Finance Committee on March 27th, 2014

[Sylvain Groulx]

There is quite a unique situation in New Brunswick because it is a bilingual province. In addition, the population base is large enough that people have access to jobs and can work in different fields in French. The same is true of some small communities in Nova Scotia, PEI and some regions in Ontario.

The situation is very different outside of these areas. We therefore have to look beyond them. It would be like comparing them to Quebec, which you cannot do because the realities are so different. In the same way, things can be very different for an anglophone working in Montreal and an anglophone living in Chicoutimi.

We should instead be focusing on supply and demand. In some provinces, people have been able to do that by themselves. However, we cannot expect the provinces to intervene in communities where francophones are a small minority. In these cases, the government's support is sought under the Official Languages Act.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Keddy.

There will be one more Conservative round, so we'll come back to Ms. Bollo-Kamara after we go to the NDP.

We'll go to Mr. Cullen, please, for five minutes.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Ms. Robinson, I wanted to pick up on something that's connected to the larger study we are doing. You referred to the glob of the Canada social transfer that goes across. It was some $63 billion last year.

I want to ask a question about leadership and actual authority. Can the federal government show leadership to seek out the accountability and transparency you were talking about, concerning where the money goes once it hits the provinces?

[Nobina Robinson]

I believe it can. I have to say that I'm not in government, but having seen the historical attempts.... There were attempts to seek accountability for the health transfer, for example.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

So there are choices there—

[Nobina Robinson]

Yes.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

—and essentially some politics between the feds and the provinces.

[Nobina Robinson]

I can only speak about our institutions. We would happily give the data.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Right.

So there are the two ends of it: you're talking about the institutions showing the data in terms of placements, success, salaries—

[Nobina Robinson]

We have to provide this data to our provincial masters. You cannot get funding at NAIT or at Sheridan without showing how many students there are, their outcomes, and key performances.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

The same is not true for other post-secondary—

[Nobina Robinson]

Why is that not available to the federal government?

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

But connected back to that, the response is to ask how we fund different institutions and at what levels.

As a second question about federal leadership or the lack of it, you talked about a national credit transfer system. Do you believe that the power rests within the hands of the feds to coordinate some leadership with the provinces?

[Nobina Robinson]

It's a shared issue. The Council of Ministers of Education is there. It has not actually gotten to this question. Part of the problem is that universities are still their own entities, and so currently it is per institution that you have to negotiate the credit transfer.

B.C. has a good system; so has Alberta. We're trying to build it in Ontario. It really has to be a shared table.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Being from B.C., you know that the west is best; we're quite confident in our positions.

Concerning the youth focus, Ms. Seaborn, we talked briefly earlier about where it comes from. Mr. Brison talked about why we are in this situation—the enforcement, the lack of rules and accountability, the unpaid internships, and the potential exploitation or actual exploitation going on for young people right now.

The government recently mused about giving the new build infrastructure program a potential focus towards youth unemployment, which is twice the national average, as we know.

As a question about the jobs grant as it has just now, after some turmoil, been negotiated between the feds and the provinces, would your group see it as having a youth focus, with a portion of the money that's going out on the jobs grant, on the training side, being specifically focused towards youth—because it is not focused that way right now—on our young people coming out of college, university, polytechnic institutes? Would that be a positive step, in the right direction?

[Claire Seaborn]

Yes, it would be very positive to have money focused towards youth and jobs. Essentially that would encourage more paid positions as opposed to unpaid, so we would support it.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

There's a recent study out talking about the impact of temporary foreign workers, a program that has expanded quite massively. Up to 300,000 people went to work today in Canada under that program.

To you first, and then to Ms. Robinson, let me ask whether there is any connection that we can make between the availability of those entry-level apprenticeship jobs, those jobs that are not unpaid internships but are the skills training within the work environment that is being supplanted.... It's quite permissive and easy—this is admitted by the government as well, it's not the opposition's point of view—to seek out temporary foreign workers, and it is quicker and cheaper and easier, particularly for a resource-sector company.

Does that put any pressure on the ability of young people to go that first step, to gain that access rather than go the route of unpaid internships?

[Claire Seaborn]

I think it certainly makes it more challenging for young people to find a paid entry-level position.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Ms. Robinson, do you have an opinion on this?

[Nobina Robinson]

I don't see companies wanting temporary foreign workers at that pre-apprentice, first level of apprenticeship, and you mentioned apprenticeship. I think that the hunt, rather, has been for certified workers who can perhaps be paid less at times. I wouldn't want to mix up apprenticeship and temporary foreign workers. That's my first thing.

I want to use this moment to ask whether, when you're worried about how you define internships, you have looked at the United States Department of Labor's definition of internship.

Okay. And does it help?

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Mr. Cash, do you have a brief question?

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

I do have a brief question. I want to get back to one that I tried to ask earlier.

Ms. Seaborn, could you give our committee a sense of how we can both crack down on illegal internships while not throwing the baby out with the bathwater? We know that there are some that are positive and important for young workers.

Can you give us some advice on how we do that?

[Claire Seaborn]

I think those interpretation guidelines will help. I think this meeting is also a very good start. It's been really positive to have a lot of members of Parliament take an interest in the issue. I think our public debate on when internships are and aren't permissible, when they can be paid or unpaid, will really help.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you.

I am going to Mr. Allen.

I just want to allow Ms. Bollo-Kamara to respond to Mr. Saxton's question first.

[Yolen Bollo-Kamara]

In 2006, $55 million was cut from the Canada summer jobs program. At that point the program created somewhere between 45,000 and 55,000 summer job opportunities for students, whereas in more recent estimates it appears that it's about 35,000 to 40,000. With an increasing youth population, this means that there are fewer job opportunities for more students.