Human Resources Committee on Feb. 7th, 2013

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

All right. That's not going to be a ton of time.

I think what I'll do, if you don't mind, is put all of my questions at the same time to both of you, and then you can just take up the time in your responses.

First of all, Mr. St. John, what a program. What an incredible opportunity for taking youth at risk, perhaps, to being youth on the brink of success, and doing that one at a time through an amazing mentorship program. It sounds like a program that ought to be replicated from coast to coast to coast.

I would love to hear your thoughts about how we go about doing that, and I appreciate needing to create the opportunities for apprenticeships through contract compliance. I think that's absolutely essential. Are there other components that the federal government could assist with in trying to grow this program and spread it through other communities?

I also wanted to ask you specifically about creating provisions. I'm using the words “contract compliance”. Those aren't your words, but it's trying to ensure that through infrastructure spending, we create opportunities for youth through your program. Are you concerned, as Mr. Grimshaw is, that when we do that, it has to be back-ended so that people don't just bid for contracts and suggest that they will create x number of opportunities—that 10% of the jobs, say, will be reserved for youth? How do we know they will actually deliver? Do you have thoughts on that? How do we make sure we achieve the goals we're trying to support?

Mr. Grimshaw, I was interested in your comments about retention of apprentices. You talked a bit about EI and the six weeks versus the eight weeks. We've also been hearing from a number of witnesses that one of the key concerns and one of the key barriers to retention is the fact that EI processing is so unbelievably slow right now so that young people in particular aren't getting their money in a timely way, can't survive those intervals, and need to drop out of the apprenticeship programs to try to make a living in some other way. Is that your experience as well?

As you'll recall from some of the work we've done together in a past life when you were in Hamilton, one of the things I've been pushing really hard for is travel and accommodation assistance for people in the building and construction trades so that they can take jobs away from their homes. I think that's crucial for apprentices as well, and I think I did hear you say that some apprentices do accept work in other parts of the country. I wonder whether you think that program needs to be available to apprentices as well.

I'll leave it there for now, but I would love to follow up.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Certainly you get about two and a half minutes to do that, but go ahead.

[John Grimshaw]

I can say really quickly that happily, I haven't had to collect unemployment insurance for quite a while, but I can remember when I went to trade school, and you're exactly right. Half the time you were there for eight weeks—and for us, sometimes it was ten weeks—and you finally got your unemployment insurance at about week nine. It was two and a half months, and that was for somebody who was not making a whole lot of money to begin with. You have to remember that an apprentice is making 40%, 50%, and 60%, graduating up to 80%, through his first to fifth terms. Especially for a second-year apprentice who isn't making a whole lot of money and may now have a family and have all kinds of outside influences going on, getting EI in a timely manner would be very important.

I don't know how many times, when I sat on a joint apprenticeship committee in another life, that an apprentice would say, “Look, I can't afford to go to school.” These are our apprentices; they are making roughly double what a non-union apprentice would make, and they don't have enough money to go to school, so I can imagine what it's like for the other ones. I think it's very often easier to go drive a truck or find a job that's paying more than that is at the time and not mind going through. An apprenticeship, as I said, is an investment.

I know that when I took a job, it was for a small amount of money, but I knew that at the end of the day it would be a valuable career. At the same time, I had friends who were going to sweep the floor in Stelco for twice as much money as I was getting, and it was that much harder to do.

I won't take up any more time on it, but yes, we do like tax breaks too, by the way.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Mr. St. John, there were a number of questions posed to you, so would you try to answer those in the minute you have left?

[James St. John]

I agree with back-end loading. I think the key, though, is ensuring in the RFP that it speaks to apprenticeship, that the contract won't be awarded unless they have a business plan on how they're going to integrate how many apprentices, how many opportunities are going to be created. We definitely need to have the language.

On the back end, if it's tied to incentives, I agree with what John said about maybe giving the employer some of the money up front, but not giving them the bulk of that money, the incentive to hire an apprentice, until they complete their training. For Hammer Heads specifically, we just want to see the apprenticeship language tied to the RFP so that the developer winning the contract guarantees opportunities to local youth in a meaningful way.

