Human Resources Committee on Feb. 6th, 2014

[Chief Bruce Underwood, Chief, Program Employability Officer, Coast Salish Employment and Training Society]

[Witness speaks in Hul'q'umi'num' ]

I give thanks to each and every one of you for the opportunity to be here today to address, and to learn from one another, and to take the time to talk about what's important with respect to ASETS agreement holders.

I need to apologize. I guess I wasn't ready. We're not really too familiar with this process, and I don't have a document to read from. But nonetheless I can speak to our experiences, acknowledge the ancestors of the land that we are on today, and acknowledge each of our ancestors who allow us to be who we are as a people.

I'm an elected chief. I'm from one of 19 nations that are part of Coast Salish Employment and Training Society of Vancouver Island in British Columbia. We do work together with each other through a board of directors that oversees the ASETS agreement itself with government. We are servicing on and off reserve in our geographical area. We do have three friendship centres that are in our territories that we are serving. I know that there's a document that's been handed in with respect to a report going forward, but I just wanted to speak to some of the issues and challenges that we have.

I don't know if this is the right table or not, but I wanted to raise a level of concern. When we moved from what was called the Aboriginal Human Resource Development Agreement, the AHRDA to ASETS, in the AHRDA itself, we were given an extension and another extension. That created a lot of chaos for the working leadership and the society itself. How do you plan to talk about the initiatives or the struggles that we're all facing with respect to lack of education, lack of understanding, and how do you plan when you're just given an extension of six months or a year?

We were told there was going to be a crosswalk of time. There wasn't a crosswalk of time. We were learning how to behave on one side of the street, we were told there was a crosswalk and here's how we're going to behave with the ASETS agreements. There was no transition for that. You know what? It's a totally different side of the street. The behaviours are different, and yet we're being held accountable with transparency. I don't think we have an issue with that. We're being financially audited. I don't think we have an issue with that. We have our program officer doing file reviews inside our offices. They're looking into our subagreements. All of the words around accountability, our nations are standing up to.

But I think when it comes down to it, it's the lack of funding for support services in our communities. When we're struggling with the timeframes and all of these other things coming at us through the ASETS agreements, it goes to the question. I hear the word about the growth in our communities and that is what we're struggling with today. Our funding hasn't increased. Our child care is increasing; our child care funding hasn't increased. The subsidies in the province in our geographical areas that support our children are struggling. I know that maybe that's not for this table, but I think that you have to take into perspective that our nations are struggling, and we're struggling to get ourselves licensed and to meet the standards that are required for Canada and the province. I just wanted to make mention of those.

I also want to mention some of our allocation for EI because we do the consolidated revenue funds in the EI. Most recently in the last couple of years, we haven't been receiving the EI part 2 revenues to the ASETS agreement or the AHRDA holders. It's our understanding that the EI part 2 revenues are going to the employment and assistance services in our local municipal governments. Yet we're asked to meet the targets on reserve or off reserve for our clientele inside the ASETS agreement. It's my understanding that the targets within the EAS offices are not being met. They are supposed to be meeting a number of first nations clients a year. That's not being met. We don't see those audited financial statements. We don't see the data entry on those reports.

There's a bit of friction going on. You see the first nations saying, “Those are our dollars. Why aren't you accountable to our first nations? Why are you pushing our clients back towards us?” There needs to be a mechanism for us to actually sit down and talk about a plan that services first nations with those dollars.

We're not at that table, and I don't know where that table is. It's very difficult when we're trying to service first nations off reserve and that isn't an opportunity for us.

The other part of it, too, is that when we talk about essential skills for employment and about feeling self-pride and self-identity, we're told by our program officer that we're not allowed to have our culture or our language incorporated into some of the training or to have a stand-alone program. But when we spend a lot of time and energy looking at what essential skills and employment opportunities are, what do those look like? I think numeracy, literacy, and all of those things are very important. But when you look at where we come from as a people, it's also important to know the language and to have the elders incorporated.

It doesn't mean just culturally. We need to bridge the cultural gap to mainstream society. A lot of our people might figure there's discrimination on the work site when somebody's up there yelling, “Throw these down and get me that cord.” Some people do feel...but that's the language, and that's the culture on the construction site. We don't have enough of those mechanisms in place to have that cross-cultural bridge to some of our success stories, and I think that's why we might fall through some of the cracks.

On population growth, when we talk about the demographics of how our community is growing and the growth, I feel like we're competing with the provincial growth as well because of the immigrants. A lot of people are coming in. We're struggling that way. How do we fight with mainstream society to get meaningful career jobs, not band-aid jobs?

