Human Resources Committee on Dec. 8th, 2011

[Christine Moore, NDP, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

I want to thank everyone.

I, myself, hail from a northern community. A specific issue is on my mind.

In the north, young men—this situation mostly applies to them—often go work outside their community. They find jobs in the north and, with only a high school diploma, they earn better wages than people with undergraduate university degrees, for instance, who stay in the community to work.

How can we encourage those people to go to school? They tell us that they earn better wages, even without a university degree, and that they don't want to run up any debt to go to school. What can we say to that?

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Who wants to try to respond to that?

Go ahead, Ms. Martin.

[Heidi Martin]

That is a concern we hear from the participants in the study. One of the participants from the Dene First Nation in Yellowknife mentioned that youth will drop out of high school and take a high-paying job or not bother to go on to university.

In Yellowknife, the Northwest Territories' Mine Training Society has invested a lot in making the connection between staying in school, staying in training, and personal economic wealth later in life. In their annual report, there's a cute little advertisement. It shows a picture of a Yellowknife Dene woman saying she's finished training and now owns a brand-new car, and she's literally sitting on her new car. They're making that economic connection between staying in school and personal economic comfort.

Some of our participants will stream individuals who are in the company and use bursaries, scholarships, and career plans to bring them from entry-level jobs to positions with a requirement for university education. When you get a big payoff for going into an entry-level job, it is easy not to bother with further education. But if you can capture people after they're on site and working, many of them can be encouraged to move towards higher education.

[Christine Moore, NDP, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

My other question is for the representatives of both groups.

I would like to know whether your programs are available in both official languages. I'm asking because of what I see in my region.

Often, people see job opportunities. They decide, for instance, to leave northern Quebec to go work in Alberta. They have some knowledge and skills. However, it is of the utmost importance that they be able to transfer that experience to the community they are settling in, once they arrive in their new region.

I would like to know whether your programs are available in both official languages. In addition, what do you do to help those workers integrate into their new community, so that the community can truly benefit and so that they do not leave six months later?

Also, is an effort being made to integrate, for instance, the wives of workers who go to northern communities? Is anything being done to help them integrate into the labour market? They are new to a region, and that is often more difficult for the spouses who follow their significant other.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Perhaps we'll hear from Suncor first and then we'll go to the Conference Board.

[Cathy Glover]

Mr. Chair, Fort McMurray has become one of the most successfully diverse communities we have in Canada. I heard this morning that the elementary school on Main Street has 69 languages represented, as families are coming from all across Canada and around the world into this business.

Our business operating language is English. Certainly we welcome anybody on site as long as they have the proficiency to be able to meet the required safety requirements from a language perspective, regardless of any language. Then we would work with the college to develop programs for new immigrants—welcome committees. We've developed a program with Keyano to welcome people who are not used to winter, to give them basically a winter 101 course on why you wear a hat, why there is a plug on the front of your car; it's not just to make it go.

We do have to help people who are arriving in this community, because there are jobs. They have heard there are jobs and many arrive, actually, without having done the research and they really don't know what it is they're getting into.

From the perspective of women, I'm also very proud to say that on our leadership team and in our oil sands business, two of our senior leaders are women. They are very accomplished engineers and very strong leaders. I think that type of role modelling is really important for women at any level of our organization.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Thank you, and we'll move to a brief response from the Conference Board.

[Heidi Martin]

The one example I have is that at Agnico-Eagle Mines in Nunavut they actually fly in a lot of their fly in, fly out employees out of Montreal. So they have a policy where you can work in any language you're comfortable with, and they have many languages. They do have a base requirement for operating in English, for safety, similar to what Suncor just mentioned. But they do have counsellors working in Inuktitut as well as in French and English.

Also, regarding women's participation, the Northwest Territories Mine Training Society, again, has a high level of women participants, especially among the aboriginal community. And 30% of their training participants are women, compared with an industry average of 5% in the mining sector. So they are really attempting to bolster the number of women in that industry and make them very welcome and successful.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Thank you.

We'll now move to Ms. Leitch. Go ahead.

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

Thank you very much to both groups for joining us today.

