Human Resources Committee on Oct. 24th, 2006

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

I mean the agreements that basically spoke to people with disabilities, people with low income, and so forth.

I guess I'd like an answer also from Ms. Nasser on that one.

[Brian Tapper]

We didn't mention the labour market agreement for persons with disabilities program in our presentation because we needed a lot more time. This program has been around in one shape or another since 1962 and has gone through a number of iterations. As a rehab counsellor, it's been absolutely essential in helping me move my clients who are patients in hospitals from being persons with disabilities to being people who are actively engaged in their education and retraining.

As Tova and I said in our presentation, it's a program that's been stretched, and for a decade its budget was frozen. We saw a slight increase in Nova Scotia last year, but if you had $100 in 1994 you'd need $121 today to have the same purchasing power. In Nova Scotia, because of the lack of funding and the increased demand, any person with a disability who now wants to go to post-secondary study has to apply for a student loan.

A lot of people who become disabled for one reason or another get into financial crisis. They may go bankrupt or be forced to default on a student loan. Because of that financial crisis, when they apply for a student loan today they may be ineligible. That means as a rehab counsellor I don't have any way of helping them to move toward training, because generally my clients have been out of work long enough that they don't have EI eligibility.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

So student loans is one of the key proposals you'd look at improving.

[Brian Tapper]

Yes. The LMAPWD program has to be looked at in the context of student aid because you are now required in Nova Scotia to apply for a student loan. If you have a bad financial history for a variety of reasons, it disqualifies you from getting access to training dollars.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Ms. Nasser.

[Susan Nasser]

I'm sorry, but I can't comment on that specific labour mobility agreement, but I'll just make a couple of comments on the importance of training.

Many people trying to get back into the labour force need not just specific job training; they need a lot of support and help just to get back into the whole idea of being in the workforce again. It's really important to remember that there are life skills kinds of things that they have to learn as well as actual job skills.

The training also has to take into account the same kinds of barriers that people encounter when they're trying to go to work, such as child care and transportation. If the training doesn't address those things, people won't get the training they need to advance into the employability sector.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Thank you.

Let me just start by saying that labour market agreements were for people who weren't attached to EI. They provided funding for training and skills upgrading and so forth, which was desperately needed.

[Brian Tapper]

When you look at the people with disabilities who our agency works with, the vast majority of them have never had a labour market attachment, which I really think is an important point. We're not just talking about people who have worked and become disabled, or stopped work because they're disabled; we're talking about a large segment of the community who, because of their disabilities, have never been able to enter the workforce.

[Tova Sherman]

We need to further address the fact that the youth clearly aren't attached yet because they haven't had the opportunity. We have a huge crisis with what we call our transition youth, who are transitioning from school--or maybe they haven't even completed high school--and looking to move into the workplace and/or full-time post-secondary education. Our big problem is that particular stream of funding has completely dried up.

I have a contract that was completely approved to support transition youth, but it's sitting on a desk due to lack of funding. Funding has stopped, and no new project has been funded by Service Canada in the HRM for transition youth since October 2005. This is really a crisis in terms of our youth options. There's the LMP as you mentioned, and then you attach the fact that all these transition youth have nowhere to go.

At one time Service Canada was extremely supportive of transition youth. Here in the HRM, which I can address, we had some incredible programs that were incredibly successful, with over a 93% retention rate for youth in their first jobs. These are real programs that were successful and are now completely shut down simply because, although approved in principle, they never received financing.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Mr. Cheverie, you have 30 seconds.

[Leo Cheverie]

In P.E.I., EI part 2 has very limited funds for people in terms of what they can access. Since the mid-1990s, $10 billion has been cut from what the Government of Canada was investing in skills training, and there's a lack of employer investment in skills training. Therefore, these federal government cuts in training have been really disastrous.

We know there has been $3.5 million for the LMPAs. Previously $125 million was allocated to workplace skills strategies, $30 million over three years for the National Literacy Secretariat, $25 million over three years for the training centre and structure plan, as well as new LMPA funds. These are really vital, because only workers can access these training funds, and EI part 2 is one of the few things available in P.E.I. for workers to get access to training. Otherwise, they have to go back and retrain themselves at their own expense, and many of them aren't in a financial position to do that because they're living in poverty or aren't able to access student loans. Even those who do go through student loans are saddled with a $30,000 or $40,000 debt at the end of their training. So this is really vital.

