Human Resources Committee on May 13th, 2014

[Chris Atchison]

Well, I think one is around the acknowledgement that the community-based organizations are doing extensive work in communities with the employers. First of all, we need to acknowledge that these community agencies are doing a tremendous amount of work with workforce development strategies, with the employers. To use a phrase that I think Frédéric used earlier, we're going upstream. We're being proactive in our engagement with employers in communities to determine what their future needs are, whether for downsizing or upsizing, and what training skills they're going to be needing. Those discussions are already happening.

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

Thank you.

We'll move to Mr. Maguire.

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

Thank you, panellists, for your presentations.

I want to go to CCCBET to give you an opportunity here as well. We're looking at making improvements in accountability in many of these areas.

Mr. Atchison, you mentioned in your opening remarks that you've dealt with a lot of different agreements. Does that provide different accountability rules? How can we combine some of those—I think you used the number 49—different agreements...better training, etc. in some of those areas? How do we expand the accountability of those measures? Do we need that many, or should we be streamlining some of that?

Perhaps you could just answer that to start with. If that's the case, how do we work together to get that done?

[Chris Atchison]

The 49 agreements that I referred to included the LMAs, the LMDAs, the TOWs, and the LMAPDs. That doesn't include the asset agreements, which are out there as well. Many of the CCCBET members would be delivering those.

There is accountability built into each one of those 49 agreements. What is lacking is a broad federal strategy that provides the ability for those agreements to be governed or to be directed by the federal government, but to be enacted and enabled in the provinces and the territories, and to take it one step further, in the communities.

The one thing we need to remember is that we can build in accountability measures, but if at the same time we're doing that we're handcuffing the service deliverers on the ground, in the field, who are trying to respond to the community need, then we're doing a disservice. We have to take a look at what those communities are doing now, what the best practices are, how flexible they're being under the current agreements, and then channel that back up and ask what broad operational parameters we can expect from the federal government in the design phase so that the actual agreements can be streamlined with full accountability to the provinces, and offered out into the communities with full flexibility and responsiveness.

I don't mean to be vague. I don't want to give you any specifics without the data, and we are lacking in that research. I think our counterparts in Quebec are ahead. They have built in some strategies that have been effective for them since 1996 or 1997, when they first devolved. They're doing some wonderful things in the province of Quebec that we should look to, but we should also make sure we include the best practices that are going on in every province, and harvest what we know is going in all of the agreements in all of the communities throughout Canada.

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

Madam Sauvé, you're looking at a lot of youth programming and that sort of thing, and we've looked at that in my local area. Are you looking at that as a shortage of labour availability in those areas? You've looked at, certainly, vulnerable youth.

I'm just asking you the same question, more or less, in regard to accountability that I just asked Mr. Atchison. How do you judge your success rates? Is it based on full-time equivalency? Is it getting people to provide better resumés to get them out into the workforce, or is it an actual job at the end of it that is a benchmark for you?

Perhaps there's an opportunity for Mr. Lalande to respond to that as well.

[Monique Sauvé]

Thank you for the question.

The Carrefour jeunesse-emploi model has proven itself, as it can be tailored to different realities, be it for young people, the labour market or the dynamics of a specific region.

When we step in to assist a young person in difficulty who is having problems and is isolated from the workforce, we work with very specific labour market information. We work with employers, and above all, with the young person to assess his needs and to prepare an action plan that he agrees with. That way, the young person is part of a structured approach.

[The Vice-Chair (Ms. Jinny Jogindera Sims), NDP, Jinny Sims]

I will interrupt for you to finish off, please. I'm sorry, but we're really short of time.

Thank you.

[Monique Sauvé]

In other words, the success of the model in dealing with the challenges of the labour market is due to the flexibility of our approach with young people.

[The Vice-Chair (Ms. Jinny Jogindera Sims), NDP, Jinny Sims]

Thank you very much.

To let our guests know, we only get five minutes, and the chair has to be quite lethal about it. If you get a signal from me, it means round off, right?

Okay. We're now going over to my colleague, Mr. Cuzner.

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

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I was expecting a kinder, gentler intervention by the chairperson.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

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

Thanks very much for the presentations today.

I will present my question to Mr. Atchison, but if the other witnesses would like to weigh in, especially Quebec, please do

On the repurposing and reprofiling of the LMA money to the job grant, I thought you typified your clients really well; you know, from those gentle-touch, self-directed clients at one end, to those who have multiple barriers, multiple choices at the other end. The funds from the LMA would have been directed at programs that offered opportunities for those types of clients.

Are you hearing from your members concerns around whether or not those programs for those with the greatest number of barriers.... Are those programs going to be able to continue with the reprofiling of the LMA money?

Would you folks comment on that as well?

[Chris Atchison]

It's been very apparent, very clear, to us that there are large concerns coming forward to us from our membership regarding the reprofiling of the dollars under the Canada job fund across the country.

CCCBET has been around since 1993, and people who have been involved with CCCBET for that long have said that they've never seen the amount of concern raised, coast to coast to coast, regarding the repurposing and how it may affect the most vulnerable populations.

[Frédéric Lalande]

If I may, I would like to elaborate on that answer.

