Human Resources Committee on Feb. 12th, 2013

[Dr. Kent MacDonald]

I'd be happy to begin.

In my view, these students are under the same pressures as other students. A number of barriers keep them from completing their studies.

The biggest one, I would say, is students being underprepared. It goes well beyond just being academically unprepared. If you look at who is going into these professions, you see that many of them are first generation, so they have never had a mother or father who has influenced them, and that's a real issue. They are underprepared financially, so they can't sustain their studies. They are underprepared socially, so when they go into these classrooms, they quite simply just don't feel as if that's where they should be. They should be out on the job site.

There's a plethora of research around student success and retention. At Algonquin we have tried to apply those same practices to our apprenticeship programs. We have seen a measurable increase in our programs; retention went from 62% to 64% over the last two years. The target of the Ontario government is 70%.

Therefore, it's getting to students at a younger age, ensuring they are academically prepared, and making sure they are wrapped with services. I could also say in the 1950s, 5% of us went to post-secondary education, and around the time of the Montreal Olympics it was about 20%. That number is now reaching 70%. Although we don't bell-curve, we clearly know that people are participating now who have never participated before, and with those students come a series of things that prevent them from being successful.

When we look at the academic nature of what we're doing, we also have to have a conversation around the required student support services, some of which the retired Brigadier-General mentioned, and about helping these students through to completion.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Does anyone else wish to make a comment?

Go ahead, Mr. Corson, and we'll then move to Mr. Matte.

[David Corson]

In brief, first of all, right now one apprentice can be placed with one journeyman. That means half the class doesn't go to the next step. They take the apprenticeship training, the federal government pays for that apprenticeship training, and then they are not allowed to continue the apprenticeship training because they can't find a monitor. That's a big barrier.

We think that at a ratio of 3:1, you would be able to take the class you have paid for and get into the next step of the technical training. That is a big thing.

The other thing is that some students have to drop out because of financial need. Again, the current HRSDC model means some students are waiting eight weeks, and they are primarily young families. A young family having to wait eight weeks for money is going to drop out. They are at high risk.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Thank you.

Mr. Matte, go ahead.

[BGen (Retired) Gregory Matte]

I think it's a very important question. I can only offer an answer in the context of this program here. I would say that for military people who commit to an apprenticeship, based on my knowledge of people in the military who have gone into the trades, the success rate is pretty well 100%.

There are economic factors that can dissuade them from continuing to completion. For instance, when they have to go back into the school for a period of four, six, or eight weeks, quite often there's a delay in employment insurance. For someone in their late 20s or early 30s who has a mortgage, car payments, or a spouse who may not be working and may have young children, that's a long time without revenue, and this becomes a barrier, so they accept the fact that with two years of training they can earn a certain amount, and they just carry on from there.

The other thing that's probably worth highlighting are the barriers to entry to apprenticeship. This is converse to your question, but it is nonetheless important, because it touches on the whole notion of workforce development.

I find it interesting that here in Canada, where we have such a requirement for skilled trades, we often look beyond Canada. At the same time, the companies that say they have a need do not necessarily contribute in an equal way to workforce development; in other words, they do not support apprenticeships. This in itself becomes a barrier to entry and can exacerbate the situation for someone who is one, two, three, four years into an apprenticeship and is suddenly laid off. This person may have to wait six months before the next gig that will allow him to complete the hours needed for a licence.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Thank you for that.

We will now move to Mr. Rousseau.

[Jean Rousseau, NDP, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

My first question is for Mr. Matte.

You said that Canadian veterans are constantly learning. So these people must have a large variety of talents and must be flexible in the labour market.

Would you agree that these resources are currently underestimated and underemployed in the labour market?

[BGen (Retired) Gregory Matte]

I completely agree. That is why the program exists. Many people in Canada do not recognize all of the assets that military personnel bring to the labour market. Part of the problem is that people in human resources only look for key words on a résumé. If they don't see what they are looking for, they move on. That happens a lot.

That is why, in this program, I decided to work around the people in human resources. I speak to company presidents and key players in the market who can appreciate the benefits of investing in people who were, or still are, in the military. They may be in the reserves, for example. It will be very profitable in the long run.

[Jean Rousseau, NDP, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

Yet in human resources and labour relations courses, these people are lauded for their value and merits. But they are discriminated against in the labour market. They are overlooked because, as you said, bureaucracy prevails. The selection process must move quickly and evaluating people takes time. But these people could contribute a lot to today's society.