We say there's a skill shortage in Canada, and employers aren't paying. Of all the OECD countries, our employers are paying less in terms of retraining their own employees. So we need to have government play a real pan-Canadian role. Canadians are moving from province to province. So obviously lots of our workers in P.E.I...we're training them, they're training themselves, or P.E.I. is training them, yet they're going elsewhere in the country because of low wages in P.E.I.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you, Mr. Regan.

We're going to move to Mr. Lessard, seven minutes, please.

[Yves Lessard, Bloc, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I would like to thank you for coming here this morning and sharing your expertise concerning the reality faced by the people you represent. I would like to address a subject that most of you touched on: the impoverishment of 50 per cent of the people who are in the labour market, namely women.

First off, Ms. Dempsey told us that the wage gap between men and women was still around 30%. That means that women earn only 72% of what men earn. As Mr. Cheverie said earlier, barely 25 years ago, the gap in the health sector was even bigger. Some say it was 62%. While there has been progress, it seems the gap is still very wide.

Between 1967 and 1977, you put forward two or three measures that were adopted by the government in order to rectify the situation. It seems to me that there has not been a lot of progress in that regard.

Can you tell us what is standing in the way of narrowing the gap?

[Karen Dempsey]

I would say no, we have not advanced very far, because, as you say, we still have more or less the status quo. We thank you for bringing that up.

I think this is something that is really, really important and is necessary to address in order to have full and equitable funding between men and women.... That's not the right word. It's necessary in order to have gender equality, to have pay equity, and pay equity is very, very important.

So I think that's something the government really has to look at very carefully, and with the cuts to Status of Women Canada, I'm very afraid that we are still going to be in that same situation for a while. It's going to be very difficult to progress and work toward that.

There are a couple of other things I would like to mention, such as older workers. I didn't get a chance to mention this before. If you don't mind, could I talk about older workers for a minute? Many of them are women, and, as you said, essentially older women, older workers, are often stressed because they face being made redundant before they're ready to retire. They often have little or no financial compensation. In fact, most of the workers in our society are not in a position to get a company or government pension when they retire. By government pension, I mean they are not receiving a pension from being an employee of a government agency or department or a corporation.

Many of these people have lived their lives as the working poor and will therefore only have CPP, QPP, and OAS to live on in retirement, supplemented by the guaranteed income supplement, at a rate based on their gross income. Many of these people, especially women, have had to take time away from their careers to care for family or elderly parents, resulting in years when they were not able to contribute to the CPP or RRSPs. The result is that they're compelled to live out their days on fixed and inadequate incomes, or are forced to find part-time work to supplement their retirement. This is another facet of the inequity between men and women, because women are being penalized. Because of the time they spent out, they are ending up with less than adequate retirement incomes.

I could go on and on, but I have a couple more points. Would you like to hear them? Is that okay?

I don't know if anybody else actually did mention the recognition of foreign credentials. At this time in Canada there is a significant shortage of health care professionals, such as nurses and doctors. And although qualified foreign-trained professionals could provide a partial answer to the shortage, they face a lack of recognition of their credentials. In order to ensure a level of competence for health care professionals across Canada, standard tests for accreditation have been set up. But fees for these exams are often high, and it is often difficult for foreign-trained professionals to obtain Canadian experience.

At HRSDC, the budget for language training has been cut, and this particularly penalizes immigrant women. The process of accreditation of health care professionals trained in other countries should be made more accessible while ensuring that a uniform standard of competence is maintained across Canada.

We urge the Government of Canada to work with provincial governments, professional organizations, and licensing bodies to ensure loans and other resources are available for qualifying exams and upgrading, to develop academic assessment tools and testing, and to ensure retesting is accessible and affordable. We need to increase the opportunity for foreign-trained professionals to acquire more Canadian experience under supervision, and accelerate the accreditation or retraining process through English and French language training, including long-term and/or immersion language training where needed.

Someone else mentioned, too, that funding for literacy programs has been cut. Again, this penalizes immigrant women in particular, and is a barrier to getting these people into the workforce.

[Yves Lessard, Bloc, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

I would like to come back to the problem of poverty, which affects women in particular. If I am correct in my understanding of Ms. Nasser’s comments, women are hit particularly hard not only at work, but also when they have the misfortune of losing their job. We know that only 43 per cent of men can hope to receive employment insurance benefits if they are so unfortunate as to lose their job. The figure for women is 33 per cent. Already, there is discrimination.

