Human Resources Committee on Dec. 6th, 2012

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Good morning. I'd like to welcome everyone here. I appreciate having our representatives here this morning.

We have Mr. Robert Blakely, director of Canadian affairs from the Building and Construction Trades Department.

We have Mr. Claude Bégin, research advisor from the Confédération des syndicats nationaux. We will start with you.

We also have with us today, from the Canadian Labour Congress, John Hugh Edwards, the national representative and senior researcher.

We also have Amy Huziak, the national young workers representative. She knows actually where Saskatoon, Saskatchewan is, as well as Cudworth and Wakaw, the place where I was born and raised. It's kind of good to have a prairie lady here with us this morning. I'm looking forward to hearing what you have to say.

We'll start with Mr. Bégin.

[Claude Bégin, Research Advisor, Labour Relations Services, Confédération des syndicats nationaux]

Mr. Chair, members of the committee, thank you for this opportunity to be here on behalf of the Confédération des syndicats nationaux and present concerns and perspectives regarding young Canadians in the labour market, and those who are just joining the labour market.

I would first like to tell you about our organization. The Confédération des syndicats nationaux is a labour organization bringing together about 2,000 unions representing nearly 300,000 members. Our members are mainly from Quebec and are grouped based on industry and region. The CSN is working to build a society that is cohesive, democratic, fair and sustainable. It takes part in a number of debates happening in Canadian society.

As a member of the Commission des partenaires du marché du travail and of various roundtables on ongoing on-the-job training, I am pleased to share with you our view of how to integrate young Canadians into the labour market.

In this context of an aging population and fluctuating economy, young people can be the answer to an industrial sector facing labour shortages. However, increasing the promotion of trades among young people still in school increases the risk that they will drop out. In industries looking for permanent staff, a number of businesses lower their hiring criteria, which encourages young people not to complete their general education. They are more interested in making money in the short term than in graduating.

Unfortunately, this very often confines these young people to their first job. Because they did not finish their basic education, they have a hard time finding another job, even within their own trade.

I am not saying that I am against workplace apprenticeship programs. I want to show that we need a better framework for these programs to ensure that the process will lead students to graduate. In order to develop a competent and flexible labour force, we need firm commitments, both from young people to complete their schooling and from employers to make it easier for their young apprentices to go to school.

While some industrial sectors may be facing a skills shortage, all sectors need to renew their workforces. We need to really inform our young people about employment opportunities in growing economic sectors without setting aside their aspirations.

We must be careful of interventionist strategies directing young people towards jobs that meet the pressing needs of certain industries. A good example of this is the mining sector, where there is great fluctuation in labour needs.

To allow young Canadians to make the right choices for their futures, we have to show them the conditions in the skilled trades they are thinking of going into as realistically and as early as possible. This can be done through introduction to trades programs or through internships in the workplace starting in the first years of their studies.

I met a teenager who did a three-year program to become a licenced practical nurse because she was almost guaranteed a job. During her last year in her program, she had to do an internship in a hospital to complete her training. During this internship, she realized that she was emotionally unable to work in that kind of environment. She gave up her training and went into another trade.

I am giving you this example to illustrate the fact that young people's potential in school and their aspirations do not necessarily correspond to labour market needs. It is important to initiate young people as early as possible to the real environment in the trade they want to choose.

Still, apprenticeship programs are important tools to integrate young people into the workforce properly. If we want more young people to participate in apprenticeship programs through the apprenticeship incentive grant and the apprenticeship completion grant, we believe financial incentive measures are important. In particular, these grants should be made non-taxable and training measures for young people on employment insurance should be created and improved.

We must use these periods of economic downturn and layoffs to give Canadian workers, especially young people, the opportunity to complete or update their general education and to reorient their careers towards growing employment sectors.

If these approaches are to be truly effective, they have to be incentive and not coercive measures.

Regarding the red seal program, Quebec is really lagging behind. Quebec is generally behind in terms of on-the-job training. While there are 57 professional standards in Quebec, only 7,765 workers out of a pool of targeted workers, or 2%, obtained professional certification.

In addition, workers who want to obtain a red seal must pay $106 to take the exam. Why spend money to get a certification that brings nothing more than greater interprovincial mobility? The workers who are most interested in interprovincial mobility are young Canadians, as shown in the 2011 annual report of the Canadian Council of Directors of Apprenticeship. The average age of new apprentices in 2009 was 24.