I'm trying to speak really quickly here. I'm very conscious of the time. I just want to mention that we want meaningful employment. We want what's right. In our communities, we're trying to define what success is when you have suicides, drinking and drugs, health issues, a lack of housing, and poverty. When we define success through our guiding principles, as nations we're somewhat forced to try to understand provincial success and federal success and what true partnership means through the ASETS agreement. It doesn't necessarily jibe sometimes. We need to have some flexibility in how we're going to work together and what that's going to look like. Again, maybe it's just a matter of creating that table that allows us to do what we need to do, on behalf of all us. I think once one of us feels good, we're all going to feel good.

I think the other part of it is that when you start moving dollars from one table to another, it's.... I talk about the active measures in our communities. Those were moved from our agreement holders over to education. First nations seemed to be at each other with respect to where those dollars were going. We want those dollars back. It makes it difficult for our own leadership to sit down and have meaningful dialogue around that.

And yet, as I say, I love the idea of tracking our children from elementary school to middle school to high school. Our children aren't being assessed, I don't think, properly in grade 1 to grade 6 to grade 9. I'd like to take a look at those assessments. I know it's provincial standards that do the testing.

One of the things we're worried about is that the SA—social assistance—recipients lineup is getting longer. How do we help that? The other part of it is that if they're not on SA, you know what, they're in our federal and our provincial court systems, and those lineups are getting longer. Those are the things that we're seeing in our communities. We're trying to work with all of you to make sure those needs are being met. Some of the communities are feeling good about what we're supposed to be doing.

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

You have about one minute left, Chief.

[Chief Bruce Underwood]

Thank you.

I'd like to suggest—not an amendment to the ASETS agreement, if there's one going forward in 2015—I think we need to have a longer agreement sitting in front of us so we can actually plan and work with those targets in that plan, rather than shifting it every 12 months.

I guess those are my closing comments. I just want to be able to work with the other ASETS holders in the province and in Canada and to work with the people who actually have some influence to make things happen for all of us.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

Thank you.

My apologies for not addressing you as chief in the introduction. That was not in my notes, and I apologize for that, Chief.

We go now to Ms. Bartlett, in Winnipeg, I believe.

[Marileen Bartlett, Executive Director, Centre for Aboriginal Human Resource Development Inc.]

Good morning.

Thank you, Mr. Chair and committee members, for inviting the Centre for Aboriginal Human Resource Development, or CAHRD, to present.

I hope everyone has had the opportunity to view the short video we sent. It is somewhat dated. We've developed more programming since then. But it provides the essence of the aboriginal skills and employment training strategy, ASETS, program in Winnipeg.

I'm going to make a few points, and then hopefully I can answer any questions you might have.

As I said in my brief, I belief the ASETS and previous aboriginal labour market programs have been very successful and essential. As well as allowing us to provide employment and training to aboriginal people, ASETS has also allowed us to leverage many other services to support them.

CAHRD has also used two other federal employment programs in the recent past. One was the aboriginal skills and employment partnership, ASEP; and the other was the aboriginal skills and training strategic investment fund, ASTSIF. Both were positive, and helped us to train and find employment for aboriginal people. We also have dealings with Western Diversification as they continue to be supportive by helping in the acquisition of machinery and developing training space for us.

The ASEP program allowed us to develop more capacity to deliver programs that facilitated the establishment of a modern, state-of-the-art, flexible training centre. Neeginan College, our training institute, was able to expand its industry partnerships, and also credibility with industry was enhanced. When our ASEP project, aboriginal aerospace initiative, was over, CAHRD continued with the infrastructure and training with some of the partners through our ASETS funding. Our programs, which were industry and apprenticeship accredited, finally allowed us to train aboriginal people for employment in the gas turbine overhaul and machinists at apprenticeship level 1 in aircraft maintenance. For that program we had a total of 101 aboriginal people employed.

The ASTSIF program was shorter and it had timing issues, but it also helped us to establish ourselves more in terms of working with industry. We developed two programs there, one for medical device reprocessing technicians, and the other for industrial manufacturing technicians.

To end then, there's another question that I'd like to answer, and that's the one about employment opportunities for aboriginal people. I do agree with the previous speakers, all of our issues are so very important, and the work that we're doing is so important. Aboriginal people do have opportunities in employment but we have to prepare them for the workforce, and we need to prepare the workforce for them. From our experience, we know that industry wants to work with us to train and hire aboriginal people. We couldn't do the type of programming needed to accomplish this without the ASETS program. Although we try to use a holistic model at Neeginan and CAHRD, we still don't meet all the needs of our clients. We would be more successful over time if we did a better job at providing full wraparound supports. The participants who access our services are susceptible to falling back into their former lifestyles. The better we are at engaging them in new lifestyles, education, and training, the more successful they will be. This is why future ASETS programs have to continue to be a balance between direct training skills for the labour force, and providing resources, so that we can provide the education, training, personal and cultural awareness, development, and stabilization that our clients need if they're going to be able to enter training and the workforce.

