Human Resources Committee on March 14th, 2012

[Devinder Shory, Conservative, Calgary Northeast, AB]

I represent Calgary Northeast, and I always say that Calgary Northeast is the hardest-working constituency in Canada. We have quite a few business people and entrepreneurs, but what I hear a lot of the time is that there is a shortage of low-skilled workers. That isn't a good thing. In this committee, part of our study will focus on the shortage of low-skilled workers. I see some discrepancy in the analysis and the on-the-ground demand in my riding.

Are there or will there be soon any labour shortages in low-skilled occupations—agriculture, aquaculture, or the service sector?

[Tracey Leesti]

There are regional differences among primary industries, which include agriculture and aquaculture. If you look at Alberta, you can see that compared with other provinces they have a much lower unemployment rate for these selected occupation groups. I couldn't comment on whether there is a shortage of workers. We don't have anything on the service sector right now, but we could provide that for you.

[Devinder Shory, Conservative, Calgary Northeast, AB]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Mr. McCracken, did you have a comment?

[Michael McCracken]

I'm an entrepreneur and I live in centre Ottawa, but I've been out to northeast Calgary on occasion. You have to be very careful when people talk to you about shortages of low-skilled workers. What they may be talking about is a shortage of low-paid workers. If the pay is adequate, then you should see people coming to work there, if not from within northeast Calgary, then from other parts of the area.

The second thing is to push the employer on what shortages of skills they are running into. Is it literacy? Is it something else? If so, then they can put some emphasis on getting that done.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Thank you for that intervention. I think you might have some people taking issue with that from some of the provinces—Saskatchewan and Alberta, for sure—but fair enough.

I know Mr. Andrews has been waiting patiently to get a chance to have his turn, so go ahead.

[Scott Andrews, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here subbing in for my colleague today.

I'm going to take this to a local perspective. I'm looking at your slide 6 and the unemployment rate for selected occupations, and I see it's very high in Newfoundland and Labrador and throughout Atlantic Canada for primary industry and for processing, manufacturing, and utilities. This survey was done in September of...?

[Tracey Leesti]

It's a monthly labour force survey, and this is an annual average for 2011.

[Scott Andrews, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

Okay. What you've projected here is nowhere what we're feeling and seeing on the ground in Newfoundland and Labrador regarding unemployment. There is no way the unemployment rate is over 27% in Newfoundland and Labrador. We're actually in a need of skilled trades now. I've had two calls in the last week for temporary foreign worker permits in Newfoundland and Labrador. So something's amiss here.

When I look at the other slide, slide 5, and you're talking about construction trades and the unemployment rate for Canada being up around 12%, that doesn't jibe with what I'm hearing on the ground back home.

Vale Inco is spending $2.8 billion on a smelter in Newfoundland and Labrador, and they're actually in a labour shortage in Newfoundland and Labrador. One of the things I'd like to just quote is this. I just today actually got their little update from their project on Long Harbour. Dan Donnelly, who's the construction manager says:

“Labour availability is one of our most pressing concerns right now,” Donnelly said. “It has the potential to put us off schedule, which in turn could put us over budget. So we're working aggressively to address this problem. Incidentally, this skills shortage is not unique to our project. Other major developments that are coming down the pipe are anticipating similar challenges. On the plus side, there has never been a better time for a skilled tradesperson in this province and country.”

When I met with Vale a little while ago, I found that it is actually applying for temporary foreign workers to supplement the Canadian supply.

So I'm a bit thrown off by your statistics here and what we're actually feeling on the ground in Newfoundland and Labrador and the need for craft labour in the province and the country. They say there is some construction labour available in Atlantic Canada, but again, temporary foreign workers are required to supplement the Canadian supply.

So I'm not seeing how these statistics jibe. I don't know if you have any comments on that.

[Tracey Leesti]

Well, I have just two comments on it.

I guess one thing would be to note that these are occupation groupings, so I guess it would mean more in terms of what particular occupations you're in. Perhaps we're showing something different when we break it down than what we have here.

Second, we do know we are seeing lower unemployment rates in Newfoundland. They've come down over time, and that's showing up in the data. There was a phenomenon about the Newfoundlanders going over to Fort McMurray, Alberta, and we're actually seeing a change in that in terms of the unemployment. We see the unemployment rate going down. We're assuming people are staying because they're finding employment in the province. So it's been one of the provinces that has been showing growth in employment.

It could be perhaps the way we've grouped this. Perhaps I can get more information for you.

[Scott Andrews, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

I think this is what Mr. Daniel was getting at over there about the grouping of this. I think that slide is misleading.

Do you guys do any statistics on temporary foreign worker permits?

[Tracey Leesti]

We can't identify them in the labour force survey, no.

[Scott Andrews, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

I think government would have access to the temporary foreign workers. You probably should ask the department to give you some statistics on that to overlay where some of the problem is, because the labour shortage in our province in the skilled trades right now is huge.

How much time do I have left, Chair?

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

You have one minute.

[Scott Andrews, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

Okay.

I'm just trying to help. I'm just putting all of this on the table. You guys can decide where you want to go with it, if you want to.

