Human Resources Committee on March 6th, 2014

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I call the meeting to order.

This is meeting number 15 of the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities. Today is Thursday, March 6, 2014. We're continuing our study concerning opportunities for aboriginal persons in the workforce.

Committee members, please cease discussions. We're starting the meeting. Thank you.

Again we have a split panel of witnesses. For the first hour we have the witnesses in front of us to provide their testimony.

Taking part in the first hour we have Ms. Karin Hunt, executive director with the Prince George Nechako Aboriginal Employment and Training Association. We're also joined by Mr. Steve Williams, chair of the Aboriginal Labour Force Development Circle. From the International Union of Operating Engineers we have Mr. Steven Schumann, Canadian government affairs director, and Mr. Brian Pelletier, aboriginal coordinator with local 793.

Before we get into the testimony, I want to mention that we are going to take some time at the end of the meeting, maybe five to ten minutes, to deal with some committee business.

I will now turn the floor over to you, Ms. Hunt, to begin your testimony. You have 10 minutes.

[Karin Hunt, Executive Director, Prince George Nechako Aboriginal Employment and Training Association]

Good morning, committee members and witnesses. On behalf of the Prince George Nechako Aboriginal Employment and Training Association, otherwise known as PGNAETA, it is a pleasure and a privilege to address the standing committee.

Our association is mandated to serve the aboriginal community in the field of human resource development in the northern interior of British Columbia. Our primary services are resourced through the aboriginal skills and employment training agreement with Employment and Social Development Canada. The region we serve encompasses 17 first nation communities, one city, and seven rural municipalities. We serve all aboriginal citizens on and off reserve, status and non-status, and Inuit people residing in a rural or urban setting. This is regardless of place of origin. As long as you're aboriginal and you live in the region we serve, you have access to our services.

We are guided by our chiefs, urban leaders, employment practitioners, and our citizens to work collaboratively to aid the workforce to participate in the shifting labour market in today's economy. We believe that individual growth and development is essential to advancing community sustainability. In an effort to maximize the potential for first nations to achieve greater prosperity, our strategy focuses on three key themes. The first is to build capacity for individuals and communities. The second is to link and develop partnerships with industry and key community stakeholders. The third is to implement innovative approaches and diverse methods to influence positive change.

We offer a suite of programs and services with unique features. We have an experienced and qualified team who are driven by success and a desire to make a difference in northern communities. We offer classrooms, stationary computer labs and mobile computer labs, and our partnerships with local industry attest to our quality of service. This has resulted in the signing of 16 recruitment and retention agreements with industry.

Together with all services provided by our association, in the past four years of a five-year ASETS agreement, we have secured 2,708 job placements. In terms of the impact to federal and provincial social programs, that represents in excess of $800,000 in savings to the employment insurance fund. It is in excess of $2 million in savings to both the federal and provincial social income fund. An estimated $30 million in wages has been invested into the economy.

We are also pleased to join our colleagues and our partners in B.C. There are 13 first nations ASETS holders like ours across the province that form the First Nations Human Resource Labour Council. We have the support of the B.C. Assembly of First Nations, the First Nations Summit, and the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs. We have signed a memorandum of understanding with the First Nations Leadership Council, and we've also signed protocols with the Industry Training Authority and the ministry of housing and social development. The overall goal of the council is to influence social change by working with the Government of Canada, developing strategic relationships leading to partnerships, and lending expertise to labour market development strategies.

When it comes to the topic of opportunities for aboriginal persons in the workforce, there are four primary considerations. One is the labour market supply. The population of working age aboriginals is expected to grow by 72% between 1991 and 2016, compared to the 23% growth of the non-aboriginal population.

The aboriginal labour force in B.C. signifies an available labour pool, with census and statistical data depicting aboriginal growth rates as the highest in Canada, which is certainly a source for new labour market entrants. The aboriginal population in the northern interior of B.C. is younger than the non-aboriginal population. For example, the median age for aboriginals is 29; the median age for non-aboriginals is 42. In contrast, 16% of the aboriginal population was over 55 years of age compared to 30% of the non-aboriginal population. The growth rates for the aboriginal population are 3.5 times the rate of the non-aboriginal population in B.C., creating a future pool of new entrants to the workforce.