[BGen (Retired) Gregory Matte]

The term “discrimination” is a bit strong. I would not say that it is active discrimination. It is just that military personnel are automatically eliminated over the course of the process. As I said, those who are higher up in a company see the value of military personnel. They are involved. I am seeing that people in charge of large companies are competing with one another to hire military personnel. To me, that proves that they see the value in it.

[Jean Rousseau, NDP, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

Perfect. Thank you.

I would now like to speak with Mr. MacDonald and Mr. Corson.

This morning it was brought to our attention that a study about labour relations and human resources, not the first of its kind, revealed that over the next 15 to 20 years, five to seven million Canadians will withdraw from the labour market. I do not need to go into detail about the devastating effects that will have on our economy, particularly the job market.

What are your thoughts on the situation and what do you think about a real strategy that would not only have an impact but that would also encourage youth to consider trades that do not have enough workers? How could apprenticeship programs help make this type of strategy succeed?

[Dr. Kent MacDonald]

In my comments, I referred to the myth that exists in higher education, and it's real. There are many reports. This is not just a Canadian problem; it's an American and European problem. Individuals are underemployed there too.

Rick Miner talks about jobs without people and people without jobs. We have hundreds of thousands of employers who are looking for trained workers, yet we have hundreds of thousands of young people without the right skills. That's where we need to have a more honest conversation about how we're going to have young people understand what the purpose of higher education is.

In North America we have been debating the purpose of higher education for 400 years, since 1636, but when you speak to students and ask why they want to go to college or university, it's very clear: they want to go to gain the skills and knowledge to get a job. That's where we're falling short.

Right now up to 30% of students at Algonquin College have spent time in a university. It's good for us. I would describe many of our programs as graduate schools of the 21st century. We're getting these highly educated people coming back and needing to have skills to actually align with the workforce.

From a government point of view and the point of view of the taxpayers who underwrite most of that education, that's a multi-million-dollar issue in the country. We're having young people not only duplicate their courses, but the opportunity cost of having to do those courses over and over is a loss of human talent.

I would suggest, as I said earlier, getting to young people and having a different kind of conversation, and I would suggest from a college perspective that we continue to provide programs that are highly in line with industry sector needs.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Thank you, Mr. Rousseau. You're time is up.

Someone else may wish to make a comment. You're certainly welcome to.

[David Corson]

With 25 years' work experience in manufacturing in Canada, I can tell you that it's a really bad idea to take training in manufacturing in Canada. We need to provide for people to understand the reality of tomorrow.

With 25 years of experience, I've come back to Algonquin College as a recycled student to get the skills that I need for an industry that has demand and appears to be growing. There was no one out there who could easily tell me what that was. I had to find it. At 48 now, I think I'm really good at doing that, but I had to dig. Our 18- and 19-year-olds are not necessarily as capable. In my experience as president of them, they need help. We need to rethink how we do that.

Again, I think it comes down in some cases to the grade 5 level, where we can start that education with parents, and educators, and the students.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Mr. MacDonald, go ahead.

[Dr. Kent MacDonald]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to follow up with a military piece.

I think the former Chief of the Defence Staff was wise, and his team was wise, when he started to look at this disconnect between the excellent training that our military members have and not having civilian credentials.

Today if you go to Algonquin College, you will see men and women in uniform studying with us. The military have said these are the types of training that do not have to be delivered by the military but can be delivered by public institutions. These are things such as chef training, automotive training, GIS training.

We're preparing highly qualified people by using public infrastructure. At the same time, these students are graduating with civilian credentials. In our view it's a nice match. When they do leave the military, they will have a credential so that when people are looking at their curricula vitae, they'll be able to recognize that certification of previous learning.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Thank you.

We'll move to Mr. McColeman.

[Phil McColeman, Conservative, Brant, ON]

Thank you, Chair, and thank you to the witnesses for being here today to help us with our assignment of what the federal government might do to promote apprenticeship and streamline it.

Having been involved since I was elected in 2008 with many of the universities in Canada through our post-secondary education caucus and travelling around the country, I'm noticing that there is a shift going on, definitely a shift, from the silo thinking of universities and institutions to an opening up in understanding the skill sets graduates need as they leave their education, as they achieve their degree or their diploma.

I'm wondering in Algonquin's case, Mr. MacDonald, whether or not you are aligning it all with any other universities or post-secondary institutions to do things in a concurrent way to assess that there is value in an undergraduate liberal arts degree, which it seems our generation had put as paramount when we tell our kids, “Go get an education”.

In my case, my three kids had to go to a community college to do exactly what you said, which was to become employable. They had their liberal arts degrees, but they weren't employable.

