Human Resources Committee on Nov. 9th, 2006

[Karyn Ferguson]

The short answer to that is yes. I think there is a mobility, but you're very right in terms of citing the fact that it's not just one individual who's moving; it generally is families, and uprooting when you are still thinking that it's not likely a more permanent or sustainable change, that it's just a condition of the economy for right now.... What happens in three, four, or five years if the economy slows down and they've moved their family? Have they made the right decision? It's a very massive change.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Mr. Kelly, you wanted to add something there?

[Dan Kelly]

There is a remarkable degree of private sector labour market mobility, but there are still many government-imposed roadblocks to labour market mobility in Canada.

If you spend some time in this province, you'll see that employers are finding new and creative ways of filling their labour market needs. The oil sands in Alberta, for example, are pulling people in who continue to live in Atlantic Canada but come for the week to work in Alberta. There are planes from the interior of B.C. that are flying into Alberta to work for a short period of time and then going home, so the private sector is finding ways of accommodating that.

At the same time, recognition of credentials between provinces remains a massive problem for employers. The employment insurance system still is viewed by many as a roadblock to ensuring that people find their way from an area of higher unemployment to lower unemployment.

I will have to say, it does frustrate me when I hear other presenters talk about EI and the need for more generous benefits, because I have to tell you, in this province, if you don't have a job, you don't want a job.

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

Getting back to the representatives of the Logistics Institute, one very interesting point you made was that women must be encouraged to take on leadership roles. When women hold management positions, they are generally treated like the men, despite being underrepresented at this level. You talk about logistics. Would you care to elaborate?

[Linda Lucas]

I think a lot of work and research needs to be done in terms of understanding various company cultures, so who are the people we see every day and what are the understood, normal kinds of expectations.

I think if we work in an environment where there are only men who are leaders, then there are subtle ways of giving messages that only men can be leaders. Part of the work we want to do is understand how we can encourage women to take on leadership roles and, if they wish, to prepare them for those roles.

So it's an evolutionary kind of relationship, but you first have to have role models and other women who are already fulfilling that role, so we create another image of leadership and then we find out what women need, and how they will deal with organizational cultures, and we move forward that way.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you, Mr. Lessard. That's all the time we have.

I thought I'd add one quick comment before Mr. Martin does.

Mr. Kelly, one of the things I thought, certainly as we started this study, was that if you didn't have a job, you didn't want to work. I think my opinion has probably changed a little bit on that, in terms of some of the issues that some people face. That's a quick comment.

I know there are certainly some cyclical things that people have a hard time trying to get out of, whether it's housing or some of these other things that help them to facilitate that, and the challenge, I guess, of government is trying to figure out where it can come in and not be intrusive while helping people get a leg up and get started back on track.

I don't know if you want to comment on that as well.

[Christine MacFarlane]

Thank you, Mr. Allison, for highlighting that.

I think it should be known that in Calgary there are social service agencies, led by the Salvation Army, that are trying to do a national campaign to tell people not to come to Calgary because there is no place to live. I told you that there's been an increase in homeless people in Calgary, a 33% increase in two years. Of the homeless people, 50% are working. They cannot afford to live in this city.

It's not that people don't want to work. They do want to work. They can't afford it, given the rising increase in housing costs and other issues. So a federal national affordable housing strategy is very important.

Thank you.

[Diane Brisebois]

I will respond to that, thank you.

We talked about mobility a moment ago. The experience we've had in our industry is that mobility has in fact had a negative impact on our industry. While there may be jobs in Alberta, the problem is that we're taking talented people from Quebec, from Ontario, from Nova Scotia and bringing them to Alberta, because there's a shortage of workers. That means those provinces then literally experience a drain and there are simply not enough workers to be able to train and replace the ones who have left.

In fact, the problem we're having in the retail sector is that retailers are stealing employees from other retailers, from one part of the country to another. So the whole issue of mobility has a negative impact on the growth of our sector across Canada.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Sure, and I think we hear that as well. One of the concerns we heard in Halifax is that the economy is considerably better than it was years ago. The challenge, they feel, is how on earth they are going to be able to sustain that in the future when people are moving out west.

There's quite clearly a legitimate concern for issues here in Alberta as well. I think I've heard everyone say this requires a multi-pronged solution, that we have to look at all kinds of different things, not only one thought process.

