Human Resources Committee on Dec. 6th, 2011

[Phil McColeman, Conservative, Brant, ON]

I was in construction for 25 years with my own company. It reminds me a lot of the frustrations in being a small-business entrepreneur and some of the things we had to go through to do some of the simplest things, like getting a silly small building permit to put up a gazebo in someone's backyard, and different things like that. I'm not saying to draw this as.... But sometimes things get so convoluted, it seems, on the government side.

Here's the question I want to ask you. Do you see the need to streamline, to get rid of unnecessary procedures, policies, or regulations, whatever they might be, just to make it as simple as most common sense would tell you it could be simple? Do you agree with that?

[Kim Radbourne]

Both streamlining and bringing in the system so that anybody could access within the same department, yes, that would be--

[Phil McColeman, Conservative, Brant, ON]

Yes: streamline it, make it easy, make it a simple point of access, and expedite it. Take it in and get it done. Because for what it's worth, I think some people might have dropped out because of the frustration they saw in seeing themselves not having the perseverance, I suppose, to hang in there with the program, especially apprenticeship programs--which I'm very familiar with--because of all the hoops and hurdles they might have had to overcome along the way. Fair comment or not?

[Kim Radbourne]

Yes.

[Gary Merasty]

Yes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Mr. McColeman, your time's well up, but it's a fair point.

I take it you agree with that point. Do you want to add to it or leave it?

[Gary Merasty]

The apprenticeship issue is a good one. Northern Alberta had a good pilot for that, where they tried to do a three-to-one journeyman-to-apprentice pilot. A lot of jurisdictions have a one-to-one system and that can plug up or bottleneck the system a bit.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

So there are some issues like that.

Mr. Cuzner.

[Rodger Cuzner, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

Thanks very much.

I appreciate you both being here today. It's great to see my old friend and colleague Gary, who was a great member of Parliament and certainly made a good contribution during his time here on the Hill.

It's great to see that you continue to do good work for the people you represent and that you are realizing some of those successes.

If we could just go back a bit, Gary, I have a couple of points for you, and then if I can I will go to Kim.

You were talking about the dropouts. They come back for grade 10. Are you saying that there's not really an adult education program that is able to accommodate those adult learners, those in their early twenties?

[Gary Merasty]

Yes. In the post-secondary program you're not allowed to really invest in the upgrading piece. The technical programs do, but they come in waves, and they're inconsistent, so in getting any type of momentum in tackling the adult education issues, the gaps in the northern communities remain.

Programs like ASEP actually allowed us to be flexible and target some of those. As Kim mentioned, a lot of our programs actually had an upgrading component to them, a workplace education type of component.

[Rodger Cuzner, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

We've had good success in Nova Scotia with the adult learning component in community colleges. A teacher might have 15 students, but they all go at their own pace. It's not the teacher up front sort of teaching a lesson. It's a program that's a little bit tougher to put forward, but they've had huge success, in that it better accommodates the needs of the adult learner.

Tell me, is there any kind of network in the mining sector and the oil sector in these northern communities? Because some companies are doing real good stuff. I know that Suncor and Syncrude take corporate social responsibility very seriously. Do you guys interface with best practices? Is there a network there, Gary?

[Gary Merasty]

Yes, there are various networks. There's the Conference Board, the Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business, the Canada West Foundation, and those types of things. There's a sharing of best practices, and we do stay in touch. We share a lot of what we do, and we learn from others, as well.

[Rodger Cuzner, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

I know that entrepreneurship is something that's really starting to grow in the Fort McMurray area, because the companies have made it a focus and have brought attention to that. Are you starting to see some examples of that? Or is it mainly that the opportunities are continuing to grow more so within the trades?

[Gary Merasty]

Yes, it's within the trades. You're seeing tradespeople out-earn professional training by a significant margin, because they start to earn earlier. Their training is on-the-job, so sometimes they get a salary during that time. There are a lot of opportunities in that area, especially right now.

[Rodger Cuzner, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

Kim, you mentioned the pre-apprenticeship program. Is that a training program without any actual hours, or is it an upgrading to grade 12? Is it an equivalency program? Is that what you were referring to?

[Kim Radbourne]

Yes. They add an upgrading component to the level one for trades readiness. There is an intro, and then you get your level one, as well. But unlike a regular apprenticeship, pre-apprenticeships sunset. So the level one is only good for so long, and if you don't get registered you lose it. It's a year.

