Human Resources Committee on March 22nd, 2007

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

So you don't have those figures.

Based on your remarks—and we find this entirely logical, since a number of people have testified to that effect—access to employment should be supported by a set of measures. Earlier you raised the question of child care centres. In my opinion, there is also the issue of housing quality and qualify of life as such. On 287 of 780 reserves, I believe, water quality is not good.

I come from northern Quebec, and I am quite familiar with the Aboriginal reserves, more particularly those of La Vérendrye and Baie-Carrière. I am a sponsor of eight Algonquins. Over the years, particularly in the late 1950s and early 1960s, I became aware of the situation of Aboriginal people. When I returne to those reserves, I see that the conditions in which those people live have not improved much. Here I'm talking about the reserves. I'm also going to talk to you about the situation off the reserves.

It's the same thing in Malartic, but especially in Val d'Or and Sullivan. If the Cree corporation wasn't there to employ these people, the situation would be virtually disastrous. Fortunately, the Cree corporation gives them work. To what do you attribute this state of affairs? Even if we work hard to try to find solutions and make the best possible recommendations, I get the impression that we aren't any smarter than our predecessors. They also found solutions, but why weren't they implemented?

Here I'm also talking to my Conservative friends, since they cut the support to the organizations assisting the least well-off in our society, and this problem concerns you as well. How can we explain why matters are not progressing?

I'm pleased to hear you remind us of these things today, but these are problems that I've previously become aware of. The conditions concerned are essential to integrating Aboriginal people in the labour market. I'd like to hear your comments on that point, particularly those of Ms. Lewis and Mr. Dinsdale. Of course, I'd also like to hear those of the departmental people, if they have a response on the subject.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

You have about 20 seconds left, so it will have to be a quick response from each one.

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

It's true that I only had seven minutes.

[Sherry Lewis]

Certainly one of the difficulties is not having the information to be able to target appropriate resources. We've asked for gender-based analysis on the aboriginal human resources development agreements and have yet to receive that. They explain that there are a number of barriers, why that can occur, so we go by the numbers of women who are waiting for employment and training funds to come down. That's what we have to gauge, although we know that numbers of aboriginal women are having to leave reserves as a result of losing everything because of a lack of matrimonial property protection on reserve.

Aboriginal women are frequently starting at a lower level than most Canadian women would have to if they were starting their lives over again. They have to leave everything on-reserve, for those who live on-reserve, and go to urban centres where there is little or no support. Friendship centres are certainly there, but not to the extent of resources that are needed in the community. So they frequently are at the bottom of the list for every opportunity that's there, and not knowing the community because they've just left their home communities and all their safety networks. So there are all the other issues, as well as being targets in the community for violence.

There are lots of issues that impact why, if she does have an opportunity to get a job, she can't stay there, because she's going to work with a black eye, or her child care that she has kind of put together has fallen apart, or she or her children are now experiencing health issues. This all begins to affect, then, this lightly put-together job that she's trying for the first time in her life, without any real supports and without any information that helps us target, and change, and evolve these programs in the way that they need to evolve.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much.

We're going to move to Madame Savoie, for five minutes, please.

[Denise Savoie, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Thank you very much.

Thank you all for your presentations. There is so little time to deal with hugely complex issues.

I'll start with Mr. Brown. I'm very impressed with the way our college systems—I'm most familiar with the one we have in British Columbia—seem to allow seamless transition to university and, where required, strong apprenticeship programs, and so on, but I've also been concerned about the underinvestment by the last Liberal government. There is certainly an indication in this budget of some investment, a transfer to provinces, which is welcome, still below the level that we had even in the early 1990s, but nonetheless a welcome addition.

I've argued for a long time for strong legislation to ensure stable long-term funding for accessible post-secondary education, quality post-secondary education, to publicly administered colleges and universities.

You raised the issue of the need to establish pan-Canadian targets. We don't seem to have the tools to do that at the moment. It seems we spend most of our time squabbling between jurisdictions. What tools are missing to make that happen? That's the first question.

The other one is that this budget has been virtually silent on literacy, and from everything we've heard at this committee, we know about the importance of it and the need for federal leadership in this area because of the implications for the labour market.

I wonder if you'd comment on those two.

[Gerald Brown]

Thank you very much. There were a lot of questions there.

First, you were talking about the tools. The association and its 150 institutions are operative right now in probably 75 countries around the world, because the rest of the world has really realized what Canada probably is just now starting to realize, that its college system is very crucial to developing that skilled workforce that's not just the elite but addressing all the rest of Canada.

One of the hardest to explain things when you're in other countries is that there is no national ministry of education. I'm not standing here in front of a federal parliamentary committee to suggest that we have a national ministry of education, but that's part of the difficulty we have, because as a result of that we have 13 jurisdictions all trying to work in some sort of common denominator. When you have 13 jurisdictions working in common denominators, you sometimes tend to lead towards the lowest common denominator.