If we want to increase the number of workers with red seals, the exam costs should be covered entirely by the red seal program. The program could also include a mechanism for workers to obtain their red seal when they are certified under a provincial standard. For example, young apprentices getting a passing mark of 70% would obtain their red seal.

Going beyond this designation, we have to ensure that young Canadians participating in apprenticeship programs in skilled trades acquire the basic skills they need to continue their training throughout their lives.

If we want the young people of today to become the entrepreneurs of tomorrow, we have to give them the tools to do so.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Thank you very much, Monsieur Bégin.

We will now hear from the building and construction trades. Mr. Blakely, go ahead.

[Robert Blakely, Director, Canadian Affairs, Building and Construction Trades Department, AFL-CIO]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

In my time I'm going to try to go to the roots of things that we think really matter. I know you've heard from the brains of the apprenticeship system in the last couple of hearings. I'm going to try to represent what the brawn has to say about some of these things.

In the interest of disclosure, I have several university degrees. I knew what the frogs were saying in Euripides' play, “brekekekex koax koax”. One gave me an appreciation for the sweep and majesty of the law. One indicated that I knew how to run a small war.

I've got three journeyman certificates as a plumber, a gas fitter, and a steamfitter. When I'm asked what's the difference between them.... My degrees gave me an education. My tickets were something by which through education, training, a course in humility, which I need frequently, I was able to actually do something.

With a Red Seal certificate, I can practise anywhere in Canada. With a Red Seal certificate, if I wanted to go to some other country people accept it at face value. Our system is probably the best worker training system—the apprenticeship system I am referring to here—in the world. Some 60% of Canada's apprentices are in our industry, construction. We support that system unreservedly, but there are ways to make it better.

There are four basic premises that you should view my remarks under.

First, there is no national apprenticeship system in Canada. There is a hodgepodge of 13 sometimes squalling, sometimes cooperating, provincial and territorial entities.

Second, and in the material we filed with you it's in bold upper case, you need a job to be an apprentice. You cannot go to school and say, “I would like to be an apprentice, may I take some training?” You need a job.

Third, getting people into jobs is one of the most important leadership things that the Government of Canada can do at this time. Currently, there are not enough skilled, trained employees to do the work here in Canada.

Fourth, there are not enough employers who do training. The Government of Canada needs to show leadership in this field.

First is dealing with the value of the skilled trades. The truth is there are no television programs that show Bob the plumber or Jack the electrician as smart people. The best we get on television is Schneider, the guy with the tool belt and the cigarette package rolled up who is always leering and doing whatever. People think if you went to university you're a winner. If you went to a trade school you are one of life's losers.

It's borne out by a lot of statistics of the number of people who start in a university and either get a degree and can't get a job or quit and go into the apprenticeship system. The average age for a completer is 31. The average age for an apprentice, depending on the province you're in, goes from 24 to 28. People are coming to the trades too late.

The Government of Canada needs to get in front of the 13 squalling and sometimes bickering jurisdictions, and you have the power of the purse to do that. Apprenticeship, in the main, is funded by the labour market development agreements, LMDAs. You need to put some conditions on those LMDAs.

Condition A is that the provinces actually get some results and train people. Then it's that people don't just get some training, that they actually go through and complete, because a lack of completions is one of the problems we have in the system. And there's making people accountable and making people understand the value of a mobile workforce in this country, which undertakes I think, on the books, $600 billion worth of industrial projects.

It means that the workforce that is extant today in Cape Breton, in Ontario, in British Colombia, or in Alberta will not be able to do it. We need people to be mobile in the country. That means reducing barriers and creating standards.

It means things like the Red Seal program, which I know you have been spoken to about.

It is about finding a way to make our workforce mobile. Today, a significant number of workers from Cape Breton are working in Saskatchewan or Alberta. In a lot of cases, they're travelling on their own dime. I've made this argument to your committee before, and your committee actually made some recommendations to say that there ought to be a mobility grant for people who undertake temporary work and keep their communities going at home.

There needs to be leadership on the mobility of training. An apprentice who starts a trade in Cape Breton should be able to complete it in Alberta. Someone who starts in Alberta and gets part of their hours in Saskatchewan should be able to make things work that way as well. It means a common core curriculum and common sequencing, which needs to be done.

