Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
If you don't mind, Mr. Allison, I will address you in French, as it is my mother tongue, but I would be more than pleased to answer questions in French or English, depending on who is asking.
We are very pleased to be here today. The Canadian Federation of Independent Business is an organization that represents SMEs from across Canada. You have before you a presentation of a few slides that I will come back to briefly, so as to allow a time for discussion afterwards.
Some of my colleagues already appeared before the committee in Newfoundland and in Moncton. Many members of the Federation are present since the issue of labour shortage is one of the constant priorities of SME leaders, throughout Canada as well as Quebec.
In the past few years, we have seen that the labour shortage was closely linked to several problems, be it the tax burden, be it administrative and regulatory burden or employment insurance. The heads of SMEs talk to us about the labour shortage every year, because this is a constant priority for them. And their concerns in this regard have been growing in the past few years.
In the slides that I distributed, you will see that the concerns of the heads of SMEs are not necessarily tied to unemployment rates. One might tend to think that the labour shortage is inversely proportional to the problem of unemployment, but that is not necessarily the case.
Alberta is currently experiencing significant labour shortages. Our SME leaders say that the qualified labour force, more specifically among the young, is moving West, which hurts them. In fact, Mr. Argento asked a question earlier dealing with the mobility of the labour force.
That fact that we are in a period of lower unemployment does not necessarily stop the problem of labour shortage from getting worse.
The Canadian Federation of Independent Business is an organization that polls its members. We asked them questions about their hiring plans for the next 12 months: only 26 per cent of them intend to hire more full-time workers in the next 26 months, and only 13 per cent of them intend to increase their part-time workforce.
These low percentages are closely linked to the problems in hiring workers. Our members will still fill their labour force needs, but by using different strategies. They will hire underqualified staff or temporary staff or even let business opportunities passed them by. Generally speaking, these strategies are not necessarily viable in the long term, because they only fill a short-term need.
The time involved in training new workers often represents a considerable number of hours for employers in all regions of Canada. These employees are not necessarily qualified and need to be trained in order to bring them up to par.
However, the tendency to train new employees is lower in Quebec than elsewhere in Canada, which is somewhat worrisome. Quebec provide 104 hours of informal training and 22 hours of formal training to new employees whereas in the rest of the Canada it comes up at 113 and 23 hours respectively.
It is appropriate to examine the issue of training in greater depth, because that is one of the solutions to the shortage of qualified labour. When we ask our members what government can do to alleviate labour force shortages, we see that labour force training, especially in Quebec, is a very compelling subject for the heads of SMEs.
With the adoption of the Act for the development of manpower training, known as Bill 90, the heads of businesses whose payroll is $1 million or less are exempted from the obligations under this act.
The CFIB has often criticized — and I will get back to this — the burden that this legislation placed on the heads of SMEs. And yet, the CFIB is not against labour force training by SMEs. As we are members of the Commission des partenaires du marché du travail [Labour Force Partners' Commission] and we have a vision on this very issue, we will have opportunities to discuss it further.
Quebec has many areas of jurisdiction: employment, training, immigration, etc. We will soon be publishing an extensive survey on the labour shortage. For the past few years, the federation has been keeping an eye on this issue. Our report on this monitoring, which will also deal with the question of immigration, will be published in the coming weeks.
The federal and provincial governments must coordinate their efforts in order to create flexible approaches, be it on training, employment insurance, immigration, pensions, etc., and find solutions.
We also believe that it is important to educate business, and bring everyone on a level-playing field. One must understand the reality of SME leaders. A SME is not a multinational corporation. The head of the business wears many hats: director of finance, director of human resources, production manager. Moreover, he brews the coffee for his employees in the morning.
You must take into account the reality of managing a SME when you develop public policy. I could discuss this at length, but we will certainly have an opportunity to discuss it in the coming minutes.
Thank you.