Aboriginal youth fall behind mainstream youth in graduation rates and often exit the public school system with leaving-school certificates at lower levels of literacy. Even though we have the highest growth rate in terms of our youth, we also have the lowest literacy levels and the highest dropout rates.

Aboriginals with multiple barriers to employment are particularly vulnerable, and need to acquire the necessary skills to adapt to the changing labour market environment and secure long-term jobs. Aboriginal citizens are the most logical labour pool for growth industries that are situated near first nation villages. Even though we have the growing labour pool, and we have the highest-growing youth rates, we also have some challenges to being able to link them to the workforce.

The labour market gap is the second consideration. The difference in employment rates between aboriginal and non-aboriginal people is particularly large in northern B.C., where, according to the report, 77% of prime-aged non-aboriginals can find work compared with only 57% of aboriginals. The unemployment rates in our region depict a 19.7% gap for employment statistics and a 10.3% gap in unemployment statistics, with a median variance of hourly wages earned at $4.33 per hour.

Education levels for aboriginal citizens are lower than non-aboriginal, and with the looming technical and trades shortages anticipated, significant work will need to take place to achieve technical competencies. For example, we employment-counselled 6,000 people who showed even a mild interest in trades, and 24% had the required literacy to begin a trade or technical program. Many of them were armed with grade 12 diplomas and functioning far below the literacy level that is required to enter a trade.

With the demand for workers projected to grow in the next 10 years, it is essential to support and continue to resource the aboriginal employment skills training strategy, thereby enabling a diversified workplace, encouraging long-term placement, and closing the gaps .

The third consideration is labour market demand. The trades outlook report for 2010-20 predicts that labour market conditions will tighten, with labour shortages for the technical occupations and trades sector as a whole expected by 2016.

The labour demand in northern B.C. has grown exceptionally fast in the last five years due to an increase in project development and a rising retirement rate. This is primarily in the field of mining, in some cases natural gas development, and certainly in construction. As identified by the B.C. labour market outlook, 97% of all job openings require a minimum high school education, of which 42% require college or trades certification. Based on this evaluation, the need to increase workplace literacy or education within aboriginal communities is key to their future success.

Growing demand across all sectors and the demand for skilled workers will exceed the growing labour force. That's significant growth in mining, oil and gas, forestry, energy, manufacturing, construction, and infrastructure development. There will be geographically based opportunities with several growth factors situated on the traditional territories of first nation communities in semi-remote and remote locations. There is also the seasonal employment versus the long-term engagement opportunities.

The fourth and final consideration is achieving parity. To increase the standard of living amongst the aboriginal community in northern B.C., it is essential to provide the aboriginal population with the skills needed to attain future employment in sustainable jobs, to fulfill job requirements competently, and to pursue higher learning. Low-skilled jobs often equate to lower pay, poor working conditions, shift work requirements, fewer benefits, minimal chances of advancement, and non-sustainable circumstances. In most cases the jobs are filled by the marginalized populations—those with lower education levels and barriers to higher learning.

Employment-related costs such as day care, transportation, work gear, and driver’s licences add to the burden of working for low pay. Within the aboriginal community, a large segment of the labour force resides in rural or remote settings. Transportation, living-away-from-home costs, and suitable accommodations can be a major factor if the jobs are located a distance away from an individual’s home community.

To ensure a successful transition of our citizens into sustainable markets, opportunity, resource and appropriate supports are required. The primary focus is to develop the skills and education of our citizens to access sustainable employment, and by providing supports, options, and opportunities to improve their employment situation. This work has proven to be more successful when led by aboriginal organizations such as the ASETS agreement holders.

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

Ms. Hunt, could you wrap up quickly, please? You're just at 10 minutes.

[Karin Hunt]

I'll move straight to the recommendations.

The recommendations we have to the HUMA standing committee are, number one, it is absolutely critical that the aboriginal labour market program receive the support of the present government for long-term and multi-year continuance.

We encourage Canada to prioritize increased investments into the ASETS delivery mechanism, rather than introducing new and often similar federal programs to assign additional resources to support the work of the ASETS. We recommend that Canada work with ASETS to correlate policy for social programs, both federal and provincial, and continue to support the flexibility of program design within the ASETS program.