We did a cost analysis for a family consisting of one parent and two children going from employment and income assistance to a salary of $25,000. This shows that the benefit to the government funders would be approximately $25,000 for that small family, and this also includes the $5,000 that it costs on average for one employment placement by CAHRD, our agency. If we multiply that by the number of clients we place in employment in one year, this is a saving of over $22 million. This is a social return on investment of 460%, and it doesn't speak to the intergenerational benefits of not raising children on welfare and of breaking that cycle of poverty.

Now I want to talk a little about developing partnerships. Employers are susceptible to stereotyping on past experiences with aboriginal workers and they also have production needs that have to be met. Thus they're sensitive to workplace issues that may present themselves with our trainees.

We make a great effort to support employers and our trainees in work practicums and on the job. When we develop a partnership we're very candid with our employers and we let them know we need their support to maximize benefits for trainees and for the workplace. We have job coaches and other supports for the trainees and employers. These are essential.

We have worked with Standard Aero for over 15 years. Both Standard Aero and CAHRD are proud that it was this partnership that resulted in Standard Aero having a 10% aboriginal workforce. This formal partnership, based on a letter of understanding and joint steering committee, is designed to fulfill Standard Aero's attrition rate of approximately 10 to 15 gas turbine technicians each year. I'd like to say that one of our first training programs with Standard Aero 15 years ago was training all women to work in the industry. Some have moved on but I do know there is one lady still there and she's in a supervisor position.

Employment and Social Development Canada's focus is on training to guarantee jobs and having employers share in the costs. CAHRD has always had a model of training for employment with employer partners, but in most cases employers didn't contribute financially. They have provided, and do provide, in-kind assistance in terms of their time on committee, work practicums, and even giving machinery and providing some training. For example, this is very tentative but right now we're talking to an employer outside of Winnipeg who is willing to shuttle aboriginal workers to and from work once we have them trained. This employer is also willing to bring the product and his workers to supervise our trainees so that the required work practicum can be done at Neeginan College. At Neeginan College we train if we have employer groups interested in hiring. But because of how quickly the labour force changes, not all trainees are always employed immediately after the program ends. But they do gain the skills to enter the workforce as soon as there are opportunities.

Finally, I want to comment on our relationship with the Province of Manitoba. In my brief I mention that we didn't have a collaborative relationship with the labour market program, which is true and it would have been helpful, but I do want to make note that we do receive quite a large amount of support from the province for several of our programs, including an adult learning centre, housing for our students, two day cares. So far this year we've received about $250,000 from the province for tuition for our students who have been attending our Neeginan College of Applied Technology.

In closing, I want to thank you for listening to us and also give my support to the previous proposals because we all have the same story. There is a great need to continue these programs and enhance them.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

Thank you very much, Ms. Bartlett.

On to questioning, Madam Sims from the NDP.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Thank you very much.

I want to thank the panellists for coming to inform us and to expand on the needs I think most of us around this table, if not all of us, realize do exist for our first nations communities, specifically for our youth, and the need for us to address that. It's a topic that's close and dear to my heart. I'm hoping that with everybody working together we can actually progress and see some real changes that will benefit everyone.

My first question is on EI claims.

Roberta, maybe you could comment on this and the other two as well, if you would like. Are you able to elaborate on EI claims as they relate to seasonal employment and how does ASETS work with EI claimants?

[Chief Roberta Jamieson]

I think that's a question for other people on the panel.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Thank you.

Marileen?

[Marileen Bartlett]

I'm not sure I understood what the question was. I'm sorry.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

I will try to go over it again.

How does ASETS work with EI claimants? As you know, the EI claims as they relate to seasonal employment are...and I just want to see how those participating in the program are impacted by it.

[Marileen Bartlett]

I could make a comment on that, Mr. Chair.

In Winnipeg, in the program that we work with, we actually don't have very many aboriginal people coming to us who are on EI. Many of them are on EI type 2, or because they don't qualify for EI they are actually on social assistance.

So we don't have a lot of interaction with that process.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Thank you very much.

Chief, did you want to add something?

[Chief Bruce Underwood]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

We do have EI participants who come in and access those services, but it's not a large number. For example, we're able to do a three-year reach-back, or a reach-back for maternity. We have what's called a “section 25” form. If somebody who is currently on EI goes into a training program, we can sign and have them register into that program to allow them to extend their EI while they're doing a training program towards employment.