The Government of Canada only hires a few apprentices, and those are in Her Majesty's Canadian Dockyards on either coast. You hire apprentices because we're the unions there and we make you hire them.

The Government of Canada is one of the largest purchasers of construction in the country, but you do not insist on anyone doing training to get your contract. Your tender evaluation doesn't fold in safety, quality, and training. A number of large industrial concerns across the country, such as Shell, Syncrude, Suncor, and Vale on the east coast, have programs where they build right into their commercial terms on their tender documents the requirement to have a training plan and to produce a certain number of trainees, learners, and apprentices on the job.

The Red Seal program took a hit when the mobility instrument became the provincial certificate of qualification. The Red Seal is important, and it needs to be reinforced. In my material, I have a bunch of stuff on that. I'm not going to take too much time on it.

Most importantly about the Red Seal, we get temporary foreign workers who come to this country. If they're in a compulsory trade, they have to get a Red Seal. If they're in a compulsory trade and get a Red Seal, under the vastly improved skills and education grid under the bill on changes to the Immigration Act that is currently pending, a journeyman's certificate will count for the same as a bachelor's degree. We will get permanent residents in the skilled trades.

The Canadian experience class and the provincial nominee programs need to be strengthened. We need to invest in a transition program: a transition from “I haven't got a job” or “I've got a crappy job” to a real job.

There's the Hammer Heads program in Toronto, which the Central Ontario Building Trades funds out of its own money. There's a program in Cape Breton that the trades fund out of their own money. There's the Trade Winds To Success program in Alberta, for aboriginal people, which the trades fund out of their own money. There is the diversity program in Newfoundland, which the trades fund out of their own money. There's Helmets to Hardhats—we thank you for $150,000 in federal money—which we're funding out of our own industry money.

We train them in the 300-odd schools we have across the country. We have an infrastructure of about $650 million and we deliver $250 million worth of training every year. We do it out of our own money.

Help with equipment would make more capacity. More capacity means more training. More training will mean more completions.

When a project is mooted and the National Energy Board considers it...we supported the change to the regulations that Minister Oliver brought forward. If someone wants to have a multi-billion dollar pipeline or a multi-billion dollar this or that built, say to them, “You may build your pipeline, but you will have a training component where you will insist and ensure that a percentage of apprentices are trained on your job.”

A billion dollars' worth of construction is five million to six million work hours. If 20% of those hours were on apprentices, we'd start training a lot of them. Remember, we have $600 billion worth of heavy construction industrial work to come, plus all the other work that goes on.

Create a voucher system, whereby an apprentice can choose what institution he goes to and can take his per-seat cost with him.

We have talked about PLAR until we are blue in the face. That's the prior learning assessment program. Set up one that works, instead of having 13 centres of excellence across the country that are incapable of actually determining what someone's qualifications should be.

Are you giving me the high sign, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Yes, I am. You're going over time. It's interesting, but....

Go ahead.

[Robert Blakely]

In terms of the shipbuilding program on either coast, make sure apprentices are there.

I'll wrap up. I have only a couple of things to go.

Concerning supports to the learner, you can't get a student loan if you're an apprentice, because your program is for eight weeks, not twelve. The profile of our people is that they have kids, they have families, and they have responsibilities. They need some dough. For Pete's sake, it isn't a lot of money.

In regard to EI, pre-approve them. Make sure they get the money when they're there. Prior testimony indicates that the number one complaint is not getting EI money.

Concerning the apprenticeship incentive grant and the apprenticeship completion grant, double them. Make them available for all years of apprenticeship and for second trades. The cost for all federal supports to apprenticeship is $89 million. Even if you doubled that, it's a value. The cost of the grants is about $8 million. Another eight million bucks would get us more completers. We need completers.

Thank you very much for your attention and for letting me go over my time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Thank you very much. You had some interesting comments and suggestions for the committee to consider.

We'll now go to the Canadian Labour Congress. I understand Amy Huziak will be presenting.

[Amy Huziak, National Young Workers Representative, Canadian Labour Congress]

Good morning, everyone. On behalf of the 3.3 million members of the Canadian Labour Congress, I want to thank you for the invitation to comment on issues related to the economic opportunities for young apprentices.

