Human Resources Committee on Oct. 27th, 2006

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Jean-Claude D'Amours]

Now we will start the second round. It will be five minutes each.

Ms. Brown.

[Bonnie Brown, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Frache, you said that every province needs a such-and-such fund, but I didn't get the name of it.

[Pam Frache]

Thank you for that question. It's a training fund that is modelled on Quebec. Essentially, it's a training levy. Employers who are not investing already in training in their workplace pay into this fund, which then is dispersed.

Actually, it sounds similar in concept to the idea of an injured workers fund. The idea would be that for those people who are already investing, this would help level the playing field and expand the resources available to training.

[Bonnie Brown, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

Thank you very much. I have so little time.

You said the federal government is not honouring the labour market partnership agreement, which is over $1 billion. Is the money not flowing? This is something that neither Ms. Nash nor I are really aware of. As briefly as you can tell me, what is happening there?

[Pam Frache]

It was a $1.3 billion agreement, the allocation for which appeared nowhere in the federal budget. There's been an exchange between the Ontario government and the federal government. The federal government essentially is saying it's going to address training issues through “the fiscal imbalance discussion”.

[Bonnie Brown, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

I wondered if that was it.

I want to also thank you for rejecting the notion of a labour shortage, which gives people the excuse of bringing in short-term workers from other countries to solve problems that the market isn't solving. On that, I want to thank Mr. Mantis for pointing out that the market doesn't decide things very well, at least not for the long-term economic or social health of any country.

You mentioned these various support systems. Are you suggesting it is now time to move to a guaranteed annual income, merging all these things in some sensible way?

[Steve Mantis]

Yes, the two options we're trying to look at more closely are a guaranteed annual income and a universal disability insurance program.

I'm going to be speaking later this weekend on a universal disability insurance program. Regardless of the disability--and I think you heard a little about this earlier today--people would be covered under that. Hopefully it would be a supportive program that would offer the range of supports you've heard about that are needed, from income security, to accommodation, training, and other supports to be full members of society.

[Bonnie Brown, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

Thank you, and thank you for articulating so very well the frustrations of someone who has spent years trying to help others and feels they are getting nowhere.

That takes me to Mr. Caplan, who had a very impressive resumé of helping and creating things to help vulnerable people. I was absolutely amazed when you kept saying there is only one taxpayer. Actually, there isn't only one taxpayer; there is a collective of taxpayers, some of whom are taking home a lot more money than others.

For example, the top 20% of income-earning families are now taking home 43% of the national income; whereas the bottom 20% are only taking home 5%. All of those are individual taxpayers, but are you satisfied that it is all just fine?

[Marvin Caplan]

I think there's a difficulty in presenting to a committee that is from all parties. My personal philosophy is somewhat left of centre; however, we live in a country with very diverse opinions.

[Bonnie Brown, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

Yes, but that opinion keeps being repeated over and over again by the business-dominated media both in the United States and here. But I would expect a person such as you, with an acute social conscience, to take the opportunity to put on the record how you really feel about those things, as opposed to mimicking the corporate slogans.

[Marvin Caplan]

I don't think I did. I said that taxpayers in Canada expect to pay American-style taxes while having European-style social services, and they can't. I also suggest that this country is proud of itself because of its social conscience. What makes us Canadians is that we reject many of the silly notions of that country to the south of us.

You used the words “guaranteed annual income”. Politically, I don't think that would fly in much of Canada. But a negative tax that talks about replacing programs with an income-by-right so that people can afford to integrate themselves into the community would make sense.

The other thing I commented on was that we need the facts. We look at many of these things from a perspective of left or right of centre. We need to find a way for all of us to find a common cause in building the best community. Part of that is ensuring that we have the right as human beings, as citizens of this country, to be treated with dignity and to participate as fully as possible within that community.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Jean-Claude D'Amours]

Ms. Brown, I am sorry. You have already passed your time by a minute.

We're back to Ms. Bonsant.

You have five minutes.

[France Bonsant, Bloc, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

It's not an insult, Mr. Caplan, or anything like...

[Marvin Caplan]

Are you speaking to me?

[France Bonsant, Bloc, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

Yes, I am.

I too served as a municipal councillor for eight years. I have a question for you. You claim to be left of centre. I respect that.

Municipal government is the level of government closest to the people, that is to our society and our community.

[Marvin Caplan]

To our families.

[France Bonsant, Bloc, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

Precisely.

Each year, the federal government amasses a surplus of between $2 and $2.5 billion. Instead of giving this money to the people who deserve it, who have worked, the government is using it to pay down the debt.

In my opinion, the government should be reinvesting half of the surplus into post-secondary education and municipal infrastructure. It's all well and good to be a paper pusher in Ottawa or Quebec City, but the municipalities are in the best position to know the needs of rural regions.

Would you be in favour of the government taking a portion of the surplus in the EI fund and transferring it to municipalities to help them deliver basic services?

[Marvin Caplan]

I think your comments are very well put. It strikes me, however, that you need to have a balance.

Again, I agree with you. I started out by saying we should be doing things within the envelope. I can tell you, if I were the Prime Minister of this country and could wave a magic wand, I'd raise taxes. I think we have obligations to our fellow citizens to maintain as human and as rich a quality of life as we can.

