Industry Committee on Oct. 31st, 2006

[Robert Vincent, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

How would the government be able to help you?

I understand that the government began to help, but can you give me a more specific answer? We hear about people coming out of university and even CEGEP with debts. What can we do to help them go farther?

People who complete their studies $50,000 in debt are not tempted to go farther. Starting life with a $50,000 debt is not easy. If, on top of that, there is a spouse in the picture who also went to university, how does the couple get out from under a combined debt of $100,000?

You mentioned a credit transfer system. What can be done at the government level about that?

[Sharon Maloney]

Let me explain the issue with respect to transfer of credits. What I'm getting at there is that notwithstanding the fact that these eight institutions provide applied degrees, all of which are recognized by their provincial jurisdictions as bachelor degrees, they cannot come to the province of Ontario, for example. And if they want to go and do a master's degree at Queen's University, those degrees are not recognized by Queen's University, because Queen's does not recognize any institution that is not a member of the AUCC. So the fact that they have recognized applied higher learning at a bachelor level is no guarantee of access into post-graduate work by our universities in one of the largest provinces of the country.

The outcome of that and in fact the reason the whole structure of polytechnics and colleges was begun with respect to the applied degrees was because the universities would not allow their graduates from diploma programs or certification to move into the university stream, so they went ahead and developed their own applied degrees. The challenge now is that Canadian students who can't get access to post-graduate work are leaving the country to go to the United States to pursue their graduate studies--unless they go to BCIT, which actually has a graduate program. So now our members are actually starting to look at graduate programs.

The point of this is that if we actually want to be competitive, we should be opening doors and not closing them. And we have to stop thinking in silos. We have to start thinking in terms of what's complementary. We describe it as the third pillar. How do we actually encourage somebody who may come into the work stream as an apprentice trade and decide that they actually would like to go further than that and end up with a diploma, and maybe go on to a BA and ultimately become an engineer? That's the kind of thinking we should really be encouraging, and we don't think that's in fact what's happening.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Merci.

We'll go now to Mr. Shipley, for six minutes.

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Ms. Maloney, for coming out today.

I find this discussion really quite interesting. To follow up, I think you mentioned that parents say “Go out and get a university degree.” I think that's true. Within our family, had we said that to all of our kids, those who now have degrees wouldn't have them if they hadn't had the opportunity to go to college and develop those skills early.

Some of us met with the president and some of the people of Fanshawe, just outside of London. The question is, how do you market? Quite honestly, where do the people who come into the high schools to promote further education come from? University. I think all of us build a sense that that's the way.

I'm wondering about ideas. How do we market this so we can fill these slots with skilled people we need so much in the country?

[Sharon Maloney]

There are a couple of things. I couldn't agree with you more that it starts in the school system. Some of the schools are starting to adopt that. Some of the school counsellors are starting to think more broadly about the kind of post-secondary education on offer. Sometimes people think it's a lesser standard to go into these institutions, and that's not the case. It really is reflective of what the interests of a particular student are and how they can be best maximized. It is beginning to happen in the high schools, and it needs to be expanded.

Maybe part of what we need to do is hear from more people like Mike Holmes, from Holmes on Homes. I listened to him yesterday morning on CTV and he was talking right to this issue. I think we need people who represent how successful a career in these types of businesses can be, and not just financially. They're independent business people, and there's a lot of value in that. Maybe as part of the national strategy some thought needs to be given to how to communicate this.

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

How do you follow through with that from the academic part, in terms of that marketing, with the industry? How do you work with the industry to promote what you need in skilled people within the trades?

[Sharon Maloney]

The model has usually been that industry comes to us. That's what makes us different in a big way from universities. We don't create programs by having a discussion and saying let's come up with this program. We create programs because industry comes to us and says they have a problem. Then we build on that.

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

I don't want to be left with the idea that you only react when there's a problem. As part of a strategy for developing, how is your communication with industry so you can make some predictions about problems, not just today but in five to ten years because of demographics and--

[Sharon Maloney]

On what has happened in the past, it's because of long-standing relationships between a number of these institutions and particular sectors. When Humber decided to build this integrated manufacturing centre, that really came out of the discussion and the pre-existing relationship with their business partners. All of these institutions have very long-standing, strong relationships with industry, so it is very much a collaboration.

There is a huge opportunity here. One of the things we want to start exploring is how to work with sector councils to provide and build partnerships. How do we go to different industry sectors, maybe the mining industry, and say, “What are your deficiencies? How can we help you and work with you?” When I talk about supporting that kind of collaboration, that's what I'm getting at--when we have partnerships between business and these institutions and government. That's how you actually market the product, because you already have a market that wants it.

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

Thank you so much for your comments regarding the budget. All of us agreed that actually it was a very positive budget.

