Human Resources Committee on March 27th, 2014

[David Acco]

As I said, three-quarters of that sample are female. As I said, those are the ones who are returning to school and are in the best position to take advantage of management positions. So the short answer is yes.

[Scott Armstrong, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

My background is as an educator, and I have dealt with some very highly academically skilled first nations youth who actually excelled going through the school system. There seem to be barriers—and I'm sure you went through this yourself in your position—once they leave the public school system and go into a university, training, or business school environment. We've seen a lot of very highly skilled high-potential young first nation students struggle once they get there because they don't have the supports at the post-secondary level. Would you agree with that statement?

[David Acco]

I would agree with that statement. A lot of it seems to be that there's no support for aboriginal people who decide to go to university, especially if they come from remote communities. They basically are left to their own devices in terms of being able to pursue an education. To be absolutely honest with you, I don't blame them for leaving a program. However, there also has to be an outcome for aboriginal people who want to go into business, careers, and so on. So there has to be in the industry some amount of support as well. Cultural sensitivity is a good start. Also, the flip slide of the coin is having industry cultural sensitivity on the part of the aboriginal person as well.

[Scott Armstrong, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

We've seen some things recently. If the internship could actually start earlier, while they're still going to school, and the companies could actually go in and recruit at that level so that students would know there was going to be a job at the end of their training, would that be a support that could be put in place for students who are actually attending university and struggling, so they would know there's a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow?

[David Acco]

I'm glad you brought that up. Co-op programs are a very good tool, and I don't see enough aboriginal co-op programs right now within industry and within the aboriginal community, especially co-op programs focused on technology, digital economies, and so on. Where they have to get their training is in the urban centres, so there has to be some amount of support for them.

Also the flip slide of it is the fact that businesses have to be ready to take on aboriginal co-op students. One of the things we have figured out is that there is a hypersensitivity to political correctness within businesses, so they shy away from engaging aboriginal people. Self-declaration is a good example.

[Scott Armstrong, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

A lot of highly skilled highly motivated academically inclined first nations people do tend to go towards the public sector simply because they see room for themselves there, whereas they might not see it in the corporate sector. What specific recommendations do you have to allow the corporate sector to try to attract and recruit first nations youth?

[David Acco]

First, I think I should answer the question of why aboriginal people go into the public sector. It boils down to this: that's where your network is.

On the private sector side there are attempts to build a network with the Aboriginal Professional Association of Canada—APAC—and a few other ones. However, there should be more efforts in terms of building that network. Our aboriginal internship program is trying to address that by building network “angels”, as I look at them, that we can push into industry. Hopefully by then they'll hire three from their community, and so on and so forth. That's my hope, that the 15 will turn into 85, and 85 will turn into whatever the situation might be.

I think the AIP is going to start to really take effect in about 10 to 15 years as these individuals start moving up the food chain. I think we need to push more aboriginal people into those management levels in order to effect it. As I said, you have skills, you have the paper trails, and in between there's the gap. That's where there's the most influence.

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

Thank you.

Mr. Cuzner, you have five minutes.

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

Let me start first by recognizing the fact that Mayor Savage doesn't have the streets open yet in Halifax-Dartmouth. I'd appreciate it if the parliamentary secretary would send him a transcript of this meeting today.

David, the internship stuff is really exciting and it's neat and I know it's going to be a challenge.

I want to go back to Colleen. If you want to read in your comments on the summer student program...because before you get into internships and what have you, a lot of the time in non-native communities that first job really has a big impact. It starts your resumé; it does so much. So if there are concerns around the summer students, if you want to read your comments into the record, I think that would be worthwhile.

I also want to commend you on the fact about the electronic data. That's really timely in light of the revelation that a lot of the government's data has been compiled through the Kijiji stats. Obviously it's tough to manage, but it skews the numbers. When you look at StatsCan and CFIB numbers and put those together, the government's numbers are even higher than those. I think that's a valid point.

If you could, help us out by identifying your concerns around the summer student jobs grants.

[Colleen Wassegijig-Migwans]

Through the pathways program, the RBAs, and the AHRDS, and even into year one of the ASETS, an allocation from the Canada summer jobs program was awarded to the ASETS of Ontario and Quebec. It did not occur with any other region. The goal as identified by HRSDC was to bring Ontario and Quebec in line with the rest of the country. The ASETAs affected would argue that the rest of the country should have been brought in line with Ontario and Quebec. Summer jobs were lost by first nations students. They are now obtaining them under the Canada summer jobs program at less than 10% of their former numbers. This conflicts with many of the government's statements on how Canada needs to invest in this population sector for the betterment of the Canadian economy.