With our program, we're slowly being tied to the Pan Am Games. They're trying to deal with some of the African diaspora diversity issues and they want to ensure it's open to different demographics, so they've reached out to us. We think this could be done on every single infrastructure project when it comes to spending dollars, and not just in construction: this should be across the board. If we're investing and rebuilding or revitalizing a community, then we want to ensure the people living in that community have an opportunity to gain employment on the work that's happening right in their neighbourhood.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Mr. St. John, there's also the question about replicating your program. Maybe you want to answer that one as well, if you could. Your time is up, but we'll let you finish.

[James St. John]

Thank you.

We have just patented our program. We think it's one of a kind, but we think with the right help from the government.... It's got to be tied to jobs. We've been very successful in not looking for money in creating opportunities, so we think this could be done 100 percent.

John represents IBEW across the province, and the IBEW fully supports our program, as do all of our other international members belonging to the Provincial Building and Construction Trades Council, so my answer is yes. This could totally be done with the support of government ensuring that the contracts are going to contractors who are going to utilize apprenticeships.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Mr. Butt is next.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Gentlemen, thank you very much for being here. Mr. St. John, it sounds as though you and your people are doing some excellent work in encouraging young people to consider the construction trades.

Prior to getting elected, I was the president of the Greater Toronto Apartment Association for 12 years, so I worked very much in the industry. I know you folks well I and appreciate what I think have been some very good partnerships between employers and unions in a number of these programs.

We actually ran a very successful apprenticeship program to train building superintendents. This was a program we started in partnership with the City of Toronto and the Toronto social services department for people who were receiving Ontario Works benefits. It was to retrain them to become building superintendents in our buildings. It was very successful. It was a true partnership, so I'm glad to hear that's your aim as well.

Mr. Grimshaw, you mentioned that your program has a 90% retention success and placement rate, versus 50% or less in other areas. Do you want to tell me again a couple of the specific reasons your program has such a high success rate versus others?

[John Grimshaw]

Again, it's about support. There are a lot of things that come into play.

When somebody gets started in our trade, the word on the street is if you become a union apprentice in the electrical trade, there's a very good wage to be had at the end of it all, with benefits and pensions and some security. The attraction is there right up front.

Throughout the whole process, they know they're going to get support. For instance, we talked about a tuition fee. Most of our locals reimburse the tuition fee for that apprentice, provided that they achieve a certain level of academic results.

Books are another expensive thing. We talked about EI coming in late and everything else. On top of that, in Ontario you have a $400 fee just to go to school, and then in our trade you have to buy another $300 to $400 in books. Then you've got to sit there with no money and you're making a low wage anyway, so we support all of that: we make sure they've got their books and we make sure they're going to get their tuition money back.

If they're having problems with their math—and generally the problems are with math and sciences for us—we have tutors for them. We have training centres. We have training directors. We make sure that we tell them to get in here and see us early if you're starting to have problems and you're falling behind. You've got to remember that often people don't start until they're 28, so by the time they go to trade school, they're 30.

By now, most of them have families or they've got bad habits as far as learning goes, and they're thrown into a school environment where they've got eight weeks to get up to speed. They cram everything into you in a very short period of time. There's a lot of information you have to absorb in eight weeks, so if you fall behind in the first week or two, you're not going to make it. It's as simple as that.

Most apprentices, if they don't have the union behind them, are left to their own devices to try to catch up, whereas we have something readily available. All they have to do is pick up the phone and say “Look, I need to talk to somebody here to get me up to speed or get me back on track.”

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

Let me get you to comment on what our previous deputant said, because I made a note on this.

He said that one of the difficulties is cramming all the training into eight weeks. Irrespective of the EI issues, which is something I'm sure this committee will look at and make some recommendations on, can we allow people to break up the training into segments? It might allow somebody to take a segment of training and then go and do some work, which may or may not be related to their trade. It would allow them to earn some income and then come back and take another segment and then another segment. It may make the training last longer, but it'll provide some income support at the same time that they're going through an apprenticeship program to then become licensed and regulated within that profession.

Is that doable? Do these apprenticeship programs need to be done in a solid, intensive, 9-to-5, Monday-to-Friday format to be successful, or could you break them up into segments, which would allow somebody to take a couple of weeks of x and go and work for a month doing something to earn some income, and then come back and do another three-week segment, and then go and do some work, etc.?

Is that doable? Could you structure a program that way? I'm sure that being a skilled electrician is significant work, and you need to know a lot of things and do a lot of on-the-job training and safety training, etc. Does the nature of the work mean it is just not doable as far as your particular trades are concerned?