More importantly, a commitment to literacy development at the first nations level is an integral step toward achieving technical levels. We recommend that this be supported by quality, safe, and affordable child care as a priority and by encouraging the labour market agreement holders to engage in meaningful dialogue and partnership with ASETS. Also, we encourage Canada to explore the best practices through the ASETS agreement holders. We also agree to work with the federal government and ASETS holders to design an alignment of federal and provincial social policies to better support the citizens toward education and technical success.

As indicated in the results of the past four years, the business case presents itself through shared resources, leveraged funds, savings achieved through jobs, and positive impact toward social transformation. But relationship building is the foundational piece to underpin all forward action. The services and results showcase one of many ASETS best practices in B.C. on engagement in the field of human resources and labour market development.

The recommendations presented, though not exhaustive, underpin a forward approach for rebalancing the scales of workplace representation by ensuring supports for preparing work-ready employees of aboriginal ancestry—an under-tapped resource pool. Conventional employment and training—

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

Ms. Hunt, I'm going to have to cut you off there, I'm sorry. We're way over time and we want to provide enough time for the other witnesses as well as questioning.

If there are points that you missed providing at the end, you can do it during questioning. The other option is for all witnesses. Because we have to hold to the timelines, if there are other submissions you'd like to make that you weren't able to make, you're able to submit them through the chair at the end of the meeting or any time afterwards during this study.

Now we'll move on to Mr. Williams for 10 minutes, please.

[Steven Williams, Chair, Aboriginal Labour Force Development Circle]

Thank you.

Good morning, everyone.

On behalf of the Aboriginal Labour Force Development Circle I'd like to thank the Algonquins for allowing us to use their traditional territories, and thank the standing committee for allowing us the time to speak today regarding the skills and employment opportunities for aboriginal people and in the aboriginal labour market programs.

I'd like to express appreciation for the aboriginal skills and employment training strategy and its predecessors

My name is Steve Williams. I come from the Grand River Territory in Brantford and I am the chairperson of the Aboriginal Labour Force Development Circle. I have been involved in employment training strategy since the inception in the 1980s of pathways to success. Karin and I have been there for a long time and up to the present time; we're still here.

Our organization is non-political and we work with 11 first nations and 9 first nation day cares. We also have an urban agreement with the City of Toronto. Last year alone we served over 8,000 people in terms of soft services: referrals, resumé writing, and job searches. We have a homelessness partnership agreement with the ALFDC as the community entity for the aboriginal community advisory board, CAB, in Toronto. We have over 26 points of service and a population of 95,000 for the first nation population, and another aboriginal population in the city of Toronto of approximately 70,000.

For over 20 years we have been providing employment and training services, and we have seen many changes and many initiatives that have come along. I'm sure you've heard all the pertinent data that you need to hear so I'm not going to bore you with more of it.

As you know, our offices not only take people who are work ready, who have decided to get a job or more training, but we often have to work with people who have decided that they want a life change. For the most part, our people require several interventions. We have no criteria. We do not judge, nor do we lay blame. What we do is accept. We accept the youth, the addicts, the single parents, the elderly, or a person off the street—we start from the beginning.

Some of the components that one must recognize include where our people come from. The majority of our people live in remote areas. The majority of time there are no skills, trade, or training institutions in close proximity to their communities, and there are no large employers who will take aboriginal people to be trained. For our people, to leave the community for the first time is a major issue and definitely a culture shock. There are many of our people who speak their traditional languages. Many of the standard programs and skilled trades or training institutes are not developed to meet the uniqueness of some of our people's training requirements, nor do they have cultural uniqueness attached to them. Transportation to and from the training institutes is expensive and sometimes time-consuming for the majority of our clients.

Our successes are sometimes not numbers or percentages, but the people who come back and who have made a change in their lives. This may be for a year or two or for a number of years. The successes have far-reaching implications and touch our lives and their families and our communities.

The majority of our offices are one-person offices. We function and run our offices pretty strictly. Our central administration office uses 3% of the budget and the other local delivery mechanisms use 12%, so we're at 15% which is probably better than some organizations.

Over the years we have witnessed many new programs, services, reporting formats, newly formed guidelines, and manuals, and we've tried to address them and work with them as best we can.

Since the inception of ASETS, our offices have been developing and have developed thousands of partners. Not many have been recognized as a formal partner, but all the partnerships that have been formed have assisted in some form in employment and training for our people. It may be a very small contribution of hiring a youth to gain work experience, but regardless of the magnitude, our partnerships have helped our people.

