Human Resources Committee on June 7th, 2007

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

Next year, to prevent a repetition of the kerfuffle we experienced this year, are you going to take into consideration the 14 recommendations that we tabled here in the committee?

[Janice Charette]

First, you asked the minister to give a response to the committee's report. I believe the deadline for that response is June 8. The government will respond to the committee.

Second, I can tell you that we reviewed the committee's recommendations.

With your permission, I'm going to speak in English and in French.

For example, one of the things the committee did recommend to us is that the assessment criteria be made more transparent and visible at the beginning of the application cycle. I think we've taken steps to do that with the applicant guide, which includes the assessment criteria and the waiting. I think there was a real interest on the part of the committee to making the criteria more sensitive to rural areas as well as to areas that are economically disadvantaged, and there was an interest in longer jobs.

That's just a couple of examples, Madame.

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

There are 44 municipalities in my riding. The biggest town has a population of 6,700 inhabitants. I went to the downtown area of the queen city, Sherbrooke, where virtually all youths have had access to this program. My entire rural area has been penalized. So your criteria were not really worth much. I've also toured my riding with all the organizations. We worked on the regional plan to help battered women, persons with disabilities and so on. However, the Conservative government has accused me of helping my friends. I am happy to consider them as friends. I'm happy to help young students who want to help that clientele.

As deputy minister, will you have another $45 million cut next year to penalize the same organizations once again? Is that in your criteria for next year?

[Janice Charette]

I must answer both questions. With regard to the criteria for next year, the minister has asked us to conduct a review of the program.

I think he's already said that publicly. He's asked us to do a review of the program to see whether the results were consistent with the policy objective. This is the first year of the program. The question of the budget for next year's program will be set by the minister next year. It has not been established at this point in time.

I would like to go back to the criteria question and how they apply in your riding.

I think there are 12 different assessment criteria. What we try to do with the assessment criteria is respond to the three different policy objectives. One of the policy objectives is creating jobs that would otherwise not be created. So you see, for example, the criteria around small urban, rural—

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

Pardon me, Ms. Charette. I know the criteria and so on, and I don't doubt your knowledge. That has always worked. The program was not perfect, I can admit. It is constantly repeated to us that Wal-Mart and Rogers received $265 million. I can hardly wait to see what party granted them those amounts and in what riding that occurred. It definitely isn't our party, because we have a lot of not-for-profit organizations that are having trouble making ends meet. Students are ready to take jobs at $8 or $9 an hour rather than go and work for Wal-Mart, as you would like. So the criteria are not the problem. I want to know how the Summer Career Placement Program, which was—

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Madame Bonsant, that's all the time we have.

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

I can at least ask my question. I'm quite direct, so I'm going to ask my question directly.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

If you want to wrap up your point, sure.

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

Why did you do that in Montreal, when there were Service Canada professionals who knew the places? We weren't working alone on that. There were Service Canada employees who knew the programs as well as I did. I want to know what kind of flip-flop you did with that, and why you centralized everything in Montreal rather than leave the centralization directly to Service Canada in the regions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

A quick response, please.

[Janice Charette]

It's a long and complicated question, but I will try.

The criteria that were applied to look at all of the applications were the same criteria no matter where in the country these applications were being evaluated.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

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

[Denise Savoie, NDP, Victoria, BC]

It seems to me that under the guise of trying to prevent political meddling, the way this program has been applied has really made it difficult for us, as members of Parliament who represent or try to represent constituents, to do our jobs. Not only can we not get some of the information we've asked for, but in my case in my riding, at the opening of the student placement office Service Canada told us directly that a directive from the minister's office disinvited local MPs.

There's a level of pettiness here that I think goes beyond trying to keep politics out of a government program. As representatives, I think we need to know what's happening in our riding, how these programs are functioning, and how the offices are dealing with students. This is just not possible, given the centralization that's occurred here. The whole centralization from Ottawa seems to be a real problem, for me.

The grid, as I read it, seems to really contradict the recommendations. As my colleague just said, I don't think there was ever a recommendation from the 38th Parliament for an overall cut of the program. The minister at the time said we're going to refocus the program to better direct the funds. Refocusing doesn't involve cutting.

You mentioned the highest level of employment or the lowest level of unemployment, but there are a lot of very low-paying jobs right now that mask.... We get the impression that the unemployment level is very low, but I think the very low-paying jobs are part of that and mask the real numbers.

