Human Resources Committee on March 20th, 2007

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), our study on employability in Canada will now commence and we'll get a chance to hear from our witnesses.

I would like to welcome all the committee members back after our break. For some of our Liberal colleagues this is going to be the first time they've heard something on our employability study, which we've been working on over the past year.

We are going to get started. I'm going to ask the witnesses to try to keep their comments to seven minutes. I'll give you a two and a one and then a cut, so we can get through everybody.

Over the next two weeks Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, we're going to hear from witnesses and hopefully get a chance to get our report together for the employability study. I know that some of our Liberal colleagues have not had a chance, but hopefully over the next two weeks they'll get a flavour of what's going on.

The clerk has informed me that he can have the preliminary report ready. It could probably also act as a bit of a review for our Liberal colleagues, and hopefully we'll have that distributed possibly next Monday, a week yesterday. Then if you have any questions, we can maybe address those on the Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, as we have a chance to hear from additional witnesses before we start going through the report.

[Denise Savoie, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Before the next election?

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Hopefully before the next election. It looks like we're going to stick around for a couple of weeks anyway, so we'll go from there.

I'll ask you to keep your comments to seven minutes. We will start with a round of seven minutes, followed by the second round of five minutes, to go through those things, so hopefully if you can't get to all your comments, they will be addressed; they will be asked of you by some of our MPs.

I am going to start with the Canadian Paraplegic Association. I believe we have Mr. Hinton and Ms. Hicks. We'll have seven minutes between the two of you, if you'd like to get started. Thank you very much for being here today.

[David Hinton, Executive Director, National Office - Ottawa, Canadian Paraplegic Association]

Mr. Chair, honourable members of Parliament, the Canadian Paraplegic Association was founded in 1945 by a group of paralyzed World War II veterans who were determined not to spend the remainder of their lives in hospitals. Their efforts resulted in improved medical and rehabilitation services, better pensions, and perhaps most importantly, increased awareness throughout society of their true abilities and potential.

Following an injury, a person must face enormous challenges every day of his or her life. Things that used to be so simple are now huge barriers to independence. The lifestyle adjustments that need to take place following such an injury can lead to depression, family dysfunction, substance abuse, and feelings of isolation and worthlessness. Lack of appropriate means of transportation, access to personal support services, housing barriers, a higher incidence of unemployment resulting in poverty, and discrimination are significant issues affecting this population of Canadians.

The Canadian Paraplegic Association, over six decades of experience, is there to help. For the last five years the CPA, through the participation of its provincial associations, has provided employment services for persons with spinal cord and other physical disabilities. Over 40% of those achieved independent employment, so CPA understands both the challenges and the successes that can be achieved.

As stated in the study “Canadian Attitudes Towards Disability Issues”, there are still challenges to the achievement of full community participation. Seventy-four per cent of the survey respondents indicated maintaining stable employment as a key issue, while 75% indicated having access to reliable transportation was a key issue.

[Ellen Hicks, Director, Advocacy and Communications, Canadian Paraplegic Association]

Barriers to employment have been identified and reported in various studies such as PALS 2003, the Scott report, etc. The most frequently mentioned barriers are in the areas of self-esteem, access to reliable transportation services, education, and employers' willingness to hire persons with mobility impairment.

Job search for a person with spinal cord injury is a greater challenge than for persons without mobility impairments. In rural areas, lack of accessible transportation means that getting to an employment services provider, to an interview, or to work may be impossible. Computer access may not even be available for some at a distance from a major centre.

Stable employment is also difficult to achieve for persons with spinal cord injury. Health issues mean lost time and income for employees. Employers' being only willing to hire a person through a grant, such as a targeted wage subsidy, may result in repeated periods of unemployment and short-term employment. As soon as the funding is up, the person is let go and must start the job search all over again. These interruptions pose added stress and hardship for persons with spinal cord injury.

Funding for organizations that have expertise in assisting persons with spinal cord injury to maintain employment is always under threat of being cut. Transitioning of persons who have received services under one provider to new providers from year to year increases the stress level of many persons with spinal cord injury and increases their likelihood of not obtaining employment and self-reliance.