Another area and number that have to be mentioned concerns our day cares through ASETS. Many of our people rely on day care funding in order to have a reliable, dependable, professional, and culturally appropriate environment for their children while they're on training or at work. One of our day cares is funded strictly by ASETS funding and closing the day care will be detrimental to working and training classes for the first nations community. Therefore, continuation of the funding of the day care is vital.

Previously, Ontario ASETS holders received aboriginal summer student allocations above the ASETS funding. That changed in 2011 and now our students have to apply to the Canada summer jobs fund.

Members of parliament have the ability to define priorities for summer student funding in their area. Unfortunately, aboriginal students are not a priority. From ALFDC's perspective, we have lost $158,000 plus 54 summer jobs for the first nation agreement and $76,000 and 21 summer students for the urban agreement.

With regard to the skills partnership funding, approximately $20.8 million has been reprofiled, and we are asking that ASETS holders also be involved in the development of the criteria for these programs.

I'm going to go to our recommendations. I know our time is limited.

One of our recommendations is to continue the existing aboriginal skills and employment training strategy. Continue the multi-year funding for ASETS as it greatly benefits career planning, lifelong learning, skilled trades training, and apprenticeship training. Involve ASETS in the development of programs. Doing so would help us to develop a program with you and help us make it better simply because we know what we need in our communities and we can deliver it accordingly.

ASETS should have the ability to develop local training programs such as but not limited to: on-reserve basic education programs, culturally appropriate literacy learning programs, and skilled trades training and apprenticeships.

Establish a forum for ASETS to have access to the decision-makers regarding programs and allocation of funding prior to the implementation or announcement of new programs, thereby increasing input and the ability to develop programs specific to our needs.

Increase self-employment opportunities funding under ASETS to enhance and create self-employment in first nation communities and for first nations people. The other component of funding for self-employment assistance under ASETS is extremely limited and should be given consideration for expansion.

ALFDC would also like to recommend the redevelopment or development of an aboriginal summer student funding component over and above ASETS funding.

We recommend that work be done with the provinces and territories to extend the apprenticeship incentive grant to cover the third and fourth year of the apprenticeship program and that the amount of the grant be increased and that high school students be included in the incentive as doing so will generate participation. Right now they only look after years one and two of the apprenticeship program and some of those go up to four years. We have a major problem with that.

A provincial engagement process was recently developed. Unfortunately, because of other sessions, ALFDC will not be able to make it, but we hope to deal with them by email.

Continue funding for the child care initiative as that allows our people to have professional, dependable, culturally appropriate programs for our children while we are at work or on training. We would really like to see the child care continue under ASETS.

Reprofile the first nations job fund to involve ASETS and join both funding streams to train those involved in the first nations job fund.

Reprofile the skills partnership funding to include ASETS holders.

I skipped through my presentation quite a bit just to shorten it up, because I had eight pages.

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

You actually have another minute and a half if you want to carry on, Steve. Judge for yourself. If you want to finish there, that's fine too.

[Steven Williams]

I'll actually finish with words from a report by the royal commission from 1996, as quoted by the Prime Minister:

As the youngest and fastest growing segment of the nation’s population, our Government recognizes that Canada’s Aboriginal communities are a critical part of our future. It is therefore in our collective interest to help ensure that Aboriginal youth receive the education and skills training they need to secure good jobs and prosper.

This statement was read by Prime Minister Stephen Harper at the signing of the royal proclamation, October 7, 2013.

I want to thank you all for hosting us.

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

Thank you for your presentation today and thank you for mentioning you're from Brantford. I won't go any further.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

Now we move on to Mr. Pelletier and Mr. Schumann.

Are you sharing your time today? Mr. Schumann, please go ahead for 10 minutes.

[Steven Schumann, Canadian Government Affairs Director, International Union of Operating Engineers]

Thank you for allowing us to appear before you today.

My name is Steven Schumann. I am the Canadian government affairs director for the International Union of Operating Engineers, or IUOE for short.

With me is Brain Pelletier. He's our aboriginal coordinator for our local 793 in Ontario.