Before beginning to address economic opportunities for young apprentices, allow me to make some comments about the current situation for young workers in general. As the members of this committee would be aware, young workers were among the hardest hit segment of the labour market in the last recession, and the labour market prospects for young people continue to deteriorate. In September 2012, there were 173,000 fewer full-time jobs for youth aged 15 to 24 than there were back in September 2007.

The employment rate for youth aged 20 to 24 fell to 66.6% in September 2012, which is five percentage points lower than in September 2008.

All considered, the real unemployment rate for youth, including involuntary part-time and discouraged workers, was 19.6% in September 2012, which is 1.4% higher than last year. Even among young workers who have managed to find employment, conditions have deteriorated. Increasingly, young workers are facing employment that is low wage, precarious, part-time, and temporary, and the path between school and meaningful full-time employment is becoming increasingly non-linear. Education is still one of the greatest factors leading to a successful working career, but with increasing tuition fees and living expenses, post-secondary education has either fallen out of reach for many young people or left them saddled with massive debt that will take years to pay off.

Can you imagine how frustrating it is for young workers who are unemployed or underemployed to hear that Canada has a skills gap, that employers cannot find workers with skills they require? Every day I hear from young workers who would jump at the chance to find well-paid, productive employment and who would willingly enter training for the jobs that are currently not being filled.

One of the hopeful areas for young people seeking employment may well be the apprenticeable trades. Careers in the skilled trades are well paid and productive. Government and employers are suggesting that skilled jobs in the resource sector and in building and construction will be plentiful in the future. Even in our imperilled manufacturing sector, increased productivity and competitiveness will require a highly skilled workforce. Apprenticeship, which combines on-the-job training, centred on mentoring by skilled tradespeople and classroom education, is a proven and effective method of training skilled workers.

Canada has a well-designed system for interprovincial certification of more than 50 skilled trades. For more than 50 years, the Red Seal certification, which you've already heard about, has provided employers with the assurance that workers holding the Red Seal are qualified to work productively in that trade. It provides workers with a universally recognized credential, which increases their employability and mobility, as workers with a Red Seal can work in any of Canada's 13 jurisdictions.

Employers are crying for skilled workers. Young workers are crying for meaningful work, and we have a universally recognized system of interprovincial certification in the apprenticeship trades. So what is the problem?

There are several barriers we can identify that limit access of young people to the skilled trades.

First are traditional attitudes. It is often assumed that apprenticeship has been a pathway to work used by young people leaving high school and seeking post-secondary training. If this were true, we would expect the average age of people entering apprenticeship would be in the late teens, and this is not true in Canada.

In the late 1990s, the median age for people entering apprenticeships was 27. The latest information we have from 2010 indicates the average age of people registering for apprenticeships in the 10 most popular trades was in fact 30. Clearly, trades training has not been used as a direct pathway between high school and post-secondary training but rather as an option for people who have experience in the labour market already.

Many studies indicate that trades training has not been a first choice option for a vocational guidance system that is biased towards university as the prime destination for high school graduates. There has also been a traditional bias against participation of young women in apprenticeship training. Today is December 6, the national day of remembrance and action on violence against women, which was established to commemorate the 14 young women who were murdered at École Polytechnique for being women studying in a non-traditional field. This gender bias lives on, in that fewer than 10% of skilled tradespeople in Canada are women.

Second is the lack of employer investment. In order to begin and complete an apprenticeship, a young worker needs to find an employer who is willing to hire and train apprentices. It would seem to make sense that employers who are having difficulty finding skilled workers would see training the workers themselves through apprenticeships as a viable option. The Canadian Apprenticeship Forum has confirmed there's a positive return on investment in training for employers. Unfortunately, many employers do not hire apprentices and seem to prefer hiring fully qualified tradespeople who have been trained under the auspices of other employers.

Third is the lack of government commitment to apprenticeship. In recent years, government has provided incentives for hiring apprentices through employer tax credits and grants to apprenticeship in mid-training and completion. While these incentives are positive, they are not adequate. To meet the needs of employers for skilled workers, and the needs of young people to find satisfying, productive employment, we require a national strategy to put all the pieces together.

Central to this strategy should be the recognition that apprenticeship provides a proven, successful bridge between the worlds of formal education, vocational training, and work.

The strategy should include, first, engaging employers, workers, and unions to work with government to design and evaluate a national strategy for the development of apprenticeship opportunities. Currently, the Canadian Apprenticeship Forum provides a venue for this kind of discussion.

