Human Resources Committee on Oct. 25th, 2006

[Denise Savoie, NDP, Victoria, BC]

But do some of those 200 imply a finer cut of the 45, or are they other trades? Certainly I can think of some in the technical field and so on, but I'm curious, do any of those 200 involve a finer cut of the 45?

[Jeff Morrison]

Some, yes; some, no. That's the easiest answer. For example, there is a trade identified as form worker, which is not a Red Sealable trade.

Form workers are those who establish the foundation of a building. That is not Red Seal, yet it is one of the 200 trades. It has no other category, if you will. It's not a subcategory of another trade, whereas you will have some trades that could be considered potentially subtrades or a subdivision of a major trade.

For example, you have the Red Seal trade of an electrician, yet one of the non-Red Seal trades, identified as one of 200, is a technical electrician. Now what the exact difference between those two is, I couldn't tell you. So yes and no is the easiest answer.

[Denise Savoie, NDP, Victoria, BC]

I was thinking of the way some trades have been cut up in the construction field in B.C., where you have a door hanger—that's the training, and that's where it begins and ends, which has caused problems. This loses the whole vision of becoming a builder, and because it's the job available, sometimes they get caught in just door hanging and that's where they are. That's where they begin and that's where they stay. So I was concerned about that, and you've clarified it.

[Jeff Morrison]

Frankly, it's exactly this situation that you talked about, which is why we're asking for some form of national standard for these various trades. The situation you described in British Columbia may not be the same here in Quebec, or it may not be the same as in Ontario, because different trades are defined in different ways.

[Denise Savoie, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Thank you; I appreciate that clarification. I think that indeed, in the case of many trades, that would allow for greater mobility.

Mr. Lavoie, you talked about development and training, and I found it interesting that you are not particularly in favour of this bill, whereas in the past few weeks, many witnesses presented it to us as a solution.

I did not really understand why you are not in favour of this. You mentioned the official and unofficial number of training hours and you compared the situation in Quebec to that of British Columbia. There is not a great deal of difference.

[André Lavoie]

I must clarify what I said, Ms. Savoie. I said that when the legislation was implemented in Quebec, the incentive was of a financial nature, meaning that the purpose was to increase investment in training. The way to go about this was to create the Fonds national de formation de la main-d'oeuvre [The Quebec Labour Force Training Fund]. An employer who could not demonstrate that he had invested 1 per cent of his payroll in labour force training automatically had to send a cheque for the corresponding amount to the Ministry of Revenue, which then sent on the money to the Labour Force Training Fund. We have always said that was not the appropriate approach.

Let us be clear here: the CFIB is in favour of labour force training development. In fact, quite recently, a parliamentary commission examined the five-year report dealing with this legislation. We are certainly not asking that it be abolished. Quite the contrary: following the raising of the payroll ceiling to $1 million or more, we accepted an invitation from the Minister of Employment at the time to sit on the Commission des partenaires du marché du travail [Labour Force Partners' Commission] in order to make Bill 90 more effective, that is the Act to promote the development of manpower training.

We also contributed to developing the General Framework for Skills Development and Recognition, which is a much more appropriate approach for small business leaders, as it takes into account their reality. We want more mechanisms and flexibility, because there is a lot of informal training going on.

As I said earlier, a small business owner manages 5 to 10 employees. It was complicated to ask him if in fact the very informal training it provided Joe this week complied with the criteria of Bill 90 and whether he could consider this a training expenditure. What we are saying is that the accounting approach is not the right one.

Training has to be concentrated in certain regions. It is difficult for an isolated company in a given region to work toward implementing a training pool and motivate employers to participate in it. Right now, we have a training program that results from the framework for skills development with sectoral committees. We establish occupational standards. We have to get companies to bring their employees skills up to par. That is far more promising and fruitful.

It was in that sense that we were against the legislation as it stood. We were working toward an amendment to the Act to foster the development of manpower training, that is unanimously supported by employers, unions and community groups who sit on the Labour Force Partners' Commission. This is a step forward.

I want to be very clear: we are not against the development of labour force training.

[Denise Savoie, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Thank you for that clarification.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

We're over time here. We'll have to catch you in the next round.