So what I think we really have to look at is ways in which both the federal government and the provincial governments can put aside some of these jurisdictional debates. That's why we think one of the vehicles is pan-Canadian workforce development, if we can start to look at ways in which we can set down some shared common goals that we'd like to try to achieve.

Some of the agreements that exist between the provinces and the federal government around the labour agreements have started to set some of those down, and that's encouraging to see. Some of those started with the Liberals and are being continued by the Conservative Party. So we're encouraged by seeing some of those events.

Literacy is an integral part of that pan-Canadian workforce strategy. In fact, our suggestion for a pan-Canadian workforce strategy is one that's more the notion of a suite that enables us to set the priorities, provide the resources, and target the accountabilities to take into account each of the regions of Canada as such.

[Denise Savoie, NDP, Victoria, BC]

So these labour market agreements right now are with each province. Would there be any value in talking about a pan-Canadian workforce agreement or understanding?

[Gerald Brown]

What we used to have at one time was that the federal government was responsible for all of this and worked with the provinces in identifying the needs in the area of workforce development, but the federal government was the one that controlled the budget. All of that has now been decentralized into the provinces, and as a result of that, I'm not sure who really has the hand on the rudder at this point. Each of the provinces, each of the 13 jurisdictions, has its own set of priorities, but I don't see a national one starting to emerge from all of that.

We're saying we think if that's the system that's in place—and it's probably difficult to change that—there's at least a role for the federal government to bring the parties around the table and agree on some sort of national priorities and areas that we need to address, and then move forward.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you, Mr. Brown and Madam Savoie.

We're going to now move to the last questioner of the first round.

Mr. Brown, you have five minutes.

[Patrick Brown, Conservative, Barrie, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Allison.

If there is some leftover time, I'll be sharing mine with Ms. Yelich. I realize that we have to be quick and concise today with the two rounds.

I have two questions. The first one is for Mr. Kozij.

You mentioned the $105 million recently referenced in the budget. Certainly that's good news for skills training amongst aboriginals. Could you expand upon that, how that's going to be funded given the immediate need? Is a larger percentage going to be released at the beginning of the five-year period?

The second question is for Mr. Brown, from the Association of Canadian Community Colleges. I have a community college in Barrie, a very good one, Georgian College. I've done the tour and seen the infrastructure needs they have. I can certainly appreciate what you speak of, and that's one of the reasons I was so happy to see the $800 million allocated in this year's budget for post-secondary education.

In your summary and recommendations you made reference to the fact that if we're going to solve this problem we really need to look at getting funding back to 1992 and 1993 levels, adjusting for inflation and demographic growth. I think that's an important thing to look at, because obviously there was a real pillaging in the mid-1990s of social transfers by the government of the day, in terms of education.

What were the effects of those cutbacks in the mid-1990s on the college system? Maybe you could let us know why there's such a need to invest today. Where did we fall behind in the mid-1990s, when the knife was taken to education on a community level?

[John Kozij]

Thank you for the question.

Just to reiterate, the $105 million is going to the aboriginal skills and employment partnership initiative, which is an opportunity-driven initiative, nationally managed with support from our regional offices. ASEP, as we call it, will fund training up to 50% of the costs for large economic development projects, and will include a comprehensive pre- and post-employment training plan.

It's funded through contributions between HRSDC and partnerships with the private sector. In terms of the funding array over the years for the $105 million, $5 million will come in this fiscal year, $30 million in the next, and then $7 million over the remaining three years of the five-year plan.

[Gerald Brown]

Your question is very good and it allows me to draw the standing committee's attention to one recommendation I did not speak to, but it is in our brief of course, and that is the need for additional resources in the area of infrastructure.

Back in the nineties I was the president of a very large institution in Montreal, one of the largest CEGEPs in Quebec, and when we were going through the budget cuts, it was very clear we had a very important priority. The priority was to respond to the needs of our students, to provide the services they required, and at the same time, to respond to as many special needs as possible, such as the folks of this particular committee. So we put aside money to invest in buildings and equipment and infrastructure, and that went on for pretty close to a decade.

Now that we're back into the process of reinvesting in post-secondary education, we think some of the money needs to go there, but we're pointing out in our recommendations, both here and in front of the finance committee, that not only do we need to have the investment for post-secondary education that has fallen back since 1992 from the point of view of responding to the educational needs, but we also need huge investments on infrastructure in our buildings. God forbid the day a building collapses. We see what happens when a bridge collapses. You can imagine when a school collapses, and probably there are some institutions across the country in that situation.

From the point of view of the colleges, our investment is even more significant. It's one thing to prepare a classroom for humanities. It's a classroom, it's chalk, it's paper, and it's light, but when you have to do aircraft maintenance, it's a little bit more challenging. You need an airplane and you need a number of engines, etc., and this is true for all, whether it be in forestry or in fishery. If you're teaching programs in the fishery area, you need boats and so on. So the needs of our college system are far more significant, especially in that area. As we move forward to be part of that global economy, we need to make sure we train our people à la fine pointe des besoins of the industry that they need to teach and work in, so they're able to go directly into the workforce.