The situation today is that I think post-secondary is recognizing this. I think they're getting it in some ways, perhaps not fast enough for some of us. They're facing a lot of barriers, particularly in their own faculties in academia, who don't philosophically agree with that direction. What are your experiences at Algonquin?

[Dr. Kent MacDonald]

They have not been positive. I think Ottawa's key differentiator is the quality of having four outstanding academic institutions: Ottawa U, Carleton, La Cité Collégiale, and Algonquin. To your colleague to your left, unlike this province, Alberta has made a significant difference in the recognition of previous learning among academic institutions. British Columbia is way ahead of Ontario. In this province, we are laggards in this regard. We are not doing a good enough job of recognizing previous learning. It has had a major impact on our students. It has a major impact when we have thousands of jobs needing to be filled.

When we look around the world at the Bologna Accord and the equivalent to that process in Europe, in Southeast Asia, and in Latin America, not only institutions but also countries are recognizing previous learning and credentials and allowing for the easy transference across not only institutions but country to country.

In Ontario it is shameful that we have not been able to figure this out. Again, from a student point of view and from the point of view of loss of talent, opportunity costs, and all of those things, it's significant. From a public taxpayer point of view, it is a major economic issue, I believe, for the province.

[Phil McColeman, Conservative, Brant, ON]

I'm going to speculate. Might this be a generational issue to have to work through, a culture that was established that removed tech programs from elementary education, that removed tech programs from high school? The high school I went to shut down the whole wing with all the trades training because the curriculum developers at the provincial level determined that we didn't need students who would be inclined to be in the trades to actually enter the trades. They wanted them to end up with a university liberal arts degree. Now you have those people who came through that culture—my generation, frankly—who believe that and think that.

I just want to make another point and have you close out with your comments on this.

You made a very perceptive observation. You said something that I think takes a little bit of bravery to say, something that I've thought for some time, and that is how we educate the educators.

In my generation, the easy way out, after our university degree, was to say to my roommates, “Well, what are you doing next year?”

“I don't know. What are you doing?”

“I don't know; we're graduating with liberal arts degrees. I'll just stay in school. I'll become a teacher.”

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

Lots of jobs there, eh?

[Phil McColeman, Conservative, Brant, ON]

I could just stay in school. I'd still have two months off and still have all that. The determination to be a teacher was nothing more than a default position to the point of least resistance.

Frankly, a lot of my friends who became teachers had no aptitude to do it—it was just to stay in school— so when you mentioned sending teachers, the educators, out on mandatory apprentices, that hit a chord with me. Getting out in the real world and understanding what's happening in the real world, in the private world, is something that I have thought for a long time is necessary to educate people who become our teachers.

I know I've taken up a lot of time with my talking here, but Chair, could you can offer me some latitude to have Mr. MacDonald respond to that comment?

[Dr. Kent MacDonald]

You've raised a number of points, several of which I hinted at earlier, and I only wish I had a little more time.

The book, which I hope you do read, gets at that. This is a phenomenon. How we value specific work has resonated into the cuts we've made in our district school boards, and that includes removing most trades-related training at an early age.

The irony in all of that, I would argue, is that the chance of that type of work being outsourced to other places around the world—be it the way we fix our cars or build our buildings or construct our roads and infrastructure—is not going to happen.

I'm a teacher. I've been a life-long educator, and it's a noble profession. In fact, Lee Iacocca said that in a rational world, the best of us would be educators and the rest of us would have to settle for something less.

That's the importance I put on it, but it does require us to think differently again as educators, to shift the conversation from what we're so focused on—what I'm teaching, what my curriculum is—as opposed to what the purpose of education is. When we can shift that conversation away from what I'm teaching to what the students are learning, we would start to grapple with things like the timeliness of how we put people through apprenticeship.

My very last comment, Mr. Chair, is that we have been encumbered by the idea that education needs to be time-placed and place-based. You can only reach a certain point when you sit there for 8 weeks or 15 weeks or four years, as opposed to looking at what has been learned in that time.

The idea of a student being able to demonstrate that they've learned the outcomes in eight weeks as opposed to three years would be a novel outcome. We're financed on how many students are in those seats for how long. It's not in our interest to get them out the door any faster.

Again, it's complex, and I wish I had more time.

Let me conclude with this: all of you hold an honorary role in this country. I've a very political mother in Nova Scotia. It was certainly an honour for me to share the fact that I was coming to meet with some of you today. Your work is important.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Thank you very much for that.

We'll conclude with Mr. Cuzner's remarks and questions.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I thank all three witnesses for being here today. It's great that your mother keeps you on your toes there, Kent.