Mr. Brown, for seven minutes, please.

[Patrick Brown, Conservative, Barrie, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

My question is for Mr. André Lavoie. I am pleased to see the Canadian Federation of Independent Business here. Before I was elected, I was a member of your organization. I am a lawyer and I own a small business.

Your organization has always polled its members to find out their opinion. In your presentation, you stated that you had asked your members what government could do to alleviate labour force shortages. Sixty per cent of them put reducing the tax burden in second place. Why? Were they referring to taxes, income tax, employability? That is my first question.

My second question is: how could the government reduce taxes for independent businesses?

[André Lavoie]

I'm glad to see that you were a proud member of CFIB.

Indeed, lowering the tax burden is always one of the highest priorities of our members, and I would say there are numerous ways of doing it. Whether it's on payroll taxes or on tax credits or on EI, there are numerous ways of putting some money back in the pockets of small business owners. In the last budget there was some very good news from a tax point of view, such as the $400,000 threshold for small businesses.

In a way, what we're saying is that you need to be able to give a bit of a break to the small business owners from a tax point of view in order to help them reinvest this money into their businesses. This is contrary to big businesses--and I don't want to attack big businesses--but of course big businesses answer to shareholders. Normally big businesses can be there to make profits, obviously, and of course they want to put dividends in the pockets of their shareholders.

It's very different in the independent business. If you give a tax break to a small business owner, what is he going to do with it? He's not necessarily going to put it in his pocket. He's going to put it back in his business. He's going to create more jobs. He's going to create more opportunities for training. He's going to create more opportunities for investing in technology in order to improve his business performance. This is basically what we're talking about.

As for your second question, I guess it was on a different way of cutting taxes. As I said, in the last budget there was some very good news and we were encouraged. I'm going to give you an example. The taxe sur la capitale, the capital tax, is against logic. You tax the profit before the business has even made one cent. It doesn't make sense. Everybody says it's against logic. I think the governments have to attack that sort of bad taxing that basically is counterproductive to businesses.

[Alfonso Argento]

If I may add to this two points of view, one is that the fiscal system in Canada ultimately needs to be reviewed completely. It's a fiscal system that penalizes people rather than motivates them. If you take on the two fronts, as André said, as an employer, if you have a break in taxes, you will reinvest more in your enterprise. As an employee, especially in construction, if you've done your 40 hours and you've made your $1,000 a week, or whatever, and your employer asks you to work a few more extra hours, the employee is probably willing to do it, but then he says, “If I work three, four, five, or ten more extra hours this week, I'm going to pay twice the amount of taxes, so I'm going to stay home. It's too cold outside to work for $3 an hour.”

The fiscal system is very out of date. It must be updated to the 2000s, when people must be encouraged to work rather than feel the taxation system is a penalty. This is an issue I wanted to bring to your attention.

[Patrick Brown, Conservative, Barrie, ON]

I appreciate the way you've put that about the motivation to work, because when I initially saw this lowering of the tax burden as a way to help the labour shortage, to play devil's advocate, one would assume that if you raise taxes and businesses go under, all of a sudden there's more trained labour that's available, and, heaven forbid, that's not what you want. But commercially, if you reduce taxes, you stimulate jobs; you create more of a need in the workforce.

Is there any concern that by reducing taxes you're actually going to create more of a demand on the need for trained labour?

[André Lavoie]

Absolutely not. I think you're going to create quite the opposite effect. You're going to give a bit of a break to the business owners to be able to reinvest that money into what counts--creating jobs.

[Patrick Brown, Conservative, Barrie, ON]

Training?

[André Lavoie]

Training is part of it too, and that's what I've always said.

If you want to encourage business owners to train more people, don't create bureaucracy; create the conditions or the structures, the simple structures, that will help them to take advantage of those structures.

I'm going to give you an example. The new hires program at the federal level was a great idea. Basically, people were given credits for creating new jobs or hiring new people to join the labour market.

I think you need to encourage small business owners. It may be fiscal deductions and so on and so forth, but they need to see a change in their pocket in order to be able to reinvest that money and be more productive.

