Finance Committee on Nov. 19th, 2012

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Thank you.

Mr. Liss, in your presentation and in your brief to our committee, you talked about aboriginal communities. You said, and it's a shocking statistic, that 60% of high school students on reserve and 43% off reserve drop out and don't complete their high school education and therefore never make it to university. You've raised that as an issue. What kinds of suggestions do you have to reach back into the public school system to help those students prepare themselves for an opportunity to learn in the post-secondary system?

[Dr. Steven Liss]

The important driver is mentorship/leadership within the community and the universities. At Queens we have a number of examples in engineering and applied science and in our school of policy studies. We're supporting increased engagement of aboriginal students in our programs and creating a receptive environment on our campuses. This is occurring across Canada. We are trying to increase the number of students engaged in post-secondary education. We want to give them the opportunity to pursue those programs and assist them in developing mentorship and leadership capacity and reaching out. This is an important point. The universities are just beginning in many respects to address this on their own campuses in a way that is receptive, welcoming, and inclusive. We want to increase the numbers in that population and make more successes possible.

I have a graduate student who has just finished a master's degree, a member of the Mi'kmaq community. I think getting individuals like Bailey and others to go back into their community and work is important.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Ms. Nash.

Ms. Glover, go ahead, please.

[Shelly Glover, Conservative, Saint Boniface, MB]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for being here.

On that note, Mr. Liss, I'm glad you brought it up, because I know in Winnipeg, which is where I'm from, the Aboriginal Centre is doing a fantastic job. It is funded primarily by the federal government. They've actually partnered with the aerospace industry, and the aerospace industry is helping to train aboriginals in a very critical sector. We've seen some tremendous success stories.

I'm glad you mentioned the successes along with the failures. We have more work to do, but, boy oh boy, we have some really talented aboriginal people coming out of these programs, so I'm glad you recognize that.

I do want to ask Mr. Smillie some questions.

I'm a mom with a son who went away to be a carpenter. He went to Alberta. So I appreciate very much all of the hard work that your association does, because my son brags about you all the time.

That being said, when he moved, housing was an issue. I appreciate what you're saying about this mobility tax credit, but I'm interested in hearing from you what solutions there would be for housing, because when he got there he had to live with four other people in a house, which was difficult. Many people who move are living in trailers.

How can we partner with you to solve that problem? Mobility is one thing, but the other is where to stay.

[Christopher Smillie]

That's a great question. There are really three ways it happens in Alberta, or anywhere across the country where there's a large concentration of work. You're either in a camp, which is provided by your employer, or you get a living-out allowance from your employer. It might be anywhere between $90 and $125 a day.

[Shelly Glover, Conservative, Saint Boniface, MB]

He didn't get any of that.

How do we partner with you to make sure that it is happening in a way that's consistent?

[Christopher Smillie]

We can speak to the big jobs, the industrial jobs, but the best way to do it is to make sure there isn't inflation in the regional economy, and that's hard to control.

When you have a shortage of skills—and that's the key of my presentation—the costs for everything go up. It's disproportionately expensive to live in northern Alberta. That's why some employers go ahead...and some owners, like some of the big oil companies, spend big money to put people up.

At the end of the day, it's about spreading the workforce across the country. Things happen in regional economies that are hot that really can't be controlled by the government, industry, or players, but I think if we have sort of a national approach to the workforce, we should be able to avoid those inflationary pressures in small....

[Shelly Glover, Conservative, Saint Boniface, MB]

Would your organization be willing to partner with government to make an incentive—something like the mobility tax credit—available, if on the inside the companies were also providing some incentive for housing? I could see a partnership working like that, but I'd hate to give these tax rates—

[Christopher Smillie]

Sure.

[Shelly Glover, Conservative, Saint Boniface, MB]

That's good.

The other thing I want to bring up is that you talked an awful lot about developing skills in schools and what not, which I think is critical. Skills Canada will provide about $8.7 million over the next three years to do those trade-focused projects.

In Manitoba, for example, I love going to the young women's conferences, where your organizations can actually help train these kids and what not. Then we also have the skills competition that happens every year, which I know many of your organizations.... We have that program, but how can we further enhance that kind of thing?