I think my understanding of economics is that all of the right-wing economists are nuts, because when you put money in the hands of the less affluent, they spend it, and that money goes back into the economy and allows us to grow the economy. If you give money to wealthy people, the reason they're wealthy is that they don't spend it; they save it. Sometimes they invest it in Canada, and sometimes they don't. Capital has no conscience. Money goes where it will return the best reward.

However, as Canadians, we do have consciences and we should be treating each other with a certain level of respect and love, and I think in order to do that, the importance of not blaming and pointing fingers and raising the level of dignity....

They haven't said it to you, but they've said it to you. When you talk to people with disabilities, what happens is that quite often they are tired of being treated as human waste.

We did something that everybody thought was a great idea. We were going to deinstitutionalize people with mental disabilities. What we did was deinstitutionalize them, but we didn't take the same money and put it back into support in the program. So now what you have is a call for more police on the street. The average municipality today in Ontario is spending over 25% of its budget for policing. That's crazy. It's nuts. Why are they spending money on police? Because people don't feel secure. Why don't people feel secure? Because there is a growing cohort of people who are in need, who turn to crime or to drugs or to other things--a social cost that is amazing.

So what we have to do is balance what we do as a community not only fiscally but socially. I believe in my heart and I believe in my intellect that if we were to do that, our country would be richer, both socially and fiscally.

[France Bonsant, Bloc, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

Thank you very much.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Jean-Claude D'Amours]

Mr. Mantis, do you want to answer--in a quick 30 seconds, please?

[Steve Mantis]

Yes. It seems that in this move to the global economy, everybody is looking for ways to cut costs, and because the compensation systems are funded through premiums by employers, employers have been trying to find ways to reduce those costs for disabled workers.

The impact has been a cost-shifting, away from the costs being paid by employers to the greater community. You can look at the increases in Canada Pension Plan disability payments, in payments by municipal levels in terms of welfare and disability pensions. Injured workers are calling for the national government to set national standards that would include preventing that cost-shifting and that those who are legally responsible should be paying the fare rather than putting it onto the public purse.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Jean-Claude D'Amours]

Thank you, Madame Bonsant.

We'll go now to Ms. Nash for five minutes, please.

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Thank you very much.

Ms. Frache, I wanted to go back to your comment about skills training. You talked about just-in-time training and training that doesn't train the whole person; it trains on a very narrow skills set and often on a very temporary basis.

I have three children. When they went through the school system, it seemed as though there were two options. One option was that you could try to go to university. There, of course, the costs are skyrocketing. That would be one course of action. The other course of action was to fall into this never-never land of low-paying temporary jobs and obviously a very insecure future. Now that future also awaits some university grads, but there were those two courses of action.

What didn't seem to be offered as a course of action was encouragement to go into a trade. We know that the skilled trades are often a ticket to greater job security, better pay, and more job satisfaction, but unlike other countries, we don't seem to have a national apprenticeship program that we can help our young people get into or that can help newcomers to Canada to translate their skills into a secure livelihood for themselves and their families.

We're here from the federal government. What would your recommendation be to get Canada on the right track for a strong skills set for the skills we need for the 21st century, one that steers away from the just-in-time training you're talking about?

[Pam Frache]

Thank you for the question.

I think we need an overall strategy that really prioritizes training, learning, and so forth. I'll touch on a couple of things.

The Red Seal program is a national program and is internationally recognized. It means that anybody who has a Red Seal certificate in a skilled trade can go anywhere in Canada and around the world. One would think we would be striving for this as a country. Instead, that's not happening, and because it is in provincial jurisdictions, there are fragmentations taking place. I think reinvesting in and reinvigorating the Red Seal Program would be extremely important.

There is also the question of a training levy. I think that's something we could even look at through federal measures, and that would actually address one of the biggest issues. It's true that there is the perception that there's university or there's nothing, but when apprenticeships are posted, there's a huge demand, and there's all sorts of anecdotal evidence that the demand for apprenticeships actually exceeds the supply. Part of the reason is that employers are actually not creating the apprenticeship opportunities; for whatever reasons, they're not investing. They basically look at either bringing in people who are already trained or they look at people with only partial skills. There is an enforcement of regulations; for example, people can hire people who have a portion of a credential at a lower rate of pay, and employers are increasingly looking to those back-door approaches rather than actually wanting to pay skilled journey people, and so forth.

In the college and university systems, they pressure people to get out of the system. You know, no dilly-dallying around--get in, get out, get in, get out, and so forth. In the colleges, there's more and more reliance on certificate programs. In six weeks you can go and do lab technician or whatever, and this kind of fragmentation is actually not whole-person learning.

My own feeling is that we need a national education act that would take the three pillars of post-secondary education--college, university, apprenticeship--and develop common standards, common credentials, and so forth, and really invest in education and lifelong learning. From literacy to English as a second language training, all of those investments pay back several times over. In fact, I was just reading in a study that even investment in apprenticeships gives something like a 400% return on every dollar invested, so that within three or four years, investment in apprenticeship is essentially more or less free.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Jean-Claude D'Amours]

Mr. Crawford, could you give a quick answer, please?