For example, many of CPA's clients had to be transitioned to new employment service providers in June of last year when our funding agreement concluded. For clients who face challenges every day, the loss of their rehabilitation counsellor was very upsetting. Each loss of funding makes clients feel more like second-class citizens. Each transition of service results in lost time as relationships are re-established.

With respect to seniors with a disability, data reported from PALS in the 2004 report showed that the likelihood of workers with disabilities 55 to 64 years of age remaining in the labour force is significantly lower than for younger workers. Nonetheless, the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics shows that in 2003 11% of seniors aged 65 to 69 years of age with disabilities continued to be employed all year, in comparison with 16% of their age peers without disabilities. This may cause reduced earning power, thereby adversely affecting the Canada Pension Plan benefits paid to persons with spinal cord injury over the long term.

The recent changes to the disability benefits under the Canada Pension Plan, which allow persons with a disability to be reinstated without a reapplication, are definitely a step forward. Persons with spinal cord injuries need to know that they can be reinstated if they must leave work for periods of time because of pressure sores or other health issues. This may gain even more importance as the population ages, since a disrupted work life can result in a lower pension benefit when it is needed most.

[David Hinton]

Mr. Chairman, with your permission, we'll conclude during the next round.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

You still have a minute and a half left.

[David Hinton]

That's fine, sir.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

All right; I like that. We're ahead of schedule already.

Mr. Cousineau, you have seven minutes, sir. Thank you for being here.

[Gaétan Cousineau, Director General, Fédération canadienne pour l'alphabétisation en français]

Thank you, sir.

The Fédération canadienne pour l'alphabétisation en français would like to thank you for inviting us. We would like to contribute our views to this consultation on employability. We thus hope to be a voice for the less literate, those whose labour market participation status is fragile.

In 1987, with a shortage of skilled labour and the emergence of a knowledge-based economy, the Government of Canada created the National Literacy Secretariat to explore the problem of illiteracy and search for solutions in cooperation with provincial and territorial governments.

Twenty years later, Canadian society still faces the same problem, with an added sense of urgency that is expressed mainly by business.

Today, we have the knowledge and tools needed to begin action. We now know that literacy is a skill developed during childhood, formalized in school and maintained throughout life.

The Fédération canadienne pour l'alphabétisation en français has been working as an expert in this field for 15 years. We bring together more than 400 agencies devoted to literacy training in all 10 provinces and 2 territories. We offer basic education and literacy to more than 20,000 adults. Our members are solution bearers. We partner with governments to ensure the maintenance and development of the quality of life of Canadians.

For us, success in this venture depends on Canadians' ability to participate in a knowledge economy. For this to happen, less literate adults must have access to literacy services in French in all provinces and territories.

Statistics Canada defines literacy as the ability of a person to use "printed and written information to function in society, to achieve one's goals, and to develop one's knowledge and potential".

The definition of literacy has changed significantly over time. Literacy requirements have increased in recent decades, both in society in general and in the world of work. Nowadays, jobs require improved reading and writing skills: we use computers, and we need to understand complex processes in both task performance and work organization. At the same time, the immigrant population is increasing. This group is experiencing specific difficulties. The population is also aging.

In November 2005, Statistics Canada published the first Canadian results of the International Adult Literacy and Skills Survey. It reveals that the situation of francophones has not changed in 10 years. The francophone community still has an average literacy level lower than Canada's English-speaking majority.

The survey reveals that 55% of francophones in Canada do not have sufficient reading skills to be functional in present day society and meet the needs of the labour market. These data are important and cannot be ignored.

I would also like to point out that 12 million Canadians are at literacy levels 1 and 2, whereas level 3 is considered the minimum literacy level for a knowledge society. Nine million of that 12 million people are of working age. Although the literacy network has seen some people become literate, the absolute number of adults receiving training or who have completed their training is not enough to change the statistical data.

One could ask the following question: Why become literate in French if you are in a minority situation in the provinces of Canada other than Quebec? We believe and we are certain that francophones must become literate in their own language for two major reasons. The first reason is the maintenance of Canada's linguistic duality as entrenched in the Charter and formalized in the Official Languages Act. The second reason is that francophones work in French even in minority environments.