[Alfonso Argento]

Basically, we need to make it worthwhile for the employer to hire apprentices more and more. I think, as I said, the initiative in the last federal budget was to give grants to the employee and also to the owner who employs these apprentices, but it's restricted to some Red Seal program employees. We say let's open it to all apprenticeships. Let's go get our workforce. Let's get the young to join the industry.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

We can have maybe one more, but it has to be very short.

[André Lavoie]

One more thing is if you're going to make any kind of tax credits available for small business, make sure they are taken advantage of by the small businesses and not necessarily the big businesses, because if you add so many conditions and restrictions, at the end of the day they get discouraged from applying and you lose the whole effect.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Mr. Gariépy, before I move to the second round, I know that no one has asked you any questions on credentials. I know it's a huge issue. It's been brought up everywhere we have been. Maybe in the second round we'll have some of those questions.

I just wanted to clarify. I appreciate the fact that we talk about duplication, and I think that as members of Parliament we certainly see it on a constant basis. Trying to figure that out and reduce it is one of the challenges of government.

Talk to us a bit about Quebec's foreign credentials. What we heard in other provinces was that people are coming in based on their scores and their recommendations, and then they are left out because they don't qualify. These foreign equivalency exams are difficult and very challenging. We realize certainly that it varies by province, but just talk to us a bit about the success of Quebec. I take it from what you've been saying that your experience with what's been happening indicates that Quebec has been leading the way. Maybe there's something we could learn as we look at setting that up federally. From your experience, could you touch on some of the challenges?

[André Gariépy]

Some of the challenges deal with the fact that when you immigrate, you generate a gap because you were trained by your educational institution back in your country of origin, and these institutions train for their country.

There are differences, cultural differences, in the way things are organized. The health services are different. The protocol and the technology used in some countries are different. The way to interact with the client is different. When you're in the health system, the way to interact with pain is a cultural aspect, and the training you receive sometimes is not the training adapted to the reality in Quebec, in Canada, in North America.

There are some gaps, and people are not looking for gaps; they are looking for things that can be recognized. If it's knowledge, everybody is trained with knowledge in a reasonably equivalent way--when you deal with science, it is science. But whenever you deal with some aspect of the way to apply science, the way to interact with the client or with other professionals, the ethics, the way things are organized, then.... And also there's language. It's even important in Ontario because you're facing a situation in which people come and they don't know enough English to be able to practise. Communication in professional relations with a client is at the basis of knowing the needs, then expressing what's being offered as services, then having the consent, and then acting upon it. If you cannot even understand the question in an exam, how can you prove that you have the qualifications and then after that practise? All these things come into play for one person.

The gap is made of two shores. It's like a river. We're responsible for part of it because we've been here for a few hundred years, establishing things--standards, ways to intervene, ways to practice--based on the level of technology we can pay for. Sometimes we don't have the money, but we think we have the money for it so we have a good health system. But for somebody coming from abroad, depending on the country, there will be gaps.

Coming from Ontario, it's a minor gap. Coming from the U.S., then, whoops, it's a larger gap. And when you come from some countries in Africa.... But even in Africa, when you're coming from a Commonwealth country, you can relate to the education system because they kept the British education system in a way. Even in the former French colonies, they kept part of the French education system. If you can relate to the French education system, you can adapt.

So each time it's a challenge, and depending on the immigration wave you receive--from Southeast Asia, from the Eastern bloc countries, or northern Africa--new challenges are coming. And the challenges are getting the information for the immigrant and about the immigrant and the country of origin to make the necessary equivalencies.

Then you need to have efficient tools. Efficient means affordable but also reliable, because we're issuing a permit to act on things that carry risk of harm many times. People are saying, in their institutions in Quebec and in other jurisdictions, when you're issuing a permit, we have confidence in the permit you're issuing, so make sure we face someone who will manage the risk in a reasonable way.

This kind of information, these kinds of tools.... When calling for qualifications recognition, a lot of people are saying, look at the person instead of the papers. Yes, fine, but how? It has to be reliable. A lot of people who are saying we should look at the person and have the necessary tools to evaluate their work experience don't have a clue about the tools available. We did a survey of the tools. There are not so many, and this is why the Quebec government put aside some money to develop tools that are efficient.

