Human Resources Committee on June 20th, 2006

[Michael Murphy]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My difficulty was, and it's very specific, that while you had a target in terms of the economic regions--these 24 out of the 58 labour market regions in the country targeted by this two-year program--an unwanted effect occurred as a result of it as well. That too was pointed out by departmental officials in their preliminary evaluation of results. I think it's now been confirmed that roughly 100,000 regular EI users got about two and a half weeks' worth of extra benefits.

That was never intended to be part of the program. Remember we're talking about a program that was about $100 million over two years, and it's now been renewed. It's been renewed at a lower threshold. It was at 10% unemployment regions before. In Canada obviously things have changed in two years in terms of that, so the threshold has been dropped to 8%. In dropping it to 8%, we would have had three regions drop out, which would have taken us down from 24 to 21. Basically, three have been added to that, so we're still at 24. It's going to run for another 18 months. There's no possibility to understand how we're going to avoid making the same mistake of again providing benefits to people who are not entitled to them under this pilot program.

I would say that when you run a pilot and the results come out that way, that's why a pilot is done--so that you can then say it's time to pull the plug on a program like that. That's what wasn't done. That was my comment.

[Jean-Claude D'Amours, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

Mr. Murphy, you have members in Atlantic Canada and in rural areas of Quebec. In some cases, the goals set by the company are not attainable because of the number of employees. If people have received these amounts, it is because they needed them. Sadly, this is reality.

These are often seasonal jobs. Are you able to tell your members that you will do anything necessary to make sure that their present employees will be able to work for the company the following year? Since this is meeting a need, why are these measures not offered to the general population in Canada? I'm talking about all those who are in need of this.

Mr. Murphy, I have always wondered who, among the persons who are present in this room, would derive any pleasure in thinking that he or she lacks two, four, five or six week of revenue to be able to make ends meet in his family budget. What is happening is not intended by people; it is the reality.

[Michael Murphy]

Can I comment?

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

You can make a quick response to a long question.

[Michael Murphy]

Without repeating too much of what I said earlier, I think the real issue here is that although you're designing a program that has a target in mind and you succeed in achieving that target, you also provide benefits to people who were not intended to get additional benefits. No one else in other regions got those benefits, even though they well could have, so you're in a situation in which 100,000 people got benefits they weren't entitled to under this particular pilot program.

I recognize that this is one example; it's one we saw very recently. That's the nature of the concern I have about a specific program like that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you and thank you, Mr. D'Amours.

We're almost out of time, but Mr. Storseth, it was your round. Just a couple of quick questions if you will.

[Brian Storseth, Conservative, Westlock—St. Paul, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll try to keep it short.

We're very fortunate to have a very knowledgeable former Minister of Citizenship and Immigration on this committee who reminds us every week of how little his government actually accomplished on the file. Labour mobility from other countries is critically important to fulfilling some of our labour shortages. This puts great pressure on--

[Denis Coderre, Liberal, Bourassa, QC]

On a point of order, can you quote when I said we did so little in government?

[Brian Storseth, Conservative, Westlock—St. Paul, AB]

No. I just actually--

[Denis Coderre, Liberal, Bourassa, QC]

Oh, it was a personal comment. Okay.

[Brian Storseth, Conservative, Westlock—St. Paul, AB]

I didn't actually say that. Thank you.

This puts great pressure on our foreign credential recognition, on education as well. What are we doing to encourage immigrants to train in areas of need, such as skilled trades?

[Shirley Seward]

First, when they come, most of them are already trained. We benefit incredibly because they have been trained in their sending countries, and we assess immigrants on the basis of a point system, as you know, that gives points for their education, among other things.

Several decades ago, Canada could not have survived without apprentices, the construction workers who came from countries in southern Europe, and we are still reaping the benefits of those workers, although most of them are moving out of the workforce now because they are older. Special attention needs to be placed on apprenticeship, but we can't expect to be able to attract the same people we did, especially from southern Europe, because there are now many competitors for their skills, and they don't have the same motivation to leave.

In our point system we clearly need to put a lot more emphasis on apprentices as we move forward, but it's not going to solve all our problems. We also have to make sure that within Canada we put a major emphasis on trying to change attitudes with respect to apprenticeship-- getting more kids into apprenticeship training and encouraging employers to create the spaces that are needed, so we have enough apprentices in the country.

[Brian Storseth, Conservative, Westlock—St. Paul, AB]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Murphy, you talked about the 15% to 20% of the regulated occupations or trades that face serious restrictive interprovincial transfers of their credentials. I agree with you on this. I was wondering if you have any examples of a predominant occupation or trade that would be affected by this?

[Michael Murphy]

In the course of our work on the Agreement on Internal Trade, we put a little report together in the last year or two that gives very specific examples across the economy. We'd be happy to send that to the committee, if you would be interested in seeing it.

[Brian Storseth, Conservative, Westlock—St. Paul, AB]

Please.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you.

Mr. Murphy; we would appreciate it if you could send that to us. That would be great.

I do want to take the time to thank all the witnesses. I realize we could probably have each one of the organizations separately for more than the two hours we have allocated, so I do appreciate the time you have made to be here, ladies and gentlemen. Your presentations were excellent and also gave us a great framework to jump off from as we move forward on this study. So thank you once again for taking the time to be here with us this morning.

[Shirley Seward]

It was a pleasure, and good luck in your work.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you.

In terms of our committee work, I know Mr. Martin had a motion. Do we have time to deal with this motion as a group? If we do, then I'll get Mr. Martin to the table quickly.

Mr. Lessard.

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

Mr. Chairman, we had asked the Minister of Labour to come back to this committee before the House adjourns for the summer. Did we receive an answer?

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Yes, his office responded yesterday. I'm told to say that he was busy, so we will not be having a meeting on Thursday as we agreed to last time. However, he's indicated he'd be interested in coming back in the fall.

Mr. Martin.

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

I have two motions to table today that I hope the committee will be willing to consider.

The first--and we've spoken about this, and I've spoken to many of you individually--is a study of the social transfer that I think would be helpful to everybody concerned, those who receive support from the government, whether it's in education or housing or social services, who feel that the system as it has evolved over the last 10 to 13 years is not working anymore in today's context. Those who deliver the program have some concern that there's no accountability, there's no framework, there's no way of determining whether what we're doing is hitting the mark or delivering the results we want to have.

So I'm moving a motion that, at our first opportunity, we entertain a study of the social transfer that would be as comprehensive as the study on this very important employability issue.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

And understanding, as you just indicated, that we have work before the committee right now, so when we....

Is there any discussion on this? It's been moved by Mr. Martin.

Mr. Lessard, do you have a comment?

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

Mr. Chairman, we will vote against the motion. In fact, we will systematically oppose any motion having as an objective to regulate the use of funds that are the provinces' money, in our case Quebec. In fact, this amounts to saying that this jurisdiction is recognized to us, providing we do what we are told to do.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

We will check the minutes on that.

The comment has been made that the work is before us, so this will have to be looked at after we've done our existing work.

[Lynne Yelich, Conservative, Blackstrap, SK]

It's a fairly good idea to study it; however, I would like to first of all see the framework and where we could make a difference. We need to have Finance tell us exactly what we would be studying or what we should be studying. I find it's a little broad for what we could actually delve into, so I'm not sure if I want it to be an in-depth study.

But I certainly have no problem with having Finance appear to tell us what's within our limits and the context of how we could address the CST. This is a kind of social transfer issue.