[Rodger Cuzner, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

You mentioned that many communities, many people, just don't understand the opportunities that are out there because of the dichotomy between federal and provincial responsibilities. Could you sort of expand on that a little bit more? If it's everybody's responsibility, then it's nobody's responsibility. Is that it?

[Kim Radbourne]

Again, I guess it would be like the funding of K to 12, right? Every little boy, and hopefully every little girl now, too, wants to be a truck driver or wants to drive the heavy equipment, but they're not aware of all the different opportunities. For example, we have an electrical training program in our program right now. I went in to present to them to say, hey, let's think about all the opportunities in terms of being an electrician. Electrical techniques and electrical instrumentation can be a starting point for so many fields. There's a huge need for electrical instrumentation. There are power-line apprenticeships. There are so many opportunities.

This kind of career education doesn't happen in our first nation communities.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Mr. Cuzner, your time is up, so we're going to move to the final round of questioning.

Ms. Leitch.

[Kellie Leitch, Conservative, Simcoe—Grey, ON]

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much for taking the time to join us today. We appreciate your comments.

I usually get cut off, because I'm the last person on the round. I'm going to give you two questions, and if you can't answer them, maybe you could send us a response. I'd greatly appreciate it.

I grew up in a northern community, in Fort McMurray, actually. I recognize exactly the opportunities that are there, particularly for integrating the first nation communities into large industrial mining operations.

First, what are some of the specific best practices or educational programs you believe your company can invest in or is already investing in? Do you have examples of other firms we can look to for best practices? That's an educational question.

Second, can you provide some comments on successes in the private sector with respect to training and development in these remote rural communities? What are they doing to attract individuals from other parts of either your province or the country? I think we all know that a thousand people are probably not going to be enough to service all those jobs in Saskatchewan. A thousand people will not be enough to service even northern Saskatchewan. We're going to have to find those other individuals somewhere else, hopefully within our own country. What are your firms and other best-practice firms doing to attract individuals from other parts of the country so that we're utilizing as many Canadians as possible and are making sure that every Canadian possible has a job?

[Gary Merasty]

We take a bit of a pipeline approach to our education training programs within Cameco. I think one of the best practices revolves around that approach, in that we look at what some of the needs are in the high school system and we try to support it. Some of them are traditional, like career fairs, informational sessions. We go in there and we introduce them to the trades, that type of thing.

We invested $2 million into Credenda virtual high school to enhance the math and science training in those schools, especially the remote ones, so they can come out with the math and science. Then we do the university-college--again, we do scholarships there, some of that traditional approach. We also bring them in to partner internally with our in-house training, so we can have economies of scale. We look at leveraging outside dollars, our internal dollars, and undertaking some of this.

We've had people get commerce degrees. Once they're employed with us, we pay their tuition to go into engineering. We just had a Métis graduate with his engineering degree. He started with us with only basically grade 12, and it went up. He's an engineer. Big John, we call him. That type of top-of-company commitment is absolutely critical. After that, it's just more engagement with the communities and really getting to know what it is they'd like to see.

There was an earlier question about innovation. Unfortunately, there's a lot of welfare in the communities. And the ability to keep people on welfare while they're undergoing some training to enhance their skills, top it up perhaps, could meet with some positive results in the future, especially with those large numbers of drop-outs.

Those are some best practices we've heard about.

[Kellie Leitch, Conservative, Simcoe—Grey, ON]

In addition to your firm, do you have other firms you would recommend that have best practices?

[Gary Merasty]

Certainly there's our partner, AREVA Canada. And we've gone into the oil field, oil sector, to look at Suncor, Shell. With our ASEP program, Shell was actually a partner in that process. De Beers has done some good things in the Xstrata Raglan mine in northern Quebec as well. They've been quite innovative.

[Kellie Leitch, Conservative, Simcoe—Grey, ON]

Thank you.

[Kim Radbourne]

One of the best practices I see with the Lower Mattagami River project is the use of the contractor Kiewit-Alarie for soliciting any of our university or college graduates, due to the incentive grants for engineers. It's really excellent to provide that opportunity to any of our technical graduates.

That's the main thing that I see, because I'm with the training organization, not the company side. The company side is being forced to sit with us at the table and to develop these plans to achieve the position. But I think they see it as mutually beneficial in meeting the obligations of our agreement and in seeing that people close to the project are getting the jobs.