I have one question. Michael, at the end you talked about unions and you talked about working with unions. One of the things we're also hearing in Newfoundland and Labrador is that the unions are not allowing people in. They're trying to keep their union roll fairly low so they don't get an expanded union force. There are people out there wanting to do the job, but these are union projects and they can't get in. I don't know how deep that particular issue goes. They don't mind temporary foreign workers because those temporary foreign workers are coming from another accredited union in the United States or wherever.

I know you briefly mentioned it there at the end. I don't know if you have any comments regarding the union forces allowing people into some of these shortage areas that have been at least pointed out in Newfoundland.

[Michael McCracken]

We worked on a number of major projects in the seventies and eighties, and who would be allowed to work was always a contentious issue, even within the union side. It had to do with trying to first get jobs for their own members before going out more broadly.

I thought those had fairly well disappeared, but it sounds like, again, in a hot spot, you're going to get some people reacting to that. I would think it would be worth bringing pressure on both the unions and the labour departments provincially to ask what this is. We don't want them to be in a position of controlling access to the workplace.

[Scott Andrews, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

We've done that with Vale and the provincial government.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Your time is certainly up.

I would like to thank the witnesses for their presentations. We certainly appreciated hearing from you, and we'll certainly take them into account when preparing our report.

Thank you very much.

The meeting is suspended.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

We'll start. I understand we may have bells interrupting, and if that's the case, we'll stop when we think it's appropriate.

One of the witnesses who was to appear is not here. I'll perhaps ask the clerk to just advise us, next meeting, on what the situation was.

We have presenters from Engineers Canada. Marie Carter is chief operating officer, and Alana Lavoie is manager of government relations.

Marie will present, and then, as is the practice, we'll open it up to questioning.

Go ahead, please.

[Marie Carter, Chief Operating Officer, Interim Chief Executive Officer, Engineers Canada]

Thank you very much. I do appreciate being invited to come and speak to you.

As indicated, my name is Marie Carter. I'm actually this week the interim chief executive officer, so I'm wearing two hats at the moment.

Engineers Canada is the national body that represents the 12 regulators of engineering in Canada. We represent more than 250,000 licensed engineers in the country.

At Engineers Canada we're aware, very aware, of the current and future labour shortages in engineering. In 2009 we carried out a labour market conditions report, which annually we update, and many of our engineering labour markets are characterized at the moment by a surplus of recent graduates with little or no experience but a shortage of people with five to ten years of experience. Those people who have specialized, practical experience are in quite short supply right now in Canada.

A 2008 report from the Information and Communications Technology Council indicated that between 2008 and 2015, Canadian employers would be looking to recruit some 126,000 to 180,000 workers in the engineering and technology fields.

We're looking at an average of some 16,000 to just over 22,000 people per year, with the supply of our domestic graduates meeting only a half to two-thirds of that demand, depending on what discipline we're looking at. We know that new graduates aren't a substitute for the experienced engineers with the specialized technical skills.

For the civil, mechanical, electrical, and petroleum engineering labour markets, the report projects low excess supply all the way through to 2018 and probably beyond. With retirements as well, we're creating challenges in recruiting experienced engineers in many of these fields in later years.

For the industrial and manufacturing engineering labour market, the report further notes that chronic labour shortages are projected to 2018, given the current levels of immigration and post-secondary enrolments.

We do our own annual report, entitled Trends in Engineering Enrolment and Degrees Awarded. The most recent one reported on 2010, when we had a total of 11,450 undergraduate degrees in engineering. In that year, mechanical engineering remained the program in which the most undergraduate degrees were awarded, following by electrical, civil, and chemical. So the standard old engineering programs are the ones that are still attracting a majority of the students.

To attempt to address the shortage that's evident now and into the future, the engineering profession is undertaking several actions. First, we're looking to the under-represented groups in engineering—women and indigenous people—to ensure diversity in the profession and help fill the skills gap.

According to the 2006 census, although women comprised 47% of the total workforce, we comprised only 13% of the engineering workforce. In fact, from our most recent data on actual licensed engineers, we're about 10% of the licensed professional engineers in the country.

The plateau of females pursuing engineering contrasts with the rise of female participation in other previously male-dominated occupations, such as law and medicine. For example, in the 20-year period from 1986 to 2006, the proportion of women who were lawyers and doctors increased by almost 17% and about 13.5% respectively, whereas for engineers we increased by only 6%.

So we do have a big untapped resource there with women, and we know that we have a lot of room for incorporating indigenous people into the engineering profession.

We're setting targets. We're improving access to training programs for engineers and fostering greater flexibility in the delivery of the engineering curriculum.

Secondly, we're forming partnerships with national and provincial indigenous-focused organizations—there is a big drive in Alberta with our Alberta association on this—to develop tools to promote engineering to indigenous students, targeting outreach and support programs that run right from kindergarten to university, because clearly you need to be on the path to get the appropriate high school credits to get going in engineering, and to raise the interest.

We're working to raise industrial and government financial support for programs to assist indigenous students in engineering disciplines. Manitoba has a reasonable bridging program at the University of Manitoba for indigenous people, but this really does need to be more widespread in the country.