It should not be a two-year process to get recognized, but a shorter time with some gap training that is available.

You're not consistent with your officials, say, and the government. You say we will open the doors to immigrants, but at the same time your education system is not on board to provide the gap training. Then the immigrant says you told him he needs that training, and he recognizes that; he knows that in his country he wasn't trained for it, but where does he get the training? Your education system is saying he doesn't have this, so he has to redo all of it. No, that's unreasonable.

This is why, in the November 2005 report of the task force that I was appointed to by the Quebec government, there are all these little things. Forget the big speeches, the big emotions about immigration or whatever; we are way beyond that. We are looking at the tiny problems that make the process a real pain for everybody.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Lavoie is next.

[André Lavoie]

If I may add to that, I think it's so very important that all the ministries in the government--whether it's employment, immigration, education, or others--be working together when an immigrant applies abroad. Okay, Quebec selects its own immigrants, and we know that, but when we select our immigrants, we have to be able to make sure that we don't bring PhDs here if what we need are technical professions or whatever. We need to be able to point out exactly what we need for the market.

Once we're there, we have to be sure, in the Canadian embassies or Quebec offices or other government offices abroad, that we point that out to the immigrants who want to migrate to Canada. It's so very important that we do that link ahead of time, rather than having these people coming here. We know very well the cost of migrating and we know very well the cost of a mis-immigration for a society afterwards, because basically the state is going to take charge of these people at one point, and this is the point at which it becomes very costly, whether it's health or something else.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much.

We move to our second round.

Mr. D'Amours is next, for five minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I would now like to turn to Mr. Gariépy and address the issue of professionals, be it in Quebec or in other regions. In your opinion, what are the challenges or rather what are the obstacles that have to be overcome to convince professionals to head to the regions?

The topic is a labour shortage, but we could also talk about a shortage of professionals in many regions, if not all the regions of this large and beautiful country. When we examine the situation in Quebec, we see there is no difference. I live very close to the Quebec border. So we listen to francophone media from Quebec. I have an opportunity to see what is going on in the Lower St. Lawrence, in the Gaspé, in Montreal or Quebec City.

What makes it so difficult to convince professionals to work in the regions? It is certainly not just the attraction of a large city, because being stuck in traffic for an hour and a half, morning and night, is certainly not attractive. So there must be something that we have not fully understood and that perhaps you could explain.

[André Gariépy]

: My father immigrated, in a way. He left the Quebec City area to settle in Montreal many years ago. So in my family, I am the first generation born in Montreal. You are broaching something quite nebulous, because we have to understand we are dealing with human beings here.

Every human being has an esthetic ideal in life. That esthetic ideal is created according to what he sees and hears. Television, most notably, shows esthetic ideals in soap operas, comedies and so forth. Everything is very urban and people have a taste to live an urban lifestyle. Being stuck in traffic for some people is perfectly fine because above all else, they are behind the wheel of a car and they love to drive.

For some, the esthetic ideal is to live near the river, in the lower St. Lawrence Valley. That was my esthetic ideal some time ago. A few years before I was hired by the council, I had sent my resume to apply for a position that was quite interesting in Rimouski. My wife and I thought that this would be a good place to raise children. As you can see, these are personal choices.

Mr. Lessard was talking about older people who have a sense of belonging to a group, their family. They are not going to go into exile the way people did in the days of the James Bay project or Manicouagan, or like lumberjacks did when they left for three months to go work in the woods and then came back. Unless we are living in a Ceaucescu-type regime and that we force people to move, every individual has the freedom to make choices in life, and the result of these choices create sociological, geographical and therefore economic dynamics.

I do not have much to say about how you achieve this. There is often a coercive approach, regarding doctors among others. Young doctors are being told that if they want to live the good life in Montreal some day with their Mercedes, first they have to go drive a more modest American car in a region and come back a few years later. This approach causes an outcry, and forcing people in this way is risky, if you think about the Quebec and Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. One can give them an incentive by offering a great deal of money but here again, it does not work. That is the human dynamic.