The IUOE is a progressive and diversified trade union with nearly 50,000 members in Canada. Our members operate the tower and mobile cranes, the bulldozers, the graders, and the backhoes that help form and shape the infrastructure and skylines of Canada.

Within the construction industry we provide some of the most highly skilled, safe, and technical positions in this industry. Because of the nature of our work, we are also some of the best paid and highly sought-after positions in the construction sector. We, through our various state-of-the-art training centres, provide rigorous but necessary training to ensure our students become successful and productive tradespersons. Our facilities are registered within their particular province of operation as well as with Employment and Social Development Canada. Our facilities are open to all Canadians, non-union and union, and are considered world leaders in the promotion and development of heavy equipment operation.

Currently, through our local training centres, we provide employment and training opportunities to aboriginal peoples throughout Canada, either directly or through various agreements with companies; first nations, Inuit, and Métis organizations; and governments. The size and impact of these endeavours vary from province to province.

As the committee is aware, the construction sector is facing a shortage in skilled labour. Over 200,000 new skilled workers are required by 2018. We believe through proper training and real opportunities, Canada's aboriginal community can and should be a solution to Canada's skilled labour shortage. We can provide many positive examples of how well this has been working, but for today, I would like to focus on several challenges that must be dealt with to ensure that all aboriginal peoples have the opportunity to obtain recognized industry credentials and be part of the Canadian workforce.

Some of these challenges that I will touch on briefly include improper training, training availability, cultural challenges, need to improve life and essential skills, mandated quotas, and referral hiring systems.

We believe there are too many organizations offering inadequate training that does not meet the need of the industry, nor provide aboriginal peoples with the necessary training to be properly prepared for employment in the trades. From our perspective, we think time, effort, and funding would generate greater results if only training centres recognized by the provincial government and ESDC be allowed to provide training that is government-funded.

We also understand there are concerns about the lack of accessible training. This, unfortunately, is a fact. In our industry, training on heavy equipment is very expensive. We have permanent training centres that may not be ideally located for some individuals, but we cannot have multiple training centres in a province. It's just not cost-effective. In some cases, we work with groups, like the Nunavut government, to send their students to our school in Ontario. We also have other examples that Mr. Pelletier can cite. We know this is neither cheap nor does it work for every group. But we've also worked with our employers on major projects to develop on-site training through project labour agreements. We also have been developing training models that allow us to make our training more mobile.

We recognize the need for a successful training model that meets the needs of first nations, Inuit, and Métis communities, but this model needs a long-term commitment and also financial support of the federal government. We also believe training centres need to do more to address aboriginal culture and improve the life and essential skills that are required by aboriginal peoples to enter their trade. Training centres must work with the various aboriginal communities to understand these challenges. Our training centres have taken some measures in an effort to remove some of these barriers. These include offering a pre-course to prepare individuals to take the trade entrance exam, implementing orientation sessions for potential candidates to determine whether or not heavy equipment trades is a career for them, and employment readiness courses to provide students with the tools and techniques needed to find and achieve employment in the construction industry.

Our school in Morrisburg, Ontario, has a campus that provides living conditions similar to living in a work camp, to give students a first-hand account of what life is like on the job site. Also, hiring aboriginal staff and developing an aboriginal engagement strategy is important.

Another significant challenge for the construction industry is to encourage aboriginal peoples to leave their community for periods of time to work on projects away from home. The problem is, once a particular job is done in their community, in most cases, the individual returns home and would rather be unemployed than travel far for work. We are reaching out to aboriginal organizations to play a role in providing solutions to this challenge.

We have tried to address it through mentorship and role models. Those aboriginal peoples who have made a career in the trades are the best spokespersons. We believe success will breed success.

Another problem is that we also believe that mandated hiring quotas, or a referral system, as some may call it, may not be the best solution. Some contractors do not abide by these hiring systems and will use avoidance techniques not to hire aboriginal workers. However, we believe if the aboriginal worker possesses industry-recognized training credentials from an accredited training institution, it would be a good first step and would make it more difficult to be ignored.

We are also strong advocates of ASETS. The approximately 83 agreement holders throughout Canada have built the capacity to find solutions to aboriginal human resource issues. They must continue to receive and have authority to spend the budgets as well as the authority to design and develop labour market programs to meet aboriginal individual and community needs.

