Thank you.
Just to jump off from where Jim was, I think we are all aware that Canada ranks first overall in the OECD on the post-secondary attainment of our population. But credit is seldom given to the fact that this ranking is bolstered by the college sector. Alone, pure university attainment would put Canada at eleventh place in the OECD. So I think the broader college fact is certainly something that both Jim and I want to underline.
Thank you so much for including me here today. I'm joined by Ken Doyle, director of policy at Polytechnics Canada, who is devoting an increasing amount of his time to the understanding of the structural problems faced by apprentice learners—the tradespeople.
Both of your studies with respect to high-demand occupations and barriers to filling low-skilled jobs are most timely. Your hearings have given you the bad news: new Canadian graduates will face challenging labour market conditions for several more years.
You have repeatedly questioned witnesses about the terrible paradox that is caused by the bad news: skill shortages are occurring at a time when the employer community and key industrial sectors are lamenting the lack of talent supply. There are actually two kinds of learners caught in this paradox: the traditional youth at risk, who are currently not enrolled in any education or training, and the poorly integrated new entrant to the workforce who might be underemployed, is unable to pursue career ambitions, and is overqualified for the proverbial McJobs that are available.
My statement today will focus on your specific concerns about how to improve labour market information and how to increase labour mobility. Let me signal very quickly that my presentation will focus on some solutions to these questions--namely, the need to mobilize existing talent supply and demand data among all stakeholders, to re-examine our apprenticeship model for its structural flaws in its logic, and to understand that undergraduate education is also delivered by non-university sectors. Simpler transfers and transitions between higher-education institutions will increase the supply of highly qualified skilled professionals for high-demand occupations.
Our recommendations today stem from the experience of the publicly funded nine colleges, institutes of technology, and polytechnics that are members of Polytechnics Canada. As Jim has noted, we share some members in common, but not all.
Essentially a subset of the well-known community college or non-university sector, our members are located in key economic regions in Canada, and indeed in some of the areas where we are seeing the highest labour shortages. Our model of education is essentially learning by doing. We offer advanced applied education in diverse fields—technical, business, health, and trades—which involve a strong component of digital skills and science, technology, engineering, and math learning, or STEM learning.
As nine large institutes of technology, digital skills are pervasive across all of our programs, be they computer programming, business administration, or even early childhood education. This is taught at the state of practice and is always relevant to what industry needs, no matter what year of study in the program. Jim has talked about the real-world nature of this kind of learning. It's designed in partnership with employers, from the curriculum design to the co-op, internship, and work placement aspects of it.
All our members offer a full range of credentials, from apprenticeship to diplomas to four-year undergraduate degrees and post-diploma or post-graduate certificates. Let me share with you some recently verified numbers that explain the size and scope of polytechnic education in Canada, which are not well known.
Our nine members alone have 182,000 full-time students, 53,000 part-time students, and 86 stand-alone four-year bachelor degrees graduating over 2,000 degree holders for the workforce each year. Over 32,000 apprentice students and 84% of all our graduates were employed within six months of graduation regardless of the program of study.
Let me emphasize one new trend in that data set: 45% of our students have completed prior post-secondary education. In fact, 13% have come from university with a degree to complete a one-year targeted certificate to get a job.
We must acknowledge that there is a difference between university and college training in general: university graduates are hoping to get jobs; college learners expect to get jobs. As large providers of trades training, we want the committee to recognize that Canadian apprentices are working toward a career in a skilled trade, not just a job.
The college system is seeing a growing number of registered apprentices who already hold a bachelor's degree or another post-secondary credential. Pursuing a registered apprenticeship is the skilled trades equivalent of pursuing graduate or doctoral studies, and should be championed by the federal government.
That apprenticeship model requires 80% of training on the job and 20% in the classroom. One important distinction to make is that as soon as those apprentices sets foot on our campuses, our institutions consider them students, like any other post-secondary student. This has led to the growth of hybrid programs that equip them with mandated in-class training but also additional credentials such as a diploma or certificate related to business administration.
Since all apprentices are treated, for tax purposes, as employees rather than students, there is little to no accessible financial support for these learners during their training. This burden has a significant impact on mature apprentices over the age of 25, who have constant and entrenched financial obligations, such as rent and vehicle payments or pre-existing loans, making it difficult for them to leave work to come back to the classroom and often forcing them to stop short of getting their ticket.
Our first specific recommendation for the committee's consideration is that all stakeholders need to collaborate to mobilize their supply-and-demand data. Let me expand. As you are well aware from the HRSDC presentation you had, labour market data in Canada is woefully inadequate, out of date, and methodologically flawed. All Canadian colleges, as publicly funded entities, track their enrolment, pathways, graduations, and outcomes, to name only a few metrics.
Governments should enable colleges to mobilize their publicly available data to all stakeholders, be they employers, high school teachers, guidance counsellors, or parents. Good national and local labour market data systems will improve the performance of high school guidance counsellors to better assist students in making education and career choices with regard to the right math and science courses needed for post-secondary success. You would do well as a committee to look back on the many recommendations of the federal advisory panel on labour market information from May 2009.
Secondly, employers too have responsibilities. Employer demand for talent is not being adequately aggregated and shared at the national or local level. More employers need to understand the dynamism of the college sector in response to their needs. In addition, employers need to avoid credential creep: why ask for an undergraduate degree when a specialized three-year diploma would do?
Third, students of the skilled trades should be treated as integral to Canada's knowledge economy and the talent needs of Canadian industry. We encourage the government to treat apprentices as learners—not as employees—and to make available the financial supports that other post-secondary students can access. Doing so would be a first step to reformulating our understanding of professional vocational training, as the Europeans have done. Abandon the false distinction between "vocational training" and the "knowledge worker"; you can be a “knowledge worker” even with vocational training.
Fourth, treat all undergraduates equitably with regard to the industry-facing internship programs funded by the federal granting councils. I know that you have heard from Industry Canada and NSERC about the suite of supports available from the granting council industrial internship programs to all university learners. To date, college undergraduates are excluded from this. At the very least, the granting councils should open up their undergraduate industrial internships and summer employment programs to college students and graduates in order to level the playing field and increase the talent pool industry can select from.
Finally, in the absence of any formal credit recognition body or mechanism, artificial barriers are allowed to remain in place, forcing students to redo learning they've already acquired in different jurisdictions at great expense to themselves, to taxpayers, and to the Canadian economy. We need to hold the post-secondary sector accountable for credit recognition in order to enable student mobility. Doing so is a shared responsibility and a national challenge.
I look forward to discussing this further with you.