Ms. Nasser, you seem to be saying that more and more women are being forced to accept precarious employment, that is, work part time, on call or in temporary jobs. Is that your observation? Are we coming to the realization that, despite job access and retention measures, it is all a waste and a matter of swimming against the tide?

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Just give a quick response. We're out of time.

[Susan Nasser]

I think it's true that women are vastly over-represented in the precarious employment field for a variety of reasons, often because of competing family responsibilities, both with children and with aging parents.

If they can enter the labour market—and that's difficult for many women, especially single mothers—they find themselves in jobs that don't make them eligible for employment insurance and that are seasonal, part-time, and don't pay very much. If they are collecting social assistance, there is a huge impact on overall income because of clawback measures.

It's an incredibly difficult situation to climb out of poverty when you're faced with this whole barrage of barriers to getting reasonable, secure, paid employment.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much.

Madam Savoie.

[Denise Savoie, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Merci.

Since we began the study, I've been trying to figure out this crazy patchwork quilt that passes for the financial assistance to students and workers that's available. It's grown without any kind of coherent vision.

I believe you alluded to the opportunity fund and the workplace skills initiative. Could you comment on this?

If we want to get more people working, using their full capacities, what kind of assistance system would really work to get us there, instead of this system, which, according to the statistics I've seen, disproportionately favours people with high incomes who would already be able to access training in any event?

[Tova Sherman]

I can say this, and you can then cut in, if you have something more to say.

I would like to say the concept of the opportunity fund is an excellent one. I would again remind you that 70% of persons with disabilities who want to work are unattached. We are talking about a great majority of people who literally have one fund to access and one fund only, and it's called the opportunity fund.

[Denise Savoie, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Those are people with disabilities.

[Tova Sherman]

I'm sorry. Forgive me. I'm addressing persons with disabilities.

We're also talking about one in five Nova Scotians. I feel we're talking about quite a large sector of our population versus what might be perceived as something very small. We happen to have the largest population of people who self-identify with disability in the country.

We really feel we are certainly including issues around poverty and women, and so on. We can see where we link up across the board.

The opportunity fund has been static, as I mentioned, meaning if it had even grown, let alone shrunk, which it has done, by keeping anything static, we all know that inflation shrinks it. As a result, we have the only access fund, which is actually a very good one and it provides a lot of flexibility.

For instance, I have one young woman in my office who is going to go to school. She can't get a job in her field because she doesn't have the experience. Because she's unattached, we finally just got her to go to school. She has a rather serious disability that she's overcome, and she's back and ready to go to school. But because she's unattached, we can't even assist her in getting some experience before school or in providing a work experience that's limited, with any kind of support. It's very difficult to convince an employer, when someone has absolutely no experience, to take that on without any kind of support, both financial and agency support.

I don't think it's only about money. I also think it's about what agencies need to do to support that person as well. We all have a responsibility. We're not here to say you need to deal with it. We're here to say we all need to deal with this together, and we're here at the table saying we're willing to talk about it.

The opportunity fund is a great fund and it's a functional fund. The problem is that it doesn't grow and it doesn't represent the percentage of the population of persons with disabilities who want to work but can't get attached.

[Denise Savoie, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Did you say there was no financing? It wasn't only that it hadn't grown and it had eroded, but there was no new financing under this fund at the moment. Did I hear you correctly?

[Tova Sherman]

Since what year?

[Brian Tapper]

Since the fund was created in 1997. Minister Scott travelled across the country in 1996. There was $30 million in 1997, and it's $30 million today. That's nine years.

My executive director is sitting in the back row, and if she were here, she would tell you that the cost of delivering services has gone up, just like everything else. If somebody wants to go to an operating program, the cost has gone up. If there's a service we need to fund...all those things consistently go up. I'm amazed by the number of people we serve. We're essentially trying to do more with less.

There's one other thing about this program that drives me nuts, to put it in simple language. If we have a client and we fund them to go into a program, at the end of the year the Government of Canada says we have to give them a tax receipt--the T4A. This means that people who are living on limited incomes have to claim whatever services we provided to them on their already small income.

We need to talk about how we provide people with incentives. For some people, the worry about whether they're going to have to pay money back could be enough to stop them in their tracks. It's a huge thing.

The other issue that's really related to this is how we provide people with supports. Then, there's the issue of how the various programs communicate. For example, if you happen to be a person with a disability who is living on income assistance in Nova Scotia, and you're fortunate enough to get money back after you've submitted your income tax, that is clawed back.