Evidence of meeting #13 for Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was pay.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Michael Savage Liberal Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS
Access, benefit level, and benefit duration, so 360, 60, 50. That would be a catchy number on that one.
Executive Vice-President, Canadian Labour Congress
Those sound like nice round numbers.
Liberal
Michael Savage Liberal Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS
Okay. Where was I going to go with this?
So if those are the changes... The government has come forward with a bill recently, which I think we're all going to support, which is to allow serving members of the Canadian Forces to extend the period for which they are eligible to claim their benefits for maternity parental benefits. But the total cost of that bill is, I think, $500,000 or $600,000, and it will affect 60 people per year. It's not a big piece of legislation.
One of the issues is that I assume that will come out of the EI fund. In the budget last year, the government said that the first batch of extra weeks they made available would not come out of the EI fund, but that the changes in the fall would. Do you have any issue with where the money comes from, with whether it should come from consolidated revenue now or whether it should come from the EI fund?
Executive Vice-President, Canadian Labour Congress
I don't know that this quite answers your question, but getting back to the unemployment rate, there was a time when the unemployment rate was over a certain amount and the government contributed to the fund. Again, there are people who are contributing to EI who cannot get access to the benefits when they need them, and we certainly want to see more people have the access they need, no matter what kind of job they have.
I don't know if that quite answers your question, but...
Liberal
Michael Savage Liberal Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS
I'm out of time anyway, but thank you very much.
I think it was up until 1990 that the government actually--
Liberal
Michael Savage Liberal Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS
--contributed to the EI fund, as well as employers and employees.
Conservative
Conservative
Maurice Vellacott Conservative Saskatoon—Wanuskewin, SK
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you both, Barbara and Sylvain, for being here.
My first question is to Barb. If one of your union members unfortunately lost their job because of the global recession but could re-enter the workforce in a non-unionized job, would you support that?
Executive Vice-President, Canadian Labour Congress
People want to work. We would rather that more workplaces were unionized, obviously, so that it wouldn't be that kind of choice, but people want to work. We certainly wouldn't say to somebody, “Don't go and get a job because they're not unionized”.
Conservative
Maurice Vellacott Conservative Saskatoon—Wanuskewin, SK
Right. Okay, good.
Maybe Sylvain has a number on this one here. Can you tell us how much the CLC spends directly to help workers with skills training, job searching, resumé building, and those kinds of activities that help them to return to work or transition into work?
Executive Vice-President, Canadian Labour Congress
We have a number of action centres that are done through our affiliated unions. Some of them you would know about. For example, the Canadian Auto Workers has a number of action centres. As well, we work very closely with the United Way, so we tend to have shared labour spots with United Way agencies so that people are working in that sort of situation. The CLC is an umbrella organization, so it doesn't do that kind of direct service, but we work with our affiliates on that.
Conservative
Maurice Vellacott Conservative Saskatoon—Wanuskewin, SK
I guess what I'm getting at is this. Do you have an idea or does somebody keep numbers in terms of a composite picture--Sylvain maybe--in terms of all the affiliates?
Senior Economist, Social and Economic Policy Department, Canadian Labour Congress
Well, in order to estimate a cost, you'd have to find out how much there is and a lot of it is actually volunteer work. How much would you pay someone who volunteers in order to help brothers and sisters find another job, or where they are involved in their local unions or in the reclassification working group or whatever? So do we calculate that based on what they're getting paid on a regular basis or on what they're worth overall in the economy? Based on that assumption, it's very difficult to find out how much that's worth.
Conservative
Maurice Vellacott Conservative Saskatoon—Wanuskewin, SK
Right. Yes, I gather... I mean, it's commendable that people are helping, volunteering and so on, and assisting brothers and sisters in that, but you don't keep any records. I think it would be a good thing for you to do that--for your own purposes, probably. That is my humble suggestion here. But you have no idea, really. You know it's happening some, but nobody ever keeps tabs or calculates the amount?
Executive Vice-President, Canadian Labour Congress
I know that our affiliated unions would have that. It's a question that we've never been asked here, certainly, and that's something we could explore. But unions that are actually engaged in the delivery of the service would certainly know that because they would know what kinds of dollars they're putting into it and also what help has been given, as Sylvain says, on a volunteer basis.
Conservative
Maurice Vellacott Conservative Saskatoon—Wanuskewin, SK
Could you corral that information and provide that to the committee? I mean, you speak on behalf of these affiliates. I don't have the privilege of having all those groups here, and you speak on their behalf, so to speak. Is there a possibility of at least attempting to correlate and corral that information?
Executive Vice-President, Canadian Labour Congress
We could see what they might have available.
Conservative
Executive Vice-President, Canadian Labour Congress
That's always a possibility.
Executive Vice-President, Canadian Labour Congress
The question would sometimes come, though, from people who would say, “Look, we're busy dealing with the unemployed here, so we can give you that information later”. That's a reality: those folks are working on a volunteer basis.
Conservative
Maurice Vellacott Conservative Saskatoon—Wanuskewin, SK
Okay.
On my last or concluding question before my time is up here, our government's number one priority, which I would think you would share as well, is getting people back to work. What advice would either or both of you, Barbara and Sylvain, have for the government in terms of what should be done to help Canadians get back into the workforce?
What types of things, what novel and creative approaches, could or should a government be doing? That's a little beyond the nature of the bill here, but walk into it.
Executive Vice-President, Canadian Labour Congress
We didn't quite come prepared with all of our...
Sylvain is dying to get in on this one.