The statistical data are clear and have been confirmed: those who are employed have higher literacy levels than the unemployed or those in low-paying jobs. Indeed, jobs require ever-increasing skills in both reading and writing, and also in problem-solving and team work. International comparisons show that countries with active, literate populations achieve better economic performance.

How can we break this circle? The solution may be found, in our view, in actively offering employment-related training within community contexts.

The FCAF and its members offer literacy and essential skill development services for those in greatest need. However, this network currently only has the means to meet the needs of roughly 1% of the francophone population with level 1 and 2 literacy. It is therefore important for us to increase the amount of training offered and to develop new strategies targeted at recruiting less literate adults. This solution is of course in addition to training within the work environment.

According to the 2001 census, 67% of francophones outside Quebec use French in their work. In Quebec, nearly all workers use French at work. This finding increases the need for us to provide more training in French within the work environment all across Canada.

We have some solutions to propose to you.

Much more must be invested to ensure access, the services offered and the increase in demand with respect to literacy. Stability must now be ensured in the offer of services in French everywhere across Canada. Incentive measures are required to encourage business to invest in training their least-schooled workers. Quebec's Bill 90 is surely a good example of this. The Government of Canada, to comply with its own laws and to maintain our bilingual human capital, must make the investments that will encourage literacy in French among francophones.

Since submitting our brief in September, we have drawn up 10-year catch-up plans, and we have costed that catch-up in order to increase the literacy rate for francophones in Canada. We would like two out of three francophone Canadians to be sufficiently schooled to function in the society of 2007.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you, Mr. Cousineau, for your presentation.

We're now going to move to the Canadian Labour Congress.

Mr. Yussuff, you're back. It's good to see you again. We saw you during Bill C-257 as well.

Welcome also to Mr. Flecker.

You have seven minutes, gentlemen.

[Hassan Yussuff, Secretary-Treasurer, Canadian Labour Congress]

First of all, I want to thank the committee again for the opportunity for us to present to the committee today on behalf of the congress. We have circulated copies of our brief. It's fairly detailed and I hope the committee members do have the time to read it at some point. Most of the issues that we're going to raise in our highlights I think are covered in our brief.

Our brief has three interrelated areas, with specific recommendations for each area.

First, we feel that the issues of employability in Canada must be examined by looking at the pattern of economic development that the government has been following in order to understand the implications for workers in our community.

In the second area, we have made a detailed analysis of the recommendations on the issues of the so-called skills shortage of migrant labour. I encourage you to read the paper.

Third, we recommend the need for an inclusive labour force development plan. We are calling for increased support for training programs and a revitalized apprenticeship program, a reinvestment of literacy programs, and an aggressive plan to better integrate equality-seeking groups and those with international credentials and the growing numbers of immigrants in the labour force, with equity in mind, not just as an afterthought.

On point one, the failed economic development policy, our analysis has shown that since the trade liberalization agreements such as NAFTA, more jobs have been lost than created. As a matter of fact, we lost over 200,000 manufacturing jobs in the last five years or so, but the impact has been the widening income gap among Canadians. Income inequality has increased for the first time in Canada since the 1920s. Half the workforce has not benefited from our economic growth. Gains have gone to the rich. Canadian families are putting in more time, yet 80% of them are getting a smaller share of the growing economy.

Canada free trade and investment policy orientation has meant losing our manufacturing sector and replacing it with low-wage agricultural and environmentally damaging extractive industries. For example, in the agricultural and horticultural sector, it is not only growing, but it is also a sector where workplace injury and hazards are far too frequent. Considering that 30% of Caribbean and Mexican workers report significant workplace injuries, many are linked to the cumulative impacts of poor living and working conditions. Some situations are fatal. Just this month, three immigrant women were killed in the Fraser Valley on their way to a day farm with 14 other workers in an overloaded van.

Our brief also details the lower wage, unjust access to benefits and pensions, and labour mobility restrictions that affect nearly 20,000 seasonal agricultural workers.

