Evidence of meeting #33 for Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities in the 39th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was federal.
NDP
Denise Savoie NDP Victoria, BC
Okay, I'll speak quickly.
In my riding office, we meet people who have difficulties accessing employment, from students who are struggling with huge debts to people just being able to access some kind of training. Jane, I think it was you who mentioned the supports that are missing, that are not reflected in policy. I am wondering if you, or whoever mentioned it, would elaborate on that. I'm sure there is a lot more to say on that.
Member, Community Social Planning Council of Greater Victoria
The specific example I was thinking of was a phone. In Victoria, on basic income assistance you receive $510 a month. I know that's a provincial issue, but this touches on the importance of national welfare standards. The average cost of a bachelor suite is $515 a month, so before you even get to paying for transportation, clothing, and food, you are already in the hole. Of course, people are not accessing the average cost. We know that a phone is a key issue for employability. It's not just having a phone number for people to put on their resumés, but also we hear quite frequently that people who have been out of the labour force for a long time, when they mess up at a job once, are scared to go back. We hear from employers that because retention is such a key issue across the country, but especially in B.C. right now, they'd be happy to call their workers and say, it's okay to come back in; you messed up, don't worry. But they don't have a phone.
NDP
Denise Savoie NDP Victoria, BC
Let me drill down, because you used the word “reflected”. It hit me in the back of the head. What would that look like in terms of policy? I understand the problem. But what would that look like? I'm sure we could talk about many others.
Member, Community Social Planning Council of Greater Victoria
It's ensuring that individuals and families who are looking for work and have work have sufficient dollars to be able to conduct that employment search that's necessary, so it's dollars through that. Then also looking at each of those key supports, I would say, would be a good way of looking at it, and then looking at the programs and services to ensure that those are provided. I would say that the majority of individual supports are not provided, but it's probably dollars to the individual.
Member, Pacific Foundation for Diversity
I'd just like to put on the record that what we'd love to see is more of the decision-making and program granting, etc., decentralized to the regional offices and that they be given authority to make those decisions. Right now—
Member, Pacific Foundation for Diversity
Or Heritage or any of them, because right now you wait for six months until it goes to Ottawa, and they don't even know the local conditions.
NDP
Denise Savoie NDP Victoria, BC
To return to the policy issue, people have talked about learner pathways. It's very difficult to navigate through the system. Would it be useful to have a single portal for learners? Is it even conceivable for the federal government to work with provincial governments on an initiative like that?
Member, Community Social Planning Council of Greater Victoria
I'm sorry, can I add one thing to the question you asked earlier?
NDP
Denise Savoie NDP Victoria, BC
Okay, maybe it wasn't clear.
People have told us, or certainly me, that they have difficulty accessing training opportunities. They don't know where to go. There are many different offices. Would it be useful to have one single portal?
Member, Pacific Foundation for Diversity
Do you mean something like a training authority?
Member, Community Social Planning Council of Greater Victoria
I would say instead that we should adopt a policy that every door is the right door. As an example of what I mean, Victoria has 13 different municipalities; when we concentrate all the services in one place, it presents a huge transportation dilemma for people.
Instead, I'd like to see a way to integrate services, so that when somebody comes to my office with a question about housing, I can also refer them to employment services. What that requires--and this is answering the earlier question about the importance of the facilitative role--is for all of us to know what each other is doing, and because programs come in and out of funding, we need to be in contact regularly. If we all know what each other is doing, we can perform those key referral services, so that if you access food at my organization, I can help you get housing.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Dean Allison
Thank you. That's all the time we have. We're going to move to our last questioner for today in this round.
Ms. Yelich is next, for four minutes, please.
Conservative
Lynne Yelich Conservative Blackstrap, SK
Thank you.
If workplace practice is a priority, should we be having that as the number one barrier to employability, as opposed to some of the other barriers that have been mentioned? Is this an important one?
I also wanted to ask a few questions about the actual part that the federal and provincial recognition of credentials plays. As you know, this is a huge problem in the federal government in our goal to try to recognize credentials, because of the governing bodies and the provinces again.
Geoff asked a good question about the provincial and federal bodies. It's very difficult to get the provinces to go on board. How do you do that if ten provinces and three territories don't really agree on where the federal government should be? Then you put in those who have to recognize credentials. Right now we have some success with the Red Seal program for recognizing trades. That's been helpful, but there are many more out there--about 200.
