Human Resources Committee on April 2nd, 2012

[Herb O'Heron]

As programs like new shipbuilding come up, and as we work with the aerospace industry or others, there's a constant dialogue. We brought people in from Pratt & Whitney to speak with MPs back in January. Pratt & Whitney has relationships with 30 or more institutions right across the country. They talk about the kinds of skills they need and the kind of research they rely on universities to do so they can do their thing. There is a great deal of sharing of information across those larger kinds of institutions—whether it's shipbuilding, aerospace, or others—around what the future needs will be for their industries to thrive in a more competitive world. So there's an awful lot of dialogue that goes on between individual universities and groups of institutions.

I see a lot more consortia of institutions where not just one or two universities can help the aerospace industry; they need 30 institutions working together on different aspects to solve the problems of the future. It's that kind of sharing and interaction between institutions at both the local and regional areas that's so important for us right now.

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

So—

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Excuse me; your time is up.

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

Mrs. Robinson wants to just jump in there. Sorry.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Okay, go ahead.

[Nobina Robinson]

You asked about the sector council program. All the colleges have ways to connect with the more adept sector councils—you've heard from some of them, like ECO Canada, BioTalent, and ICTC. We try to connect the employers we have with the sector councils.

Now, of course that program has been massively reduced and there is a need to rethink how we do this, because sectors change and there are new and emerging sectors in the country. But as I mentioned earlier, every single college program has two employers overseeing the program, as required by the province. So can't we harness those companies, those employers, to talk to us about their demand-side data?

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Mr. O'Heron, did you have a point you wanted to make on that as well? No? You're fine.

Mr. Knight, go ahead.

[James Knight]

The Ring of Fire has been mentioned, and I just wanted to say that we're working very hard with colleges in the north and aboriginal leaders to try to identify some programs that would support aboriginal learners in that area for the Ring of Fire opportunities.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

All right, definitely your time is up.

We'd like to get back to Madame Blanchette-Lamothe in a bit.

Mr. Butt, would you like to go? You're next on the list.

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

Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you very much, everyone, for being here today.

It seems to me we have a couple of challenges here. The first challenge we have is how we get high school graduates to consider going into post-secondary education and training for these jobs that we know are more prevalent in the future economy. Mr. Knight had mentioned this earlier. Let's not call it trades; let's come up with some new, sexy name, but something to push people into that because we know those are the jobs of the future.

So we have one group of people who are recent graduates from high school we're trying to move in. As I see it, the second group we have—and I'd like each of you to comment on this and whether or not you think there is any difference or whether we treat them the same—are the people who come into my office every so often, who had one career, who were working somewhere for ten years. Now they no longer are able to work in that area because the business has shut down, the economy has changed. They may have been highly trained in a certain area, but unless they have to pick up the whole family and move to Alberta, they want to keep working in Mississauga, where I am from, but they're no longer able to work in that area. So how do we re-educate them? How do we get them back into a program that would allow them to utilize some of the skills they already have or perhaps augment or improve what they have so that they can move into working in another company in Mississauga that is desperate for highly skilled workers? And I've met with those employers too.

Do you see a difference in approach between high school graduates versus second-career or retraining opportunities with people who are older and already have experience in the workforce? Is there a role for the federal government to play more so than it's doing now in those areas, while obviously still respecting our friends in the provinces?

Whoever wants to go first, go right ahead.

[James Knight]

Thank you for the question.

In Ontario there has been a specific program. You actually mentioned it: Second Career Ontario I believe is the name of it. The province instituted it to help the transition of people formerly employed in manufacturing. There is major displacement. And there have been some very interesting successes and outcomes. But clearly we're not dealing with high school graduates. The approach to high school graduates will be quite different. These may be people in their thirties and forties, with families, with responsibilities that high school graduates might not have. So the approach to them must be very different and the support systems and tools that you use for them must be very different.

This program has had some success in Ontario, and there are some wonderful stories about transitions from manufacturing to many other careers. But the scale is fairly significant, and I have to admit we haven't managed to take care of all of it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Ms. Robinson, is there any point you'd like to make?

[Nobina Robinson]

Second Career of course was somewhat supported through the federal government and the stimulus funding. Yes, it was delivered in Ontario, by Ontario, but it was through that kind of support. So there is a role for the federal government.

