Human Resources Committee on Sept. 27th, 2012

[Cheryl McDonald]

I would say it's been pretty much the same. Maybe we have had five new employees.

[Scott Armstrong, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

So over the last several years...you said there have been several cost drivers that have increased the pressure on your base funding. Can you elaborate on some of those? What is causing the stress on your funding? If the funding has remained consistent and your employee base has remained consistent, is it an increase in salaries? Is it fuel costs? What is driving the cost of your program up?

[Cheryl McDonald]

It's the lack of O and M dollars. Administration for our organization comes from the allocation that comes to us from the province. We have language training for people. You could have an anglophone go through with that program and be the best linesman, but he's going to be challenged to find a job in Quebec. That's the reality. So there are training costs. There are child care costs. There are relocation costs and allowances. All of those costs factor into making our dollar worth less now.

[Scott Armstrong, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

But these costs would have existed when you first started your program, correct? Is it that there are additional expenses within those costs? What is driving those particular costs up? For example, let's take language. Language skills training I'm sure is an issue that you've always faced. Has there been an upward pressure in the costs to deliver that language training?

[Cheryl McDonald]

I think the real bulk of the cost is that we're getting more and more people who need a longer duration of intervention, and in that time, if we had the ability to be more proactive instead of reactive, we could be going into the school system and teaching the young children in primary and secondary and saying, “Do you know what the trades are in this region?” We're not able to do those things, because we're dealing with the bulk of our clients.

[Scott Armstrong, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

You're saying that 10 years ago the client you were attracting came to you with more skills and fewer social needs than they are coming in with today, which might be a reflection of the economy. There are all kinds of other factors in there. So the difference really is not the cost pressures, and it's not the amount of base funding. The difference is in the clients you are now attracting. There's probably a broader range of clients with more needs. Am I accurate in saying that?

[Cheryl McDonald]

Yes, there are more needs coming in, social needs for supports and things like that.

[Scott Armstrong, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

Really what you need is an expansion of the services your program can offer to be more proactive, to try to meet some of these needs earlier before they actually get to you.

[Cheryl McDonald]

For example, even publicizing who we are is something we want to do, but at the same time, if we say, “If you want to find aboriginal workers, come see us”, our fear is that our people aren't ready. It's a long process and employers have to be willing to partner with us on that path to get that person to become their employee.

[Scott Armstrong, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

I just want to talk about a couple of barriers. I think one of the largest barriers facing the first nations community is literacy. I'm an educator. I've had a lot of experience in education, in particular with a first nations background. It goes back to literacy.

Do you find that's a big barrier to success within your program and also success when they leave your program? Is literacy a big challenge for you?

[Cheryl McDonald]

Yes, it is, and we're just starting to get into the essential skills and those kinds of programs to get them before they start looking at what kind of schooling they want. That's the reality. Even when it comes to a work ethic, if they're coming from a household where education and the work ethic aren't there, then we have that burden of trying to work with them to get them there. It's a real challenge for us, and our schools are underfunded in comparison with the rest of the province.

[Scott Armstrong, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

Mrs. Desjardins, I have a similar question for you.

The students you're graduating—and you said there are several hundred that have graduated—would obviously face similar barriers of literacy and basic life skills, which you said you're trying to provide to them. Do those create a barrier to their labour mobility out of province? Do those provide them a barrier to actually finishing their apprenticeship? Are they facing larger challenges once they leave work that are causing them to drop out of the labour market?

[Mary Ann Desjardins]

At the moment some of our students have left Quebec and they're working in other provinces as linesmen. We've had students who have left to go and work in Alberta and places like that because there were needs. But at the beginning of the program, it is a fact—they need the prerequisite to get into the program. Some of them don't have it, so they have to go for formation générale des adultes—adult school—to get it before coming to the vocational school.

[Scott Armstrong, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

So before they—

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Thank you, Mr. Armstrong. Your time is up.

We've appreciated both Ms. McDonald's and Ms. Desjardins' appearing before us and sharing their thoughts with us. We'll certainly take them into consideration.

With that, I'm going to suspend for a few moments and we're going to go in camera for some future business.

We thank you for appearing before us.

[Proceedings continue in camera]