The question I have is: would you agree that the grid contradicts the recommendations made by the 38th Parliament? Take, for example, the high crime. Well, sorry, rural areas get zero, because they're low-crime areas. The visible minorities in many rural areas...? The visible minorities live in Toronto or Montreal, so we've been hearing a lot about that.

There seems to be a real contradiction.

The other question is, you say you can't tell us how much was allocated in the first round. That seems to me very problematic. How would you know to go to a second round, if you can't tell us how much came out of the first round of applications to start with?

[Janice Charette]

I am here to answer your questions as best I can about how the program is being administered. The government will respond to the report of the committee on the summer career placement program. In questions about why things are done, you're asking for my opinion, and I don't think it's appropriate for me to give you that.

I can tell you that one of the big choices in terms of program administration is around budget alloc—

[Denise Savoie, NDP, Victoria, BC]

No, I was asking whether the grid, as it was, contradicts the recommendations. I think that's a fair question for a professional.

[Janice Charette]

What I'm about to explain to you is how we allocated the budget, which is what I think lies at the heart of some of the committee's recommendations.

There are two choices about how you would allocate a budget. You would try to do it on the basis of a formula that would take into consideration a number of different factors. The committee has indicated that rurality was one of them, and economic disadvantage. There were other members of Parliament who have talked to us in the past about the challenges of trying to find summer employment in areas of high crime. So the question is always to try to find the balance between all of those different factors. You try to do it ex ante, before you see the proposals.

What the government chose to do in this case was to put in place an allocation formula that allocated funding on a provincial-territorial basis for the not-for-profit sector, a national basis for the public and private sector, and then had a set of criteria that tried to rank proposals against the policy objectives, which include the economic conditions within an area but also the nature of the job that was going to be offered to the student, as well as the kind of barriers a student might face in getting a position. All of those factors were taken into consideration among the criteria.

So there is a choice. The government made a choice in terms of how it allocated the budget, and I expect if you wanted to talk a bit more about why that choice was made, the minister would be in a better position than I to talk about it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

That's all the time we have. We'll have to get you in the next round, Madame Savoie.

We'll move now to the last questioner of the first round, Mr. Brown, for five minutes, please.

[Patrick Brown, Conservative, Barrie, ON]

Thank you.

There have been references to the list the minister supposedly had. There's a big difference between mentioning a sampling of decisions and asking for a full list. We have the Bacardi grants in Ms. Dhalla's riding, and Wal-Mart. Those are examples, not a full list.

I would like to congratulate those involved in this program on the civil service level, because this is a first year with new priorities. When you change, adapt, and improve a program, that transition year can have some challenges, and I think you've handled it well.

I want to look at the 12 criteria and how they have changed from different years. I know there's been a lot of defence of political meddling and the old system of standing up for big conglomerates--standing up for MPs dictating to have grants go to their ridings. I have the list here, and I'd certainly be interested in which of these 12 criteria the opposition don't support. To help understand why they oppose these 12 criteria, it would be good to get some information on how it used to be.

They include jobs being created in geographic areas with high unemployment rates--hopefully they're not against that; jobs in small, urban, rural, or remote areas; project activities directed towards members to support the vitality of official language minority communities--I certainly hope you don't oppose that; employers committed to hiring priority students; jobs in high-crime areas; employer focuses on the provision of services to persons with disabilities, recent immigrants, aboriginal persons, members of visible minorities, persons who are homeless or street involved, other groups with social employment barriers, children or seniors, environmental protection or other priorities--hopefully you're not against those criteria.

The job must provide clear related experience or early work experience; the job provides employability skills; the employer provides supervision and mentoring; duration of the job contributes to the student's experience and income; the salary offered contributes to the student's income; and finally, the job is associated with a special event, is a unique work experience.

When I look at these criteria I am very impressed at how in-depth this program is with these new changes. It really focuses on areas of need, on areas or communities that need a helping hand from the government. It doesn't go back to defending political meddling and standing up for the Bacardis and Wal-Marts of the world.

Maybe you could shed a little bit of information on how these criteria have changed from previous years.

[Janice Charette]

Thank you, Mr. Brown.

I'm not going to get into the preamble part of your comments. I don't think that was intended for my response.

