Canadian Heritage Committee on Dec. 11th, 2012

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

Okay. Thank you, Minister.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

You're welcome.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Moore]

Thank you, Ms. Sims.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

I'm sorry, but that's the best way I could answer it in five seconds.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

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

We'll talk further.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Moore]

Okay.

Mr. Armstrong is next.

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

Thank you.

Thank you, Minister, for being here, and thanks to your officials.

I'd like to focus first on the temporary foreign worker annex, because we've had some discussion on that. You mentioned in answer to Mr. Young that you have agreements with Ontario and Alberta, which are two of the larger provinces.

It seems to be very effective. It seems to be a good answer to a solution that we need to make.... We don't have any in Atlantic Canada. I'm wondering about that. What are your discussions like with the other provinces that have been trying to put this in place?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Well, we do have bilateral agreements with all of the Atlantic provinces to coordinate our partnership on immigration matters. As it relates to the temporary foreign worker annex, we have one with Nova Scotia, but they have not used it. They've not asked us to exempt any occupational categories from the LMO requirement, but they have the power to do so, so I want to correct my earlier comment: B.C., Alberta, Ontario, and Nova Scotia do have TFW annexes in their agreements with us.

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

Now that a province has an agreement set up, what situation has to occur for it to actually apply it and put it into effect?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

It's really at their discretion, but we would hope that they would only write to us asking for an LMO exemption if and when they see a very acute labour shortage, when there are just clearly not enough Canadians, and when over time employers just cannot get enough Canadians for a particular occupational category.

I'll give you an example.

In northern Alberta, with these huge mining developments, there's a very acute shortage in certain skilled trades, such as welders and boilermakers, so they wrote to us to say that even though they'd increased the number of students being turned out of their vocational institutes and even though the number of apprenticeships was going up, they still had a very acute shortage, and they asked us to please exempt, at least on a pilot basis, six specific skilled trades from the LMO requirement. We were happy to cooperate.

We're watching that closely. If we find that there are integrity problems, we'll shut down the pilot program.

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

A change in the labour market might also cause that as well, when there's a difference in what happens in northern Alberta or in shipbuilding in Nova Scotia.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

I suspect that in Nova Scotia, with the big new shipbuilding contracts at the Irving shipyards, you may see an acute shortage in certain trades, and they may want to access this kind of program.

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

I think it would be expected, though, that Irving would also explore trying to bring back some Atlantic Canadians from out west for these jobs, to bring back some experienced people, because one of their biggest challenges is having people with some experience in this type of job. They may look overseas for that experience, but they could also look out west and at other parts of Canada and try to bring some of the people home.

The next thing is that I really think the gap lies in education. For the most part, it's a provincial responsibility to deliver education, but do you think there's a gap between what we're teaching our young people to do in the school system and vocational system and what the labour market is going to be in the next 10 to 15 years?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Yes. I couldn't agree more strongly.

My own view is that for a couple of generations our society has been sending all sorts of cues to young people to do post-secondary academic formation, which is great, but in a way, we've devalued, I would suggest, semi-skilled and skilled labour—working with your hands—to the point where it's almost stigmatized, I think, in some respects, for many young Canadians. This may explain why, even though there are great good-paying jobs available in these areas, there's a paucity of young Canadians going into our vocational institutes.

I think a lot of this was perhaps done unintentionally in our education system, when provincial education departments shut down vocational high schools. I think that's something that provinces should revisit.

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

Staying on education, I know that when I was going to high school—I'm 46—we had the first computer science courses that were laid out, and the curriculum was focused on programming, so I was taught how to program. I didn't know how to keyboard and I didn't know how to use all these other computer skills that I actually needed when I got out, but I knew how to program a little. They went away from that. They've actually changed the education focus more to how to use computers, how to do keyboarding, and how to have those computer skills.

I think there's almost a need now, with this absolutely great opportunity that we have in educational software, in video-gaming industries, and in other ways, to put some more programming courses back into school, back into vocational schools, because there's definitely going to be a need for these people when they come out.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

As I've said, not only is there an acute shortage in the video game industry, but there is also a shortage, as I mentioned, across the IT sector in Canada, and that, frankly, blows me away, because I hear from the....

For example, farmers tell me that for jobs that were done at harvest time by young Canadians—perhaps when you and I were in high school or college, when people our age would go out and work on farms in the summer and fall and make decent money—now they cannot get young Canadians to do that work. One orchard farmer in B.C. told me that if the job doesn't involve an air-conditioned office and a computer, forget about trying to get a young Canadian to do it these days.

You would think, then, drawing from that sort of anecdotal assessment, that young Canadians would be rushing to get into these high-paying IT jobs, but they're not. There's a shortage of them, and I can't account for that.

I think there really is need for some fundamental rethinking at the provincial level about how we're preparing young people for the labour markets of the future, and this includes IT.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Moore]

Thank you.

Finally, we have Mr. Cash.

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm very concerned about some of the things we're hearing today. What we're talking about is the mismanagement of the temporary foreign worker program, and that's the root cause for both the inaccurate assessments of the Canadian labour market's ability to fill employment needs and the inadequate response to the individual needs of industries like this one.

A major focus of this study is the creation of high-value domestic employment. Creating good jobs for Canadians is our primary and ultimate goal here. That's why we're doing this study. We're not here to talk about how we construct a system where we can bring in permanent residents to fill highly skilled jobs in this sector. That's not what we're talking about here.

To be fair, you have said that you're confused. You've said that you don't understand the situation here. You've also said that there must be a lag in terms of the concerns the gaming industry has, but in fact we just heard from witnesses, so there can't be a lag; they're dealing with this situation on the ground right now.

Do you not think that you really need to take a serious look at what's actually going on, sector by sector; that one-size-fits-all doesn't work; that this industry is one that really needs some attention in a different way; that you can't compare welders to senior game management?

Really what we want to do here, and what we need to support, is what the industry has said they want: they want to see a transfer of skills so that Canadians get trained up as quickly as possible, and in the meantime deal with the labour gap. That's what the industry needs.

We're not hearing that understanding here, and I'm really concerned about that. Could you—

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Perhaps you haven't been listening, then, Mr. Cash.

First of all, when I said I was confused, I was really referring to my confusion, which you've just amplified, about your party's position, demanding on the one hand greater streamlining of the labour market opinion process—

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

No, I'm sorry, Minister; you were saying you were confused about the needs of the industry.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

—and on the other hand demanding greater rigour and that we shut it down. You can't have it both ways: either you want a program that can respond to labour shortages or you want to shut it down. You can't have it one way when you're talking to a friendly interest group and then another way when you're talking to your labour union friends.

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

Actually, what we're looking for here is some understanding on the part of government for this ever-expanding sector of the arts and culture sector. That's what we're looking for. That's the point of this study.

Given that, I'm going to pass the rest of my time over to my colleague.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Well, to respond to your point, there are hundreds of occupational categories. We do respond to them in very targeted ways, as you suggest we ought to.

For example, when there is an acute shortage in a particular occupational category, we are happy to work with provinces to exempt those occupations in certain regions from the LMO requirements.

I wish you would take yes for an answer, but I was shocked when you just said that you disagree with our idea that we should be trying to have people come in and get permanent residency in high-paying jobs.

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

I'm saying that's not what this sector is asking for.