Human Resources Committee on May 1st, 2014

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

My recollection is, and I stand to be corrected, around 2,500 work permits were issued so far under that pilot.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Okay. Can you also give us an idea of the number of workers with Red Seal certificates, or equivalent, accepted into the pilot and the number of workers without these certificates accepted into the pilot?

Minister, because I'm short on time I'm going to get my next question in. Under the pilot, employers do not have to attempt—attempt—to recruit Canadians or landed immigrants. How can you be sure they're not displacing Canadians or landed immigrant workers?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

I certainly don't have an answer to your first statistical question. I will look into that. I suspect we don't have that data.

On the second point—

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

Minister, I have to interrupt you. We have a point of order.

Mr. Armstrong, go ahead.

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

Mr. Chair, on a point of order, we're engaged in a discussion here on the LMDAs and our potential study. I don't think this relates to our discussion at all.

The minister can answer, but I think this is off the subjects we are looking at studying here in this particular committee.

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

Okay. I've allowed quite a bit of latitude all day on subject matter. I would ask members to keep it on the LMDA study.

Minister, I'm going to leave that to your discretion. If you wish to respond, you're welcome to. If not, that's fine too.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

I would respond by saying that we have had for some time, Ms. Sims, temporary.... We have immigration agreements with all of the provinces. Some of them include annexes that relate to the temporary foreign worker program and in some of those annexes, including the one with Alberta, they have long had the capacity to indicate that there are certain occupational categories for which they would like labour market opinion exemptions because they are facing a critical shortage.

The Government of Alberta asked us to exempt, I think, seven occupational categories in the skilled trades, primarily related to the big oil sands developments, and we responded as is our obligation under the annex.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Thank you, Minister.

Once again, I think my critical question is what kind of oversight is in place to make sure that Canadian workers and those who live in Canada, permanent residents, will get first crack at those jobs?

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

A point of order.

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

Before you answer, Minister, we have another point of order.

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

It's the same point of order, Mr. Chair. You’ve just instructed the committee to focus on the study, yet we're still having questions on—

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

I did, and indeed, you are correct.

Minister, please don't feel obligated to answer that. Actually, I'd like to ask Ms. Sims to keep it on topic, which is the LMDA subject matter. This is going off topic. It's going back to where you were previously.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

I appreciate your intervention, Mr. Chair, but I do want to say that I see a direct link here because when we're looking at training people for future jobs and the grant system that is going to be put in place, it actually links to the current Red Seal question. I see a direct link. I do not see this as a separate stream. That's why I'm always careful of what I ask the minister.

I know that the minister is more than willing to answer the question because he can actually see the linkage.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Well, I'll take the question as having been more of a rhetorical question. Let me just say let's be a wee bit careful about this language of displacing Canadians. I saw on Twitter last night that a Liberal MP said something about how we were letting foreigners take Canadian jobs. That language can lead to a coarsening of the public discourse on immigration and a lot of things. Let's be a wee bit careful about this.

For example, we have a new skilled trades permanent residency immigration program. I don't want us, as parliamentarians, telling Canadians that when those people come as permanent residents—for example, many of them starting on their work permit as temporary foreign workers—that they're somehow foreigners taking jobs from Canadians. You didn't say that Ms. Sims, but some of the debate is starting to go in that direction.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Chair, I have a point of order. I'm sorry, but I want to make it very clear that at no time is it an anti-immigration policy statement.

Thank you for acknowledging it.

I'm sorry, Chair, but I have to clarify the statement—

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

Please, that's not a point of order.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

I felt it was. It was setting the record straight.

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

No, it's not. It's not referencing back to something that is a point of order. Please.

Mr. Mayes, we are running quickly out of time. You have three minutes, sir.

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

Minister, as we do this study, there are two challenges I think I see.

One, as the parliamentary secretary said, the agreements in place now obviously had broad parameters. If we study this topic and then come down with specific guidelines for the provinces, with the dynamics of provincial jurisdiction and service delivery, is that going to compromise what we would recommend?

The other thing is, I see the challenge about the mindset of Canadians and educational institutions as far as the value of skills training. We identified that when we did our study and that there needs to be maybe some better communication, either by the province or the Government of Canada and help to educate the educators.

I was just wondering what you see in those two topics.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Mr. Chairman, on the first point, I've encouraged wide-open discussion on the LMDA renewal and the broader skills agenda from this committee and from other interested parties. I don't think that compromises the federal negotiating position.

Once we get your input and that of stakeholders, we will then formalize the Government of Canada's negotiating mandate for LMDA renewal. We'll get your input first depending on your work plan because, to be transparent about this, we hope to have new agreements by the end of this calendar year and I would hope to formalize the federal offer to provinces for LMDA renewal this fall. We would hope to get your input in time for that.

On the second point, yes we need, as it were, to better educate the educators on the realities of the labour market. That, however, is not a federal responsibility. I've asked to meet the Council of Ministers of Education of the provinces and territories to raise precisely this question.

I am concerned, and all Canadians should be concerned, that we saw the closure of virtually our entire system of vocational high schools and of vocational training in our comprehensive high schools over the recent decades. There needs to be a re-engineering of the secondary and post-secondary education systems to create more choice and options for experiential learning in vocations and trades.

Again, it is not a direct constitutional responsibility of the federal government, but you know, we pay for a lot of this. We transfer billions to the provinces, partly for higher education. I think we, as the custodian of those taxpayer dollars, have every right to ask the province how those dollars are being spent and what outcomes they are getting in terms of employment. I've put that on the agenda with the provinces.

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

That will end this session because we do have a few things to do.

Minister, I'd like to thank you, first of all, for the generosity of your time today. I know what your schedule is like, and I know this was an exception you made, and our committee truly appreciates it.

We also appreciate your personal comments about what directions you are taking with the ministry in terms of the renewal of these LMDAs, and it is an excellent beginning to our study in that we don't normally have ministerial input.

We thank you, sir, for being here today.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Thank you, Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

We will have a very brief recess and then resume in about two minutes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

I call the meeting back to order. I would ask those who are not involved to please quickly move along so we can get our committee business done on time.

As some committee members may be aware, the Standing Committee on Finance has invited our committee to study the subject matter of certain clauses of Bill C-31.

It's my understanding that Mr. Armstrong has a motion for this. Typically with committee business, we go in camera. I'm not certain that we need to on this, but perhaps I'll leave it to the discretion of the committee. If someone wants to put us in camera, we can do that.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

I will.