Human Resources Committee on June 3rd, 2014

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

I'm not taking that away from you, sir. I'm just saying you took a lot of time there.

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

Chair, could I seek unanimous agreement so that we could have a response to this question?

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

Do I see...? No, I do not see that.

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

What's fair should be fair. Come on, guys. Last week....

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

Actually, just for the record, you were at five minutes and 40 seconds because you took quite a bit of time there presenting that.

You can respond at your pleasure on future rounds of questioning.

I didn't mean for that to be controversial, by the way.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

Mrs. McLeod.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

The first path I actually want to head down is this. We've heard from almost every witness consistently around the issue of data and how we really need better labour market information. We've also heard different suggestions from different people around, basically, the structure to gather better data.

We've had some people talk about what Stats Canada does, but we've never really had good data in terms of labour market information because of course it's a provincial issue.

We had one or two witnesses—I can't recall how many—who suggested that we actually have a CIHI kind of report. Of course, that's the Canadian Institute for Health Information, and of course where that is.... It's a not-for-profit. It's funded by the federal and provincial governments and the work gets guided by the board of directors and its core functions are health information needs and priorities, standards, databases and registries, analysis.

If you were going to say how we should move forward, what structure do you think would be a good structure? Is it this one because the delivery of health care is provincial, and this is a structure where they have the partnerships in terms of that data collection? Or do you see Stats Canada as being the better route to go?

[Mary-Lou Donnelly]

I think that Stats Canada is a very important route to go. I think that Canadians have a lot of faith in Stats Canada and what they produce, but it doesn't mean that it's the only thing that we can do.

The provinces should have a lot of input into this as well. It's one of the reasons why we need to be working together on it. We need to invest money in it. It's not just going to happen overnight. It absolutely needs some sort of investment.

In terms of the research and how that plays out, I don't know. That's certainly not my area, but what I do know is that we need to have more detail and one of the ways in which to do that is to invest more in Stats Canada so that they can produce.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Have you been familiar with CIHI over time or not really?

[Mary-Lou Donnelly]

Not particularly....

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

So I guess in terms of doing that comparison it's tough for you.

[Mary-Lou Donnelly]

Yes, but in looking at that I think it sounds very interesting and I'd like to look more into it.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Good. So my next question and I don't know if we have the information and maybe you do. Anecdotally, I've had people who have come in who are EI eligible. We're talking about expanding EI eligibility and they've come to me, and this is in British Columbia, and they've said, “Listen, I've been laid off work. I've been interested in a program that should qualify, but the providers of the program have said they've run out of money for the year”.

Have you got any sense of whether that is happening across Canada? Was it a unique situation during the recession? Is there any information on that particular piece? Is the money actually covering the people who are currently eligible?

[Mary-Lou Donnelly]

It's covering some of the people who are eligible. Some of them are not taking advantage of it because they just don't have the information. It's another one of our issues that we really see when we talk to people about LMDAs; they don't know that the money's there. They don't know it exists. Employers don't know about it. Employees don't know about it.

One of our recommendations in another presentation was also to have better information out there for people so that they are aware of these programs. Certainly, I'm hearing that around the country as I go on these consultations.

I think if you look in the MAR, the monitoring and assessment report, there's a lot of information in there and it tells you how the moneys are spent. It gives some more details provincially and territorially on the LMDAs. I believe that not all of the money is spent. It differs from region to region, from province to province, so while they may have run out in British Columbia, it doesn't mean they've run out in another province.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

So to me that's a bit of an issue. I think it's something we need to know about. If the current people who are eligible are trying to access and they're being turned away because there are no funds left, and then there's a pot left somewhere else, that seems like a bit of an issue.

[Mary-Lou Donnelly]

You're right and it's a communication issue as well. I know I've had many young people present their case to me where they thought that they heard that they could get this money and go take this training. So they've done that, but the piece that they didn't do was that they didn't get approval from the province. So they find themselves in a situation where they want to go and have this training and they've enrolled, but there is no support for them because it must be approved by the province.

Those rules and regulations from province to province, territory to territory, are different. So that's one of the reasons why we need to better inform people of the LMDAs and what to do, how to access it, things like that.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

If I have some time I would go back to—

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

You don't have any.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

I was going to go to Roger's question. Could we have unanimous consent? No?

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

You're out of time. I've been somewhat strict on time, but there's a reason for that and that's in fairness to all members, to have a chance to ask questions.

For the sake of time, that's the end of the first round. We're going to end the questioning at this point so we can suspend for a few moments while the witnesses exit.

First, before we do that, I want to thank the witnesses for taking your time today to come to this committee—

Yes, sir.

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Mr. Chair, I think that our work is supposed to wrap up in 15 minutes. Could you add a few minutes so that we can ask the witnesses questions?

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

I'm allowing up to four to five minutes for the exiting of the witnesses and for us to make the transition to our committee business, which typically is in camera. I'm expecting that might happen, and I'm anticipating that. My ruling is that we have finished the first round. We will not move into the second round.

So thank you very much for being here. Thank you for taking your time coming in and sharing your thoughts with us on this very important subject matter. You will be able to obviously submit more, if you wish, post-meeting today in written submissions to the committee, and we look forward to writing a very comprehensive report on the LMDAs. Thank you so much for being here.

We'll suspend for up to five minutes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

Members, let's resume our committee meeting and go to the motion that's in front of you from Ms. Sims.

Mr. Armstrong has moved a motion to go in camera.

(Motion agreed to [See Minutes of Proceedings])

[Proceedings continue in camera]