We sincerely wish that we could do more in providing opportunities to aboriginal people, but despite being leaders in training, we face challenges of exclusion from government programs because we do not employ the tradesperson—we just train—and some groups, like contractors and some bands, are unwilling to work with us because they see us as a union.

We have the capacity to support first nations, Inuit, and Métis people to find self-fulfillment through work and become self-sufficient. The best social program is a job leading to a career.

The IUOE is working with aboriginal communities to accomplish this goal. Our approach benefits aboriginal communities, our industry, but most important, it makes Canada stronger. We just need some cooperation to allow us to reach our potential as trainers.

We would like to thank you for allowing us the opportunity to present today. We hope you have found this information useful, and we look forward to answering any questions and expanding on what we have said.

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

Thank you, Mr. Schumann, for wrapping up in that amount of time.

I'll just mention to you that my background was as a contractor before coming here. I had my own business for 25 years and because of my proximity to the Six Nations of the Grand River, as Mr. Williams is here to be a witness for, my experience was that some of my best employees were first nations people in the trades. I'll just make that comment because I think it fits at this moment after your presentation.

Now we'll move on to questioning.

Ms. Crowder, you have five minutes, please.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Great, thank you.

Thank you to the witnesses for coming.

Mr. Williams, I just wanted to point out that if you could submit your full presentation to the chair and the clerk, we will all get to see your full presentation.

The study, when it was laid out, was talking about a study on opportunities for aboriginal persons in the workforce and supports available to them. We can all agree that there are plenty of opportunities for first nations, Inuit, and Métis in the workforce. I don't think we need to talk about that. There are sufficient studies out there indicating that, particularly in rural, remote, and northern communities, the aboriginal population are the ones who are there and available but they don't meet the requirements of industry for a variety of reasons. So I'm just going to take off the table the opportunities. We all agree there are opportunities. There are lots of studies out there that support this, lots of studies that talk about investment in education being the way to move forward.

I want to come to the barriers. There are a couple of points that you have all made but I just want to reiterate those.

My question is this. Is there a recognition by the funding programs that are available that in many cases the first nations, Inuit, and Métis who come to use, for example, the ASETS program, are perhaps older? They're not fresh out of high school. They perhaps have multiple barriers to employment, will often have dependants requiring child care, and may have a very spotty work history. In your view, does the funding currently available to you address those issues sufficiently?

I'll start with you, Ms. Hunt.

[Karin Hunt]

No, it doesn't. While it's true that the majority of the participants in our programs are between the twenties to late thirties age range, there is an increasing number of youth exiting the high school system with a leaving-school certificate or a diploma who are functioning far below the competency level that is required to be a success in a trade. So we are having to play catch-up and there are additional resources that are required to develop the workplace literacy that is required in addition to providing them with the other types of essential skills and the industry soft skills that are necessary to be successful in maintaining a job.

In British Columbia we've not seen an increase in that resource level since I think 1997, so we're trying to do more with less. It has been extremely challenging, but we're up for the challenge.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Before I go to Mr. Williams, Ms. Hunt, I live on the Cowichan people's traditional territories, and have worked with the Coast Salish Employment & Training Society, and of course they've represented those very same issues.

Mr. Williams, do you have a comment on that?

[Steven Williams]

Yes, it doesn't work for us either.

There are so many barriers, especially in the city of Toronto where people are coming from the remote areas. They come down here, and it's a culture shock. They don't even have their grade 10 for carpentry.

We're trying to get them upgraded to grade 10, or grade 12, so they can get into a training program. If they get into Toronto, they may get into alcohol problems, drug problems, so we have to get all those things cleaned up before we can do that. If they're homeless, it's even worse, because now we have to get them out of that situation as well, and try to get them in some kind of accommodations.

There are a lot of barriers there. We don't have a lot of money to be able to do that. We're doing our best. We're working with the City of Toronto for the homelessness issues. Especially this winter when it's been so cold all over the place, it's really been tough but our staff has been trying to do it. All the organization has volunteered time to be able to go out and try to find people and take them off the street.

The issue of employment training is always that we have a number of interventions to get to that stage, before they can get employment.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

I still have time, right?

Mr. Schumann or Mr. Pelletier, are you aware of any supports to employers to help that transition from training into the workplace?

