Human Resources Committee on May 26th, 2009

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

You answered my question in part. But you will see where I want to go with it. You said something very important that was repeated by everyone here, that the effort has to come from everyone. Decision-makers and influential groups in society will be making it happen. We are all of the same opinion, but we still need to turn our words into actions.

Let me explain. This is not about party politics, given that the invitation is also extended to our colleagues in the major national parties, The Canadian Federation of University Women believes—and I share their view—that there should be strong, proactive legislation on pay equity. That sums up their remarks on the inequities.

Does not abolishing a woman's right to go to court to obtain pay equity fly in the face of the sentiments we are hearing today?

[Calvin Fraser]

That is a question for my colleague.

[Susan Russell]

I believe your question was on the task force on pay equity and how it affects women. I'm not quite sure what the question was, but our recommendation was that a pay equity task force be implemented. We said that the recent Public Sector Equitable Compensation Act threatened pay equity in that it weakened women's recourse to pay equity because they cannot challenge a judgment if it has been passed, as I understand it.

That, to me, is undemocratic. We find that very troublesome and we really would like to see a future government or this government implement the task force, because the recommendations are excellent. They're very good. They would make the country look good. It seems to me that the Public Sector Equitable Compensation Act was very backward-looking.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

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

[Susan Russell]

Does that answer your question?

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

We're actually over time right now, so we're going to go to the next questioner. Thank you, Mr. Lessard and Ms. Russell.

We're now going to move to Mr. Martin, for seven minutes.

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

Thank you very much.

I first wanted to say that I appreciated the comments from the Canadian Council on Learning in terms of this committee. We do in fact work well together. It's not that we don't have the odd difference of opinion and good debate over issues, but we do, and we're trying to do something constructive on this piece. It took commitment from all parties to get this study on the road, which I have appreciated, and I think everybody else that's come before the committee has also.

Last week when we were on our so-called break, the committee was actually in Calgary at the national conference on poverty, which I think in itself speaks a myriad about the serious commitment we have from this committee to actually get something done. I appreciate that.

I have three questions, so I would appreciate succinct answers to them so that I can get all three of them in.

I want to start by saying to Susan that when we were in Halifax two weeks ago, we heard from the YWCA a cry on behalf of women referred to as the poorest of the poor. It was not just for charity or band-aids, but for justice. I think it was a meaningful statement that we all need to hear, which brings me to my first question. My question is for the colleges.

Terry Anne, do you remember the story of a young Ontario woman named Kimberly Rogers? We can, as government, not only create policy that makes opportunity; we can also create policy that creates huge roadblocks for people, and from the late 1990s into the early 2000s in Ontario we made it illegal, a criminal act, to be on welfare and also collect student assistance.

This one woman got caught in that web. Her name was Kimberly Rogers. She was a woman expecting a child, was in her last year at college, and was about to graduate and get on with this new education and training to a life for herself and her soon-to-be-born child. She ended up charged, convicted, and assigned to house arrest. On the hottest day of the summer of 2002, I believe it was, in Sudbury, she and her unborn child died in her apartment, a tragic and terrible example of how bad policy can create unexpected results.

In terms of people trying to get out of poverty and take advantage of what the community college system has to offer, are there other policies across the country that get in the way of people actually doing that? I know there was an inquest and some recommendations. One of them was to do away with that linking, to delink that. Is that still going on?

[Terry Anne Boyles]

There are countless examples of programs, particularly for low-income people to access post-secondary education or literacy and bridging programs. They are not quite as radical as that, but certainly....

We'll use Burns Lake, B.C., as another example. There were 20 students in an aboriginal-based community learning program for community health care. There were 20 different funding mechanisms for those learners. They each had to figure out which one they might be eligible for and which one would make sure they didn't lose the benefits for their children through the differences in the living cost allowances. That's one of the key points we've made.

One of the examples, the model in Saskatchewan, has done a harmonization of their various programs to eliminate some of the inequities in linking that to some of the federal programs on inequities to alleviate.... Actually, in the mid-1980s there was a pilot project between the federal government and the provincial government there to look at ways that they could test how you could enable people on social assistance programs to go to bridging programs and post-secondary education without losing their social welfare benefits. We had the fortune of being a pilot institution for that, and we had huge success. There was quite a difference in terms of the students who were coming through that funding mechanism and their success and the success of their children.

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

Thank you very much.

I want to move to the Canadian Teachers' Federation and share with them that when I was in Penticton two years ago, I met in a church hall with community activists. The teachers were there, and they told of children coming to school in September who, en masse, disappeared in the spring. They lived over the winter in hotels that, all of a sudden, had rooms available because it was no longer the tourism season. They were immigrant farm workers. Their kids went to school while they were not working in the winter. Once the hotels became in need again, they no longer had housing, so they moved somewhere. It was thought that they moved into the mountains, where they had lean-tos and tents, and also some accommodation on the farms themselves. The teachers were saying what a shock it was for them, and what a waste of human potential. These children actually never graduate because they never finish a year.

