Human Resources committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Thank you for bringing a focus to the strategies to retain and recruit older workers, and thank you for the opportunity to present on the study. CARP is a national non-profit, non-partisan organization, with about 300,000 members across the count

Human Resources committee  I'm not entirely sure about Canadians generally. Certainly among our membership they gave us their response. As you might know, we do poll our members every two weeks on our various advocacy issues. On this one, we specifically asked them what was the reason, if they were still w

Human Resources committee  Yes, twice a month.

Human Resources committee  Very poorly. First of all, people who themselves, despite the assurances.... Our members tend to be over 50, and most of them would not be specifically affected themselves because of the transition period. Nonetheless, the response rejection of that change was about 80%. When y

Human Resources committee  That work has yet to be done properly. The concern at this end is more that there's hardly any clear and present category of industry where older workers are welcomed with open arms. They tend to be found in casual, precarious positions, part-time and so on. It used to be adequ

Human Resources committee  Yes, but some of it was done. There was the expert panel on older workers that reported in 2010 or 2009, I believe—I'm not absolutely certain, because nothing was done with the report. Much of the research in that report is work that we're relying on now. All of the issues that I

Human Resources committee  Well, show us the money. That's the bottom line. When we asked them questions about what they would like, such as more dignity or special programs, they just said to get them the money they need to actually get a peaceful retirement, a structured retirement, and also to extend

Human Resources committee  In fact, we do ask the fiscal accountability question a lot, the fiscal responsibility question, on various and sundry things, whether it be health care.... Of course, everybody wants more services and so on. The responses by our members are always twofold. They don't reject payi

Human Resources committee  Fewer older workers or fewer workers, period?

Human Resources committee  One of the trends that has hit older workers particularly hard, and it is addressed somewhat by the targeted initiative for older workers, is one-industry towns where people are working and then the entire industry shuts and they are not trained for anything else and no other job

Human Resources committee  We haven't drilled down to quite that granular level. That's something that Third Quarter, with its funding, would be well suited to do, given that that's what they're targeting. As I say, their biggest contribution to this point is to round up the employers who are interested in

Human Resources committee  We can cross-tab last weekend's poll to get at those answers. We don't have an absolute answer for you. All I can say is that on a gross basis this was the answer. We see more people who in the past would have already retired going back into the workforce in larger numbers, to t

Human Resources committee  One thing we got back from our members and people who call us was the question: training for what? Of course, there needs to be training, and indeed in this recent budget there was announced a job grants program, which redirected some of the training funding into areas targeted t

Human Resources committee  But the way it's described, an employer has to choose an employee whom he or she wants to train, put their own money up, and then obtain matching federal and provincial funds. If you look at our situation where older workers already find barriers to staying and getting new jobs,

Human Resources committee  In actual fact, for the 55-plus group, both men and women are participating in the workforce more than they did in the past. There was an increase...I think there was more of a steady increase for women than for men rejoining the workforce. I don't see the explanation for that