We talked about the apprenticeships and those things that were put in it, in terms of financial.... What more can we do? What are your thoughts on that?

[Sharon Maloney]

I think there needs to be a national strategy. I think there have to be some goals put down using the input of people who really understand what's going on out there, because when you're asking me how they predict, I think that's part of our issue.

The other thing that most definitely can be done, if we're not going to invent new dollars, is to look at the dollars we actually are expending and make sure the dollars are going to the right institutions that are actually going to produce the kinds of quality people we need with respect to the skill gaps. So that involves funding the infrastructure of these institutions and recognizing the critical mass that these organizations represent.

The other piece, most definitely, is the applied research. There is a very glaring deficiency there. Something like 92% of the $11 billion in research investment has gone to pure research, so it would seem that one of the things that could be done fairly easily, I think, is to make sure that the criteria of the funding agencies are actually reflective of and are changed to reflect what is involved when we talk about applied research.

It means perhaps creating research chairs that are actually dedicated to applied research, and enhancing the capacity of these institutions to actually do applied research, because that's where you start helping the SMEs.

When I quote those numbers from the CME, what I'm really trying to say to you is that SMEs don't have the resources. They don't have the infrastructure. They don't necessarily need to have the infrastructure because there is a potential resource here, which, if supported and leveraged, would be an existing entity that just needed more help in order to be more responsive to the market needs of the SMEs and certainly of large business as well. We work with a lot of large companies.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Your time is up, unfortunately.

We'll have to go to Mr. Martin for six minutes.

[Tony Martin, NDP, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

Thank you very much.

We've had a study going for a couple of months now at the human resources and social development committee on employability, which probably dovetails nicely with some of what you're saying here today.

Some of what we've heard out there is that ultimately industry employs the skilled tradesperson or whoever, and some folks have come and said that there are skilled tradespeople out there, but they're just not being hired. There's a disconnect somehow between what's needed--which we hear about all the time--and a lot of people who have the skills but can't seem to put them together.

I know that in northern Ontario now there's a bit of an uptake in the mining industry, and they can't find enough skilled people there. And yet I know from the people I run into who lived in northern Ontario, who'd love to come back and work there, who may have the skills or who could be trained, that it seems that industry is looking for ready-made. They're not willing to put the investment into the actual training themselves.

You mentioned some statistics early in your presentation about the amount of investment that we're making in actual training and skill development and research. So I guess the question I would have for you is how we get industry interested again in making that investment and in recognizing that there is a return on it. Somebody said the other day at the meeting that industry actually sees it as a cost, as opposed to an investment, so how do we switch that around?

To give one more analogy, when I lived in Wawa in the sixties and seventies and Algoma Steel and Algoma Ore were going strong, there were just oodles of young men and women in apprenticeships working in those mines and in those industries. The company itself, in partnership with the government, was paying for their training and sending them away in some instances to George Brown College, for example, in Toronto and paying for their apartments and everything. But the company got trained, skilled persons, who are still there today.

[Sharon Maloney]

I agree that the dynamic here needs to be driven by industry in the sense of recognizing or identifying where the problems are and what the capacity is that needs to be filled. How do you encourage the private sector to do that? So much of what I'm reading is that industry is recognizing that they have to do this, and notwithstanding the risk of training somebody and losing them, if they don't invest in this way they are not going to attract the people they need and they're not going to keep the people they have spent all that money on. I often think of the comparison to retail. You spend all this money trying to attract new customers. Why don't you spend more money keeping the customers you already have happy? It's a safer investment in a way.

I think it's a combination of things. I think it's leadership from opinion leaders, key decision-makers, obviously governments. I think it is also leadership coming from the corporate sector, and I think there has been leadership. There have been a number of symposiums where companies from Microsoft right through to Toyota are talking about the need to do this. To incentivize business there may need to be a combination of tax incentives or tax credits that enhance or encourage companies to actually spend money on their employees. Arguably, we need the same thing for employees who want to invest in their own education and have a form of registered retirement savings plan for people so that they can invest in their own education.

I also think that unless we invest in the infrastructure of the institutions that are capable of providing good quality education of the sort we're talking about, we won't have the full dynamic. So I think we really do need a comprehensive approach of let's look at our dollars and where they're being spent, at where can they be better spent in order to address this, at how do we encourage the private sector, and where do we get the leadership to be able to put this issue on the radar screen for the country if it's not there already. In some circles it is, but in many circles it isn't.

Talking about competitiveness is not all that interesting, arguably, but when you start talking to people about prosperity and what do you want for your children's future, then I think people do tend to pay attention, especially if we're also talking about going after people who are underemployed and don't have the opportunities to move themselves forward because pursuing education is expensive, because they'd have to leave work, and they really can't afford to do it.

[Tony Martin, NDP, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

I couldn't agree with you more that we need to invest in that infrastructure. We haven't, and in places like northern Ontario, where the plant is so very expensive to keep going.

