Human Resources Committee on Oct. 5th, 2006

[Tony Martin, NDP, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

So that people understand, was the socio-economic initiative of any interest or value to your sector?

[Susan Annis]

We certainly felt a part of it and were involved in the discussions. The Canadian Conference of the Arts was the voice for the cultural sector in those discussions and around those tables. We were natural partners in that discussion.

[Tony Martin, NDP, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

Maybe we'll go back to the question of wages. Does anybody want to jump in here? The reason we're not making the connect is that the industries looking for people aren't paying enough. If they did, people would be willing to do the training, spend the time, make the investment, and actually come and work in your industry.

[Catherine Cottingham]

I'd like to respond to that.

We're a well-paid business. People make a very solid salary in the electricity business at every level of the company. One of our challenges is to the point that Susan made earlier around career awareness.

Recently the Ontario companies did a study that looked at people's awareness of trades in the business and found that general awareness was reasonably high among both parents and youth, in the 60% to 70% range, but awareness of opportunities in the utilities business was 2%.

So we have a significant challenge in helping the understanding of what kinds of career paths we can provide. Part of the career awareness piece is helping them understand we're not about old technology. People think we're somehow not cool and not exciting, and you're not going to be working with computerized things—that it's all somehow gears and levers, and whatever, which excites a small proportion of the population, but not everyone. Yet we're very high-tech. We have lots of great opportunities and lots of career paths for people. So our challenge is helping them understand that they're there.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Ms. Annis, just a quick response.

[Susan Annis]

Another way to think about compensation is the benefits that are available to workers. In our sector, I've mentioned that social benefits aren't available to the large number of self-employed. That's also true about the child care sector. So when they go to call centres, maybe they don't only get increased incomes, but they also get benefits, and that's a huge issue.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you. That's all the time we have.

We're going to move to our last questioner of the second round. Mr. Brown, you have five minutes, please.

[Patrick Brown, Conservative, Barrie, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you for being here today.

I come from a riding an hour north of Toronto, where Georgian College has a program focusing on the auto trades, which certainly encourages apprenticeships.

I want to delve a bit into what CARS has put forward, in terms of their proposal about the fifty-fifty cost-shared arrangement, to get your comments on what the cost of that would be for the federal government. What comments do you have for us on the initiative in budget 2006 for the apprenticeship training grant?

[Jennifer Steeves]

The recommendation I spoke to is a program that we administered in the early 1990s—and it worked tremendously well—where we leveraged federal funding with industry training dollars.

The program worked over a three-year period for about $7 million. We set up credits with the industry, so that it really did build a training culture among those who participated in the program. We lined up people like Canadian Tire Corporation and Midas—several big players in the Canadian industry to ante in, to commit some dollars. They felt that these were good investments, that they were getting a return on their training investment.

It was quite a complex program to administer, but the training selection went through us. We made sure that it was of a certain quality, and the effects of that program carry on today.

From our research, the people who subscribe to our interactive distance learning and other training programs came out of this initial program from the early 1990s for the most part, because they started getting into training. They started budgeting for and organizing training. It became a part of their corporate culture and it carries on today.

[Patrick Brown, Conservative, Barrie, ON]

What would the cost be for the federal government?

[Jennifer Steeves]

The program as a whole was about $7 million, and about 30,000 people were trained during that period.

[Patrick Brown, Conservative, Barrie, ON]

If it was reintroduced, do you think it would be the same amount today?

[Jennifer Steeves]

I think it could be done for that, yes.

[Patrick Brown, Conservative, Barrie, ON]

This is a general question to everyone. What are your centres doing to encourage more apprenticeship opportunities?

[Jennifer Steeves]

We've been working with the education community to promote careers in our industry to young people and get them thinking about careers in the industry and moving into apprenticeship programs. The other thing we've been doing is we've developed an accreditation program with some initial funding from the federal government, which has ended. The accreditation program, through which we accredit post-secondary motive power programs, carries on today. We look at curriculum, equipment, teacher time, and a lot of different criteria to ensure that young people who do have the initiative to get themselves into training to enter occupations have a very high quality training experience. Currently we have about 28 programs across Canada nationally accredited.

[Catherine Cottingham]

The electricity industry has significant apprenticeship programs across Canada. One of the interesting things that came out of the period of belt tightening in the 1990s was that many corporations saw apprenticeship programs as an extra. About 30% of our businesses as of 2004 did not have apprenticeship programs.

One of the things that I would say we are doing, and this is with the help of the Government of Canada, is just getting some solid data as to why you need to have them, why there is an opportunity to have them. Our businesses have to go before the regulators and defend their investment in training programs. Things like the sector study that the Government of Canada assisted us with helped them in demonstrating why there is a need. We have businesses that have said to us that they have gone before the regulator, and the regulator has said “why should we invest, why don't you just take from the jurisdiction next door”--hardly smart business planning.

On understanding the return of investment in apprenticeship, there was a study funded recently by the Government of Canada with the Canadian Apprenticeship Forum with a certain community of trades that was extremely helpful for our businesses to be able to say here's the return on actually putting a buck in for an apprenticeship program: the return is $1.38 for every dollar invested. That type of bottom-line impact is how you achieve program development with key influencers, whether they be senior leadership in a business or senior leadership in the policy environment.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

That's all the time we have, Mr. Brown. Thank you very much.