On the criteria, there are a couple of things. This is the first time we have put this kind of comprehensive applicant guide together. One of the things that accompanies a new program is a move to these more rigorous and objective criteria to be able to do the evaluation. As I said, we changed how the budget was allocated so we needed to have a way of assessing the projects. The criteria were developed based on our experience with the program and looking at the recommendations of the committee.

In past years, even the committee indicated to us that the way the proposals were being assessed wasn't sufficiently available to the people who were applying. We had an applicants' guide, but they weren't necessarily able to understand completely how the decisions were being taken. That's why so much effort went into actually putting together the 12 assessment criteria with the level of detail associated with each one--the points. For example, within the high unemployment rate there are one to 12 points, depending on what the youth unemployment rate is in that region.

The availability of accurate labour market data was an issue for the committee, so we tried to gear the assessment criteria to the best available labour market data for the folks who fell into this cohort.

We took the policy objectives, aligned the criteria against those policy objectives, and tried to do a weighting that looked at those three objectives: conditions in the area that might inhibit a student from being able to find a job, jobs that wouldn't otherwise be created without this kind of a program, and the high-quality work experience. That really was the logic and rationale behind the criteria.

[Patrick Brown, Conservative, Barrie, ON]

Okay. I just want to get two more quick questions in.

You say it's the first time there's been a guide put together. How did organizations know what to say to prove that they were giving quality work experience in previous years?

Second, I understand that Mr. Savage, in a press release yesterday, said that he wanted to know the reasons why unsuccessful applicants were denied funding. This program was administered over the last ten years, and I'd be interested in knowing if that was something that was given every year.

Also, when MPs decided, did MPs provide the department, which had the ability to disburse, with why they picked and chose organizations, what the reasoning was? You know, in the interests of parity, I'm sure Mr. Savage would have done that and provided information on why he rejected applicants.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

About 20 seconds for a response.

[Janice Charette]

Oh, God.

This is the first time we have done a guide. We are trying to provide information to applicants about how they did relative to the criteria. We provide them with an assessment. We're also offering them a follow-up if they want to actually understand how they might go forward next year and perhaps provide us with additional information that will allow them to score higher.

I think that is one of the challenges that came out in our review. Organizations may not necessarily have understood the change in the new criteria, despite the fact that I thought we tried to do a proactive outreach. The information was available on the Internet. A comprehensive applicants guide is available to members of the committee, if you'd be interested in it.

I think we still have a challenge in terms of making sure that organizations are able to demonstrate to us, for example, the quality of work experience around supervision or mentoring. I don't think that was featured as much in previous applications.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much.

We're now going to move to Ms. Dhalla for five minutes, please.

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

Thank you very much for taking the time to come today.

For many of us sitting around here, we've been raising this issue for a number of months now. I'm going back to some of the press releases issued by my colleague, I know, on behalf of the Liberal caucus.

One press release, dated March 5, states: “Conservatives' Student Employment Con Job”. Another one, dated May 16, states: “Conservative Cuts to Summer Grants Kill Community Programs”. And another one, on May 23, states: “Solberg Must Immediately End Confusion Surrounding Student Summer Grants”.

So I know there has been a lot of work done by opposition parties to ensure that the students and the non-profit organizations that deserve funding actually receive appropriate funds to ensure that students can get hired for the summer. I can tell you, from talking to many of these organizations and these non-profit groups that traditionally have relied on the summer career placement program in the past, that they were actually counting on the Canada summer jobs program this time around to ensure that they would have access to the appropriate funding, and students would have access to ensure that they would actually obtain jobs.

So I was quite surprised, when we had submitted a motion, which I think was approved by the majority of members on this particular committee, to request a complete list of criteria....

How is it that in the past, MPs were provided with a list of individuals and organizations that had applied; the information came back from HRSDC itself on whether or not those organizations, non-profit or private, had been approved or denied; and we as parliamentarians had an opportunity to look at that list? I know, from talking to many MPs, that there was no involvement from the local MP. They took the advice of HRSDC.

Why is that when that same list is being asked for this particular year, it's been deemed a privacy concern, when in previous years it never was?

[Janice Charette]

Thank you for raising that, because I think I've heard the reference to privacy and lists a couple of times.

In my response to Madame Lafrance and your motion, I think there were two parts to the motion that I tried to respond to. The first one was with respect to organizations that were denied funding, in that case, as the committee even indicated in its opening paragraph, “subject to private considerations”.

The second part of the motion has to do with the organizations that were funded. I think your question is about organizations that were funded. Am I correct?