Are there other examples of that unique feature across the country in terms of to trying to educate children with this economic reality sort of hitting them in the face?

[Emily Noble]

Calvin talked about some of the things in Alberta, but--Tony, you're my MP--I think it may not be that kids are moving all over. Let me tell you, when I was principal of Alex Muir Public School in Sault Ste. Marie--at standard rate, we would call it an inner-city school--the kids who moved on September 26, because they couldn't pay the rent or something was coming up, would go to another school for October, and then there was a whole cyclical kind of thing. There was one kid who, in the space of two years, had been in eight different schools. Think of the impact on the family, the impact on the child's learning, and the impact on the potential for the child. That is the kind of example we see fairly frequently.

Certainly in southern Ontario they are not picking tobacco that much anymore, but there are people, particularly from Mexico, who come up to pick fruit and then go back down to the States or Mexico. That was quite extensive, and there is quite a revolving door there.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Martin.

We're now going to move to Mr. Komarnicki for seven minutes.

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Thank you very much for your insightful presentation. Certainly there are common threads that we have heard in the presentations here today and from others who have presented.

Higher levels of education and skills upgrading are certainly important, not just for those...but they have a way of affecting the children down the road.

I noted that you said there is a growing momentum to tackle poverty and a will to address it, but the solutions aren't always uniform. There may need to be some adaptability, Mr. Fraser said, and pat solutions might not be the same for all areas. I also get the sense that there needs to be collaboration not just between the federal and provincial governments, where there are some issues I will talk about a little later, but also with municipal governments, school boards, the teachers' federation, and elsewhere, including maybe at an international level, to tackle the problem in this fashion.

How would you describe the process that's available now? Is there a medium for that type of collaborative discussion to take place at one time? How are we doing? Is there room for improvement, and are there any suggestions on how we might better improve in that area?

It doesn't matter how you start. Mr. Cappon, you may start, if you like.

[Dr. Paul Cappon]

I think Canada has several impediments when it comes to improvement, and those impediments revolve around the lack of mechanisms or ways of collaborating that exist in some other countries but not here. When we go to international meetings and hear how other countries do things, we find it very difficult to bring back the lessons and use them here, because we don't have the mechanisms in place.

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

What would you suggest?

[Dr. Paul Cappon]

In particular, we don't have a means of disseminating interesting or promising practices. We have some excellent practices in almost every area of social policy in various regions of the country, but we don't have the means of spreading them from one part of the country to the other. People don't know in one province what the province next door is doing. This is true even within regions.

Secondly, we don't have shared benchmarks and targets, and this is probably the most important consideration. In education, this is why parents like report cards. It gives a sense of progress. You know what your child is supposed to be able to attain in any particular year, and you're able to assess from a report card whether you're getting there.

Monsieur Lessard was talking about Europe. Europe has, for education and training, 16 indicators and benchmarks that all countries in Europe accept, and there are reports on the performance of every single one of those countries with respect to those benchmarks. Moreover, five targets are held in common across all of the European Union. On an annual or biannual basis, they have to report on whether they're meeting those targets.

If you don't have targets in social policy, what is it that you're going to accomplish in a particular timeframe? It's very difficult to move toward the solutions we need. But high expectations tend to yield better results than low expectations.

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Thank you.

Mr. Fraser.

[Calvin Fraser]

I agree with Dr. Cappon that one of our problems is that efforts are often made in isolation and are not seen by anybody else anywhere in the country. Some excellent pilots took place 20 or 30 years ago. There are currently some successful pilots, in Saskatchewan and B.C. particularly, working very well that deal with at least major chunks of the issues before you today.

To actually have a big effect on the aboriginal question, we need to be able to bring people like Indian and Northern Affairs Canada together with the school boards, the provincial organizations, and the teachers' organizations. We're doing not so much more with the immigrants and the workers. The concept that you heard a few minutes ago of students disappearing is more common than any of you would like to think, and it happens particularly in all of those vulnerable groups. As for aboriginal students, as soon as somebody tries to help them, bang, they're gone, back to another community, and there's no coordination between agencies or provinces to try to track them and help them and to actually deal with the issue. Clearly, there's a coordination role and an information role that other partners can play.

I'd also like to pick up on the accountability piece and to note that the targets can't always be measured in numbers, but that doesn't make them any less important. If we're going to look at immigrant children or aboriginal children and improving their performance in school, we can count how many years they attend or how much the completion rate changes. But there are all kinds of things we can look at that are at least as important to the children's lives and the future they see for themselves. The targets can't just be quantifiable, measurable targets. They need to be targets that are meaningful for the country and for the people living in poverty.

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

The federal-provincial differences can be counterproductive--clawbacks on programs and so on. It's good to see some of what's happening in Saskatchewan. Maybe you could amplify that. What do we need to do to make things better coordinated, better targeted, more strategic?

