Finance Committee on April 3rd, 2014

[Christopher Smillie]

Those 16 year olds who are working for the HVAC company in Stuttgart get paid two days a week. So they're not.... They're paid by the company and assisted by the state, so it's a relationship that exists.

Unpaid internships aren't the way to go in Canada. We need to get more people involved in the active economy. Imagine asking somebody to be a construction apprentice unpaid. So four years of your life, 80% of your work is done on the job, but you have to be unpaid. It's not the way to go. We need good paying jobs for people and at the end of the day, the systems that are getting it right incent people to get results.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Okay.

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Mr. Smillie, what approach would you take to change the thinking in Canada?

It's one thing to say that we want to move in that direction, but it's another to get an entire culture to think that way.

[Christopher Smillie]

There are buzzwords around about parity of esteem around various careers, etc., but at the end of the day, we need help promoting that these are valuable occupations. The people I represent make twice as much as I do. We have to get the word out. We have to do a better job and industry has to do a better job as well, the big construction companies, the big energy companies, saying your future probably isn't typing at a keyboard, but it's welding a pipe, reading a blueprint, or being an operation engineer at an oil sands facility or at a nuclear plant.

Those are some of the messages we need help delivering. We can't do it alone in industry. We could do a better job, but we also need better partners to create that parity of esteem in terms of messaging.

I would add quickly, the guy that's a carpenter today is an entrepreneur tomorrow. That second-year apprentice we're helping move through the system will be running his own crew one day, so we need to be talking about entrepreneurship. We need to be talking about starting a small business and that's the kind of messaging that could have a real impact on getting people involved. It's not just swinging hammers; it's running your own company.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Okay, thank you.

Merci, monsieur Caron.

I'm going to take the next round as the chair and I want to echo all of the comments from my colleagues that this has been a fascinating and very helpful discussion.

Mr.Smillie, I'll just continue with some of your points. You talked about how in Germany it was 50% academic, 50% skilled trades. In Canada it's 85% and 15%, which shows a very marked difference. When I was in high school many years ago, I was geared toward the academic route and it was right for me. For many of my friends who went through working in careers for 10 or 15 years, many of them went back to institutions like NAIT, did construction, engineering, and now they are working as CEOs. They started off at a relatively low entry level and then worked their way up, so I think that's an important point as well.

I think we also want to say for guidance counsellors it's very hard. It's a lot to put on them to say they have to know about every single occupation, every single career. This is why I really applaud initiatives like what RBC is doing in terms of providing opportunities for young people.

But let me throw something further at you. I was at a school in Harlem, New York, where a bank actually put a branch in the school. I was astounded by this and I thought, I don't think this will work. So I walked in and what the bank did, the logic of it was, it was part financial literacy, but it actually put a branch in with a branch manager where the people who would run the branch were the students.

So it was designed to give them employment opportunities. It was designed to teach them about some financial matters. They would work there for the school year and every summer they were placed at a different branch of that bank, somewhere else in the city. These were all kids from Harlem and the Bronx. So they would work in Manhattan in the summer and then they would go back to finish their high school there.

It was a fairly radical concept, but it even went further I think, Mr. Smillie, in what you're saying about bringing everybody together. It actually put industry right in the school and provided some good opportunities. The teachers I spoke to said it was a fantastic experience. A lot of the students with very challenging backgrounds said, now they work. They love going to school. They love going to work. They see the opportunities available to them.

That's one sector, that's the financial sector, but you can do that for many others as well. Is that something we should be looking at here in Canada at this committee?

I'd open it up to anyone, but perhaps I'll start with you.

[Susan Uchida]

Yes, I could address that, certainly.

As another example of what you mentioned, we also offer work experience like that in disadvantaged communities. Perhaps not quite in the school, but the school relationship does exist.

I would echo some of the conversation around the table as well. Obviously, as one of Canada's largest employers we're frequently called upon to provide an opinion on what more corporations and businesses could do. I sense a growing desire and intent around collaboration, educators, government, and business coming together to foster some ideas and address it, because there does seem to be some very great passion and concern around youth in Canada and how to address that.

Outside of this relationship with RBC, I also sit on the Learning Partnership's board, which is a not-for-profit association seeking to link government, educators, and business. They do the take our kids to work program.

You see it similarly through those forums as well, the deep desire to work with our colleagues for the betterment of all Canadians.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Okay, I appreciate that.

Ms. Woloschuk, do you want to comment on that?

[Dianne Woloschuk]

I think there are a lot of interesting and original things going on in schools right now that may not be all that well known. For example, I can think of a program at a high school near where I worked where they had taken the physics 20-30 program and merged it with a program helping kids to get their pilot's licence.