We're going to move now into our final round, and we have Mr. D'Amours for five minutes.

[Jean-Claude D'Amours, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you all for appearing before the committee today.

I am going to start with some observations. One of the things mentioned earlier is the fact that regions in this country are becoming more urban than rural and there is a problem with employment. Let us go back in time. Before going into politics, I was in economic development. When you work in economic development, you take into account the diversity of your suppliers, clients, and markets.

In some of the more rural regions of the country, there are people who appreciate the quality of life and the environment they live in. In certain cases, they are often forced to go away to study, but they would also like to be in a position to go back home.

Have the various organizations or sectors that you represent thought about the fact that the workers that you so desperately need might like to be able to go back home to where they were born, to work, which would create for your a permanent pool of people who could work in your sectors?

It is not because people work in a rural environment — my riding is rural — that they are uneducated. In reality, in my riding, in Northern New Brunswick, there are two community colleges and a university. Partnerships between industry and these teaching institutions can easily solve the training problems for industry, regardless of what industry we are talking about.

At the same time, instead of always sending employees or individuals to other regions, have the companies that you represent considered doing the opposite? There would be no training problems. People would be stable, because they are in the community they want to return to. Even people who go to work in other provinces say so. They would like to go back to their own region. That would represent incredible stability for the various industries. I understand that it would be more difficult for some industries, but in most cases, it is possible.

My riding has a seaport, a railway, roads, and airports. What more do you need when you have people, knowledge, and infrastructure? I would like to hear your reactions to that.

[Colette Rivet]

Prior to today, I might have had trouble answering your question, but I now have a better understanding of the issue of health and pharmacology products and new companies. They often need to be close to one another to continue to develop biotechnology. Not all companies will survive. Sometimes, people want to be able to move to another company to pursue their career.

We now have agricultural and forestry biotechnologies. There is also bio-fuel here, in Ottawa. We are trying to find a place to set up a bio-fuel and ethanol plant. I know that biotechnology is now in your area.

Initially, it is a little bit difficult with respect to research, but there are many advantages. In fact, biotechnology is very important for agriculture in Saskatchewan. We also provide a great deal of assistance to farmers.

[Jean-Claude D'Amours, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

And in terms of the auto sector?

[Jennifer Steeves]

As for the automotive repair and service sector, those folks are everywhere, rural and urban. Everybody has a vehicle. They all need to be repaired at some point or another.

The New Brunswick community college in Bathurst is one of our accredited programs. They offer excellent automotive repair training and collision.

The challenge for our industry is to release people to go to training to upgrade their skills. If you're in a rural location, it's not just the cost of training. It's the downtime, the loss of productivity while that person or two people are away on training, if they have to go to Moncton or to Bathurst, for example. So what we came up with was our interactive distance learning, and that has worked very well.

The way it works is that a shop has a satellite dish and a television set in their lunch room or some common area in the shop, and we broadcast upgrade training--not apprenticeship training but upgrade training once they're in the workforce--so they can keep their skills updated.

That has worked very well, especially for rural communities, because it is such a challenge to keep their skills updated, and if they don't, their employability is greatly diminished, especially in our industry. So ways to bring training into the workplace are very key for our industries, and probably for others.

If you look at a corporation like Canadian Tire, they have stores everywhere across Canada and certainly need to attain training.

So there's interactive distance learning, distance training. We're now looking into e-learning, what the industry's capacity would be to receive training in that format.

Ensuring that people's skills are upgraded and keeping them employable is key, but they're certainly employable in these rural communities.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much. That's all the time we have for that question.

I just want to ask a quick question. I know we talk about training, and training, and training. I realize that the federal government does offer some incentives, but I also realize that employers are in that boat as well.

What are your thought processes on employers? Should employers be stepping up to the plate for skill training, and are they? Obviously they are, probably at various levels, at various times. Is there more need for employers to be stepping up? That's the first part of the question.

Secondly, is there a way a government could encourage them to do that? I think I know the answer to that, but what kinds of things can we as a government do to encourage more of that?

I don't know who wants to take a stab at that first. Go ahead, Ms. Rivet.

[Colette Rivet]

Yes, the federal government could certainly help us with putting in internships.

And how would the companies help? They would actually take the time away from trying to keep their companies surviving and help train these people and make them competitive and marketable, and help them out.

So that's an internship part, where you don't really need to have the credentials recognized; you need to have the competencies recognized. That's where we could work in partnership with the federal government.

And how do the companies help? They do help. They help with our sector councils, they help with on-the-job training, they help with colleges and universities, and so they do it in their means, as much as they can, as well. Yes, there's lots of room for improvement, but they're trying.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

I have a quick follow-up about internships. What does that mean? Does the government pay for the time? What exactly...?

[Colette Rivet]

Right now the federal government does subsidize what's called a career focus program, and we administer that program. The federal government subsidizes one-third of the salary of the people who are going in. They are people who have never worked in biotechnology; we are trying to make them aware of the sector and get them interested. That is filled up immediately. Everybody loves it, and the evaluation of it is that over 90% of the people--I can't remember the exact figure, but it's quite high--have been hired by the biotechnology companies afterwards.

It's very promising, but the internship area is even more than that; it is to help not only the people who are in transition--new entrants--but also foreign professionals who are coming in.