Human Resources Committee on Nov. 27th, 2012

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

There is about 30 seconds. Does anyone else want to comment?

[Rodger Cuzner, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

Ms. Steeves wanted to make a comment, I thought.

[Jennifer Steeves]

I would just say that I would agree that for apprentices that is a big challenge.

[Rodger Cuzner, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

Maybe we can get Mr. Butt to help us out, see how he gets along with his two girls, and we can get him to join us with—

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Thank you very much, everyone, for your presentations.

We certainly covered a lot of ground in a relatively short space of time, but I appreciate your cooperation in having you provide the information to us. We'll certainly consider that in our report.

Thank you very much.

We'll have a brief adjournment and then we'll start with the second panel.

I'll suspend for five.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Would the members take their seats.

We have the Canadian Construction Association and the Canadian Chamber of Commerce with us. Each will present for roughly five minutes. Then we'll have a line of questioning.

We do have some committee business to attend to, so I'll try and suspend a bit early for that purpose.

Having said that, we'll start with the Canadian Chamber of Commerce. Go ahead, Ms. Anson-Cartwright.

[Sarah Anson-Cartwright, Director, Skills Policy, Canadian Chamber of Commerce]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I am Sarah Anson-Cartwright, director of skills policy at the Canadian Chamber of Commerce. Appearing with me today is Mr. Shabbir Hakim, executive director, Alberta Council of Turnaround Industry Maintenance Stakeholders, ACTIMS, and Construction Industry Stakeholders Association of Alberta.

In February, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce issued a paper called “The Top 10 Barriers to Competitiveness in Canada”. At the top of that list was the skills crisis and it will be at the top of our list again in 2013.

This past spring, the Canadian Chamber consulted with its members across the country on the skills crisis. I will give you a very brief overview of employers’ views on the skilled trades and apprenticeships.

To begin, Canada can be a frustrating place because of the skills gap. The attitude is often that you are educated first and then you get a job. This approach has to change. We need to improve our bridging between the education system and employment.

The lack of people in the skilled trades is a pressing issue for businesses across the country. There is a huge difficulty in attracting workers to the skilled trades. While there is no one action that the Canadian Chamber recommends, there are several common observations that businesses shared with us.

We heard about the need to remove the differences in accreditation across provinces, if possible, and to encourage the recognition of accreditation across provinces, as the Red Seal program does for many but not all trades.

For employers considering apprentices, cost may be the primary barrier since an apprentice in his or her first or second year may not be as productive. For some employers, collective agreements may make it difficult to get apprentices.

What might government do?

Certainly, there is a need to address the stigmatism over the trades and to shift parents’ views on careers in these fields. Also, we were told that either employers need an employment training tax credit or there should be more upfront training in institutions.

What could businesses do themselves to address this shortage?

The business community is not taking on enough apprentices, we were told during our consultations. Many employers opt not to use the financial support for apprenticeships because they lack the time. There are ways to change behaviour in the market, however.

For example, one of our members, Syncrude, requires its contractors’ workforces to be comprised of 25% to 30% apprentices, with equal distribution between first and final year of apprenticeship. All ACTIMS owners, that is, Syncrude, Suncor, and Shell, follow this practice. With firms of that size, the contract requirement can have a profound effect on the number of apprentices. It offers a model for other companies to adopt to stimulate skilled trades apprentices.

At the Canadian Chamber, we can raise awareness with employers of best practices for apprenticeships. We can also assist in positioning the skilled trades as in-demand careers. The onus is on us in business to help develop the labour force we need.

Now, let me turn it over to Shabbir Hakim of ACTIMS.

[Shabbir Hakim, Executive Director, Alberta Council of Turnaround Industry Maintenance Stakeholders and Construction Industry Stakeholders Association of Alberta, Canadian Chamber of Commerce]

Thank you, Sarah.

First off, I wish to thank you for this opportunity to discuss a very important issue facing the economic growth in our country. Canada has a thriving, heavy industrial sector. The portion of industry that I represent has in excess of 1.6 billion workforce hours in pipelines, utilities, and oil sands new construction, which is scheduled to be built by 2020.

I represent a segment of industry that in part is working hard to assist with the attraction, education, development, and sustainment of the apprenticeship program.

There are three items that I'll point out.

