Human Resources Committee on Nov. 27th, 2014

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

That's the end of that round.

Mr. Cuzner, you have seven minutes.

[Rodger Cuzner, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

It's my pleasure to spend time with the minister. I want to thank him for the kind and gracious comments at the welders' event last week.

You became minister in July 2013, and as you had indicated in your opening comments, you were really taken by the number of backlogged files that you had received from the pension review tribunal: 7,000. Madam Brazeau in her comments said last week, “We realized that there was a backlog on day one.... We have had discussions with the minister throughout.” There were 48 staff online then, where the full complement would be 74, but there didn't seem to be—you know you inherited the large backlog—that degree of urgency to address the staffing shortfall within the SST.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Mr. Cuzner, I respectfully disagree.

Because I had some experience dealing with backlogs at the quasi-judicial bodies at the IRB in my time at immigration, I immediately understood the problem of backlogs. It's like a debt. If you don't deal with it, it keeps growing.

I immediately asked for advice on how we could deal with this and essentially the chairman of the SST said.... When I became minister in July, they were still getting tooled up. I directed my staff to work with the tribunal and tried to get to a full complement of decision-makers as quickly as possible. I'm pleased to tell you that of the 74 statutory full-time positions, I believe we're at 72 right now. I think there was one recent resignation and sadly a recent death.

[Rodger Cuzner, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

That's 18 months later though. So six months in you saw and identified the problem, 7,000, and six months in you had increased it by 10 or 11 staff.

There were even part-time positions that could have been filled. These are disabled Canadians. Some had been waiting for two years at that point to have their appeals heard. I would think there would have been a degree of urgency on addressing that.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Let me address that.

Mr. Cuzner, my predecessor put in place, quite commendably, a rigorous pre-screening process that takes multiple steps. I was informed that it took no less than 12 months to bring candidates through the pre-screening process. There was an inadequate pool of recommended applicants coming to my desk from the pre-screening process. When I became minister, it took time for more candidates to go through that 12-month long rigorous pre-screening process.

Let me be blunt. The reason we put in that rigorous pre-screening process, as we did at the IRB, is to make sure that we don't end up with unqualified, typically patronage, appointees.

Now, if I wanted to—

[Rodger Cuzner, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

Let's talk about that.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

If I wanted to, I could have just dumped the rigorous pre-screening process and appointed people off the street the next week, but I didn't think that was appropriate. I wanted to respect the rigour of the process and that took time.

[Rodger Cuzner, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

Your predecessor also said that the system was going to be simplified to allow Canadians more accessible appeals. Yet, when they established the SST, there were no performance measurements there. The performance measurements were in the old system. There are no performance measurements here. Do you think that's a shortfall in the system?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Yes, which is why I encouraged the chairman of the tribunal as a deputy head of a public body, while fully respecting its independence on decision-making matters, to put in place such performance measurements, which she has done by contracting an independent consulting firm through an open and competitive tendering process to provide her with a productivity model.

Quite frankly, to be honest with you, I want to make sure that, yes, the decision-makers take the time necessary to render fair decisions, but that they are rendering as many decisions as they reasonably can each day and each week, so we can get at that backlog.

[Rodger Cuzner, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

So the people that were put in place, under the old system you had to have 25% lawyers, 25% had to—

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

You mean in terms of appointments not productivity?

[Rodger Cuzner, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

Both appointments and productivity, but the productivity would be based on who's sitting at the desk making those decisions. About 25% used to be lawyers and 25% had some kind of professional medical training.

Do you have those requirements in the staffing now?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

What per cent used to have to be former Liberal campaign managers, Rodger?

[Rodger Cuzner, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

Was that a criteria?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Thankfully, in the pre-screening process, we've made that impossible.

[Rodger Cuzner, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

You can be flippant with that, but 7,000 Canadians have been waiting for over two years to get access to benefits.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

My point is that the previous system was completely at the discretion of the minister to make recommendations to cabinet.

[Rodger Cuzner, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

Let's talk about this.

Is this one the right one? There was no study. I placed an order paper question asking what study was undertaken in order to develop the SST. There was no study undertaken. What was the rationale for moving toward the SST?

I will give you a multiple choice.

You knew there were 7,000 and there doesn't seem to be a certain degree of urgency in that. That would be a concern and that is why we are where we are now, because you didn't ramp up quick enough, or the people that you hired didn't have the same qualifications as the old system. That would be the b part of the multiple choice. Or the system itself doesn't work. The system itself isn't as simplified, or maybe d would be all of the above. But the system continues to wrestle with that backlog of Canadians that need access to these benefits.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

There is a lot of questions embedded in that, Mr. Chair.

The allocation of 74 decision-makers was based on starting with a relatively clean slate, which didn't happen. The old Pension Appeals Board did not transmit to the department the fact that there were several thousand backlogged cases. That was not included in the planning, which I find very regrettable

On the rigorous pre-screening process, you talk about 25% being lawyers. I invite the committee, perhaps in an in camera meeting so as not to violate anyone's privacy, to actually go through the CVs of the people we have, at least the people I've appointed since I've been minister. They are phenomenal, first-rate people. I am quite sure that the percentage of lawyers is higher than 25%. We have taken the patronage dimension of this out of the system. There might be a couple of people on there who have supported my party in the past. I know of only one person personally, who I appointed to the board, with whom I had a pre-existing relationship but who is eminently qualified. These are qualified individuals who are not appointed on the basis of partisanship but on the basis of competence.