[Terry Anne Boyles]

One of the biggest challenges is that over the last 15 years or so there has been more fragmentation in terms of the programs. So a lot of the funding mechanisms are now project based; the partners and communities are sometimes competing against each other in order to do program delivery for the same client group. We really believe there's a whole community approach at the local level, the pan-regional level, the pan-Canadian level, and for our member institutions, because we work so much in the international development domain, at the world level.

Our report is one example of how we do the information sharing between and amongst the colleges in Canada. We also work with the World Federation of Colleges and Polytechnics, and we have a Canada-European Union meeting happening next week looking at some of that common information. But our system misses some of those collaborative meetings that used to happen between municipalities, the federal government, the provinces, the social service agencies, and the colleges in terms of alleviating poverty in particular.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you, sir.

We will start our five-minute round of questions and answers. I will start with Madam Folco.

[Raymonde Folco, Liberal, Laval—Les Îles, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

The presentation you made seemed to me to be extremely complete and well-organized.

But I would like to go into a little more detail on some of the points you raised. In terms of the national strategy, I know for a fact that the use of the word “national“, in the Canadian context, is a significant obstacle. Given the federal-provincial agreements that are to come, could you tell us how it will be possible to avoid obstacles like that in the minds of some provincial and territorial governments?

So we are talking about a national strategy, a federal-provincial agreement on education as part of the fight against poverty. You said that accountability can not always be measured or expressed in precise numbers. But I feel that accountability should be a significant element of an ideal agreement. That has not always been the case. I would like to hear your comments on that.

I would also like you, if possible, to include the question of legal challenges and the assistance that the government could provide. I think that Ms. Russell in particular indirectly alluded to it in her presentation. If possible, I would like both your answer and the national strategy to deal with the issue.

The question is open to anyone who wants to answer.

[Dr. Paul Cappon]

As I mentioned earlier, a number of things flow from working cooperatively on training and sharing data between provinces, the federal government and stakeholders in education and learning, in the broadest sense of the term.

As has been previously mentioned, even the information we have in Canada at the moment is very fragmented. For example, we do not know exactly how many students are in any given system, whether it be a college or even a university, at any given time. In a variety of fields, we do not know how many graduates there are. How can we meet the needs of the labour market in Canada if we do not even know how many people graduate in each field each year?

This database must be set up as a cooperative federal-provincial venture. Once that has been done, we can set objectives. As I mentioned previously, the objectives do not necessarily have to be quantitative—and I agree with Calvin Fraser about that—but they have to be clear and they have to involve accountability. A province would not be responsible to Canada as a whole, but Canadians as a whole would be responsible to other Canadians. That is the very broad sense in which I see accountability.

With a significant information base, with objectives, targets and reference points shared by the provinces, as is the case with member states of the European Union, pilot projects could be established. For example, the federal government could support pilot workplace projects in the provinces. The projects could be operated by the stakeholders and supported by the provinces. The goal would be to encourage employers to do much more in the area of training and learning, especially for their workers' literacy, numeracy and basic skills. That is not being done at the moment. Canada really is below the OECD average in this respect.

In a real sense, poverty is linked to basic skills like literacy and numeracy. But, even there, a way must be found to measure the quality of the involvement. The evaluation must be based on standards that reflect the views of each province and the federal government.

There is a principle, but there are also ways to tie activities to each of the learning objectives. I feel the same about early childhood education. In Canada, one child in four enters school without the necessary skill. There are a number of examples like that.

[Raymonde Folco, Liberal, Laval—Les Îles, QC]

Can you give me one more minute, Mr. Chair?

When we talk about overseas qualifications, we are not always talking about immigrants; they are often Canadians, in fact. For them, poverty is a factor. We often talk about the taxi drivers with PhDs. I wonder if you can make recommendations for those clients too.

[Terry Anne Boyles]

The Association of Canadian Community Colleges and our members are probably one of the largest providers of immigrant integration programs in the country. The association is running the first three pilot projects for Canada overseas, so between the time immigrants are accepted for immigration to Canada and when they come, typically eight or nine months, in Guangzhou, in Delhi, and in Manila we provide a service where we work with those potential immigrants in terms of doing the links to the credentialing agencies while they're still in their home country. By doing identification and regulatory framework in Canada, they would be working on and looking at it. If language training services are needed, some of that starts beforehand. They are then linked directly into employment in Canada or into the bridge gap-filling programs for the credentialing agencies. Our member institutions and the association staff itself work with the credentialing agencies across the country, whether those are professionals or in the trades, to move immigrants and convention refugees more quickly into the labour market.

[Raymonde Folco, Liberal, Laval—Les Îles, QC]

Can we get some written information from Madam Boyles on this subject? I'd certainly be interested in having a lot more information on this particular topic from you or any other member of the panel.