The second example is the tar sands. There is a race to mine the tar sands, and oil is also extracting an enormous amount of natural gas and water. How much natural gas? Six billion cubic feet per day, enough gas to heat 3.2 million homes per day. How much water? Well, 4.5 barrels of water are used to produce one barrel of oil. In 2005, this was twice the amount of water used by the city of Calgary. Plans for expansion of projects will have a drought-prone province dry.

The social and health costs are grave. First, Fort Chipewyan Dene people are now facing a higher incidence of leukemia, lupus, and autoimmune diseases. Elders say these ailments come with the oil industry, the failure to place this development and creating disruptive dislocations. The east coast is losing even more young people as they race to join the western boom.

The recommendation is that we need to reverse the trend of highly explosive, unsustainable economic development that polarizes regions and social groups. We recommend that a national coordinated strategy establish a reasonable pace of development for all major natural resources expansion projects.

A pace of development plan of natural resources means taking the time to do a comprehensive social and environmental impact assessment, enabling the planning and implementation of a training and apprenticeship program that can meet the demands of skilled labour, maximizing the benefit for job creation at reasonable rates of wages and growth, and permitting the construction of adequate public infrastructure in projects areas commensurate with the growth.

We need to see labour market planning responding to community needs. For example, affordable housing, child care, public transport, potable water, and waste water delivery and treatment facilities are crucial areas requiring immediate public investment both in terms of construction and labour force training and placement of workers.

The Canadian Nurses Association predicts a shortage of over 100,000 nurses by 2011. These needs hold promise for greater balance in employment access across Canada in several sectors. The brief details other examples.

Concerning skills shortage and migrant labour, the CLC questions the employers' promoted myth of a widespread skills shortage in Canada. There is growing evidence that employers are using the claim of skills shortage to employ foreign workers in a range of skills categories, thereby avoiding the obligation to provide workers with acceptable working conditions and wage levels.

Here is just one example. Last summer, 30 Costa Ricans and 10 Colombians and Ecuadorians came under the foreign worker program. None spoke English. They had been in Canada less than two months and were being paid at $1,000 U.S. net in return for a 65-hour work week, the equivalent of $10.43 an hour, while domestic labourers were earning $20 to $25.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

You have one minute left.

[Hassan Yussuff]

Despite the human rights complaint being lodged with the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal, justice still has not been achieved for these workers. The company has moderately raised the wages.

I'll just focus on one area in conclusion. The foreign worker program needs sweeping reform. The CLC calls for six key changes:

The first is to establish a strong compliance, enforcement, and monitoring mechanism for the foreign worker before any further expansion of the streamlining process.

Employers should be required to advertise job openings at 5% or more above the market wage before claiming a labour shortage.

The labour movement must be fully engaged in an implementation of the foreign worker program.

The labour movement should be involved in determining which occupations are truly under pressure and the most appropriate methods for solving labour or skills shortages. This could include the examination of employers' practices affecting labour retention, or matching available workers in one area with available jobs in nearby areas via labour mobility and support initiatives.

Apply a set of strict, upwardly graduated penalties upon employers who violate employment agreements and provincial labour standards, with the maximum penalty being denial of access to the foreign worker program.

Last, through collaboration with community groups and unions, the federal government should again ensure that their racism-free strategy is involved in the foreign worker program.

Of course I could say more, but because of the time, I'll comment if there are questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you, Mr. Yussuff. Certainly we hope that through the questioning you get the chance to get some of that out.

As Mr. Cappon just got here, I'm going to pass by him. I'll let him get himself organized.

We have Mr. Gruson from the Police Sector Council. Sir, you have seven minutes.

[Geoff Gruson, Executive Director, Police Sector Council]

I'm executive director of the Police Sector Council. The council is involved in the long-term sustainability of policing.

I thought I'd take a little bit of time today to highlight three critical challenges or issues in policing. It would be very hard for me to hit the whole topography of policing for you in a short period of time, so I'll focus on just three areas.

I think you've met with a number of members from the sector councils in the last little while, so I'll assume that you have a fairly good knowledge of the sector council program. One thing it provides for policing is a vehicle or a forum for all the myriad stakeholders in policing to get together and talk through the issues and challenges facing policing.

