Evidence of meeting #17 for Industry, Science and Technology in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was training.
A recording is available from Parliament.
3:55 p.m.
Executive Director, Transfers and Renewal, Employment Programs and Partnerships Directorate, Department of Employment and Social Development
Yes, I can speak to that.
I'm going to start off with youth. You were talking about young people—
3:55 p.m.
Conservative
3:55 p.m.
Executive Director, Transfers and Renewal, Employment Programs and Partnerships Directorate, Department of Employment and Social Development
—getting into the labour market. It's very important. I think it's a key part of this conversation.
We know 75% of our new labour-market entrants over the next decade are going to come from the school system, so when it comes to skills gaps and areas to fill—
3:55 p.m.
Conservative
Joyce Bateman Conservative Winnipeg South Centre, MB
You have hit the nail on the head, and please speak to that skills gap piece because often the gap is no experience. How do we fill that gap? Every time I've worked with a young person, I've always ended up learning more from them probably than they have learned from me, but for them to get that first job is so difficult. So if those two tiers could be dealt with, I'd appreciate that.
3:55 p.m.
Executive Director, Transfers and Renewal, Employment Programs and Partnerships Directorate, Department of Employment and Social Development
We recognize that, and we have the youth employment strategy, which is an investment of over $300 million—$330 million—for youth.
It has three parts to it. It has skills languages for the more vulnerable youth segment. It has career focus, which is primarily targeted toward post-secondary—
3:55 p.m.
Conservative
Joyce Bateman Conservative Winnipeg South Centre, MB
Could the person in this industry who employs 25 people in my riding—just down the street from my constituency office—who was actually a witness here, be able to say, look, I want to partner with the government in hiring this person and training them? How does that work?
We kept hearing that they can't get trained people.
4 p.m.
Executive Director, Transfers and Renewal, Employment Programs and Partnerships Directorate, Department of Employment and Social Development
Yes. Let me talk about career focus, because I think that is really the key program under the youth employment strategy that helps youth and helps that sector, and that program is primarily an internship program.
I can tell you a little bit about how it works because we have made big investments and changed—
4 p.m.
Executive Director, Transfers and Renewal, Employment Programs and Partnerships Directorate, Department of Employment and Social Development
It's called career focus.
4 p.m.
Executive Director, Transfers and Renewal, Employment Programs and Partnerships Directorate, Department of Employment and Social Development
Through career focus we do provide youth, and as I said, primarily youth with a post-secondary degree, who have all the academic requirements but are lacking the work experience to successfully settle in the labour market. It is a wage subsidy to help them get a job with an employer in their field of study.
Through career focus, what we have done lately, because it is a successful program and it does target exactly that youth population you're talking about, we have made some significant investments over the past few years to strengthen the program. It started in budget 2012, when the government put in an additional $50 million to provide more internship opportunities in high demand fields, and high demand fields are the entertainment industry, STEM fields, the skilled trades. So we were able to provide more internships. It was further strengthened in budget 2013; an additional $70 million was put into the career focus program.
4 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative David Sweet
Thanks, Ms. Bertrand. I'm sorry the time is up now.
Now we go to Madam Murray for five minutes.
4 p.m.
Liberal
Joyce Murray Liberal Vancouver Quadra, BC
Thank you for your visit today to help us understand these important issues.
I want to ask a question around the temporary foreign worker program. I have a constituent in Vancouver Quadra who has had a huge amount of frustration trying to get approval for a temporary foreign worker in a start-up where she's president. At a time of trying to get a new technology going, raise funds, find some of the expertise that she needed, she found someone but spent literally over a year hitting a brick wall in trying to bring someone in. This is a very small start-up, so everybody's essentially doing it off the corner of their desk. She just felt that the department was completely unresponsive.
I'm just wondering whether there is any kind of an ombudsperson. Is there any kind of place where someone in that situation, who is poised to create a technology-based business that could be a huge job creator and hits a brick wall...? Is there a way that she can get through the 1-800 number lines and talk to a real person, and appeal the decision? Is that possible? Because there's going to be a lot of people in that situation in the SME category.
4 p.m.
Director General, Immigration Branch, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
It's difficult to answer your question, Madam, if we don't know whether or not she was successful in getting a labour market opinion process and had problems with CIC, or whether the challenges were with ESDC.