Mr. Martin, five minutes.

[Tony Martin, NDP, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

I wanted to follow up on the comment that Mr. Kelly made, of course, that somehow if you're not working you don't want a job. I've run into thousands of people across this country who would love to work and for one reason or another can't get themselves into a job.

Nobody chooses to live in poverty. Poverty is an awful, terrible, debilitating experience, and it seems that the further into poverty you get, the more difficult it is and the more costly it is to get you out. That's why I think we must reconsider the whole question of how we structure our EI program and make it more helpful to more people, the groups we were talking about earlier, the disabled, women, aboriginals, immigrants, who find themselves more proportionately in that category than others.

I heard it once said, actually by a bishop.... It might have been your Bishop Henry, I'm not sure.

[Christine MacFarlane]

He's very vocal.

[Tony Martin, NDP, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

He's very vocal, yes.

He said that when people get laid off or they lose their job and they're on EI, if they're a plumber or a pipefitter or whatever, they still have a sense of confidence about who they are and usually feel they're simply moving from one job to another. If they stay on EI too long and they fall off onto welfare, they go into another category altogether. It becomes a poverty of spirit that happens to them. They lose contact with their old colleagues at work, their family starts to look at them a little weird, like “What's the problem with you?” Eventually they have to start borrowing money, and then nobody wants to talk to them. So the further down you drive people into poverty, the harder it is to get them out of it.

So it seems to me that extending EI to more people, the part-time people and so on, would actually be a good thing in terms of simply keeping people moving, because once they get stuck in a rut, then too many things build up. It becomes much more difficult and, I would suggest for everybody, much more expensive in the long run. I refer to the costs in terms of health care, and oftentimes they end up in the criminal justice system because we criminalize poverty now more and more, and that kind of thing.

I'd like to hear from Christine and from Dan on that, or Leigh.

[Christine MacFarlane]

I couldn't agree with you more. That is why we're making the recommendation to look at revamping employment insurance. We believe it's a way to keep people engaged in the workforce. We have seen people who, as you say, get into a negative cycle and are unable to get themselves out.

We know there are some part-time employees who don't qualify for unemployment insurance, and we're hearing that the people most at risk in our community are involved in part-time employment. We would like to look at revamping some of that. We'd like to look at the number of hours that people need to qualify for unemployment insurance, as that's being changed as well, and moving it down significantly.

I agree with you and Bishop Henry about the issue and its impact on people--keeping them engaged in the workforce.

[Dan Kelly]

I want to clarify that I'm not for a second suggesting that there aren't innumerable impediments to people getting into the workforce and staying there. But I also want to urge the committee not to make these hearings irrelevant.

I have to tell you that it would be very beneficial for committee members to go to a shopping centre in Calgary right now and talk to a couple of retailers at random. An editorial in the Calgary Herald a few months ago summed it up very well. There was a business owner or manager sitting behind a desk, and a young student came in and handed him a piece of paper. The owner or business manager said, “Is this your resumé?” The student said, “No, it's my list of demands.”

I have to tell you that in this part of the world—I know it isn't absolutely true everywhere in the country—increasingly our members are telling us that they are so desperate for workers that they put up with absolute garbage from employees on a regular basis. Basically employees can tell their customers anything they want, and employers are reluctant to discipline or terminate their employment because they are so desperate.

There are hundreds of thousands of jobs sitting vacant right now. I know there are roadblocks to getting people into these jobs. I'm not suggesting that for a moment. But it isn't the amount of jobs. Often it isn't the salaries or benefits, because employers are doing their share to try to create high-quality employment for the vast majority of Canadians. It is very frustrating to them when they see programs and policies put in place that act as roadblocks.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you, Mr. Kelly.

That's all time we have, Mr. Martin.

We're going to move to the last questioner this round, and that's Mrs. Yelich. You have five minutes, please.

[Lynne Yelich, Conservative, Blackstrap, SK]

Yes, I have a couple of things. Please don't quote Bishop Henry too much.

We are benefiting from Alberta's wealth, because many are coming back to Saskatchewan. So we're quite pleased that Alberta is doing as well as it is.

I'd like to give you each a minute, because all I have is five, to tell me if there's one thing you want us to leave here with today. Please do it right now. We'll go down the line and start with you, for one minute each.

