Evidence of meeting #29 for Finance in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was skills.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Andrew Saxton Conservative North Vancouver, BC
Thank you.
My last question is for Mr. Gouda from Career Edge.
Mr. Gouda, you talked about paid internships in your opening statement. I'm sure you're familiar with our government's recently announced $55 million for paid internships. I'm just wondering how you think that could impact young Canadians' abilities to get internships and, ultimately, to get the jobs they're looking for.
President, Career Edge Organization
I am familiar with it. It's a positive step and we'll be working with the government to see how to make that work.
Conservative
Liberal
Scott Brison Liberal Kings—Hants, NS
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thanks to each of you for your testimony today. It's very helpful as part of this study.
The labour market agreements with the provinces funded a variety of programs across the country that were approaching similar issues in different ways, but the common thread was that they were helping people get the skills they need to enter the workforce and to participate in the economy.
In Nova Scotia, 60 groups lost their funding as of March 31 when the labour market agreement funding from the federal government ended. The provincial government has now offered, for a period, bridge funding of several million dollars. For instance, some of these groups were helping people who had dropped out of high school to get their GEDs, such that they could enter training or the workforce. Some groups were helping with basic literacy.
Is this something you're seeing in other parts of the country as well, that some of these groups that were previously receiving federal funding as part of the labour market agreements have been rendered vulnerable by the decision to withdraw that funding as of March 31?
Professor, Lead Investigator, Poverty and Employment Precarity in Southern Ontario, McMaster University, As an Individual
One of my research partners is the United Way of Toronto. Of course, they associate with many of the organizations that receive that sort of funding, and certainly they are concerned. But I think also that as an organization there's a concern that while obviously we need these kinds of bridges to give young people these kinds of skills so they can compete in the labour market fairly with other people, I think we have to also be very cautious that we're not building very nice bridges to dead ends.
Certainly one of the concerns there is that we also have to think about what kinds of jobs these kids are going to be getting. Are we simply increasing the competition for a shrinking pool of good jobs? I think that's something that we have to be concerned about as well.
Liberal
Scott Brison Liberal Kings—Hants, NS
Thank you.
Any other comments from other parts of the country? Would you have seen similar challenges in other regions? Dauphin, Manitoba?
Executive Director, Dauphin Friendship Centre
It has been the experience in Manitoba, and we know of several different programs around the province that had the exact same situation happen. Some of them have closed. I think we're very fortunate that the Province of Manitoba does support adult literacy and learning. Getting your GED or adult upgrading education is already paid for by the province, but unfortunately Manitoba did not provide the bridge funding, so many of the programs closed or had to find alternative sources of funding.
Liberal
Scott Brison Liberal Kings—Hants, NS
Mr. Gouda, I'm very impressed with Career Edge's model and success rate. You have a 56% success rate in terms of your interns being hired by companies. The TD Economics report on youth unemployment and underemployment tells us there's potentially a $23-billion cost to the economy over the next decade or so as a result of sustained youth unemployment.
Should we be measuring or considering that cost when we're considering investments? Mr. Saxton mentioned paid internships and the federal government funding. Should we be perhaps increasing that, given the risk of significant economic loss, a multi-billion dollar loss, as a result of this youth unemployment and underemployment situation?
President, Career Edge Organization
Absolutely. I think we all know the demographics and the fact that pretty soon all of us baby boomers will be retiring. This is about helping what we do, and what you're talking about, Mr. Brison. It's about launching people's careers sooner and turning them into taxpayers instead of tax burdens and allowing them to start contributing, to start learning, so they can take over from those of us who will be retiring in the coming years.
Connecting them with full-time meaningful work experience shortly after graduation we believe greatly affects their own success and prosperity, and that has a very positive impact on Canada's society and economy, so yes.
Liberal
Scott Brison Liberal Kings—Hants, NS
Mr. Joe or Ms. Desmoulin, we're told by the economists that having a young population is an economic advantage, or can be an economic advantage, and I guess that's contingent on that young population having the skills. The youngest and fastest-growing population in Canada is in aboriginal and first nations communities.
If we're getting it right in terms of education and training, that would be a huge advantage for us economically, but we're not, so it's a big risk. I'm told that there are 300,000 or 400,000 young aboriginal and first nations members entering the workforce in the next—
Liberal
Scott Brison Liberal Kings—Hants, NS
Four hundred thousand entering the workforce in the next 10 years. Given that there's I think only a 30% high school graduation rate, should we be closing immediately that funding gap between aboriginal and non-aboriginal schools? Shouldn't that be a pretty clear investment that we ought to make post-haste?
