they get into something that is more hands-on and more apprenticeship-oriented. It isn't quite an apprenticeship program. It's something like an early apprenticeship program. It has been used, interestingly, in a test case in a penitentiary to prepare aboriginal people before they come out of the penitentiary.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Ms. Popovic, did you have a comment?

[Aleksandra Popovic]

Yes. Thank you.

I want to go back a little bit to a comment my colleague made about Tim Hortons as an example and where perhaps being a cashier may generally involve what we would call lower-level literacy and essential skills.

What we are seeing now, and I think we would agree, is that with the advancements in technology we are see jobs in which there are spikes of need for essential skills. That would mean that in general, most tasks may be rather low level in terms of the needs around literacy, so an individual with lower-level skills could function there, but there are some things in that job that would require higher levels of skill. With a good learning approach at the workplace, one can actually assist a low-level learner to have that particular skill in the context of that job.

I would point to a report done not too long ago in Ontario called “Menial No More”. It looks at how low-level-skilled jobs, or what were formerly considered rather low level, have these new, more highly complex tasks that require higher levels of skill. This requirement has changed the shape of that work and has meant that training needs to become more part of the workplace itself. It's just an additional thought.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Thank you for that.

We will now conclude with Mr. Eyking. If you wish, you can go ahead with some questions.

[Mark Eyking, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

Thank you, Chair. It's an honour to be on this committee.

I'm going to follow up a little bit on Mr. Shory's questions on the aboriginal community. In my riding in Cape Breton, the fastest-growing community I have is the Eskasoni. They're the largest aboriginal community in Atlantic Canada.

One of our main economic drivers in Cape Breton is the work that is in Fort McMurray and places like that.

I see the Eskasoni as just an example of many aboriginal communities. Most of the time they're in remote areas. There's a disconnect with the real economy and what's happening, and they don't have a sense of what opportunities are there.

This morning in The Globe and Mail there's an article that says “Native leaders reject Ottawa's education overhaul”. It seems that the federal government, which is responsible for the education of aboriginals, is not on the same page as the native leaders.

That said, I see the German model. I don't know if you are familiar with the German model with apprentices, with people in many of the skills in industry, but the German education system reaches to a younger age, like a junior high level, finds out what the kids are interested in, shows them different avenues that they can go in, and helps them all the way through that path. It's not as though they wait until grade 12 in Germany and then ask what they want to do; they reach younger people and show them a bit of a framework where they can go and apply.

I think the German model in the aboriginal community should be used more. You'd be going right to younger people and showing them the opportunities, showing them the jobs that are out there in the future and what they could be doing.

I really believe the unions, the private sector, and government have a role in this regard. It's a vested interest, because these are the fastest-growing communities in Canada and they have the highest unemployment. These kids are very capable, but they're not given a pathway to achieve that goal.

I would like to get your comments on what we're doing wrong. I know you gave a few examples, but that's not really what I was hoping for, a few examples. I think the article in The Globe and Mail is saying that this has failed. From the federal government's perspective, there has to be a better model overall for these native communities. I will leave it at that.

[Andrew Cardozo]

I think the issue of aboriginal engagement in education is an increasingly urgent one, in part because it is the fastest-growing demographic in Canada: about 50% of the aboriginal population is under the age of 25. The other interesting thing is that about half the aboriginal population lives in urban centres, so there are issues you referred to, Mr. Eyking, that are relevant to on-reserve residents and then there are other kinds of issues that are relevant to the urban aboriginal population.

I think there are a few different things that we need to be thinking about. I agree with your approach in terms of looking at the German model for apprenticeship across the board. Part of the culture change that I think would be very useful in Canada is that we seriously undervalue the apprenticeships or the trades in general, so in high school kids are basically encouraged to go to university. That's the number one thing that all kids are pushed to. In fact, we all do that in our families, or at least most of us do that, unfortunately. Then the message in high school is that if you're not good enough for university, well, you could go to college, and if you're really not good enough for that, then there are the trades.

That's quite unfortunate, because quite often when you look at it 10 years later, the kids who went through apprenticeships are doing very well, while some of those who got a B.A. in political science are floundering and not able to find a job. We have it backwards when we think a university education is the guarantee to a job and comfort for life. I think we need to look at that part of a change in our culture and provide more value to the trades and to apprenticeships.

If I can come back to the aboriginal population, I can't say that I've seen a program—and I'm not an expert on it—that is really successful enough with on-reserve aboriginal kids. It's a bit easier in the urban centres, where you have a more well-developed educational system and more supports in that system. I think provinces like Manitoba and Saskatchewan, which are projecting that in the next few years half of the population in some cities will be aboriginal, are much more seized with it and further advanced on this issue than are other provinces.

[Mark Eyking, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

But that's not going to happen with most of the reserves. These remote areas are not coming to town to get educated. We have to assume that these kids are going to be in these areas. We have to go to them; they can't come to us. That's my sense.

[Andrew Cardozo]

Exactly, yes. I think the solution—

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Excuse me. Thank you, Mr. Eyking, your time is up.

We will have Mr. Cardozo complete his response, and then if Ms. Popovic wishes to make a remark, we are open to that as well.

Go ahead, Mr. Cardozo.

[Andrew Cardozo]

I think for the on-reserve young people it really comes down to some one-on-one planning. Certainly my observations across the board are that when we're dealing with turning things around in terms of aboriginal education, it's the one-on-one mentorships, the one-on-one help with kids in school that help. I think we can learn some of the lessons from Manitoba and Saskatchewan that would apply on reserve. Clearly, over the decades we haven't done a good enough job and there's more work to do, but I do think it comes down to dealing with kids on a very individual basis.

[Aleksandra Popovic]

I concur. I have seen programming occur in aboriginal populations that needs to be within the context of the community. It needs to be something that is embraced by the community and not seen as imposed by an external interest or an external need. I have seen programming for the continued availability of individuals who are doing the teaching and the training for other types of support and acting as mentors around other personal, emotional, and family needs.There is a different kind of approach. That one-to-one approach, I agree, is very, very important.

[Andrew Cardozo]

Can I just mention quickly two of the programs that come to mind that are useful? One was done by the sector council that deals with automotive repair. They took their automotive repair high school program and customized it to automotive repair in terms of Ski-Doos. They ran the program on a reserve, I believe, in northern Manitoba and northern Ontario. That was very useful, because the program was very relevant to those kids. There may not be a lot of automobiles, but they certainly know about Ski-Doos. That's one example.

There's the woodworks program as well. They've again made it relevant to building housing, for example, or to some of the services around housing. When you take a program that's apprenticeship-oriented or trades-oriented and make it relevant to the reserves, I think it has a much greater chance of being successful.

[Aleksandra Popovic]

Hear, hear!