I'd like to hear one thing you'd like to have as an impact of your presentation.

[Christine MacFarlane]

First, thank you for this opportunity.

The one thing we would want you to pay attention to, which might address some of the issues that my colleague at the end was talking about, is this. We agree with him that there are lots of jobs available in Calgary, and there seems to be a lack of people filling them, but we think there are a couple of things that federal leadership would make a big difference on.

First, the national child care strategy would make a huge difference and pre-empt a large number of women and male parents from being unable to engage in the workforce.

Second, there is a huge leadership role for the federal government to take in affordable housing. If they do so, this would address a lot of the issues for people who are leaving our city. CMHC's statistics show that the migration out of Calgary is increasing, and people are leaving because they can't work here. We're talking about Calgary, but this is going to become a national issue.

Those would be the two things I would say: child care and affordable housing.

[Linda Lucas]

I think the recommendation we would like to leave you with is to find ways to use technology to support continuous learning. People can't leave their job sites in order to go to school. So how can we use technology to encourage lifelong learning and make accessible ways for people to continue to grow their skills, grow their careers, and make transitions?

The second thing I would very much like to recommend is that we look for efficiencies and find ways to work with education, industry, and government. We need to move out of the silos that sometimes exist between ministries and among various levels of government. We have to find ways to come together to solve problems in a unified, efficient way.

We meet people here for the first time. There are many things we can each do to support each other's work. But we need ways to find each other, and government has a role to play in that kind of leadership.

[Diane Brisebois]

Our recommendation would be that this committee, as well as all ministers and parliamentarians, support Minister Solberg's announcement last week about setting immigration targets at 265,000 permanent residents, which we think is extremely important, and support the announcement to allow foreign students to work off campus.

Finally--this is more of a challenge than a recommendation--ensure that the committee, as well as the government, does not see the EI program as a panacea. EI has moved from a pure insurance program to a multi-social-policy payroll tax program. Half of the premiums paid are for things that have nothing to do with regular benefits to compensate for job loss. So while we're all concerned about EI, we need to see how that money is being spent and who is in fact benefiting.

Thank you.

[Elaine Cairns]

I guess my recommendation is that we don't forget about the people at the basic skills level, which 40% of Canadians are at. We know that people need skills at level three, and 40% of Canadians are at levels one and two.

Just to comment, we also know that low-literacy people spend 38 weeks looking for a new job, and people with an education, post-secondary, spend nine weeks. So let's not forget about that in the cycle of saying that everybody can have jobs.

Also, I was looking at some statistics last night, and Canada ranks tenth in the recent adult literacy survey of workplace literacy initiatives. So we're not doing a good job of training people in the workplace. Even though there are a lot of really good programs out there, we're still only tenth, and we can do a lot better than that--whether it's an adult basic skills program, whether it's a higher skills program--in doing some of the work that people have talked about here.

[Lynne Yelich, Conservative, Blackstrap, SK]

It will do your heart good to know that that's where a lot of the initiatives are going and what some of the literacy spending is going to be focusing on, as well.

[Elaine Cairns]

Right. Thank you.

[Dan Kelly]

I'd ask the committee to ensure that while it looks at the challenges people have getting into the workforce, it does not forget about building the workforce for tomorrow and about looking at government policy through the lens of how this is going to address the skills shortages. I think Alberta's a bit of a canary in the coal mine on this issue. We're feeling it here very quickly. But I know that our members in Saskatchewan and our members in British Columbia are not very far behind. Immigration policy, I think, is one tool that we have in our war chest on this issue, particularly reducing the bureaucracy of the immigration program. We're going to be releasing a study in the first week of December that will put forward a number of recommendations on that front.

Look at the impact of the tax system, particularly the payroll tax system, in keeping people out of the workforce.

Another message I want to bring to you from our members, which we hear a lot, is that if you could save two hours a week for a business owner by reducing the red tape and regulation that businesses are facing each and every day, that would be a huge relief in addressing the skills and labour shortages they're facing.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

One more time, I want to thank all the witnesses for being here. As you can appreciate, the issues, although pretty much the same, do vary from province to province. This is why we're coming to every province, because the effect of these issues is different in different regions of the country. Thank you once again for your comments and your submissions. We certainly look forward to when we produce a report some time in the new year.

Thank you once again for taking the time.

This meeting is adjourned.