Sector councils are a partnership initiative, bringing together all the various stakeholders to a common table. Policing is no different. Our board of directors includes ADMs of policing and justice in every single province, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, Canadian Association of Police Boards, education and training institutes, etc.

When it comes to sector councils, the Police Sector Council is a little atypical. We're a public service sector council, which means we have less opportunity to leverage private sector funding and private sector involvement. Policing is notoriously reputed to be losing money every year, so we end up being fully at the trough for the financial programs of the public service.

We are just two years old as a sector council. We have a 30-person board of directors, including a union representative.

With that sort of backdrop, let me hit on three critical issues. I think other people have used the concept of the perfect storm for you, so I'll pick up on that as well. The three areas I'd like to talk about are the changing—or maybe the unchanging—governance and budget issues; the changing complexity of the police environment; and the changing demographics. Those are three areas that you're probably fairly well familiar with.

First, on changing governance, the fact that we have so many people around a board of directors table is probably symptomatic of the governance issue. Constitutionally, policing is delegated—from federal to provincial, from provincial to municipal, and from municipal to police board, etc. And funding varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. The funding that the police in Manitoba have is not the same funding that the police in New Brunswick or Ontario have.

There are over 220 police services currently in place in Canada, with 80,000 police employees; that's both sworn officers and civilian members. They're delivering the full range of federal and provincial policing throughout Canada. That varies in size, from a one-person police force—Gary and Lynne will know of Carrot River, Saskatchewan, for example—to a 23,000-person police force, such as the RCMP.

The budgets and the management models for these folks are equally as varied as the number of people in policing, which means there's also a wide variation in training, education, equipment, professional development, and in fact in the delivery of policing across the country.

The principle to protect and serve has stood us for 150 years, but the capacity to do that is highly dependent on fluctuating tax bases, budget cycles, fiscal pressures, increasing costs, and the time and skills we have to invest in policing—certainly in the new millennium policing.

The other side of this is that citizens probably expect uniformity of policing right across the country. When they have a break and enter at three o'clock in the morning, they're expecting a compassionate and honest professional to step up to the front door and take their case. Unfortunately, depending on where they live in the country, that's not always the case.

In terms of budgets, I have just a couple of quick notes for you. Police expenditures for contract policing—that's boots on the street policing—cost taxpayers about $8.3 billion a year. That expenditure base has grown by about 3% a year in the past seven years. We're in a little bit of a growth cycle, but policing budgets of course reflect the public service budgets and the vagaries of the public sector.

Fully equipping a police officer today costs about 40% more than it did ten years ago, about $107,000 for somebody on the street doing police work for you. Wages and benefits in the police budgets are about 80% of the total cost of policing.

It probably goes without saying that police budgets are not increasing fast enough, and it's certainly not anticipated that they will be doing that in the future. Policing is highly dependent on a fairly inflexible tax base, and I think this has led to significant capacity erosion over the last ten years certainly. Maybe it's time for that governance model to change.

Issue number two is the complexity of the work environment. On page 4 of the brief, I've highlighted the fact that there's not a lot of opportunity for operational efficiencies across policing. I've given you some examples of the shifting operational environment. Crime statistics are certainly dropping across Canada, except for violent crime in certain areas, but criminality is much more sophisticated and technologically enabled, and it respects no jurisdictional boundaries. New threats are emerging for policing to deal with as first responders, threats such as bird flu, civil disobedience, and strained social cohesions in certain urban centres.

Investigations are increasingly complex due to court decisions. Every time there's a court decision or a change in legislation, there's more processing time in dealing with the issues that policing has to deal with. A recent study from B.C. talks about break and enters requiring 58% more processing time today than ten years ago, driving under the influence 250% more processing time than ten years ago, and domestic assault almost 1,000 times more processing time than ten years ago. These statistics give you a sense of selective response in the policing community and declining clearance rates across the country.

Policing is also being carried out under significant oversight and media scrutiny. This demonstrates a fairly dynamic and challenging operating environment, and I think it probably points to a need to address this outside of traditional operational silos.

Next comes the changing face of policing. You've heard from all the sector councils about the youth dearth. In the aging police forces we're going to lose 40% to 50% of our senior managers in the next three years.