So it's been difficult to try to get as many as we had previously As we said, we had hoped that the government would be able to see bringing the rest of the country into the type of arrangement we had with this fund. It was Canada summer jobs. It was summer career placements. Back to 1993 the program was—

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

When did that take place?

[Colleen Wassegijig-Migwans]

The program was discontinued in the first year of the ASETS. We were able to access it for 2011, but it has been discontinued since then. The money flowed through our ASETS and AHRDS agreements. I can't recall what it was under the pathways program, but we had access to those funds for our first nations' youth and some for off-reserve.

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

You mentioned about the cuts to the sector councils. How has that manifested itself? How have you seen that lack of support or withdrawing of support impact...?

[Colleen Wassegijig-Migwans]

Especially within the trades and apprenticeship sectors, we have seen that the collaboration, the communication that is necessary before any partnership ensues has really been affected at their end. They are now all doing different things to continue. Some sector councils, especially the construction industry, are working with our organizations in Ontario at least, to be able to continue and lend industry support to those endeavours with the ASETAs.

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

You made one comment about duplication. Could you expand on that? It was interfacing with the groups, I believe.

[Colleen Wassegijig-Migwans]

In particular with the SPF and the ASETS strategies.

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

I have trouble keeping my acronyms straight.

[Colleen Wassegijig-Migwans]

Yes, sorry.

I can't remember what ASETS is. The SPF funds are also ending in March 2015. You can see, especially in the northern areas, that those SPF projects have actually become duplicates of the ASETS delivery. There are comments from the delivery agents in the northern areas that the SPF projects are doing essentially what the ASETA holders are doing.

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

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

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for being here.

One thing the Government of Canada has been trying to do is facilitate connecting aboriginals with available jobs and identify the jobs. We heard some very positive things from companies such as Cameco from Saskatchewan, and about the good work that Gary Merasty has done previously. Rio Tinto was at our last meeting from British Columbia talking about the great opportunities that aboriginals have been given to get skills training through their company.

So there are many success stories, and that's what the Government of Canada's intent is, to make sure that we're training people for the jobs that are there. I don't know whether training people for government jobs.... We need government employees, and there's going to be a great need down the road, but there has to be a broader range of employees than just training people to be part of one or another level of government.

First, what initiatives have your groups undertaken to identify the employers, to attach the training to an actual job that is there?

Second, concerning community output, I was a mayor for nine years and I always knew that if something was community-driven, it was successful. You always have champions in a community to move forward. It's such an important thing for any government program, that the community be behind it.

I want to know what kind of output and connection you have with the communities you serve.

Let's start there. I'll ask all three of you.

[Jerry Peltier]

Mr. Chairman, can I answer Colin?

Concerning you first question, dealing with the companies that have appeared before you, there's no question that they're doing a good job. We certainly support them. Actually, we work with those companies, because, as Mr. Acco stated, we're part of the Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business—we're a board member. We sit at a round table with these corporate managers and talk about the challenges they have and we have, as corporate Canada trying to attract aboriginal people into the workforce.

Some of these people are there not because they want to be there, but because they are driven there because of court actions—the duty to consult. So they have no choice.

Concerning the other point, yes, we hear a lot of this from the private sector side. I don't want to put on my political hat, but I'll put on my private sector hat.

We see the commercials. We see the comments that the government has training dollars to help aboriginal people get into the job economy. But we can't seem to find those training dollars, and that's our challenge.

This is where the aboriginal internship program that Acosys has developed is falling into a vacuum. There seems to be no bureaucratic box through which this program can be addressed. This is why we're having such frustrations.

We hear all the good things. There's a saying that there are funds and training dollars out there. We don't want to take away those resources that the aboriginal organizations and aboriginal or first nation communities are entitled to. They are limited, as they are. We want to encourage the government to put more funding into those programs. It's been said so many times that they are just not enough, the way the young aboriginal population is increasing. You've heard those stats. We need more financial resources.

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

Can I just make a comment?

We had Roberta Jamieson here from Indspire. Our government added $40 million for bursaries for aboriginal students for post-secondary education. So we have met some of the dollar needs to ensure that opportunities are available to aboriginal students.

When I was the chair of the Standing Committee of Aboriginal Affairs we did a study looking at post-secondary education for aboriginal students and we identified some of the issues involving aboriginals coming from remote villages and the challenges they face going to the larger centres and the cost of doing so. But we definitely have put some money forward to assist in post-secondary education for aboriginal students.

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

We're over our time, Mr. Mayes. Five minutes goes quickly. If you choose to follow that up through another question, that's fine, but we've had more than five minutes there.

Now we go to Madame Groguhé for five minutes.

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

I have some questions, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

Yes, it's your turn. You have five minutes.