Number one, the national owners' forum of the Construction Sector Council is a group of large industrial owners from across Canada that has identified the need for apprenticeship growth as part of its 26 step plan for developing a sustainable resource base.

Number two, working with the Alberta owners and the members of the Canadian executive board of the building trades of Canada, the requirement for sustained apprenticeship growth has been identified as a key success factor for construction and maintenance activities of our large industrial work places.

Number three, members of the oil sands owners community have assisted in the development of the ACTIMS and CISAA entities, which provide a simple mandate for maintenance and construction activities of principally the oil sands sector. Simply stated, these two entities facilitate the supply of skilled and qualified workers for the owners' projects with a focus on Alberta and Canadian content.

Solutions are multifaceted and include non-traditional approaches in the education and marketing of these opportunities for youth and parents. We need to focus on women, aboriginal peoples, mature workers, immigration, secondary careers for individuals, programs such as helmets to hardhats, and temporary foreign workers.

In terms of the skilled trades, this will only start with apprenticeships and the various programs that assist to identify aptitude and skill. Programs to support the co-op registered apprenticeship program and pre-apprenticeship academic training are a start. The issue remains our timeframe. We require these skills now.

Apprentices play a huge role in these workplaces for the foreseeable future. We need to market our opportunities, create a strategy for growth, modify our approach in our educational institutions, assist with monetary offsets during their education, and force incentives on employers to utilize these individuals as an investment for the future of all Canadians.

Thank you, and we welcome your questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Thank you very much, Mr. Hakim.

We will hear from the Canadian Construction Association. I understand Mr. Bellai will be presenting.

[Romeo Bellai, Member, President, Bellai Brothers Construction, Canadian Construction Association]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and committee members, for inviting us to be here today to share with you the views of the Canadian Construction Association on this important issue.

My name is Romeo Bellai, and I'm co-president of the family firm known as Bellai Brothers Construction Ltd. We work in the Ottawa-Gatineau area. We have maybe 22 tower cranes you'll see here in Ottawa that belong to us. We're putting up many condominiums and other developments, so you're talking to somebody who is at the grassroots of what's happening.

We are engaged in every kind of construction activity in Ottawa-Gatineau. We are founding members of the Canadian Construction Association, known as the CCA for short. Joining me today is Bill Ferreira of the CCA, who is director of government relations and public affairs for the association. I am also a director with the Construction Sector Council. My interest in apprenticeships is more than theoretical. It is vital to my competitiveness as an employer in the construction industry, which is why I am so pleased to be here with you today.

With regard to the question of why young people are not more drawn to apprenticeships, I blame my generation. As students, we were inundated with messages from the government, guidance counsellors, the media, our parents, and most important, Hollywood, that the key to a happy and comfortable life was found in a white-collar profession, not a blue-collar profession. With few exceptions, almost every movie or TV show, like Quincy, M.E., focused on medical, legal, or business professions, so not surprisingly, everyone wanted to be an MBA, a lawyer, or a doctor. How did I make it to construction? Well, it's a long story, and that's for after.

No one aspired to be an apprentice. These careers weren't glamorous, nor were they viewed as well paying. When I was in grade 6, my teacher asked me, “Romeo, what do you want to be in life?” I said, “Well, I want to be a bricklayer”. He said, “Why would you want to do that?” I said, “If it's good enough for my dad, why can't I be one?” As I progressed in school, they were always pushing students more towards academia. Anyway, that's my story.

How do we turn this around? To a degree, workforce demand and higher wages are doing this already in some parts of the country. For example, in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and to a lesser degree in Manitoba, the high demand for construction services has created a shortage of apprentices in some skilled trades, particularly in the electrical and mechanical trades. However, the biggest complaint from most employers about new apprentices is in their lack of basic skills, which goes back to my earlier point. Those students with a high degree of proficiency in math, physics, and language simply go to university, while those with lower proficiency in these essential skills are streamed to the trades.

The trouble is that most trades require a high aptitude in math and language. Without that, young apprentices often struggle with in-classroom portions of their training, which is part of the reason that so few apprentices actually complete their training. I've heard of fourth year apprentices in carpentry not wanting to write examinations because they don't have any writing skills. They're stuck in that vortex of being afraid to write an examination.

