Human Resources Committee on March 12th, 2012

[Louis Beauséjour]

I think we know what is going on. We have been receiving more and more demand for temporary workers. More and more employers are asking for labour market opinion, because that's a job the department is doing for each employer. The demand for labour market opinion has increased recently, and we're just catching up with it.

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

So the requests for renewal are part of it, but if you want a renewal it's six months.

[Louis Beauséjour]

Basically, the labour market opinion is for two years. If you want to have temporary foreign workers for more than two years, you have to ask for another labour market opinion. It's treated like a new one.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

You have 15 seconds.

[Louis Beauséjour]

I did mention that one of the—

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

You're using up her 15 seconds, but she seems amenable.

[Louis Beauséjour]

As part of my opening remarks I mentioned that we are now looking at improving the process by accelerating the labour market opinion approval process.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Thank you.

Mr. Mayes.

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

One of the issues I have with the challenges we're seeing in the west is the skills shortage and looking at some way that we can start moving people in the labour market—make them more mobile to get to the jobs.

I know we're talking about skills training, but is there a way you can connect people to the jobs? If you're training somebody in Newfoundland, you can connect them to jobs in Fort McMurray or Saskatchewan and address some of the needs in western Canada through the skills training.

[Louis Beauséjour]

The main tool we want to use more and more is the Working in Canada website. We want to be able to post more job openings there to ensure that all job seekers in the country can get that information and know where there are job openings in Canada. That's one of the things we want to improve on.

Right now the only jobs posted on the Working in Canada website are those that are in the job bank. We should do a better job of trying to have access to job openings posted by some of the private sector providers and make them available.

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

One of the challenges we're finding is that our provincial education is not really directing students to the skills that are needed. They're going to university and taking courses that may not be in high demand and probably won't be in high demand.

Do we interfere at all in trying to make sure that information and data get out to the universities and colleges in Canada to make sure they understand and educate students? It's a big waste of money. For a student to take a degree, any education is good, but if we're looking for jobs and trying to fill the needs, that is a big problem in western Canada.

[Louis Beauséjour]

It's a real challenge to help youth make choices in their careers. We have to figure out who are the best people to target to ensure that they can influence the kids when they have to make their career choices. That has always been a challenge. We're looking at how we can ensure that parents have access to the information on the Working in Canada website. We try to ensure that the information out there is better, up-to-date, and used by people who influence the youth population.

We have to focus more on having that information available in a way that it can be used and understood by the youth population, which is a bit different from the regular job seekers. The tool was developed initially to provide information for new immigrants and after that the job seekers. We need to develop those tools and make the move to target older people who can influence youth when they make their choices.

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

We hear information about connecting aboriginal students with programs that are sponsored by various sectors in industry to fill those jobs. Is there the opportunity to do that with non-aboriginals? Is that being done?

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Make it a short response, if you could.

[Louis Beauséjour]

Yes.

I will say that on that front there are a number of good programs under the youth employment strategy that could be used to do that when, in particular, we are thinking about skill links, which try to support youth at risk to try to bring them back either to school or to work. That is one of the key programs available to do that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Okay. Thank you.

We'll conclude with Mr. Harris. Go ahead.

[Dick Harris, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm a visitor here today, but I'm astonished at a couple of things. I know we have people called career counsellors in the high schools, who try to do a good job, despite the fact that they have no real information to be able to tell students where the jobs will be in the future to help them make choices. I know that for a fact. I know it's a provincial jurisdiction, but I would strongly suggest that we might have some cooperation between HRSDC people and the provincial people who would deal with that.

I'm also a little astonished that there seems to be some consideration that the data that identify potential job areas seem to be unreliable—I think that was the word. With the technology we have today, we have companies that have the skill to do what they call either dynamic modelling or situation modelling, using the most sophisticated database technology. They put in all the data and it chews it all up and spits out the most accurate information you could imagine. They can predict pretty much anything.

I'm surprised there isn't a company like this that is working with the government or on contract with the government to provide accurate information, because it's such a vital part of our economy going forward. I'm really surprised, because I know that technology exists. I know there are companies that do this for a wide variety of areas and provide that information to our government: When are we going to run out of fish? How about the caribou? How much corn do we need? They can figure this all out, and they can apply that same technology to identify where the skill shortages are going to be and how this is going to play out with the demographics going down the road.

To your knowledge, is there any consideration being given to try to get that more refined so that we can get accurate information?

[Yves Gingras]

I can take this one, Mr. Harris.

Not in terms of the modelling, but in terms of data, we now have access to a company that provides us with online job postings three times a week in Canada. It covers the whole country, all sectors, many occupations, and—

[Dick Harris, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

Sorry to interrupt you. Those are job postings that exist now. But we have to go beyond what exists today. We have to be looking 20 years down the road to make sure we have the labour skills and the technical skills to fill those big voids that are coming, as our baby boomers start to retire.

[Yves Gingras]

Mr. Harris, when we put this with the national projections we do, we provide that to our partners at the provincial and local levels. The idea is that they are building on this. I know there are products that take it to the local level, and we rely on them to take it to the counsellors. It's not something we do ourselves, but what we do here at the national level is a stepping stone for them to take it further. We do assist them technically. We work with provincial officials to interpret what we do at the national level so they can go deeper.

I'm not sure if it's all, but some provinces are taking it down to the local level in terms of where the market is going. They are developing their views, and we are helping them do that.

[Dick Harris, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

I appreciate that, considering our government is spending hundreds of millions of dollars—maybe a few billion dollars a year—on programs to prepare people for jobs and getting the skills. It would be nice to know where they're going with that, if we're spending that kind of money. That's my point.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Just to follow up on that, I guess what you're saying is that maybe there are individual sectors or provinces that might be drilling down to what their specific areas of interest are. But is there a national body that takes this information and compiles it in some meaningful way so that it can be dealt with across the nation and is more specific? Should somebody be responsible?

That follows up on what you were saying, Ms. Crowder. If we don't have reliable statistics that are accurate, should we not position ourselves in such a way that we would, as Mr. Harris has suggested, produce something that is close to accurate, could be relied upon, and could be used for planning purposes?

Is there any response to that?

[Louis Beauséjour]

We mentioned that COPS is one of potential tools that would probably do a better job, to supplement that with sectoral information. We can work as partners.

One of my first answers is that to try to predict the future in terms of new jobs will always be a challenge. It's not something that is easy to do. Jobs are created. New jobs appear and old jobs just disappear. Sometimes, even in our own system, we keep the same names. At Statistics Canada, most of the information we have, in terms of looking at jobs, is in the national occupational classification system. This system is updated only every five to 10 years. The titles don't change, but the jobs under the titles change. We know that jobs evolve, and we cannot get at that really.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Thank you.

Do you want to make a closing comment?

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

The question I wanted to ask is outside of the witness.