Finally, over the last 10 years, Engineers Canada and our constituent associations have undertaken a number of projects to help ensure the timely integration of international engineering graduates into our profession and into the workforce. As a brief example, one of our current initiatives is the international engineering graduate road map, and that will be a comprehensive one-stop shop, essentially. It's a resource to ease the start of the international engineering graduate's navigation through the process of becoming licensed in Canada.

With support from HRSDC, we undertook a big project called “From Consideration to Integration”. One of the items that was identified as an issue was just the understanding from the immigrant's point of view of how our system in Canada works, so this project should really provide a lot more clarity from that perspective.

We've undertaken a lot of our projects in partnership with the federal government, not only with HRSDC but also with Citizenship and Immigration Canada, and we look forward to continuing that very successful working relationship.

From our perspective, we would strongly encourage the federal government and provincial and territorial governments to continue to focus on supporting strong science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education at all levels, with special emphasis on the under-represented groups, while also continuing to work with various professions to improve the foreign qualifications assessment and recognition process.

We know from our contacts in the regulated professions that we're probably leading in a lot of the initiatives in how far we've come with being able to recognize the foreign credentials, and also in making it easier for foreign-trained people to apply from offshore, to get the process started, and to understand what they need to do to get going.

From our perspective, we're quite proud of the work we're doing to address the current and future labour shortages in our profession.

Thank you very much. I'd be happy to answer questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Thank you for the very interesting presentation.

You have done some good work, and there is more work to be done.

We'll open it up to questions.

Ms. Hughes, you'll go first in this round.

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

Thank you very much.

I think it's quite interesting that you've talked about the 6% of untapped resources. You've indicated some of the initiatives that you've undertaken or are starting to take in order to move in that direction and tap into that.

You mentioned the aboriginals and women specifically, so I'm just wondering.... I know that we've talked about foreign credentials. During that study, we also talked about the aboriginal population. We've heard from organizations and businesses about their interventions to ensure that there are education initiatives, and we've heard about the training initiatives they've undertaken, so I'm just wondering if you could elaborate a bit more about some of your initiatives that you're undertaking, especially in the aboriginal.... It's good to say that we're going to go out there and raise the awareness, but if the funding is not there so they can go to school, there's still a problem.

[Marie Carter]

Absolutely, yes. The 6% that I referred to is only the increase in women. From the perspective of women, 50% of our population, really, is untapped. From the perspective of the whole aboriginal issue, we entered into an agreement with the Assembly of First Nations to try to work collectively on this issue.

We first started looking at this about eight or nine years ago. We reached out to the Assembly of First Nations, and we got in a number of people who had expertise in the education systems. It really appeared at first to be like trying to hug a cloud, because each little community has a different way of doing things, and they've got different ideas and values. So we wanted to try to get to a point where we could work towards helping to improve the basis—the basic education pieces—without alienating the group that we were trying to help by simply trying to go ahead with it.

So we do a number of things. We support a lot of the workshops and summer camp programs that they've got in the various first nations and aboriginal communities around the country. We've got quite an active program in supporting those workshops just so they get a feeling that science is fun, and math is fun, and subsequently, engineering can be fun as well.

The Alberta association is just in the process of really developing their outreach. They're working with industry. They have worked quite a bit with getting the gas and oil industry, which is predominant in northern Alberta, to help within the communities with that basic primary level education, so that the people will have the opportunity to move forward.

The ongoing program that I mentioned and that we're trying to help get spread across Canada to other universities is called NAEP. That's a bridging program they have, understanding that people coming from some of their local aboriginal communities may not have the math and science from their high schools. It's a program to work with them—and there's some financial support—to take two to three years to get through first-year engineering, so that they have the time to bring those skills up to speed, and then they just go into the regular stream with the rest of the engineers. They have been quite successful with that.

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

Thank you.

On that note, there was a labour market study done for engineering and technology by Engineers Canada, and it basically found that employers are overlooking recent graduates with little or no experience and are looking for engineers with five or more years of practical experience. I've heard that from people personally as well.

So what is the hand-up to them? You're telling me there's a shortage, but these people are being overlooked.

[Marie Carter]

Exactly. When we got the results of that, I thought, well, you know, you're not going to have any engineers with five to ten years of experience if you're not hiring the people out of university, because in five or ten years, they're the ones who will have the experience that you're looking for.

We've been making our best efforts, as have our constituent associations, to try to connect with industry to talk about mentoring programs, and to assist them with mentoring programs so that they can see that the new graduates who they hire will come up to speed more quickly.

There are a couple of provincial programs with some financial assistance for companies to hire new graduates, but those aren't well known or particularly well funded, so it continues to be a problem, and it continues to be an issue.

They're looking outside of Canada for the people with the five to ten years of experience rather than hiring our own grads. There is a gap.

This also happened in the 1990s because there was a recession in the late 1980s and early 1990s. I graduated in 1989, and I was in the last class where we really got jobs. The next class in 1990 didn't, because there was a recession. I'm a civil engineer. So we ended up five to ten years later, from the mid to late 1990s, not having enough engineers, those middle experience engineers, and again, they were relying on immigrant engineers.