How do we overcome this challenge? Well, we need to do a better job of promoting the skilled trades to teachers. You've heard many times that a lot of teachers, who are university trained, forget the blue-collar background of most people in this country. So do guidance counsellors. We need to dispel this myth that anyone can learn the skilled trades, which is simply not true, at least not when it comes to the construction trades.

Another recent problem we have seen is the oversubscription to some trades, while others continue to struggle. For example, in many parts of the country, high school graduates are seeking apprenticeships in electrical trades because they think these trades pay better than others. This is simply not true, and it is placing considerable strain on the training system for electrical apprentices, while other equally valuable and well-paying trades remain under-subscribed. This is a perception issue fed by a lack of information about the trades, which is why we believe that better skilled trades promotion at high school together with training for guidance counsellors could help turn the situation around.

We also feel that better national government advertising is a way to help get this message out to the public.

Everyone here is a member of a political party. You do such a great job convincing us to vote for you, perhaps you can have a program to convince children and kids and students to join the trades.

[Bill Ferreira]

We didn't do a great job.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Romeo Bellai]

In the 1980s, the federal advertising designed to promote higher education of young people effectively increased university enrollment. These ads, which were prominent in movie theatres and in magazines popular with youth, helped motivate many of us to pursue a university education. What we need now is a similar campaign to help promote the benefits of a career in the trades. This is happening somewhat already, but overall more needs to be done, particularly with teachers and guidance counsellors, who as a result of their own academic experience often hold a not impartial bias toward university for the brighter students.

Over the next eight years, it is estimated that the construction industry across Canada will need to find 320,000 new workers just to keep up with the pace of retirements and demand. Of the 320,000, nearly half of these positions will be filled through domestic training efforts, with the remainder coming through immigration. Now that we're talking about immigration, are we only inviting doctors and university individuals from out of this country to come in? Why don't we try to invite some trades in? That would help.

Clearly, immigration will be part of the solution, but we can also increase our efforts domestically to move the apprenticeship training, particularly among the under-represented groups, such as women and aboriginals. With employers, specifically construction employers, being asked to play an increasing role in the workforce training, many are struggling to find apprentices with the aptitude required for a career in the construction trades. By aptitude I mean the mind, the soul, and the heart. As a result, employers are being asked to play an even larger role in the development of apprentices, often helping them achieve the proficiency in math and language they need to complete their apprenticeship training.

The federal apprenticeship job creation tax credit has been a helpful aid to reduce some of the upfront employment costs associated with the apprenticeship training, although the maximum credit available needs to increase to keep pace with the cost of inflation. I don't believe it has changed in the past six years, right Bill? Currently, the maximum credit available is 10% of the annual salary of an apprentice, up to $2,000. Increasing the credit would certainly make apprenticeship training more attractive to smaller firms.

The apprenticeship incentive grant and the apprenticeship completion grant are both extremely useful inducements to encourage potential apprentices to consider a career in the trades; however, again, these grants need to keep up with the rising cost of education to remain relevant. The biggest challenge we find to the uptake of these programs is often the lack of awareness on the part of our members. The national advertising by government has helped, but what we really need is a more focused promotion at trade shows, in industry publications, and at the college level to broaden the knowledge and uptake of programs by industry and apprentices alike.

In closing, let me just say that we don't see any silver bullet—there is no magic wand and it won't happen overnight—that will remedy apprentice training issues in Canada.

What is needed is a more positive promotion of careers in the trades at the high school level. If we repeat it often enough, we will get more people in the trades. We need better training of teachers and guidance counsellors with regard to not only a skilled trades appreciation but also workforce demand, so that we avoid oversubscription in some trades while ongoing shortages remain in other trades. We need better and more positive advertising designed to change the opinion of parents and students regarding the trades. We need better promotion of the apprenticeship pathways and benefits of training to students and business owners. We need better employment promotion regarding government supports for business that engage in apprenticeship training. Finally, we need an increase in the currently available tax credit and grants, so as to realign them with the cost of living, and better and more incentives to train the underemployed, such as aboriginals, youth at risk, and older workers in transition.

With that I conclude my opening comments. I look forward to your questions in the five official languages of construction: Italian, French, English, Spanish, and Portuguese.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Well, thank you. You might get two or three.

We'll start with Ms. Charlton.

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you all for being here this morning.