I have a real sense of urgency about this, which I have conveyed clearly to the chair of the tribunal, and it's why we have seen a reallocation of 12 decision-makers from the EI division to the CPP division. It's why we have appointed 22 part-time experienced and trained decision-makers. It's why we are lifting the statutory cap on the number of tribunal decision-makers. It's why the chair is getting a productivity model, so we can assess how many additional decision-makers we may need to add. It's why, on my insistence, we've truncated the timeline for the pre-screening process from 12 months to a few months, so we can get people through the queue faster for consideration for appointment.

We're doing everything within our power to add additional resources and speed up the process.

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

Thank you, Minister.

I'm going to pause for a moment.

The purpose of the meeting was consideration of supplementary estimates (B). I think the minister, in his opening comments, extended the latitude of the meeting by virtue of his comments. I'm allowing it, but I would remind members here that I will have to step in if we become too far off track. I know the minister's willing to engage, and I know the minister's willing to answer, but I'm simply saying to members of the committee around the table to please draw questions back to the reason why we commenced this meeting.

It's now Mr. Armstrong for seven minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Minister, thank you for being here today. I do believe you're willing to consider extending your meeting with us here today. Is that true?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Ms. Sims said she would very much like me to stay longer, and I appreciate the regard she has for my presence. I would be happy to do so.

I have a meeting with an ambassador at 12:30 p.m., but I could stay until then. That's if it suits the committee, Mr. Chair. I don't want to impose that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

I'm at the behest of the committee.

Would you like the minister to stay, as he's willing to?

I see everyone nodding, so I guess we will carry on, sir, until you indicate you have to leave.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Minister, thank you for extending your stay with us. It's always great to have your ability to answer questions and clarify things for the committee.

I want to focus a bit on apprenticeships. You talked a lot about apprenticeships in your opening statement. I was able to attend the trip with you last year to Germany with several business leaders and labour leaders from across the country. Can you talk a bit about a couple of other systems—the Swiss system, the German system, the European system, the British system—and what we can glean from those systems that we could actually implement here to try to develop a more robust apprenticeship system broadly across Canada?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

I touched on this broader skills agenda at the end of my opening remarks, and I want to thank Mr. Armstrong for having joined me on our European skills mission in March, which included almost all the major Canadian business organizations, some of our larger unions, many folks from our post-secondary sector, and representatives of several provincial governments as we spent three and a half days studying the German dual vocational training system and a couple of days studying the reformed apprenticeship and trades training system in the United Kingdom.

It was, I think, a phenomenal eye-opener for all of us to see how those systems are getting radically better outcomes. In the Germanic-European systems, by which I mean those of Germany, Denmark, Switzerland, Austria, and to some extent the Netherlands, young people in secondary school are actively encouraged to develop interests in particular occupations, trades, and they're often encouraged when they're 14 or 15 to do brief stints of a week or two on work sites to get a tactile sense of what different occupations are like.

Then typically when they're 16, two-thirds of the kids in those systems go into paid apprenticeship trade programs. On average they're paid modestly, about a thousand euros a month, because most of them are teenagers still living with mom and dad. So they don't have a lot of living expenses but they are paid something, and typically, they spend three to four days in practical learning on the work site, and then one to two days of the same week of theoretical training at a berufskolleg, a vocational college.

The practical and the theoretical learning are perfectly integrated. There is a totally seamless connection between the employers and the colleges in the development of the programs. The phenomenal thing is that typically these trade programs in the Germanic system take three years, which means two-thirds of youth in those countries at roughly the age of 19 get a trade certificate, which according to everyone in those countries is regarded as having the same esteem and value as a university degree, and 95% of those youth are then hired in the occupations for which they were trained and are now certified.

Of course, many of them then take part-time additional post-secondary studies or they eventually go on and perhaps get degrees, often at co-op universities, which are also integrated with employers. They're not just sitting in a classroom; they're also often indentured or attached to an employer.

These results are phenomenal. This is why those Germanic countries have youth unemployment rates that are roughly half of what ours is. I believe, Mr. Armstrong, that in Switzerland, the youth unemployment rate is about 3% versus 12% in Canada.

The average graduation age for trade certificate holders in Germany is 19 versus, according to the Canadian Apprenticeship Forum, 28 in Canada, and those 28-year-olds are a lot of young people who did what their high school counsellors and parents told them to do. They went to university. They got the degree. They were encumbered by the debt and too many of them found themselves unable to find employment in the fields for which they obtained their degrees, ended up in the service economy or at the bottom of the labour market, frustrated, carrying debt, until they decided to go back to college or into an apprenticeship program.

What I'm trying to say is we cannot perfectly replicate the Germanic system here but we can try to drive toward their sense of the parity of esteem between trades and professions, apprenticeships, and universities. We can ask our employers to emulate the deep financial commitment of European employers to trades, training, and apprenticeships, and all of us should be encouraged, especially from the secondary schools, on a kind of recreation of this idea of experiential learning and vocational training.