[Christopher Smillie]

It is all about promotion of the skilled trades as a valuable career path, full stop.

The Government of Canada can play a significant role in getting to people before they get to high school or while they're in high school or elementary school, to say that this is a valuable career path.

If there's one thing the committee can take out of this, it is that industry needs help getting to people in the education system.

[Shelly Glover, Conservative, Saint Boniface, MB]

Would you be supportive of us enhancing that program?

[Christopher Smillie]

Absolutely. Skills Canada is a way to promote and get young people involved in the trades. They cover everything, from hair cutters to construction workers. There's a long list.

[Shelly Glover, Conservative, Saint Boniface, MB]

I've been every year. It's amazing.

[Christopher Smillie]

That's one way to do it, absolutely. We'd be supportive. We'd think about doing a P3 type of thing with Skills Canada and government, industry, and whoever else, absolutely.

[Shelly Glover, Conservative, Saint Boniface, MB]

That's very insightful.

Do I have one minute left?

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

You have 20 seconds.

[Shelly Glover, Conservative, Saint Boniface, MB]

Thank you for acknowledging Minister Oliver's....

With regard to responsible development, could you just expand on that? Why do you think that was important?

[Christopher Smillie]

It's important to get the regulation stuff right to spur investment, but we need to make sure the labour market policy is in tune with that. We can't roll out these great steps to get our country developed without making sure that the labour market and skills policy at the federal and provincial levels are in sync.

We don't want to have all this investment and then not be able to follow through and actually build the project. That would be my 20-second answer.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Okay, thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Glover.

Mr. Brison, please.

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

And thank you very much to each of you for appearing before us today.

Mr. Smillie, recently I was at a conference of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives and there was a session on education and training. One of the Calgary-based oil executives or CEOs said he had just as much interest in the quality of trades training in Nova Scotia or Newfoundland as he did in Alberta, because of the mobility of the workforce in Canada.

Over the weekend I was in Mr. Jean's riding of Fort McMurray, where a lot of Atlantic Canadians are living and working. One of the things I saw in that riding...when you talk to people, you learn that some of the training programs enable people after grade 10 to go to a summer job, to do some form of apprenticeship after grade 11, and then in grade 12 they graduate from high school with a skilled trade.

Given the diversity of practices around trades within Canadian provinces, do we really need a robust national trades and learning strategy in Canada—working with the provinces?

[Christopher Smillie]

I think we need to refocus. In the skilled trades, we have the Red Seal program, which already is a national forum, so to speak.

When the federal government is giving money to the provinces for education and training programs, they need to think about the public policy implications of that money, or is it just a carte blanche to the provinces?

Do we need a national strategy? I think what we need is coordination from the national level to make sure the right people are lined up with the right jobs at the right time.

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

Yes.

This is a longer discussion perhaps, but I would assert that we need more than just coordination. This is a national imperative, and there's no constitutional barrier to preventing leadership on this file from the national level.

On the issue of international students, both in terms of Canadian students studying abroad and foreign students studying here, for a long time Australia was attracting more students from China, but I believe last year Australia started attracting more students from Mexico than Canada. Is it a question of resources, or is the Australian government just more focused on this in terms of the amount of investment they're making? Would it be a good idea to develop some sort of national or internationally recognized scholarship program aimed at attracting the best and brightest to Canada, something with a branding capacity of, say, a Fulbright or a Rhodes scholarship?

[Dr. Scott McAlpine]

Absolutely.

To the Australian question first, Australia is investing quite heavily in the branding of Australia as an education destination of choice. The advisory panel on international education in Canada advised that if we did a similar thing, we could double the number of international students by 2022 from 239,000 to roughly 450,000.

On the Fulbright scholarship idea, again, the recommendation we make is for a doubling of the number of scholarships for study abroad opportunities, as well as studying in Canada. We want to see 50,000 Canadians having the opportunity to study abroad, and certainly the same number having scholarships to study in Canada.

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Lounds, congratulations on the work the Nature Conservancy of Canada is doing. I support what you're calling for, in terms of continuing the NACP.

Have you looked at issues around land banking and agriculture and sensitive agricultural land? We're seeing more of that, for instance, in the Annapolis Valley, in Nova Scotia, with the pressures of development.