Given that the Labour Market Agreement was renewed with virtually the same parameters, I understand that we are not part of the same process as the rest of Canada.

The entire year was difficult for us, because we had no idea how to coordinate the Canada Job Grant with our measures and services in Quebec. That is particularly critical as the number of people served by the programs funded under the Labour Market Agreement is facing a relative increase. There are problems with the clientele. The people we serve have increasingly complex problems and are less and less the type of unemployed people we can transfer to the workforce without considerable support.

The funding under the LMA is crucial for us.

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

I would like to get a general comment as well. Everybody has made reference to it, and I think we agree with the minister, that the business and corporate community need more skin in the game.

Do you have a general view that the bigger companies —you know, Hydro-Québec or Bombardier—are better at seizing the opportunity with training than the small entrepreneur? Or, are the larger companies looking for the already trained employee and not willing to train up? Would they sooner come in and pick those skilled people, as opposed to training people? Do you have a general feel or sense for that?

[Frédéric Lalande]

Yes, there is a clear correlation between being an employee from a large corporation who is already trained and having access to on-the-job-training. I will quickly summarize the Quebec model.

Companies that do not contribute enough to labour market training will contribute to a fund that is used to finance these measures. We know that for small-and-medium-sized companies, it is particularly difficult for employees to have access to training. A specific attempt is made to fund measures that will target these categories of workers.

This is, in fact, a problem that is very difficult to resolve simply. It requires fine-tuned action over the long term, with a view to changing entrepreneurs' attitudes.

Having said that, we understand them very well. We are in contact and very often in a partnership with them. They face significant challenges. Being an entrepreneur is not easy. If in addition to that, we tell them that they are required to look after labour marker training, it is often too much for them.

In other words, the labour market training fund is there to provide assistance that is often required.

[Monique Sauvé]

I would like to add...

[The Vice-Chair (Ms. Jinny Jogindera Sims), NDP, Jinny Sims]

Thank you very much.

I'm sorry, Madam, but maybe in the next round of questions....

I'll turn it over to Mr. Mayes.

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

Thank you very much to the witnesses for being here today.

I think we can acknowledge that Quebec is a leader in Canada when it comes to skills training, programs, and outcomes. I appreciate, Madam Sauvé, that you have acknowledged our government as a partner in part of that success.

One of the things that really struck me in your presentation was that you knew your client, their background, and those things that you worked with in that person. Instead of just a student, or a trainee, or a future employee, you looked at the person. I thought that was really great.

I just wanted to ask you, how do you approach that? When you have a client who comes in the door, do you have somebody who focuses on looking at their background to see the big picture, the full person, when dealing with that client?

[Monique Sauvé]

First of all, the team that welcomes the young people at a Carrefour jeunesse-emploi is made up of people who have received training for that. The majority are young people themselves. In addition, they have training in career management or social work. So they are in a position to welcome the young person from a comprehensive perspective considering all aspects of their lives. Although they are working on an action plan for getting a job, studying or becoming an entrepreneur, they look carefully at all aspects of the young person's life.

Without losing sight of the objective, which is to get a job, there are partnerships with the community that help deal, for example, with problems relating to health, or drug use. Sometimes, we deal with young drug users. We set up partnerships that help us to complement our approach with young people.

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

I appreciate that.

Mr. Atchison, in the community in British Columbia that I come from, the Shuswap construction industry professionals, the local college and secondary school, and the city—I was mayor of that city—all partnered with the contractor who built a spec house. We had nine students who were there through the whole process, right from the time they dug the hole until they put the roof on and did the finishing inside that place. The professionals in the various trades donated their time to walk alongside them when they were doing the wiring, the plumbing, or whatever it was.

It was a great successful program. Of the nine students I recall, eight of them were offered jobs after they graduated. I guess what I'm looking at is community-based employability training. I think it's so important that the community be involved in this. That worked very well for us.

Here's my question. As far as your experience goes in connecting with those people who are on employment insurance and looking to be retrained or whatever, are you able to interact there as part of the LMDAs and help those people who need further skills and who are collecting EI?

[Chris Atchison]

Absolutely. What you've described is a classic situation that occurs. Those individuals would have been identified, probably by a community-based employability training organization. They would have gone out and sought that partnership with the trades team, and they would have helped build that labour market opportunity for those kids.

Under the LMD agreements, that type of community response and local labour market flexibility are completely available, and it's so meaningful when community-based trainers and the rest of the employer groups, the trades, can come together in a partnership, because it is a collaboration, and it is a partnership that has to work, that will continue to.... It has to be there in order for us to have the responsive successes that we're going to need to build across the country.

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

I have one question about the potential employer. How do you work with the employer, not just with the training but with the person? You know the expectations and work with them. Do you have follow-up after they have started? Do you keep connected with the employer and employee just to ensure success?

[Monique Sauvé]

Meeting the needs of the labour market is one of the largest challenges. We need to provide support to help them keep their jobs. That is even more true for young people who want to explore different fields of work. Helping them feel comfortable in their work environment is what it is all about.

The carrefours have developed a number of initiatives to connect with employers, be it through company visits or activities, like events where young people prepare to meet with employers to stimulate their interest, so that they can explore different jobs and want to discover their own interests and jobs.

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

Thank you.

Madam Groguhé.