Second, we need measures to increase the profile of apprenticeship as a significant and viable post-secondary option for all young people, including young women, minorities, and other under-represented groups.

Third, we need to maintain high standards of training, remuneration, and safety. We know that skills training is a key component to increasing the productivity and competitiveness of our economy. Our future is not in a race to the bottom, but rather it is in the creation of a high productivity and high wage economy.

We know that many employers recognize the importance of addressing these issues. I can ensure you that the Canadian labour movement is also ready and willing to work to build our economy and to play its part in the creation of useful, productive jobs for young people.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Thank you very much for those presentations.

We'll now move to rounds of questioning, alternating between parties.

We'll start with Mr. Sullivan.

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the witnesses.

It's good to hear that there are unions out there trying to create these apprenticeship systems as strongly as you are. The government has not done very well in assisting in creating these apprenticeships over the years. It has spent billions of dollars in infrastructure money and, as far as I know, very few of those dollars had targeted apprenticeships in them.

More recently, with some federal money, but mostly provincial money, Metrolinx in Ontario is spending close to $10 billion on rail infrastructure projects in the city of Toronto and is refusing to create apprenticeships through the Hammer Heads program. It has come up with various excuses, mostly to do with the fact that it just doesn't want to be bothered with it.

Is there a role for governments to play in insisting that there are apprenticeships attached to the spending that those governments do?

[Robert Blakely]

I think the short answer to that is, yes, there is a government role.

Companies like Shell and Syncrude aren't charities. They understand fully that if they are going to be able to develop the sorts of facilities they need, they need a follow-on workforce. They've done the demographic modelling. They've looked at the numbers. They've taken the construction sector council numbers, the mining sector council numbers, the petroleum sector council numbers, and the electrical sector council numbers and had comparisons done of their own privately, and understand that skilled people are at a minimum.

Do you insist on having apprenticeships? They do. They find that it's productive. The study done by the Canadian Apprenticeship Forum, which says $1.00 spent on an apprentice has $1.47 return, seems to bear that out.

I speak as someone who's worked as an apprentice. Two people are working together; if one is making $40 an hour and one is making $20 an hour, the blended wage rate is $30 an hour. If two guys are working at $40 an hour, the blended rate is $80 an hour. A number of people have seen this. The school of thought that says it's too much trouble for us to bother with this is just a cop-out, respectfully.

[John Hugh Edwards, National Representative and Senior Researcher, Canadian Labour Congress]

Mr. Chairman, I could add to Brother Blakely's comments. The idea of governments’ participating in the apprenticeship system is not theoretical; it's practical. Bob would agree that there are, in fact, agreements being signed now between governments and industry across the country that are including in them benchmarks for training.

Newfoundland and Labrador is the example that comes to my mind, where agreements signed between the petroleum industry and the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador include offsets for training and benchmarks that need to be hit in hiring apprentices.

[Robert Blakely]

The labour agreement from Nalcor has that in it.

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

You talked about the unions spending, I think, $250 million a year in training.

[Robert Blakely]

Yes.

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

Will that money be as available if Bill C-377 passes? Will there be as much?

[Robert Blakely]

No, training funds are still in the bill. The truth is that Bill C-377 solves a problem that doesn't exist. Will we be affected in training? Yes.

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

It will reduce your ability.

[Robert Blakely]

It will reduce the amount of money available, because we only get so much out of a collective agreement.

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

I have one other thing: the federal government's response to the lack of skilled trades has been to allow employers to hire temporary foreign workers at a 15% discount. If that's going to be the...

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Mr. Sullivan, hold on a moment.

[Kellie Leitch, Conservative, Simcoe—Grey, ON]

Mr. Chair, I have a point of order, just to correct the record. That is actually not what the legislation states.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

That's not a point of order. I don't think it's particularly helpful, because I'm not sure those are accepted facts. Carry on.

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

There is provision in regulations, not in legislation, that suggests that employers who need temporary foreign workers can hire them and pay them 15% less than the going rate in Canada. I'm not sure if that applies to all of them. But it doesn't seem to be helpful if the result is that we have less incentive for employers to employ apprentices. Would you agree?

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

You can respond. Your time is up. I'm not sure that's a fact. As the chair, I don't think that's correct. In any event, you can respond.