Human Resources Committee on March 25th, 2014

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

Thank you very much. Five minutes goes quickly, doesn't it?

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

I have more questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

On to Madam Groguhé.

[Sadia Groguhé, NDP, Saint-Lambert, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

Just before you start, perhaps you'll want your translation. Okay?

[Sadia Groguhé, NDP, Saint-Lambert, QC]

Yes, because I will be speaking French.

I thank our witnesses for being here.

As a preamble, I would like to make a comment. In all the evidence I have heard so far, including yours, there is a common thread. The idea is that we must make sure that what we give communities is really tailored to their specific situation. That comes up in the evidence and it seems very important to me.

My first question is for you, Mr. McPhee. How many aboriginal workers are hired by Vale in Canada? Can you give us some figures, please?

[Cory McPhee]

I don't have the numbers across our operations. I can tell you that it varies by operation. At the Voisey's Bay mine, I think 52% of our employees are aboriginal.

Bob, you can tell me what that represents in terms of numbers.

But we almost have an inverse relationship. Our youngest operations have the most mature relationships with aboriginals. At our operations in Ontario that have been mining for 100 years and more, and at our operations in Thompson, Manitoba that have been mining for 60 years, the aboriginal relationship was never given as much focus and consideration in the past, so as we develop new properties.... Last month, we opened up our first mine in Sudbury in 40 years, and we now have an IBA, our first IBA in Sudbury in 100 years of operation. It's a kind of unique inverse relationship, but that IBA does allow for the employment of aboriginals now as a first choice.

[Sadia Groguhé, NDP, Saint-Lambert, QC]

Can you provide a breakdown and the figures on the progress in aboriginal persons hired by your companies over a number of years? Is it possible to have that breakdown? If you don't have it right now, you can forward it to us.

[Cory McPhee]

Sure. It's trending up. It has to, because we're finding these where there's no urban base workforce for us.

[Sadia Groguhé, NDP, Saint-Lambert, QC]

Okay, very well.

You also talked about expecting new challenges. You talked about jobs that will be different from the ones aboriginal people currently have. Can you make some clarifications in that sense? Will the jobs be more specialized and have more managerial responsibilities? What do you foresee in terms of jobs?

[Cory McPhee]

The specific reference to the jobs changing was in going from an open-pit bulk operation to a much more technical underground operation that is in narrower working areas. You have to deal with ground stresses. You have to deal with a lot of variables that we have a lot of experience in as a company, but that our employees have no experience in. As we're moving from open pit to underground, it changes the work environment completely for these individuals, requiring a different level of training and a different level of skills.

[Sadia Groguhé, NDP, Saint-Lambert, QC]

Very well.

My last question is for all of you. Whoever can answer it, please go ahead.

One of our witnesses talked about the economic resiliency of the communities involved in skills development. Based on your experience and the expertise you have acquired, do you see this type of economic resiliency in the communities?

[Bob Carter]

I can comment briefly on the experience in Labrador. We have no immediately adjacent community, but we have about seven communities that we interact with, the closest being about 40 kilometres away from our site. We're a fly-in, fly-out site.

What we're seeing is that most of the aboriginals who are working with us are living in their home communities. They aren't migrating to larger centres. They are bringing economic wealth to the communities. They are promoting themselves as roles that students can aspire to achieve. We're seeing higher graduation rates in high school and more students aspiring to do post-secondary programs.

It's just scratching the surface, though. Some of the inherent problems that we see in the north are still there, and it requires real jobs and real economic generators that I think the mining industry offers to communities to create that kind of significant shift that needs to occur.

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

Thank you.

We'll go on to Mr. Mayes for five minutes.

[Colin Mayes, Conservative, Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, witnesses.

Formerly we did a study on skills shortages in which we talked to the mining industry. I want to ask Mr. Fredericks a question that I didn't get answered during that discussion we had with the mining industry.

Rio Tinto did a great job in advertising with TV ads about two years ago. I want to know whether you found that there was a spike in the interest as far as recruiting went. Because that was something that was identified: communicating to students the opportunities that the mining industry and all trades have. It's been gnawing at me to see how effective that ad was.

[Jay Fredericks]

I'm not sure of those statistics but I can check on that and report back to you on that.

I do know of some of our activities in an area where I'm most directly involved right now, which is working in northern Saskatchewan. Certainly our entry there and our consultations with local communities have caused a bit of a spike of interest in the mining sector in the region with a new player and a potentially new development happening. We are getting a lot of excitement and interest.

[Colin Mayes, Conservative, Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

The other question I have for all of the panel is, as far as engaging the aboriginal community and looking for the people who could be interested in skills development for your particular sector, do you partner with the communities? I appreciate what Mr. Webster said. I think that's right, community driven. Communities that have good leadership and are supportive have success.

Also with the educational institutions, do you do all of the training on your own or do you partner with colleges and training facilities to bring those skills to the aboriginal students?

[Cory McPhee]

I can comment on that from Vale's perspective. We do partner with the post-secondary institutions. In Sudbury we actually developed a mobile classroom. This is in a transport truck with walls that move. We bring it out to the first nations communities where sometimes the youth are reluctant to leave the community to go to school. We bring the classroom to them.

We've also started to try to catch people earlier in their lives and we've partnered with a group called Indspire to put mining into the high school curriculum. That's been successful for us as well.

[Colin Webster]

We recognize our limitations in providing training for skills development and those kinds of things. We defer to the communities and the community organizations to help us do that. We take over once the people become employees of Goldcorp and we provide additional training, for example, on working in an underground environment. Employees may come through the door who are perfectly acceptable and then go anywhere within Goldcorp. If they choose to go underground, we provide them with Stope School training and things like that. We focus on job-specific training.

[Jay Fredericks]

We see higher levels of success and retention through a program where those programs can be operated in local communities. A significant factor for many aboriginal youth, in particular, is that if they go down to a larger centre or the training program, it's often a cultural shock to them and can result in distractions that can impact their success in the programs.

One of the ways to help address that is often to have an elder involved in the training program provide counselling to them. We're seeing some great messages coming from elders in the local communities, encouraging youth to get training to build up their skills and to seek employment in the mining sector. It's very positive messaging that we're hearing from the elders. We just need to help ensure that the message goes all the way through to the youth.

[Colin Mayes, Conservative, Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Mr. Webster, there are a lot of aboriginal communities that are very remote, only accessible by air in northern Ontario. We heard some testimony from a mining company that there is fear that the area where they draw the students from is quite large, and they've actually accommodated by having planes go out and pick up people and bring them to the training centre. Have you experienced that in northern Ontario? Is that something the company is also doing?

[Colin Webster]

Yes, we do the same. We fly some community members in and out of their home communities so that they can come to work for us. We do have regular aircraft routes that go there to pick them up and take them home when their rotation is done. It's absolutely true.

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

Thank you very much.

That's the end of the questioning rounds. We're going to stop here and thank the witnesses for being here.

When you sit in the chair there are always things you learn. I'm sure people around the table have learned a few things today. The one thing I learned that stands out is that earwigs are everywhere. I'm wondering when they do underground mining whether they find earwigs.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

Committee members, if any of you would like to entertain a motion to take a study trip to Australia, I would gladly entertain that.