Co-Chair, National Youth Council, Assembly of First Nations
I think we should be considering closing that gap pretty soon—sooner. When we look at our rates on reserve for diplomas we see that we're at somewhere around the 14.4% rate, compared to first nations off reserve, where we have 28.9%. This goes back to the 2006 census. Then compared to the non-aboriginal population, we're hovering at around 39.1%, and it goes on...it goes up. That's no certificate, diploma, or degree, compared to the high school certificate equivalent, where we're looking at 36.8% on reserve and 61.6% off reserve when compared to the non-aboriginal population at 66.8%. Looking at apprenticeships or trade certificates or diplomas, on reserve, again, it's anywhere from 48%...to 67.5% off reserve.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative James Rajotte
Unfortunately, you're out of time, Mr. Brison.
Mr. Joe, did you want to finish up?
Co-Chair, National Youth Council, Assembly of First Nations
There's a steady curve there that we should look at.
Conservative
Conservative
Gerald Keddy Conservative South Shore—St. Margaret's, NS
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Welcome to our witnesses.
We've been at this study now for a couple of weeks, and a number of messages keep coming back. One of them is to match the skills young people learn in school to the skills employers are looking for. I'm an optimist, so I think we're getting a little better at that.
But at the same time, we hear a lot of reports that the secondary and post-secondary education many young men and women are receiving is not necessarily what their future employers are looking for. That's a point I want to throw out there with a question for anyone to take a stab at: how do we do a better job of that matching?
The other question I have concerns the challenge of remote first nations communities. There are many remote communities in the country of Canada, but there are more remote first nations communities. For those communities that can offer anything beyond junior high, there is the added cost of it. Also, when young men or women leave junior high to go to high school, what is the quality of that education? That's a recurring theme in this: is the quality at the level it needs to be? Do we need to become better at delivery, and if so, how?
Anyone can take a stab at these questions.
You were nodding, so go ahead.
Beedahbin (Dawn) Desmoulin
Well, I would definitely say that we aren't meeting the educational needs of our youth in our communities. Elementary school education is not meeting the needs for our youth to ready themselves to go on to high school. We have youth leaving the community from high school, young people who have graduated. Some communities have high schools, so they have graduated at their high school in their community.
But then they go to post-secondary and they think: “Boy, I have a grade 12 diploma. The world is my oyster.” They leave the community, go to post-secondary, and have not a clue. They cannot compete or complete any kind of higher-level post-secondary education. Their skills are not there. Their foundational math and English language skills are not there.
In grades 6 and 3, they're still doing the testing for these students. The provincial testing is still mandatory for our first nations. They're still doing those to see how we compare with the provincial average, and we don't.
Conservative
Gerald Keddy Conservative South Shore—St. Margaret's, NS
Yes. I think that's more prevalent in every school, not just first nations schools. I'll give you an example. We try to hire a young person in the office every summer. Their educational skills vary from being okay—and I'm being polite—to being excellent. But many more of them are just okay. Grammar skills straight across the board are atrocious. Somehow we have to get those basics.
But the next part of that question is, how do we match those skills with the job market or with employers and the skills they're looking for? I tell high school classes all the time to get a good basic education and that their employer will more than likely be willing to train them. You can go to them with an undergraduate degree, but they're still going to want to train you.
Go ahead.
Vice-President, Habitat for Humanity Canada
First of all, there is a role for government to play, but it's not exclusively government's responsibility. I think in some ways the most effective matching of skills to labour-market needs comes in almost a P3 type of format.
I'll give you the best example I can think of. I have celebrated previously the Saskatchewan government's leadership. It's the government investing in and supporting the success they saw being created by Habitat and the Regina Trades and Skills Centre in particular. The skills and trades centre is not just an educational outfit; it is an industry-driven organization that brings together education based on what the local labour market is asking for. If it's construction that they're looking for, they offer more construction courses. If it's plumbing and electrical, they do that. If it's welding, they provide those opportunities.
Every student who goes into the program has almost a guarantee of employment when they come out. What they need between the time when the opportunity is presented and identified by the employer and the time they get to that opportunity with the employer is the chance to build somewhere. That's where we come in—in the middle.
Conservative
Gerald Keddy Conservative South Shore—St. Margaret's, NS
That makes a world of sense. But how are they able to maintain the flexibility? You have staff there full-time. Let's say you're teaching welding and carpentry and that those trades are in demand, and suddenly there's a change, and it's oriented more to oil and gas, so it's high-pressure welding and low-pressure gas pipefitting.
How do you maintain that flexibility?
Vice-President, Habitat for Humanity Canada
Saskatchewan may have the luxury of a growing economy, so everything is in demand and they can continue to invest in every area. I think this is a fair challenge to identify for the rest of the country, where there are fluctuations.
I would go back to what I think is the central proposition for me, that is, that funding should be directed to success; that it shouldn't always be government that identifies where to experiment in areas in which they think there will be success, but that we should really look at where success is being achieved by the partners at the table here.
When you identify that, you say that we should get more of it. That's where we should direct our resources. I think everybody at the table has to recognize that dollars are limited, so you want to get a good return. You should look at where success has been achieved.