Also, you talked about incentivizing industry. We've been giving business and industry tax breaks since 1993, major ones, both federally and provincially, and yet we have the statistics you've just laid out there that the reinvestment of that isn't happening. So what's to convince us that doing more of this won't simply be throwing good money after bad?

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

You're well over, Mr. Martin.

Very briefly, please.

[Sharon Maloney]

I think it depends on the type of tax incentive and who you're giving it to and why. What I'm talking about is you incentivize companies by working with institutions like ours to train people. So you really have to have deliverables and measurable deliverables so that you can see whether or not we are producing more skilled people. But I take your point with respect to dollars having been not necessarily always well spent.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you.

We'll go to Mr. Lapierre.

[Jean Lapierre, Liberal, Outremont, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Welcome, Ms. Maloney.

Why is the École polytechnique de Montréal not on the list of institutions you represent?

[Sharon Maloney]

The reason is that the nature of the polytechnique and the CÉGEPS in Quebec is different from these institutions. The polytechnique in Montreal is really at the top if I had a paradigm in terms of what a polytehnic should be, because they do not offer certificate diplomas, they only provide applied degrees. Our institutions provide everything. With respect to the CÉGEPS, because the program is two or three years and then you go on to university, again it's not exactly a fit with these institutions, because these institutions really are right in the middle. That's why we're call it a third pillar of providing education from certificates right through to an applied degree.

[Jean Lapierre, Liberal, Outremont, QC]

But when you are calling for a national people and skills strategy, I think the practice of the federal government in the last few years has been to decentralize more than try to have a national strategy. We have witnesses here who said that those federal-provincial agreements work well, and the union people last week told us they were better because the market, frankly, is more localized. The problem, when you do those prévisions, is it's like a prediction on weather: they're always wrong. At least if you have a smaller market you can do a better job.

How can we have a national people and skills strategy, but then everybody, and even Ontario lately, wants to have a federal-provincial deal because they say it's better administered and it's closer to the people? How do we solve this dichotomy?

[Sharon Maloney]

I think one is the delivery and the implementation, and the other is the strategy. When I talk about a national strategy, what I'm talking about fundamentally is a recognition of how critical post-secondary education, in all of its formats, is to the country's prosperity and its competitiveness. I don't think we can really achieve that as a country unless we collectively are able to say this is core to us; we need to invest in this. It also means that all of the individual activities that are going on at the provincial level actually need to be part of an understanding and a knowledge of what that is. That is not to go in and say we know that doesn't work and we're going to tell you what to do in your jurisdiction, but to understand that piece on a collective basis--that we have all these arguably fragmented approaches we're taking, but where do they interconnect?

One of the things that polytechnics has done is to develop what we've described as a protocol to allow their students.... Any student can come into any one of these institutions and, by virtue of that protocol, move to any other institution across the country. It's really to leverage that and to make sure that where we have separate initiatives we're maximizing it. Different provinces now have some good programs happening on e-learning on the Internet. I would hazard a guess that on a national level we really don't have a foggy clue, nor do we have a portal that allows us to connect that.

That's really what I'm getting at when I talk about a national approach to being able to identify what the issues are and leadership in dealing with the issues.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Mr. Arthur.

[André Arthur, Independent, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

My subject is quite brief, Mr. Chair, and if I am not able to take up my time, I would like to listen to the question you might have.

Mrs. Maloney, skilled labour comes out of your technology school at one end; at the other end, you receive kids who come out of the high school system. If I talk to people who do this kind of job in Quebec, what I hear about are the challenges of competency they see in those kids when they enter their schools, and they will talk about language skills and work ethics. What do you say about the kids who come out of high school to get into your schools? What kinds of challenges do you face between what they are and what they need to do to become skilled labour after that?

[Sharon Maloney]

One of the strengths of these institutions is that their focus is teaching, as compared to the increasing focus of universities, which is research and graduate work. The dynamic is different. They spend a lot of time working with their students to be able to enhance those skills. Also, because of their approach of working in teams and working with businesses, all the skills we describe as soft skills are a critical part of what they are dealing with. So when their students leave--and I think my colleague Ken would be able to tell me if I'm off by a few percentage points--they have a placement rate of around 96%.

What employers find difficult with graduates is they come in and don't have those soft skills. They are not used to working in teams. They haven't learned what it is to work in a corporate or business structure. The whole basis of these programs is they have to do that. After first year, they spend four months a year working with a business, and they have to move; they cannot use the same employer throughout the program.

They have to learn. That is part of what you have to achieve and get marked on to get your degree. It is not just theory. It is not just understanding the skills. It is understanding, if I'm an engineering technologist, how I relate to an engineer, how I communicate, how I market, how I become part of that team.