[Brian Pelletier, Aboriginal Coordinator, International Union of Operating Engineers Local 793, International Union of Operating Engineers]

Good morning and thank you.

We work very closely with the ASETS holders, and we work with the ones here, particularly in Ontario. We work with them to design an assessment process as to the client that we need, and what they have to come with before they arrive at our training institutions.

We want to see success, and we don't want the aboriginal client just to come for the sake of training. We'll work with the ASETS holder, again, to assess the client, but also to do the research as to where the employment is, whether the employment is in the community or out of the community. We work with contractors, and we do have sensitivity awareness within our own organization to work with aboriginal, first nation, Métis, and Inuit people.

We want to see success. We're not just in the business to train people for the sake of training. We're not just after the money. We are after a skilled worker. That's what we want, a skilled worker. We want someone to come with the right attitude, a good work ethic, and most importantly, show up. In our industry there may be eight dump trucks waiting to be loaded, and if that excavator operator doesn't show up those guys driving those trucks aren't too happy. They get paid by the load.

This is why it's important that we work with the ASETS holders.

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

Thank you for that.

Now we move on to Mrs. McLeod, for five minutes.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Thank you to all the witnesses, and this has been a very important study that our committee's undertaken here.

I want to start by asking Ms. Hunt a question. I'm from the Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo area. I think we're warmer out in our area than it is in Ottawa right now.

Your recommendation two is what I really want to zero in on, which is where you want to prioritize the ASETS holders in terms of what the government's doing. In the area I represent, of course the Shuswap Nation Tribal Council is an ASETS holder, and has done some great work.

It's certainly also no secret that some of the chiefs have really supported some opportunities through the skills and partnership fund and things like B.C. AMTA. We heard about the Nunavut, the marine...so some really successful models that were outside the ASETS holders.

Can you really tell me why you made that recommendation? Is it widely endorsed? Because we have heard of some other models creating success, and one of our goals as a committee is to explore some of those different opportunities.

[Karin Hunt]

First of all, we support and encourage any process that is going to advance and develop aboriginal people and get them ready for the workforce in long-term, meaningful careers. With the ASETS agreement, it is more flexible in terms of working with a broader cross-section of industries, so it's not just one specific industry. For example, the 2,708 job placements that our ASETS has had over the past four years is in all industries, whether it's health, mining, natural gas, energy, construction, transportation, tourism, or hospitality. We have the statistics and data on where each of those 2,708 job placements were.

You can see how any time there is even new industry growth in any particular area, there are going to be subsectors and there's also going to be growth in other sectors. For example, with mining, it is transportation, automatically. We've been able to work with industry in each of those sectors, so I suppose that's why we see ASETS as a shining example in B.C. of what can be done when you're community-based and able then to work with all sectors in a particular community.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Thank you.

I can leave my next question open. It might be for the International Union of Operating Engineers, but it is for anyone who would like to explore this. I see opportunities in terms of also the Canada job grant and where that's going in terms of aboriginal people and opportunity. Can you maybe talk a little bit about how you see these intersecting together? I don't know who wants to jump into this.

[Brian Pelletier]

What we've been doing is wherever there is a major project—and we can just go down the road here to Akwesasne, that international bridge. They built a new bridge, it's open, and they're going to tear down the old one. So we've brought in Mammoet, who was bidding on the contract, and they met with the first nation community. There were chiefs in the room, there were economic development people, the people in the community who have an influence as to changing the conditions. We think that the job is critical, so Mammoet has made a commitment and we as a union have already taken in six Akwesasne citizens with the appropriate skills, and they're working. Some are working now. The employers are now asking for those people, and they're going to Midland. They're taking them to other projects around the province.

The commitment is that we're bringing the contractors in, and they're meeting with the community. They're having some dialogue, and they're identifying the skills required, the process to become a union member, the process to acquire the skills, the process to be hired by the company. So that's happening and that's one example in Akwesasne. It's the same with the Highway 400 expansion. It's going through about six or seven first nation territories. We brought Aecon in the room, we got the first nations in the room, and it's the same thing. We talk about process, we talk about the employment opportunities, we talk about what you need to get these jobs. This is before they even put a machine on the road. This is all part of the tendering process. The commitments are being made, and quite frankly we're walking the talk.

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

Thank you for that.

Now on to Mr. Cuzner for five minutes.