Their study of physics was then applied to the work they were doing to get their pilot's licence and by the time they finished their grade 12, they had their pilot's licence. I can think of other programs for students getting credits for theatre arts. It was an integrated program, and they did it by mounting a theatre production, an actual production that people paid to see, and on a grander scale than what you might expect from a high school theatrical production.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

They do that in my area.

[Dianne Woloschuk]

There's a lot of really original, creative stuff going on in different schools across Canada. I think we're always willing to look at partnerships and collaboration. One principle we would hold to is that in a publicly funded education system, the basic principle is equity for all children, and we would certainly want to see that remain the cornerstone.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Okay, thank you.

Mr. Smillie, I want to go to you on this because when I went through school there was an industrial arts program and there was also a home economics program. I took the home economics program, which I thoroughly enjoyed, but it seems to me there are fewer of these alternatives. That's just my impression, and it may not be correct. But it's also a challenge I think to find a lot of educators who have that background. Similar to what a bank would do in my example, from your perspective is this something you could do in the school, to run the IA program?

[Christopher Smillie]

I'm working on a live example right now. NAIT is trying to deliver a crane operator course at their facility. I can't remember if it's at Fort Mac or Edmonton. They've come to us and asked if we had a current operator, someone who's working in industry who would be willing to be an instructor, because they have an instructor need over the next two years. We're living examples like that.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

That's at the post-secondary level.

[Christopher Smillie]

That's right, so this person has to have a boom truck operator licence and a heavy crane operator licence to teach that to other students. Through our membership, we're seeking and grabbing those people and putting them in.

Your bank teller example in Harlem, there would be an apprenticeship program for those bank tellers. I used to work at RBC and was a bank teller a long time ago. I would have been involved in a formalized training program with a set curriculum, which I would have learned. Even a salesperson at a department store would have an apprenticeship for that occupation, so you can see the slice-and-dice way the training system is set up.

We need to get better at connecting industry with our education system, absolutely.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Okay, I'd like to continue, but my time is up. As I cut everyone else off, I will cut myself off and go to Mr. Brison for a seven-minute round.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Uchida, I too want to commend RBC for what you're doing. I had a conversation a few months ago with one of your RBC directors, Michael McCain, about unpaid internships. I asked whether Maple Leaf Foods uses unpaid internships. He said that they don't, and he went further to say that he believes that there is basic honour and importance to paid work. In fact, he has five children who have had opportunities to do unpaid internships, but he urged them not to do them, saying that they would be better off working at something entry-level that actually paid, because of the basic respect implied in the employer-employee relationship by paying someone.

I'm pleased to see RBC funding 100 internships. I'd be interested in ways in which we can provide leadership or encourage more companies to provide paid internships. For instance, are other banks doing the same? Is the Canadian Bankers Association or the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, these organizations that represent some very large companies that are important in the Canadian economy...? Are there initiatives within those organizations to expand these kinds of paid internship opportunities?

[Susan Uchida]

I don't have that level of detail, Mr. Brison. What I know is that certainly all of our internships would be paid. That is our policy, and that is how we administer it and live it every day. We could find out for you what the other organizations do.

But I agree completely with your spirit, about honest pay for honest work. There's a real lesson and livelihood in that, and it's what we believe as well.

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

It's also fundamental to equality of opportunity.

[Susan Uchida]

Absolutely.

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

If someone is privileged or from a privileged family, they can afford to take a swish, unpaid internship that may look good on their CV, whereas somebody else who can't afford to do that.... We deepen the inequality of opportunity.

What would be the pay for each of your 100 paid internships? What is the duration, and what would be the total pay package for them—

[Susan Uchida]

The duration is for 12 months. They're paid completely, whether they're working physically for us or at the not-for-profit.

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

—for the internship.

[Susan Uchida]

The pay is commensurate with market compensation rates for the roles that they do in the branch. I can't disclose the amount, because our privacy policy would not permit me to do that, but it is very market-fair.

Also, because they're contract employees it addresses the fact that they do not have benefits, so it's comprehensive from that perspective. Of course, they have time off for vacations as well as part of that 12 months.

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

Summer jobs are important as well in building work experience. Last summer, the summer job market was one of the worst we've seen in about 40 years. It was just a tough market for summer jobs. In 2005, the Canada summer jobs grant created 70,000 jobs. In 2013 it created 35,000 jobs. The program has changed.

Would you agree that increased funding for the Canada summer jobs program would be one way to address, in a tangible way, the need for young people to get job experience now?

You may have an opinion on this, but others may have a view on it as well.

[Susan Uchida]

I'm nodding because I believe it goes back to the point you originally made about payment being important—about honourable work and being paid for it.

For some organizations, this might be the best way they can access funding to give that experience. Whereas we can do it through our corporate citizenship fund, other smaller organizations may not have that.