I want to caution around the term “re-educate”. One of the things we need to talk about is every learner has a prior set of acquired skills and talents and we have to find ways of measuring that. Our ways of measuring prior learning are probably in need of upgrade. There are things like entrepreneurship skills that someone would have acquired that could be translated with a certain amount of additive learning. Either we walk the talk on lifelong learning or we don't, but I wouldn't want to call it “re-educate”. That's the first thing.

Yes, there's a difference between how you treat high school leavers and how you treat those who have to retool their career.

Let me talk about the high school leavers and some of the issues we're finding. It's all very well when you persuade them and say, “Go join an apprentice program, because you will make good money as a plumber or a gas pipefitter or a Hydro One worker”. But what we're finding also is society has changed. Previously, these professions had families where the father was the auto-shop owner and the kid grew up having worked on car engines, or the father was a carpenter and the kid had built houses on his summers off. Now we find that the big challenge to get that high school student through the first year of post-secondary is to understand how hard it is. Often that high school student has been misadvised and has taken the easier math, but now wants to be an animation designer and fails first-year math. The amount of remedial math work that we're having to do to get kids through technology programs needs to be talked about.

Has this necessarily got to be funded by the federal government directly? No. But when you give the money to the provincial government to deliver post-secondary education, hold them accountable for these outcomes. That's what Jim was saying.

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

Do you want to comment as well, Mr. O'Heron?

[Herb O'Heron]

It's a little bit different with regard to the kinds of occupations and the kinds of skills of university graduates. I mean, look at the job changes that have taken place in our economy. In the economic downturn, there were about 450,000 jobs lost for those who do not have any post-secondary education. There were about 78,000 increased jobs for those with college. There were about 6,000 fewer jobs for people with trades, and there were about 300,000 more jobs for university graduates. They were all in the kind of occupational profile that I pointed to before.

Part of what a university education does is it provides the learner with lifelong learning skills to be adaptable themselves. Many of them have those skills, and that's why we see people in computer programming jobs who have English degrees. That's why we see students adapt and change. It's why we see engineers who are doing things far outside the field of engineering.

An awful lot of adapting and change takes place, and it's not just for university graduates. In the picture that one can draw with some of these data, it is really important to understand the kind of shifting going on in the labour market.

I agree with my colleague that lifelong learning is really important. No country has it right yet, especially for the 45-year-old who has changed jobs and now has that additional expense to go through and a very short career thereafter to benefit from that expense.

So it's a real challenge in every economy. We've been talking about it for the 35 years or so that I've been involved in this field. I've seen France and other countries talk about éducation à vie and not really be successful at finding new ways. As I think the demographic data that I had up earlier showed, we have to find ways of dealing with that. We cannot, as Jim pointed out, meet future labour market needs if we only rely on the growth in education of the youth cohorts. We have a big challenge there, and we need to make sure that we're using every opportunity to exploit the kinds of educational backgrounds they've had in the past.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Thank you, Mr. Butt.

We'll move to Ms. Blanchette-Lamothe.

You don't need to use up the seven minutes—it will be the last round—but you're welcome to it.

[Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe, NDP, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Thank you.

We often talk about our fears in the face of the aging population and the labour shortage that we will be dealing with in the next few years. I was very interested in the fact that today you presented concrete measures to deal with this labour shortage. For example, you mentioned community initiatives for getting people back into the job market, the importance of access to education, tools and programs for students with learning and behavioural difficulties as well as programs designed for people with disabilities and aboriginal people.

You talked about innovative and best practices in colleges and universities. You may wish to add to that.

Given all of these measures that you have implemented to deal with labour shortages, what challenges do colleges and universities have to face? What resources could help colleges and universities in implementing more measures like those?

Could the federal government play a role and support the colleges and universities, through initiatives, programs or innovative practices, in seeking out these people who are already in Canada and who would like to get into another field or the labour market?

[Herb O'Heron]

Especially in relation to aboriginal Canadians, there are all kinds of pilot programs that universities themselves are funding to try to attract and retain and support students through to graduation. They're doing that, as my colleague mentioned before, on their own dime, if you want, reallocating from other resources.

