Human Resources Committee on Nov. 29th, 2011

[Colin Mayes, Conservative, Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Mr. Sutherland, do you have something?

[James Sutherland, Acting Director General, Aboriginal Affairs Directorate, Skills and Employment Branch, Department of Human Resources and Skills Development]

Yes. While not part of the K-to-12 or the upper grade levels, under our aboriginal skills and employment training strategy and our skills and partnership fund, initiatives such as mentoring or allowing people to go to other places for training are eligible activities. So should a community under the ASETS or under a skills and partnership project determine that is a good thing, that is an eligible expense and is allowable. Doubtless some ASETS holders are doing that.

[Colin Mayes, Conservative, Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

I think that's a great investment, just to give them possibilities, because that's going to give them hope in some of these more remote communities.

A figure was mentioned of 600,000 students who have been trained with certain skill sets. Of those, what percentage go directly into the labour market? Do you have those figures?

[Louis Beauséjour]

No, I don't have those figures, specifically how many are successful after getting the intervention with the.... That was referring to all provinces and territories using labour market development agreement money to fund different supports for the 600,000 who are being trained or use the support. I don't have the number of how many have been successful. We can try to get that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Do you have a comment, Mr. Sutherland?

[James Sutherland]

No.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Go ahead, Mr. Mayes.

[Colin Mayes, Conservative, Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

What sort of partnering do you do with those who are doing resource development—the mining, oil, and gas sectors? I'm looking at possibly getting ahead of the curve, for instance, on the Enbridge pipeline between Edmonton and Kitimat. Do you work with those companies to look at their needs and start thinking of programs that may be fulfilled before the actual construction starts?

Mr. Clarke, do you have something?

[Allan Clarke]

One of the things we're doing, I guess inspired by the framework for aboriginal economic development, as well as some of our new programs, like the strategic partnerships initiative.... There are a number of things that I think have changed over the last number of years around resource development that have a huge impact and potential impact for aboriginal communities. What used to be kind of far away is not as far away as it used to be. Communications and transportation corridors are going to get wider, so there are a lot of opportunities that would have been otherwise unavailable to people in the past. That makes this study by this committee quite relevant at this time. It also sets up a number of challenges for us.

One of the biggest things that we have to do, and we've started to do this, is to kind of get ahead of some of these developments. You can think about some of the examples in the past around the Victor diamond mine with De Beers in northern Ontario, and the fact that the type of benefit did not accrue to some of the first nations that might otherwise have. Some of the things that got in the way were basic literacy and numeracy skills. NRCan recently commissioned a study on the Victor diamond mine, which you might want to take a look at. It shows how things do not work out the way you had planned them.

What we're trying to do is learn from some of these things. For instance, I talked earlier about the Ring of Fire, and we see the Ring of Fire as having a huge impact and potentially being of huge benefit to first nations in and around the Ring of Fire development, about nine first nations in northern Ontario. What we need to do there is work a little bit more holistically as a federal government. There are a lot of different departments that have some measure of interest in how these things work, whether it's NRCan, or Environment Canada around the regulatory processes, Aboriginal Affairs Canada, obviously, and HRSDC.

We have a lot of different investments that we're making in economic development, in labour market development and training. One of the things we're trying to do is work with first nations, work with the Province of Ontario, work across the federal family, and work with the mining interests to make sure that we have a better sense of what's at stake and exactly what will be required as we move forward.

As an example, we've been working very closely with Noront, who is interested in developing the chromite deposit up there, as well as the Matawa First NationsTribal Council, and other first nations. I think the idea that we're trying to evoke is being a little bit more ahead of the curve and not missing some of these opportunities as they come upon us.

We're focusing a lot of our new funding that we had in the strategic partnerships initiative to build in the capacity and support the capacity of first nations to engage with provinces, to engage with the private sector, to engage with the federal government and others, their own communities, for instance, as they enter into relationships with industries that have extremely big and complex operations and developments that are sometimes beyond the scale and scope of things they have otherwise been accustomed to.

This is one of the things we're doing much more aggressively as a federal family.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Thank you very much, and thank you, Mr. Mayes.

I will suspend for five or ten minutes, then we'll regroup and continue with questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

We'll recommence the committee hearing and start with Mrs. Hughes for seven minutes.

[Carol Hughes, NDP, Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON]

Thank you very much. I have lots of questions. I hope I can get most of them in.

I'm going to change the channel a little and go to Industry Canada.

It says here that in budget 2009 the government provided $225 million over three years for Industry Canada to develop and implement a strategy to extend broadband coverage. We're close to 2012, so is there a plan to allow more money to come through for broadband, given that a lot of communities still need access to broadband? You indicated that 40% of your projects were completed, so that leaves 60% incomplete. Will they be done by the 2012 deadline? Are they all in remote rural communities, and how many of them are first nation?

[Janet DiFrancesco]

That's a lot of questions. If I miss one let me know.

[Carol Hughes, NDP, Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON]

You can go back to Hansard after and maybe submit what's not answered.

[Janet DiFrancesco]

Certainly.

The broadband Canada program is a three-year sunsetting program. On what we have achieved, as you noted, only 14 of the projects are currently completed. The remaining 35 will be completed by December 31, 2011, with a few projects going into March 2012. All of the projects will be completed by the summer of 2012.

We are monitoring them very closely. One of the things we need to understand with Internet projects is that the networks are complex and require a significant amount of effort and sometimes reworking to get them right and provide the service we're looking for.

[Carol Hughes, NDP, Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON]

Are they all in rural communities?

[Janet DiFrancesco]

All of the projects are in communities that were designated as unserved or underserved. By definition, urban areas were excluded from the process. In 2009, 100% of urban areas had access to broadband at 1.5 megabits per second. All of these projects are in what we consider to be rural or remote areas.

[Carol Hughes, NDP, Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON]

Is there an opportunity, or has some money been allocated for further funding after 2012? I know that some of my communities are dependent on Internet access for their businesses, but I often get calls from these communities saying they cannot compete with others because they still have dial-up.

[Janet DiFrancesco]

By the time the program is finished in 2012 we estimate that less than 0.5% of Canadians will actually lack access to basic broadband, which is at 1.5 megabits per second. Those households are scattered across Canada in very low-density areas, and in some cases very remote areas.

On the next steps, the Minister of Industry launched a federal-provincial-territorial discussion last January. The provinces and territories are looking at trying to get a better understanding of where the gaps in broadband will exist going forward. That may pave the way for a future discussion on needs.

The private sector continues to invest in broadband networks, in particular mobile broadband networks. In some instances these networks provide viable alternatives where other types of broadband don't exist. A number of provinces continue to invest. You may be aware that the Province of Quebec announced $900 million in investments for broadband in that province. The Province of B.C. recently announced a $1 billion deal with Telus to expand broadband cellular and broadband services in that province. Alberta and other provinces are doing the same thing.

In the area of broadband connectivity there's a dynamic atmosphere. There's still a lot of investment going on, and we will want to target any future investment in areas where gaps remain.

[Carol Hughes, NDP, Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON]

Out of these 49 projects, how many were in first nations communities?

[Janet DiFrancesco]

We have 12 projects in first nations communities, representing just over $30 million in investment, and they will connect just over 15,000 households, approximately.

[Carol Hughes, NDP, Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON]

Out of the 5%, how many communities are we talking about here?

[Janet DiFrancesco]

Out of the 5%?

[Carol Hughes, NDP, Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON]

You said that about 5% still won't have access.

[Janet DiFrancesco]

It's 0.5%. That represents about 63,000 households, but I can't tell you precisely which ones would be first nations. We could get back to you on that.