I'd like to also pose this question to you. How are we going to get these trades and skills recognized when everybody has found this difficulty? There are perhaps 400 different governing bodies across the country. How do you bully the provinces? How do you bully these people into recognizing credentials?
Member, Pacific Foundation for Diversity
I can give you a hopeful answer to that.
We were involved with helping one of the organizations that delivered the Skills Connect program very successfully. What we found was that all the local, provincial, and federal bodies were very happy to come around the table. Maybe that's because our skills shortage in B.C. and Alberta right now is so serious that they're absolutely desperately looking for the skills. We had no trouble getting them to the table.
In other words, the point is whether it meets their needs. We have to get away from looking at it in an adversarial way--as long as you have minimum standards and the federal government has established a coordinating agency, we should just get on with the job, rather than constantly getting mired in jurisdictional issues, because at the practical level we've found that they've come to the table. For instance, looking at the construction trades, the B.C. Construction Association, the local trades organizations, and each of the trades associations all came around the table, including the colleges delivering everything from ESL to trades upgrading.
Conservative
Lynne Yelich Conservative Blackstrap, SK
I'd like to interject, because you're right, you've got them around the table. It's been very successful and very well done. We applaud that. B.C. and Alberta have come to an agreement for labour mobility between the two provinces. We applaud that.
Our provincial government in Saskatchewan should be part of it. They have refused. So it seems that when we get the professions on board, then we lose the provincial body, which wants to sit back and watch this. Their main complaint or main problem with that was they wanted to see if it was good for the public good. So as federal representatives here today, we know you can see how difficult it is, because when you get the professions, you don't get your provincial governments; when you get the provincial governments, you don't seem to have the professions. But across the country, the bigger issue is the professions. You might have done this well in B.C. and Alberta—and you have.
Perhaps we'll look at some of the problems in other provinces, which have been talked about, and maybe this isn't as big a problem as we think, but it certainly is when it comes to a referral agency for credentials.
Member, Pacific Foundation for Diversity
I've been in the change management business for a long time. It's not an easy task; you're constantly balancing one group, and sometimes it's just as simple as a personality who makes it tough, as they won't come to the table. But I think if you can use some best practices and say that so-and-so is coming to the table, I know it's a technique that works, because people want to keep up with the Joneses, for lack of a better term. So if some key organizations come to the table, or just a number of the smaller ones, it's very tough to be the odd person out. So I think it's a matter of having the right techniques.
I agree with you that it has been absolutely tough in the past to get the professional bodies to the table. Suddenly we find a change in atmosphere, and I'm hopeful, given the demographics and the spiralling downwards of the workforce, and the skills shortage—which is going to become a Canadian one in a few years—that perhaps we've got that trend on our side. So maybe we should be looking ahead to see what works.
Conservative
Lynne Yelich Conservative Blackstrap, SK
I guess I just wanted to give you some peace. In your opening remarks, you said you don't see foreign recognition of credentials happening. Things are happening, but it's slow, because we're trying to get everyone on board.
Conservative
Lynne Yelich Conservative Blackstrap, SK
That is why I asked about the uniqueness of B.C., because B.C. and Alberta have shown they are anxious. Saskatchewan is anxious, but they don't want to come on board yet.
Member, Pacific Foundation for Diversity
Only once the skills shortage hits. Until then, it was absolutely—
And we haven't even talked about labour in this equation yet.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Dean Allison
We are out of time, actually. We've gone a few minutes over.
I do want to thank the witnesses for being here. As you understand, we believe employability is a huge issue in Canada right now, and it's only going to get worse. That is why we hope we can continue to shed light on this and make recommendations to the government.
It's been very interesting, as we started in the east, in St. John's, Newfoundland; Halifax; Montreal; and Toronto; and today we're in Vancouver; and tomorrow will be in Calgary and then Saskatoon. The different regional perspectives are good, because some things done regionally are actually good ideas that we may include in our final recommendations to the government.
So we do want to thank you for taking the time. We know you're busy individuals, doing lots of things, but thanks for taking the time to travel to be with us here today. Once again, we believe this is a pretty important study we're undertaking, and your input is greatly appreciated.
The meeting is adjourned.