Finance Committee on Feb. 15th, 2017

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

In the “Building a Highly Skilled and Resilient Canadian Workforce through the FutureSkills Lab” report and the list of three core functions of the FutureSkills lab, it was remarkable to read that there is “$17 billion in annual public spending on skills and training programs”.

I'm really curious about that. Could you comment on the FutureSkills lab? I think that's an endeavour that all governments in Canada—all three levels, and if you count the regional, four—really need to look at, because we are investing a lot of money in skills training. Maybe some of those programs need to be reviewed. Could you comment on the FutureSkills lab?

[Dr. Ilse Treurnicht]

The FutureSkills lab was, on the one hand, very much focused on recognizing that we have a vibrant labour pool that's talented, diverse, and highly educated. At the same time, we are facing some very important shifts coming in the future of work and the nature of jobs, through automation and digitization and so on.

The idea of the FutureSkills lab is to fill a bit of a gap by creating a neutral entity that sits between the educational institutions, the corporate training environment, some of the non-profits that deliver skills training, some of the regulators provincially, and so on. It is to create an opportunity for all of these groups to come together and begin to identify shared challenges and experiment with new innovative approaches to skills training, after creating alignment on where some of the pain points are. It is also to create more agile data collection mechanisms to stay ahead of the trends, in particular using digital signals, which are not typically captured in labour market information systems; then very importantly, in a very evidence-driven way, to begin to collect the results of those shared experiments, bring some of the best practices from global institutions—countries such as Singapore and Australia are doing very interesting things on future skills—and make sure that those learnings are widely available to organizations at the provincial level, at the federal level, and in the non-profit sector so that we can up our game on all fronts.

We think it fills a very important gap to foster a kind of new environment and to try new approaches.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Thank you all.

Mr. Dusseault, there is time for one question. Then we'll have to cut it there.

[Pierre-Luc Dusseault, NDP, Sherbrooke, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My question will be quite short.

Mr. Sabia, you mentioned earlier the role of catalyst and investor that the government can play to promote economic development. I want you to elaborate on the investor role.

Traditionally, the Canadian government has loaned large amounts to private companies, and it did this very recently. In particular, the government gave an approximately $380 million loan to Bombardier, whereas the investor strategy was observed in Quebec. The Quebec government invested in the C Series by buying shares in the company.

Do you think the Canadian government should play an investor role? Do you think it's really the government's role to invest directly by buying shares in private companies?

[Michael Sabia]

I could tell you all sorts of things.

When a government plays the role of unifier, catalyst and investor, the goal is to try to present a new image of a government that won't intervene, but will work with the private sector and other stakeholders to consolidate everybody's skills. The goal is to work together to mobilize our society and achieve important goals. The first thing would be to propose very high and very ambitious performance targets, and also to bring people together to try to achieve these goals.

I want to go back to our discussion on infrastructure funding. At the same time, I can answer Mr. Deltell's question on the investment bank.

We suggest that the government's financial involvement in an infrastructure funding project be treated as an investment. I'll give you an example. In Montreal, the Caisse is currently planning a new public transit system. At this time, we're negotiating with the Quebec government and the Canadian government to determine how they could participate in the project.

The goal isn't to ask them for a subsidy, but for an investment that will generate a return for both levels of government. It's another way of viewing the government's involvement. A government won't always be able to play an investor role. That's not realistic. Also, in a number of cases, such as the infrastructure funding case, there will be chances to change our way of thinking about this issue.

That's why we're focusing on the idea of a government investor. An investment isn't always just the idea of something in financial terms. For example, if a government facilitates the development of a skills lab, it's an investment in the skills of our workforce to encourage more labour market participation. It's an investment that will generate a return. In this case, the return is a social return, and, indirectly, a significant economic return. It's an example of the government's role as an investor in the development of our human resources. That's why we're creating this idea of an investor.

[Pierre-Luc Dusseault, NDP, Sherbrooke, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

With that, we'll have to end today's discussion.

Thank you very much, Ms. Treurnicht and Mr. Sabia. Thank you for your thoughtful answers to questions, the discussion you provoked, and the work you do on the advisory council. We really appreciate that as a Parliament and as a people.

I have just one bit of information for committee members before we adjourn. The deadline to submit amendments to Bill C-240, that's Brian May's bill, is 5 p.m. tomorrow.

With that, we will adjourn till next Wednesday.

The meeting is adjourned.