Immigration has been touted as a solution in many other areas; it's not necessarily a solution in policing. Today's source countries bring immigrants with an inherent distrust for authority—in fact, often with negative perceptions of policing—and that's difficult to overcome, certainly for people coming into policing, and certainly in trying to get at their children. Recruiting aboriginals is very difficult because of the sovereignty issues around policing.

Passive recruitment is no longer going to work for policing; we have to proactively go after the youth of today. We have a proposal in front of the federal government to spend some money on a social marketing solution.

There are two points, on closing. Having a skilled workforce and a skilled policing workforce is a national issue, a Canada-wide issue, and the sector council helps us address that. I don't think anybody wants have and have-not policing across this country; everybody should have the capacity to have a fully responsive police force.

The second point is that the model we have in policing in this country may need some substantial rethinking, and something like a sector council allows us to do that within a broader umbrella.

Thank you for your time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you, Mr. Gruson, for your time.

We're now going to move to our last witness. Dr. Cappon, you're from the Canadian Council on Learning. Thank you for being here today. We look forward to your presentation.

[Dr. Paul Cappon, President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Council on Learning]

Thank you, Chair.

The Canadian Council on Learning is still a young organization, but we have already released a number of major reports, and today I will focus on the findings of our first annual report on post-secondary education, released in December 2006, the first ever report to provide a pan-Canadian analysis of post-secondary education.

We set out to answer the following question: To what extent does our post-secondary education and training sector contribute to achieving Canadians' social and economic goals?

This question relates directly to your study of employability issues, because it is estimated that within the next 10 years, up to 70% of new and existing jobs will require some form of post-secondary education. Today, only 45% of Canadians possess post-secondary credentials.

I would like to highlight some of the report's conclusions, and obviously to invite everyone to read the full appraisal.

First, post-secondary education is no longer just about students in university or college. In a knowledge society, post-secondary education must touch all Canadians lives—from workplace learning to technical skills, to adult literacy.

Secondly, Canadians are well served by their post-secondary educators and institutions.

However, when we scratch below the surface of Canada's high participation rate in post-secondary education, we note mismatches between labour market needs and our capacity to fill them, whether through apprenticeships in the skilled trades or through training of engineers and scientists.

I believe that unless we achieve a better understanding of supply and demand in the labour force, individuals, employers and the entire country will suffer.

For example, nine million Canadian adults lack the literacy skills needed in modern society, hampering their ability to get good jobs, and even undermining the health and quality of life; 1.5 million Canadians have unmet job-related education and training needs.

The needs of adult learners for more flexible, affordable, and responsive methods of accessing PSE are not adequately met. Access to and benefits of PSE are unequally distributed among Canadians. This jurisdictional context of education in Canada I don't think is or should be a barrier to planning, goal setting, and progress. Indeed, individual provinces are far more likely to achieve their objectives with a pan-Canadian framework than without.

Why is that so? Because workers, capitals, students, professionals, and even institutions are now mobile. So issues of quality, access, transfer of credits, recognition of prior learning, health care, human resource planning, research, development, innovation, to name but a few, are all areas that cannot be adequately addressed in a fragmented manner. They require a plan.

We think if Canada is serious about stimulating economic growth, ensuring that our citizens have access to rewarding employment opportunities, increasing Canada's international competitiveness, and supporting strong communities, we must develop appropriate tools for this task. Currently Canada lacks mechanisms to ensure coherence, coordination, and comparability for PSE. These are issues being addressed in most other developed countries.

Our report on PSE is replete with examples from other countries, and not just other countries, but supranational bodies like the European Union. Even in the United States, a country whose universities dominate the world's top 100 ranking and whose productivity and per capita GDP are much higher than Canada's, a federal study recently concluded in that country that without a national strategy for PSE, the United States risks falling behind economically. With that example in mind, is there any reason for complacency in this country?

If federal states like Australia can develop national strategies, and the independent member countries of the EU can set common goals and targets, so can Canada. Those societies that prosper set the conditions for success economically and socially.