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

We'll conclude with your response to that and move to the next questioner, but go ahead.

[John Grimshaw]

I can give you real-life examples.

The joint apprenticeship committee that I used to sit on—in a former life I was a business manager for the Hamilton local for electricians—we had approximately 280 apprentices, and we had that problem with getting apprentices to go to school, because of their economic problems and whatnot, so we went with Mohawk College and with our representatives from the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities and asked if we could set this up somehow for night school for, say, two nights a week. That way the apprentices could still work during the day, could go to night school, and could then come back. Could we could break it up so that, exactly as you said, we could have a week on, a week off, a week on, a week off?

So they tried a couple of those programs. It was a miserable failure to get young people to focus on this, especially if they're working.

They work all day. They might work outside. You're in the apartment building business, so I'm sure you know they get built outside. As a result, you're outside all day and you're cold, especially in the wintertime. Now you've got to go home, grab a bite to eat real quick before you head off down to your local community college, and then sit there for three or four hours to learn something else. What's your retention level? Generally speaking, our experience was it wasn't very good.

Some people were good at it. Some people can work quite well under that environment, but the majority of people in the trades are not scholars. They're not like the kids who go to university and cram and cram and cram. They're used to that lifestyle. Most apprentices don't think along those lines. In the end we had to end the program because the success rate was terrible, and we ended up forcing them to go into block situations.

Just to be clear, it's not just eight weeks. They go eight weeks one time, and then they go two periods of 10 weeks on top of that, so there's a total of 28 weeks of training.

As I said, my experience with it in our particular group was not very good.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

All right. Thank you very much for that response.

We'll move to Mr. Caron.

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Thank you very much.

Thank you for your presentation.

It's actually a very impressive program, and I think a very good example of how unions and employers and builders can actually work together on something that's really constructive and useful.

Youth do their apprenticeship periods, and after that they are able to work. Given the cyclical nature of the work, is it often that these people cannot work 12 months a year? Do they work all year long, or do they sometimes have spells when they can't actually find work?

[Steve Martin, Business Manager, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers - Local 353]

I'm the business manager in Toronto. We have 1,700 apprentices at any given time on the go. We're always taking in new apprentices. They're always working.

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Yes, but once they're finished their apprenticeship, then they go on labour, which is actually—

[Steve Martin]

No, they become journeymen. Again, I represent 5,800 journeymen as well.

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Can they actually find work 12 months a year?

[Steve Martin]

Yes, we do about 14 million man-hours a year.

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Okay, then there is no problem in terms of being able to find work and matching the jobs with—

[Steve Martin]

We have 400 employers, and they always have work on the go. Our apprentices are very busy. Our journeymen are very busy taking new starts out of the Hammer Heads program. It's a great opportunity for them. Number one, they end up back in their own neighbourhoods exposing the program to other people who are there, which brings more from the neighbourhood back out again, asking how to keep it going.

You know that a massive amount of building has happened between Oakville and Trenton and up to Parry Sound in the last 10 years. We have probably another 10 years like that. There's a lot of trade opportunity for them.

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Now that you have your headphones on, I will continue.

Generally speaking, training falls under provincial jurisdiction, although the federal government can play a role in various programs. As you pointed out, that is the case for a second-language program. However, a program like Hammer Heads in Ontario can also have an equivalent in the other provinces.

What is the current situation in the provinces, particularly in terms of retaining apprentices? Does it vary from province to province? Does every province have a program that is similar to Hammer Heads or to an ideal program? Have the provinces expressed an interest in something like that? I just wanted to have an idea of the equity between the provinces in terms of apprenticeship programs.

[James St. John]

The only other program similar to Hammer Heads that I know of is in Vancouver. It's called BladeRunners.

Could this be replicated in other provinces? Most definitely. All of the provinces have building trade unions. Right now it's our building trades that fund Hammer Heads and collectively, in kind, it costs us $1 million a year to run this program. Those dollars come from us and are spent by us for the youth. There is no question that this could be done in other provinces.

As I said, to my knowledge, there is only one other program that was very similar, and that was BladeRunners. We took that model and expanded upon it to come up with this comprehensive 12-week program that we have right now.

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

From what I understand, as a result of this program, among other things, you feel that Ontario is a step ahead of the other provinces when it comes to construction apprenticeships?