Human Resources Committee on March 28th, 2012

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

Mr. Butt, you're next.

[Brad Butt, Conservative, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thanks to both of the witnesses for being here today. I'm hoping I'll get questions in for both of you in my five minutes, but I'll start with Ms. Schmidt.

I'll share a family story too. My daughters are eight and 12. I know that my eight-year-old daughter talked for a week about the visiting scientist who'd come to her school. She thought it was just the bee's knees, for lack of a better way of saying it. She was so excited about that. Now, whether that will lead to her having an interest in a career in the sciences from grade 2 to when she eventually gets there....

I want to follow up on some of the things you were saying about how we, as a federal government, can play a better coordinating or leadership role, given that we know elementary education is clearly in the domain of the provinces. Is there any other specific thing, other than a program like the one that I think of from my own personal experience? I think it had a real impact, but it was only one day out of the 190 days of school that these kids go to.

Do you have ideas on how we can expand that, and do more of it, to get young kids in grades 2 and 3 talking more about sciences and being excited by science and math?

[Dr. Bonnie Schmidt]

It's also very possible that you might want to choose a third party to be the broker to bring everybody together. Let's Talk Science works with 36 universities and colleges from coast to coast, with many industries, and with the federal government scientists who want to get involved. We mobilize 3,000 people who themselves are in the science workforce or are going to be in the science workforce. We do go into schools and community centres all the time and work with kids. You have to have a different kind of program for each of the different ages and ranges.

In addition to doing the focus things—you parachute in and then you leave—we've begun to work more on how to have programs that can be implemented and have a life of their own in the classroom. You do have to get the teachers involved. You do have to get the voluntary sector involved.

Job fairs and all that are great, but you have to think strategically on how to systematize it. That's really where we're at right now, systematizing the work that began 10 or 20 years ago with role models in the classroom. How do you make that a permanent feature of every child's experience in the summer, in school, after school? It's a cultural piece.

It's definitely doable, and there is a role for the federal government.

[Brad Butt, Conservative, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

Just to follow up on that, I can tell you about one of the things I've done with a couple of schools I've visited in my riding. Here at the House of Commons they put together a teachers' kit, an absolutely fantastic kit. When you go and talk to a grade 5 class that's learning about Parliament, it's a leave-behind. The teachers are grateful for it, because the provincial ministries of education—well, I can only speak for Ontario—aren't doing it. It's a part of the curriculum, but the Ontario curriculum isn't giving them enough. When I come and do that, it has DVDs and all kinds of other things that they can use in the practical experience.

Could you see the federal government—through FedDev, perhaps, or the minister for science and technology, or Industry Canada or HRSDC or whatever—playing a role and maybe putting that kind of kit together so that the provincial ministries of education could then avail themselves of it?

[Dr. Bonnie Schmidt]

We do that now. We've actually put lots of kits together for use by teachers or by volunteers. Starting with pre-K and kindergarten, they look at friction and movement. They go all the way up to grade 12, where they look at leading-edge biotechnology. We are able to do that.

The other piece that's really innovative is our web-based blended learning program. That's actually connecting people with classrooms virtually and creating a place where teachers can receive training and support using a medium that the kids like and using a medium the teachers can get to on their own time. It really is about supporting educators, and it is about building the connection across the community with a clear vision of what we're trying to achieve at the end of the day.

There are lots of things—kits and resources—and we could do all of that.

[Brad Butt, Conservative, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

Mr. LeBlond, one of the other issues I and probably all MPs deal with concerns older workers. You mentioned senior workers and getting the industry to realize that hiring people who are 60 or 62 is actually a good thing to do if they have skills or experience. I have people coming into my office and meeting with me who are in their late fifties. They worked for one company, but they're no longer working there because of the economic situation: the company's shut down, or they're scaling back or whatever.

These people still have those really viable skills in many of the occupational areas that your organization represents. How do we get the message out to businesses that it is still a good thing to hire somebody who's 58 or 59 or 60? They may still get five to ten years of additional work out of an individual like that, because they want or need to continue working. Do you have any strategies for how we can encourage employers to hire older workers in these skill areas?

[Isidore LeBlond]

I won't go down the road of tax breaks or incentives, but certainly industry needs to hear it more than once. We have to do a major lobbying campaign to market to them and to indicate that they're part of the solution. There's no one silver bullet here; they're part of a solution.

A lot of the seniors have great skills and can teach some of the younger workers maybe two or three days a week. A lot of people I know don't want to work five days, but maybe you'd want to take two seniors to get five days of employment out of both of them.