This means that Canada needs goals. Where do we as a society want to go? It means that Canada must articulate a set of explicit well-defined objectives for what should be achieved through PSE to maximize the overall well-being of Canada and of Canadians.

Canada needs a strategy. How do we get there? We must develop mechanisms that enable the key players to work together to achieve the goals, while respecting provincial responsibilities and while respecting institutional academic autonomy.

Canada needs ways to assess progress. How will we know when we get there? Canada must develop a clear set of indicators and measures to determine whether those goals and objectives are being achieved. This requires the development of a consistent, comprehensive, and comparable set of measures and data, something that is lacking today.

In CCL's next report on PSE, to be released this fall, 2007, we'll assess where progress is and is not being made and identify further priorities for action. In identifying these further priorities for action with respect to workplace learning, CCL has set out the following five principles:

First, we need to develop a comprehensive approach, a toolbox kit of validated and proven practices.

Second, there should be co-financing and co-responsibility.

Third, for workplace training, the state should not act alone. There must be a coalescence of partners.

Fourth, results, outcomes, and quality must be measured so as to demonstrate value for money and effort.

Fifth, individual achievement should be validated and affirmed through certification and recognition.

In closing, Chair, I'd like you to please consider the following. Many organizations applauded CCL for delivering their first-ever annual national report on PSE and calling for a pan-Canadian focus and strategy. These were organizations ranging from provincial governments to business groups, labour groups, and PSE institutions. These organizations represent the views of millions of Canadians, Canadians who know that their personal success, as well as that of the country, depends on ongoing access to the tools that support a knowledge society. I would suggest that Canadians want all partners to work together to create the conditions for this success.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you, Dr. Cappon.

We're now going to move to our first questioner, our first MP. We have Mr. Savage from the Liberal Party.

Seven minutes, sir.

[Michael Savage, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I may split some time with Ms. Dhalla.

Thank you all for your presentations. They were very good.

I'd like to talk with Paul Cappon about the CCL report, which is very impressive. It's a very strong piece of work in a lot of different areas. I'd like to discuss one area with you in particular, and that is participation at the post-secondary education level of under-represented groups, which you have identified here.

You also indicate correctly that a number of different surveys come to somewhat differing conclusions about whether we have done anything to close the gap between lowest-income Canadians and highest-income Canadians in terms of post-secondary participation. I don't think we've done nearly as well as we should have, but some people take it as a success that the gap hasn't in fact widened over the past 10 to 15 years. We know the top income groups particularly go to university at a higher rate than the lowest-income Canadians, while the difference is less marked at the college level.

If we're going to maximize the potential of Canadians, we're a pretty small nation in the overall scheme of things, and many of the larger nations are spending lots and lots of money to get people to post-secondary levels. I wonder what recommendations you would make. You identify aboriginal peoples here very strongly, and the fact that we need to do more. Getting a post-secondary education is not just at the post-secondary level, but providing the social constructs so they can get to university.

Another group that I believe is under-represented at the post-secondary level is persons with disabilities. It seems to me that we don't have—We've had some successes in the past few years with the Canada access grants, the Millenium Scholarship Foundation, and some new initiatives, but we don't have a robust national series of needs-based grants. I wonder if you could give me your thoughts on that.

[Dr. Paul Cappon]

Thank you.

The challenges are important, and they're not just challenges with regard to money, of course; they're also with regard to organization.

Let me give an example of an issue that doesn't seem to come up very much, but that certainly reflects our ability to produce graduates in universities and colleges. We lose about half of the students in the first and second year, but we don't know why we lose them. We don't know what constitutes success, why people get through and why people don't get through. We don't have a tracking system, even for the people who get into universities and colleges.

There's an example of an issue pointing to the need on a national basis for much better data and analysis about where we're succeeding and where we're not. Our main concern, which is why we consider the future uncertain for post-secondary education in Canada, is that on a national basis we don't do a good job of knowing where we're going and what's happening at the present time.

With respect to the funding issue, there are issues of access that are dependent on funding. What we find in our report is interesting. We mention that people from lower-income groups actually overestimate the cost of post-secondary education; it actually costs less than they think it does. That's interesting, because it speaks to the need for people to come from a milieu that has a learning culture. It speaks to the need to do something about the cost of post-secondary education and about support for students, but also to issues like graduation rates from high school. In societies in which graduation rates from high school, as in Canada, are not good enough, of course you get not necessarily a culture of learning, but a culture of dependence. I think that's one of the main issues we have to address as well.