The first question is rather short and succinct. Perhaps I can just have your comments off the top. I really want to find out what you think are the key success factors for private sector areas investing in skills training in these remote rural communities. What would be the top three items? I know you had listed a few overarching...and we've not really been that focused. But what are the top three things that each one of these private sector companies needs to focus on in order to be successful in recruiting people into jobs in the north?

Suncor, do you want to go first?

[Cathy Glover]

I'm not sure it's a short answer. I'll have to think about what the top three pieces are.

The challenge is that there isn't a pipeline of skilled folks, young people or older, coming in. We know we have an aging population of skilled trades individuals and there will be a gap there. We don't have enough open training positions to educate new people. I think the other piece is that as a society we don't necessarily value skilled trades as a viable career opportunity. People can have very successful careers working in skilled trades. We need to talk to younger people about that being an opportunity. Success isn't only getting your BA. We are talking to young people about trades and other opportunities for them.

[Arlene Strom]

May I add a couple of things?

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Sure, go ahead.

[Arlene Strom]

We have really tried to focus on approaching this by being long term in our planning. We're planning more partnerships. Our company has typically not had a lot of joint ventures, but we are partnering so we can work together with industry and have staged needs over a longer period of time, so we don't get the peaks and valleys in labour needs, as we did back in 2008.

Second is to collaborate not only within the communities but within industry, so the labour organizations. We're looking at where the needs are going to be. What are the skills?

Third is mobility, not only outside of Canada, which gets a lot of attention, but within Canada. The certification processes for labour, skills, and trades should be harmonized so that we can have good mobility across Canada as well.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

We certainly hear that recurring from time to time.

Does the Conference Board of Canada wish to add anything to that?

[Heidi Martin]

Just to echo what Suncor has said. We have a lot of the same issues, but I would add that partnerships should be based on mutually beneficial goals. You will only find out what those goals are if you communicate with each other, so that must be based on a strong and constant communication back and forth, and that includes an understanding of each other's culture. We found in our study that communities are unique and you have to understand each other's culture, and that goes both ways. The community has to understand the business culture of their partners and the business has to understand the culture of the community they're dealing with.

One last thing is that there has to be a long-term focus and stable funding. We found that a lot of our organizations are chasing and wasting resources on constantly trying to renew their funding. Some funding is sunsetting, and they're nervous about being able to continue with their programs. So if there's a long-term focus and they don't have to worry about funding, they can continue to provide training and programs. That's something businesses must be focused on as well.

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

I have one short question for Suncor.

I know what you use the plug-in for when you use your car up north, because I grew up in Fort McMurray.

How valuable is Keyano College to what you are doing? Has it been an essential key component to making sure you have this pipeline you've talked about? Has it allowed you to build what you need, or are you looking for other partners outside of that college system?

[Cathy Glover]

I think we need to look at Keyano as well as others. The organization isn't large enough to meet all of the needs that are there. NAIT is a very essential partner in the skilled trades we have. In order to teach these trades you need certain kinds of equipment and materials, and they're not necessarily available at all of the institutions.

The college is important, and I think it's very important in building the community. There are programs critical to heavy equipment maintenance or piping technologies that are very specific to what we do. But having a college in the community is also very important to the sustainability of the community and keeping kids there. Children who are growing up in that community are able to choose to stay there. They don't necessarily have to leave to go to a post-secondary or technical trade school so they can work in the industry.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Thank you for that.

We'll move to Mr. Cuzner.

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

Thanks.

I think it's pretty cool that my colleague, Ms. Leitch, grew up in Fort McMurray.

My association with Fort McMurray goes back to 1976, when I worked with Catalytic Enterprises at Great Canadian Oil Sands, or GCOS. There were about 13,000 people in the community at that time. There are 69 languages in one of your elementary schools. I know most of the people in Fort McMurray were still trying to decipher “Newfinese” at the time I was out there.

At the risk of sounding like an infomercial for Suncor, I'm going to use my five minutes to share with the committee that Suncor is seen as a tremendous corporate citizen in Fort McMurray and the broader region. They have done some really neat things. With labour relations, they have taken some very progressive steps.

When I think back to Fort McKay, which is just out past the plant—when we first started going there in 1976-77, the community itself was in really rough shape. Because of its proximity, Suncor was very engaged in the community there. I know now that some of the best tradesmen came out of Fort McKay and even some of the more successful entrepreneurs in Fort McMurray are from that community. So obviously there have been some good things done.