It's going to take a little bit of public relations. We need to engage these companies, and all it's going to take is for some companies to start leveraging others, such as consulting companies, until the word gets out, especially in the construction industry or in any of the infrastructure programs. I'm not talking about a 70-year-old senior citizen putting up a steel skyscraper or pouring concrete, but there are some of the other tasks that they are very capable of teaching and transferring. They're going to be able to be those mentors that we seem to have lost in this country over the last 25 years.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Madame Perreault, do you have a few questions?

[Manon Perreault, NDP, Montcalm, QC]

Thank you.

My questions are for Ms. Schmidt.

Earlier, you said that students drop science courses much too early. Are they doing so to enter the job market, or are they switching their field of study altogether?

[Dr. Bonnie Schmidt]

That's a very good question. I don't know if they're changing disciplines. Do you mean they're dropping out at the high school level?

[Manon Perreault, NDP, Montcalm, QC]

Yes.

[Dr. Bonnie Schmidt]

What we're finding with our benchmarking study is that typically at the end of high school, only about 40% to 50% of students have completed their biology courses. About 20% to 30% have completed their chemistry, and 10% to 20% have completed their physics courses. The polls we've done suggest that they drop out for a few reasons, one of which is that they don't need any more credits to graduate from high school. About half of them who don't continue on say they don't need to. It's not required, and they're not seeing the connection with future jobs, so why work harder than they need to if they don't need it?

In our poll, 15% said they'd already learned enough in their science courses to help them with their everyday life forever, so they're not seeing the relevance of science.

I believe very strongly it's the relevance and the lack of clarity as to what awaits them. Many young people have no idea that about 40% of college programs require or recommend optional science and math credits. One of the fastest-growing areas in the college system is foundational or remedial science and math programming.

So they're dropping it because they don't know. Their parents don't realize how important it is and how many doors get cut off.

[Manon Perreault, NDP, Montcalm, QC]

Is the reason that young people do not know they need it to meet credit requirements or to open a door down the road? Are they poorly informed or do they simply disregard that information?

[Dr. Bonnie Schmidt]

I believe it is very much that they are poorly informed, and I go back to the parents as well. There was another survey done last year that asked parents about their perceptions about the importance of science. New Canadians were very high in their recognition of that. Canadian parents were less so, and first nations parents were much less so. Awareness of the fact that the world has changed and that jobs require more and different skills is a huge problem.

The second one is relevance. Much of the content at the high school level is not really positioned into a framework that shows its relevance or its application to a job.

[Manon Perreault, NDP, Montcalm, QC]

Does one Canadian province produce more science students than the rest?

[Dr. Bonnie Schmidt]

It's interesting you ask that. We will be releasing our study later in May.

We looked at a few provinces. One of the quite surprising things is that Saskatchewan is graduating a higher proportion of students from their high schools with credits in science. When we looked into it more, we found that there are fewer options; kids have to complete more science credits, and they have fewer choices. It isn't necessarily that they are doing it better; there is less choice and there are more mandatory science credits.

[Manon Perreault, NDP, Montcalm, QC]

Thank you.

I am going to change topics. Earlier, you said that you do not receive any government funding, but I also read that—

[Dr. Bonnie Schmidt]

I didn't say that.

[Manon Perreault, NDP, Montcalm, QC]

All right, I misunderstood.

I also read that yours is a non-profit organization. What are your main sources of funding?

[Dr. Bonnie Schmidt]

We have pretty good distribution of our revenue. We have funding from FedDev and we are supported by three of the granting councils, but in small, peer-reviewed grant applications. We have good funding from industry partners and foundation partners, and we have a small stream of earned income as well.

We are quite diversified. A growing number of individuals are realizing that it is a good cause to give to. We are a registered charity.

[Manon Perreault, NDP, Montcalm, QC]

My last question will be brief. Is there a program specially designed to attract more women?

[Dr. Bonnie Schmidt]

We used to have one. I began to get many calls from the parents of boys and from science consultants and coordinators at school boards saying they were having far more challenges keeping boys in the system than girls. I know this is a really sensitive area, but through elementary and high school it's very important that we look at raising the bar for everybody and make sure everybody has opportunities.

You start to see differences in gender participation a little later in the pipeline, but we are in dire risk of losing boys right now. It's also happening in the sciences at the high school level. For those reasons, we no longer have gender-specific programming.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Thank you.

Do you have a concluding remark, Mr. LeBlond?

[Isidore LeBlond]

No.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Okay.

Thank you very much for your presentation. We appreciate your attending.

With that, we will adjourn.