There are many parts to the question, but I think the question of access is one that goes well beyond financing.

[Ruby Dhalla, Liberal, Brampton—Springdale, ON]

Thank you very much to everyone for your presentation. As my colleague Mr. Savage said, the report that's been done by the Canadian Council on Learning is very thorough and I think very beneficial in ensuring that we as a country have a strategy to address the issue of post-secondary education and access.

I want to speak about an issue—and I believe I only have about three minutes—that is very near and dear to me, and especially to my constituents in Brampton—Springdale and I know to a number of other Canadians across the country. That is the issue of foreign credentials recognition.

We have a number of immigrants who come to Canada with hopes and dreams and great aspirations and who are looking for this great life. When they get to Canada, they very quickly realize that with all of the training they have taken in their respective countries, whether they're doctors, engineers, lawyers, or nurses, their qualifications are not recognized; they have difficulty in being accredited and, most importantly, in getting integrated into our labour market workforce.

On Fridays when I see my constituents I hear a number of stories—the chicken and egg sort of story, where they have the experience and have been recognized and accredited, but when they go to employers, they want Canadian experience, but no one is willing to give them that Canadian experience.

In 2005 I put forward a motion in the House of Commons, which was supported by most of the parties in the House, in regard to having a foreign credentials recognition secretariat that would bring together the provincial regulatory bodies and other stakeholders to ensure that it was a sort of one-stop shop.

I think the Canadian Council on Learning mentioned in its presentation that it's a jurisdictional sort of context, not only in education but in other areas, that perhaps results in a barrier being formed. When I was putting together the motion there was a lot of apprehension, in the sense that we had 17 different federal government departments operating in silos and no one knew what the other one was doing. The motion was as a result of that and also the frustration that a number of new Canadians have in the country.

When the Conservatives were elected, they spoke about not the secretariat but the development and creation of a Canadian agency. Unfortunately we haven't seen a lot of progress on that, much to the frustration of people, and they're again being upset. I think it is a question of Canada's economic productivity and future potential.

My question, both to the CLC and also to Mr. Cappon, is this. What do you think the mandate of a secretariat or an agency should be? How should they be able to assist new Canadians and also employers in ensuring that when these Canadians are coming here with these qualifications they're not driving cabs or working as security guards? It's really a question about our economic prosperity as a nation.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Mr. Yussuff, do you want to answer? We're out of time, but I would like to hear an answer.

[Hassan Yussuff]

I thank you for the question.

We have been arguing for some time that a secretariat could play a useful role, because the reality is that almost all the professions we're struggling with in regard to recognition are provincially regulated.

The Ontario government recently put forth what I thought was a very constructive strategy on how they're going to start to now deal with it. I also believe the federal government has some tools and levers available.

In the immigration agreement that the provinces have signed with the federal government, we have always argued there should be some clearly delineated responsibilities for the provinces that are receiving the immigrants, that the provinces must make a commitment that they will assess their credentials in a short period after they arrive in the country. The provinces certainly have the authority to deal with those self-regulatory bodies that have been an impediment to getting foreign credentials recognized within their jurisdictions. Some of them are self-regulatory and some are provincially regulated.

This is an ongoing issue that we have been arguing for some time. I think a secretariat could play a useful role in how we integrate the provinces in using perhaps experience from one province that has been useful in achieving some successes compared with that in other provinces that are still not addressing the question, despite the fact that we continue to attract almost a quarter of a million immigrants every year and they still can't seem to find employment within the profession they came to Canada to work in and were promised they would be working in.

It is a complicated problem. Many governments have talked about this. The reality is that we haven't made progress. I believe that a secretariat or some structure that will bring the provinces and the federal government together will certainly make some differences in how we are addressing the issue. Certainly across the country it has been addressed in very different manners from coast to coast.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you. That's all the time we have.

We'll move to Mr. Lessard for seven minutes.