Some of these programs are finding amazing things, absolutely amazing things, and amazing ways to do it—less expensive ways than they had in the past, but still in ways that are costly and especially difficult to scale up. One can take a program and provide it for 50 or 100 students and really be successful, but how do you scale that up to 1,000 students at your own institution and to other institutions?

I think the federal government can support some of those kinds of programs, the pilots that are necessary, to make sure we're doing the right things across the country, to support them to scale up for aboriginal Canadians in the future, and to support the ones that work in the particular situations in which they work.

So I think there is a role for the federal government, especially in that area.

[Nobina Robinson]

You asked what kinds of challenges there are. I'll give you a real-life challenge.

In Kitchener--Waterloo, our Canadian Silicon Valley, anchored by RIM, we have Conestoga College producing IT degrees, right? You always think that the University of Waterloo produces them, but Conestoga does as well.

But you have small and mid-sized IT firms offshoring those jobs to Bangalore. What has gone wrong? Did they not know that there were 2,000 students up the road at Conestoga or even at Waterloo? Is it the wage issue? I think these challenges need to be talked about.

But from a federal government point of view, would better labour market data—timely, granular, and local labour market data on the availability of the talent, the nature of the credentials, and the vast array of two-year diplomas, degrees, and graduate degrees—not have helped that company to not offshore those jobs? I think that is a challenge. What is the federal government role? As I said in my opening statement, mobilize the existing data on the demand side and the supply side.

Also, as I think as you have heard in the course of today, there is a range of success stories, individual and local community success stories. We all want to say that we're doing a great job. Well, why isn't there a compendium for us to go to so we can say that if they are doing it out at Red River College, maybe it applies in Nova Scotia? Where do you go to get that? That is a national role that can be funded. After all, the taxpayer has paid for all of these successes to come together.

Thank you very much.

[James Knight]

Certainly one federal responsibility, which I hope will be addressed following the budget, is the K-to-12 education on reserve, which has been disastrously underfunded. About two-thirds of the amount the provinces provide has been provided to on-reserve aboriginal K-to-12 learners. I was very pleased to see some progress there, but we must make sure that it comes to full fruition.

Thank you.

[Herb O'Heron]

I think another thing is a small program in the last budget and in previous budgets around internship programs and the ways in which we can promote employment for recent graduates, especially the kind of employment they can get in small and medium-sized companies so they can bring their expertise directly into the company through an internship or an employment experience. It's something that we have proposed for a long time.

It's about the ways in which we change the NRC. As the NRC changes, it creates opportunities for PhD and master's students—for all kinds of students—to go through that kind of lab experience where there's a great deal of connection between the company and the students while they're in school. It's the work while you learn model. That would really help, and it does exist in other countries.

Other countries are following what's called the Fraunhofer model in Germany. Whether it's the U.K., Finland, or other countries that are following that model, they are finding success with creating internship, co-op, and work experiences for new graduates and students as they're going through these programs, to really help. That's where the federal government can play a role in Canada: around those kinds of experiences.

[Nobina Robinson]

My colleague Mr. O'Heron is referring to the work of the R and D review panel. I was a member of that panel. I'm very surprised and pleased to see how many of our recommendations were acted on by the government.

What I will do, though, in my day job, the one that pays the mortgage, is say that any effort—any—to include internships must include college students. The budget announcement of last week is for graduate students only. I think we have to not narrowcast the talent needs. We have to not filter human capital and treat it as some sort of escalating pyramid. We have to build human capital at all points of the talent supply.

Colleges are responding to employer needs. We have flexible programs. We have one-year programs right up to four-year programs. Those people cannot be left out of the research and innovation agenda. That is a common cause we have with ACCC.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Thank you very much. The seven minutes are up.

We went through essentially the full two hours without a break. We have covered a lot of ground. Some very pertinent suggestions raised some very interesting questions for our consideration. There were some thought-provoking suggestions as well.

We certainly appreciate having you here before us. We will certainly take your comments into consideration. Thank you very much.

I would ask the members to hold back for one question that Ms. Hughes has.

You are welcome to leave. Thank you.

[Herb O'Heron]

There is some information along the wall there, and if you want it, it's also on the desk. If you need any other kind of information, let me know.