Were the challenges with the labour market opinion process or with the work permit processing?
4 p.m.
Liberal
Joyce Murray Liberal Vancouver Quadra, BC
My understanding is that it's with the labour market opinion.
4 p.m.
Director General, Temporary Foreign Worker Directorate, Department of Employment and Social Development
Obviously I can't speak to the specifics of the case, but I will say this—
4 p.m.
Liberal
Joyce Murray Liberal Vancouver Quadra, BC
No, and I'm not asking you to. I'm talking about whether there is an ombudsperson for very small, emerging, innovative businesses that don't have the staff or a lawyer to go through a lot of bureaucracy. Is there some channel for start-up businesses?
4 p.m.
Director General, Temporary Foreign Worker Directorate, Department of Employment and Social Development
On the labour market opinion side there is nothing specific that's targeted at start-up businesses. I'm always disappointed to hear that companies feel they've had problems navigating the process. There are a lot of steps in the conversation between Service Canada in our regional offices and a decision on a labour market opinion. There are certainly lots of opportunities for an individual to bring information that can help the program officer in the regional office make an informed decision on whether or not the entrance of a foreign worker for that particular occupation is essentially a net benefit for Canada. There are always various variables that are taken into account, including verifying whether or not the employer actually has the financial means to pay the foreign worker for the entire time they're in the country.
There is no formal appeal process in the labour market opinion, but I will say that every single time someone goes through the process, an application goes in and sometimes, on some applications, almost innumerable conversations happen between the program officer and the regional office and the employer. There is ample opportunity within the process for the employer to make their case before the decision is rendered.
4:05 p.m.
Liberal
Joyce Murray Liberal Vancouver Quadra, BC
Thank you.
In terms of the job grant, I come from a business background in a field where there was always some new government program to try to help people get jobs, and sometimes they interfered with the functioning market.
How would you be able to avoid businesses' getting the job grant for training or positions that they were planning to have anyway?
4:05 p.m.
Executive Director, Transfers and Renewal, Employment Programs and Partnerships Directorate, Department of Employment and Social Development
As I said, the Canada job grant has certain parameters around it to make sure that it addresses that very issue of employer involvement in training decisions and employer investment in training. That is core to the Canada job grant.
The implementation and the monitoring is up to the provinces. It is up to them to implement.
4:05 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative David Sweet
Thank you, Madam Bertrand. We're way over. I just wanted to give you some opportunity to answer that.
Mr. Van Kesteren, you have five minutes.
April 7th, 2014 / 4:05 p.m.
Conservative
Dave Van Kesteren Conservative Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you all for being here.
To follow along that line of what Ms. Murray was alluding to, she's right. In the past, governments have had a tendency to try to lure businesses, but sometimes that didn't seem to work.
I'm thinking about Minister Kenney's trip to Germany. There seems to be more of a collaboration between the different departments, and the provinces and the government. Can you maybe tell us what your department's future plans are to develop more talent, and how you're working in conjunction with other departments to do that?
4:05 p.m.
Executive Director, Transfers and Renewal, Employment Programs and Partnerships Directorate, Department of Employment and Social Development
Alexis, my colleague, alluded to the fact that we are renegotiating, reforming, transforming three labour market agreements, and those are agreements with the provinces and the territories. So we're working closely with our partners.
I have spoken to the LMAs briefly, but we're also in the process of renegotiating and transforming the labour market development agreements, which are really our biggest investment and our biggest transfer agreement with the provinces and territories. It's almost $2 billion in funding that has been devolved to the provinces and territories, or given to the provinces and territories to deliver programing for, primarily, unemployed Canadians.
I hope I'm addressing your question. We are working very closely with our colleagues. We have been, but we are going to work even more closely with them over the next little while as we move through the transformation, again, to ensure that programming meets current labour market challenges.
4:05 p.m.
Conservative
Dave Van Kesteren Conservative Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON
What are some of your biggest challenges as far as making that a possibility?
4:05 p.m.
Executive Director, Transfers and Renewal, Employment Programs and Partnerships Directorate, Department of Employment and Social Development
Our biggest challenges in terms of working with our...?