But I want to move back to what Dick had asked before about the capacity for communities to even assume some of this success. At that time back then—and I'll just share this one with my colleagues—to get to Fort Chip, you fly in there in the winter. I was contracted by the Alberta Recreation and Parks Association to go in and do a coaching development hockey clinic in there. So we landed at the air strip. There was a horse on the air strip, so they had to buzz the air strip and shoo the horse off. It was about 35 below, and nobody picked me up at the landing strip. I was there with a bag of pucks. I had the old 16-millimetre films and all that. I had books and binders and all that. So the supervision wasn't there.

I walked to what I thought was the school. It was open. By about noon time some kids started showing up. There were no coaches, but a bunch of kids started showing up. I was trying to figure it out as I went along. I didn't see an adult for the day, and the plane wasn't picking me up until five. So I said, well, maybe I'll take the kids down on the rink and do some drills. The kids said, “We can't go, there's too much snow on the ice.” I said, “We'll clean the snow off.” So we cleaned the snow off and we did a hockey clinic. I did some drills with the kids and all that. We had some great fun.

At the end of it, one of the kids came up and said, “Are you Jari Kurri?” So the kids at Fort Chip think that Jari Kurri came to their community and did a clinic that day. That was before I was a politician. I don't fib anymore now that I'm a politician.

So from Suncor, could you share with us—you had referenced Fort Chip—what types of things you're involved in with that community now? What types of initiatives would you have pursued in the Fort Chip community that would have allowed for greater opportunity there? I know there are some successes in McKay. What about Fort Chip? How have things come along there?

[Cathy Glover]

As you say, Fort Chip is a more challenging community because it is that much more remote. Our most successful example is a company manufacturing Kevlar wristlets that are being used by a number of different industry members in Fort Mac. Really these are protective sleeves that go over top of the suits our people wear on-site. They are being manufactured in a very small plant up in Fort Chip, which has been steadily employing somewhere between five and six people for probably 15 years. What that does is provide a need that we have, as industry; this is a product and a safety piece of equipment that our employees require. It's something we need, but it's something we can do in the community that is building an economic benefit directly into the community. We've had some of our folks in our business development group work with them to build and sustain that business, and to see if they can actually create a broader market for it. We haven't been quite as successful as we had hoped they might be able to be because of that transportation challenge. That's one really strong example of what's worked.

Also, through an initiative called the oil sands leadership initiative we are beginning to do collaborative work. We have five industry organizations working together, and rather than being competitive and each going into the community to try to do different things, we've been trying to go into the community together. We've had some real success looking at some of those things in those smaller communities.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Thank you very much.

Unless Mr. Cuzner has another very interesting story to share—

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

Just one comment. I'll tell you that back 30 years ago I would never have thought there would be any manufacturing going on in Fort Chip.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Thank you.

We'll then move on to Mr. Shory.

[Devinder Shory, Conservative, Calgary Northeast, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, witnesses, for being here.

Being from Calgary, Alberta, I can share all kinds of good stories about not only Suncor, but a lot of other companies that create jobs and that had such good programs to facilitate all of the workers from across Canada, or foreign workers, so that they would feel at home.

I have a very limited time and I want to focus on my question to the Conference Board of Canada. I was reading in your Centre for the North initiative that “a strong North is essential to a strong Canada”. I agree. We all know this, and we agree that under the leadership of Prime Minister Harper the north has been made a priority by this government.

Then I was reading the report of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, which is called “On the Front Lines of Canada’s Northern Strategy”. It reads:

In Ottawa, parties across the political spectrum have made northern issues a priority, and the current federal government has put more emphasis on the North than any other in recent memory.

Then I was reading the Canadian Chamber of Commerce comment, where they say that:

Despite many sources of government support and significant federal spending directed at rural/remote areas of Canada, consistent progress in building strong, self-sustaining remote communities is not evident.

My question is, considering all the observations made by FCM and the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, in your opinion, what is the reason that we are not achieving the intended results, and what should we do considering the fiscal restraint period we are going through?

I would like to receive some non-monetary input here.