That is something our offices do.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Thank you very much.

My next question is maybe targeted more to the Salish. Can you talk a little bit more about developing tailored training to meet the demands of workers in individual communities? On the island you're dealing with some quite diverse needs in communities. By the way, my family still lives in Nanaimo, as do my children and grandchildren. I did most of my teaching on the island itself.

Can you also give feedback on this type of approach of developing targeted training for the needs of different communities?

[Chief Bruce Underwood]

One of the specific partnerships we're working on is with the Coastal Aboriginal Shipbuilding Alliance. If you look at where we're at, I think there is an opportunity for us to take a look, in partnership with the Department of National Defence and in partnership with Victoria Shipyards, at opportunities for us to be part of those, with the cost sharing.

So if you were looking for a specific snapshot, that would be my quick response with regard to an opportunity in our area that we're taking a look at now.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Thank you very much.

Next, do you feel that child care needs are adequately addressed right now? I'm just going to throw that out there: a yes or no is fine.

[Chief Bruce Underwood]

No.

[Marlene Rice]

No.

[Chief Roberta Jamieson]

Absolutely not, and it's a great need.

Often the students who come to us will only require child care during the day, but a lot of the programs they're attending are offered in the evening. They may just need that extra $1,000 to cover off child care so that they can pursue their studies.

I absolutely do not think that child care is adequately provided for our students.

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

We'll now move to Mr. Armstrong, for five minutes.

[Scott Armstrong, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank all of our witnesses for being here. We have only a limited amount of time, so I'll try to focus my questions.

To start with, Ms. Jamieson, I read your biography, and you are the first female first nations person in Canada to receive a law degree. I want to congratulate you on that. That's a great sign of success. I'm sure when you went off to law school and looked around, you didn't see many people like you sitting around you, obviously, but you still managed to succeed and get through, and have gone on to such great success.

In Nova Scotia, and Mr. Cuzner would support me on this, we're actually having some success working with first nations youth and getting them to graduate from high school. We have a really high percentage compared with other places in the country.

This is anecdotal, but I'm just wondering...because you have a lot of experience with first nations students at the post-secondary level. Of the students we are sending to the post-secondary level, we're having trouble keeping a lot of them there. I believe there are some barriers once they get to the university level that preclude them from completing their education at that level.

As I say, it's anecdotal, because I've been working with students as an educator for a long time, particularly first nations students. But am I accurate in saying this? Does the data support it?

[Chief Roberta Jamieson]

Yes, in fact, it does.

We don't talk a lot in the country about retention. There's a lot of discussion about entrance and attracting more to come into colleges and universities. Colleges and universities themselves understand that their future is inextricably tied to their ability to attract and retain not only foreign students, but also the fastest-growing demographic, indigenous students. They are also very keen to do that.

We've done some work in partnership with the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada. We hosted a summit with them, talking about the very issue you raise. There is a public report. The summit was hosted in 2010. We talked about the changes that colleges and universities need to make to ensure that our students stay there once they get there. There was everything from creating centres where our students can go and meet one another.... That's what kept me in university and college, I'll tell you. First of all, I could go home. I was lucky, when I went to law school I didn't go too far away. But when I did my undergrad I went to McGill, so it was long way away. I wanted to know that there were other students there like me. There were student centres, there was access to elders, counselling.

We just finished an updated study, again in partnership with AUCC, on education choices, as we call it—why students choose to go where they go. Some colleges have a high enrolment of indigenous students, and others do not. There are reasons for that.

Those are two report that are publicly accessible. Perhaps your researchers might dig them up.

I know about the success of the Mi'kmaq in Nova Scotia. It's one of the shining lights in the country.

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

I must inform my colleagues and the witnesses that the meeting will have to adjourn due to votes. The bells are ringing.

Before we adjourn, I apologize to the witnesses for the fact that this is the way Parliament works. I'm sure most of you know that. We did have a condensed amount of time to deal with this issue.

Let me say to colleagues and members around the table that if there are further questions that you have of the witnesses today, please feel free to bring them to the clerk's attention. We will make sure that if it's a particular witness you want to ask, or if it's the broad range of witnesses on a particular question, we'll be sure that they receive that, and we would ask them for their response back as we do this study.

We really thank you. I do have to be somewhat aware today that the presence of Roberta is very special to me. I must tell the table that, because she is a former chief of Six Nations of the Grand River, which I represent in the great riding of Brant.

Thank you, Roberta, for being here.

Thank you, other panellists.

The meeting is adjourned.