The college has a double whammy: the budget cuts that have forced us to move money away from our infrastructure and maintaining our infrastructure, and then the very nature of our instruction—that because we teach skills training, we need to upgrade our equipment constantly.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much, and I'm sorry we're out of time.

We're going to move to our second round. Ms. Dhalla, five minutes, please.

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

Thank you very much, once again, to all the presenters, in particular Ms. Lewis. I found her presentation most interesting and insightful.

I wanted to touch upon some of the barriers that women from the first nations and aboriginal community face in particular, those with whom you work. Some resources were given. I know that with the Kelowna accord there would have been some resources and investments, money that would have filtered down, to ensure that these women could overcome some of the barriers they are facing and enter the workforce.

Could you describe to this committee what benefits the women from the first nations and aboriginal community would have received from the Kelowna accord?

[Sherry Lewis]

Certainly in the Kelowna accord there was lots of talk about investment, both on- and off-reserve, and so the benefits would have been broader than much of the focus that is primarily on-reserve. For us, because we know that a large number of aboriginal women are forced to leave the reserves for a variety of reasons, our area of expansion, our focus, is non-reserve or off-reserve.

Take housing, for example. They talked about shelters and transitional houses for the first time, and so there would have been benefits in terms of expanded supports that women could access as they were fleeing a variety of situations.

If you look at employment and training, there were lots of recommendations around learning centres and networks off-reserve or outside their original networks to build on the successes we see in studies. As we say, when barriers are limited or eliminated, aboriginal women lead the way in terms of successful graduates.

We are increasing graduates, but it does not result in higher-paying jobs, and so we see we need to focus at the time they are receiving their training and getting the skills they need. Why isn't this turning into jobs? That's part of the evolutionary piece we were talking about, and data is extremely important when we're trying to assess what kinds of changes need to occur to meet the new or current job market.

We find that many women are much more comfortable in home settings, so distance education was another area they were considering, so that women no longer had to leave communities, because we are finding that women experience the most violence when they leave the safety nets of their home communities. What we are finding in our Sisters in Spirit initiative is that women leaving for school are becoming targets because they are out, away from the safety of their home communities, and on their own, with little or no resources. This is why they talked about these learning centres, so they can begin to come together and talk about their common needs, how they can build those supports in terms of child care and helping each other that way, just that natural safety net that can occur.

The Kelowna accord had a number of those kinds of recommendations, and certainly we were hoping to have a lot more push or influence as it was implemented. We hoped there would be more gender-specific considerations or approaches and some of the standard recommendations you'd see in there.

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

I think that last night, when we had the vote and all opposition parties supported it, that was in light of the fact that it would have had a tremendous benefit and impact across the country and would have perhaps eliminated some of the barriers that women face. I know, having been born and raised in Winnipeg, that there's a significant first nations population there. I've had a chance to work with some of the women from the community.

Given this particular budget that has just come out, are there any types of resources that your organization and women across this country, especially from the aboriginal and first nations community, will be able to access to ensure that some of these barriers can perhaps be avoided, since we don't have the Kelowna accord?

[Sherry Lewis]

We're certainly hopeful that the investment in the ASEP program that was mentioned earlier will have some benefit, although there's no choice. They decide which jobs you go into, so that limits the choice. Most of those jobs are in areas that women don't traditionally choose, because they frequently involve fly-in and having to live there for two weeks. Those kinds of jobs change the whole child care issue into something quite different. Quite frankly, women are much more connected to the earth and their sense of belonging to the earth, and many of those jobs that are supported through ASEP are in areas that are harming the environment, so those jobs are not something that we find aboriginal women going towards.

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

I'll just ask this very quickly, because the chair is looking at me, and I've run out of time.

You mentioned many times in your presentation and in your answers to questions that you've requested documents from HRSDC in regards to gender-based analysis and some of the specific demographics. I don't know if the people from HRSDC could provide this committee with information as to why that information has not been provided to an organization like yours, which has been there helping women across the country since 1974.

[John Kozij]

It would be a pleasure. Actually—

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Could you give just a quick response?

[John Kozij]

We've looked at the results data. We've seen that about 50% of our clients are women, which actually suggests that both men and women are accessing AHRDS equitably.

In addition, we do support NWAC, the Native Women's Association of Canada, to do additional gender-based labour market programming. We also have a first nations/Inuit child care initiative bundled in as part of our program to help support women who face barriers to employment. Regarding the Statistics Canada data, it is broken down by gender. I'd be happy to share it with this committee at a later point.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much.

We're going to move to Mr. Ouellet for five minutes, please.

[Christian Ouellet, Bloc, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you for coming to meet with us. You really are an important source of information. I'd like to ask Mr. Dinsdale a question.

I met with people from your organization last summer, when I travelled to western Canada.

Where does your funding come from and approximately what is the budget at your disposal?

[Peter Dinsdale]

The funding we receive from the Department of Canadian Heritage for our program is $16.1 million annually. We give that funding to local friendship centres, and they leverage that into additional programs. So the total amount, $89 million a year, is being spent in communities across the country.