It strikes me that we have this almost perfect storm, if you will. We have a skills shortage, we have the decline of the middle class, and we have really high rates of youth unemployment and aboriginal unemployment, all of which makes apprenticeship seem an important part of the solution, so I really welcome your comments here today.

I certainly hear what you're saying with respect to the need to make apprenticeships seem more attractive at the secondary education level as a career choice for young Canadians. Unfortunately, I don't think that's something the federal government can get directly involved in because of jurisdictional issues. Nonetheless, we all have to play our part in that.

I wonder whether you'd be willing to comment on this: I'm from Hamilton, a large manufacturing industrial sector. In the 1970s and 1980s, we had really vibrant apprenticeship programs. Companies were willing to invest. They saw apprenticeship programs as investments, not as expenditures. I think now, more and more, companies are seeing apprenticeships as an expense to them because they're not necessarily seeing the payoff. I wonder if you can reflect on why that shift happened and what we need to do to change that mindset back again.

The Europeans are still hugely successful with respect to their apprenticeship programs. They didn't see the same dip that we saw here. I'd be interested in hearing from you whether there was a shift in the way the federal government supported apprenticeships throughout those periods which may account for some of the dips. My colleague was talking about changes in the EI program that made the wait times longer; certainly, that's been entirely unhelpful. That's probably not the only factor that has changed. I know we have the capability to deliver. The building and construction trades, I think, are still the most vibrant part of our apprenticeship program, but we also see other opportunities for apprenticeships not being as vibrant as they used to be.

It's kind of a broad question but I would appreciate your comments. Mr. Bellai, you already started to talk about some of the solutions, but I wonder if we can focus on what we used to have, what we need to get back, and how we might improve on it.

[Romeo Bellai]

Would you like it from the CCA?

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

We'll let you go ahead. You make some comments and I'm sure they will have some as well.

[Romeo Bellai]

Coming from Hamilton, you have a great labour leader there, Joseph Mancinelli of Liuna. They have a great training centre and they're always looking forward to training new people. One of the challenges they have is also retention of people. That's all based upon the question of whether there's still a job when the person goes from the third year into the fourth year of apprenticeship.

In the EI situation, I think when a person is in transition waiting for the new job, it's very important to have the shortest amount of time possible before the person gets those benefits. It's very helpful in the continuation of a person's dream of becoming a carpenter, a plumber, whatever, that the support, the safety net, is there for those people. A lot of individuals working in construction have families. If they cannot put the bread and butter on the table because they can't do their construction job, they will drive a truck. They will do whatever it takes. They need that EI support, absolutely.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Go ahead, Ms. Cartwright.

[Sarah Anson-Cartwright]

I can simply give you a sense of what we heard from our members, particularly small and medium-sized companies. They really take on a huge burden with the investment they have to make when they need to train apprentices. It's not like that in other businesses, where you have a fully trained employee coming to you. There is that general burden that is also affected by the business cycle. If business dips off, their capacity to take on apprentices is going to be affected as well. When they have to see an apprentice go away for that in-class training, that technical training portion and leave them for six weeks, they've lost an individual from among their small workforce. That is another difficulty.

There is also the reality when they have trained apprentices who complete their apprenticeship and get their certification, those individuals then become more mobile in the workforce. There is the issue of losing a fully certified employee after you've invested in their training. The challenge is often very much in making that commitment, the financial burden that falls to the small and medium-sized businesses when they do take on apprentices. It is different, perhaps, in Europe where they have quite a different relationship, shall we say, between the employer, the labour sector, and so forth.

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

I'd like to talk about that for two seconds, if I could. I'll be really quick.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

All right.

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

I think we agree on what the issue is, but what is the solution? Where can the federal government step in? Is the European example something we should be striving for? Concretely, what would you like to see the federal government do to assist, particularly, the small and medium-sized industries to make sure that we create a vibrant workforce?

[Sarah Anson-Cartwright]

We have not yet had policy resolutions from our members across the country with respect to this specific issue. That said, we have had probably the largest number of resolutions this year on the broader issue of the skills gap. In other words, our members are absolutely seized with developing the workforce they need in the future. With respect to this particular piece, the skilled trades and encouraging apprenticeships, I think we would need to explore that further. But you had a sense of what ideas there are.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Thank you for that two-second intervention. We'll now move to Mr. Mayes.