Human Resources Committee on June 3rd, 2014

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

Let's come to order, please.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the 27th meeting of the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities. Today is Tuesday, June 3, 2014, and we're here to continue our study on the renewal of labour market development agreements, also known as LMDAs, which you'll hear quite a bit about.

For the first hour, we will have a panel of witnesses. We are pleased to have with us, from the Canadian Home Builders' Association, Mr. Bard Golightly, president, along with Mr. Kevin Lee, chief executive officer. We're also joined by Mr. Sean Reid, vice-president, federal and Ontario, for the Progressive Contractors Association of Canada. Finally, from the Canadian Welding Bureau, we have Mr. Craig Martin, vice-president of public safety.

Welcome, witnesses. We will give each of your organizations up to 10 minutes in presentation time. Following that, we'll have rounds of questions from members.

Let's start with the Canadian Home Builders' Association.

Kevin, are you going first?

[Kevin Lee, Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Home Builders' Association]

I am, thank you.

It's a pleasure to be here today. Thank you for the invitation.

My name is Kevin Lee. I'm the chief executive officer of the Canadian Home Builders' Association. Here with me today, as the chair has pointed out, is our national president, Bard Golightly. Bard is chief operating officer for the Christenson Group in Edmonton, Alberta.

I'd like to start off by saying we're pleased to see the federal government working constructively with the provinces in aligning labour market programming with market demand. As you may know, CHBA has supported the introduction of the employer-directed Canada job grant, and we are pleased to see special consideration being assured for small employers, which was something CHBA was calling for, with many of our members falling into this category.

At the outset, I should say that the association has long-standing policy positions regarding employment insurance that relate to LMDA funding, training, and support programs. We believe that EI premiums should be reduced or maintained at levels appropriate to sustain the program, and the funds in the EI account should be dedicated to the purposes intended. The industry believes the design of the EI program should be dictated by policy and must be the outcome of evidence-based analysis. So we're pleased to see the work going on here to further that exercise.

Given the association's goal of helping connect our members with labour market programming as part of our human resources strategy, the association has carried out research on LMDA funding, training, and support programs in the past. Our goal was, and is, to support our provincial associations in providing input on labour market programs to provincial governments so that such programs can best serve industry and worker needs. As well, many of our members have limited human resources capacity in their own shops, being small and medium-sized firms, and rely upon information provided by the association to help them understand changes in programs and changes in regulations.

What we found in the past was that it could be very challenging to determine what specific LMDA-funded programs are available in each province, and how our members in local provincial associations could best engage with these programs. There are, of course, some exceptions and very positive examples, but from a national perspective it has been a challenge to gain a good understanding of all of the various LMDA-funded programs available in each province and the results of those programs.

So for these reasons, CHBA has supported the expansion of reporting requirements for LMDA-funded programming. We're pleased to see things headed in this direction. Additional information on specific programs at the provincial level would allow industry at large to better engage in program development and participation at the provincial level on a collective basis.

I want to be clear, though, that we are not suggesting more reporting just for the sake of reporting. That's not a wise investment of EI ratepayer dollars or tax dollars. What we are asking for is that we see the information on the specific programs being delivered by the provinces with the LMDA funding, and that we see the results and the data. Further, CHBA can see great value in expanding the stated objectives and accountability framework now being applied to the revised labour market agreements and moving those on to labour market development agreements.

We'd be pleased to provide the results of our research carried out on publicly available information on the LMDA-funded programs at the provincial level, although I should note that our research predates the recently published information in the “EI Monitoring and Assessment Report 2012/13” on medium-term impacts of employment benefits and support measures on EI claimants. We are certainly interested in learning how these research results that have come out more recently will be considered as part of the LMDA transformation process.

I should also add that although it hasn't been an issue yet with LMDA funding programs, we must emphasize the importance of recognizing all apprenticeable trades under any federally supported programs. As I emphasized in our last appearance before this committee, and I'm hoping we don't have a vote called today—that would be nice—the residential construction industry comprises Red Seal trades but also many other apprenticeable, provincially designated non-Red Seal trades. These other trades are equally deserving of federal support, and programs that limit funding to only the Red Seal trades are not in line with the government's current directions in its attempt to connect Canadians with jobs.

I'd also add that it has been suggested by some that this would cause administrative complications, but our position is that it would in fact not do so. All apprenticeable trades are designated by the provinces, and information on each trade is very readily available. The system is therefore already in place to easily and more fairly accommodate this additional collection of trades, particularly in the residential construction industry.

With that, I'd like to pass the mike over to our president, Bard Golightly, who will close with his comments and some recommendations.

[Bard Golightly, President, Canadian Home Builders' Association]

Thanks, Kevin. Those were good comments.

It's a pleasure to be here today. Thank you, Mr. Chair, for the opportunity to speak.

I had the opportunity on April 29 in Edmonton to participate in a labour market development agreement round table. It was a great session, I thought. From a national perspective, it's interesting that while our country may not indicate it has a labour shortage, if one considers the employment rate, we find that in the residential construction industry we're having a great deal of trouble finding the right people with the right skills at the right time. As well, with the demographic trends moving along—we all know about those—labour shortages of skilled people are predicted to get much worse.

When I travel across the country in my role on the CHBA executive, it's eminently clear to me how different the employment situations are in different regions, and how important it is that our system accommodate and account for those regional differences.

For background, we are a 900,000-job industry generating over $120 billion in economic activity. However, in the next decade we will see approximately 100,000 job vacancies to fill. That means our industry and government need these LMDA dollars to be as effective as possible in getting Canadians employed, and perhaps more importantly, though, not just into jobs but into careers.

Today we offer the following recommendations for your consideration.

Make information on all LMDA-funded programs, provincial and federal, and the results of these programs easily accessible for review and sharing by employers, allowing for as much flexibility as possible in labour market development agreements in order to accommodate the regional and sector-specific needs and opportunities. This is something that I think came up in Edmonton as well.

Second, ensure that all training and support programs are available to trades and occupations working or seeking work in the residential construction industry. This would include promotional efforts funded through LMDAs.

Third, ensure that residential trades and occupations are included in the labour market information being used by those designing the LMDA-funded programs. Where apprentices are concerned, this includes, as Kevin mentioned, not only the Red Seal but all provincially designated trades as well.

In addition, it should be noted that our industry employs many people in non-apprenticeable jobs, many of which serve as entry-level positions into the industry and offer long-term career opportunities. In fact, my son is just going through that now. He has now moved into the apprentice program, but he started off in a non-apprenticeable trade and he's building a career out of this.

I'd also like to add that in our Nova Scotia consultation, a common theme stressed around the table was the need to reduce bureaucracy and reduce the barriers that stop individuals from accessing training. For example, a person having to wait six to eight weeks for employment insurance benefits is a barrier to training. A solution could be to bridge that six-to-eight-week gap that apprentices must wait for EI by having the grant dollars assignable to the employer. This would allow the employer to pay the apprentice during regular pay periods since they know the money is coming.

With those goals set out and the information on LMDA-funded programs in hand, we trust that our sector can play a greater role in helping to direct LMDA-funded programming, as well as connecting employers in our sector with various opportunities to help employ even more underemployed and unemployed Canadians. This in turn will help address the pending shortage of skilled workers in our industry.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

Thank you.

Now we'll move on to Mr. Reid from the Progressive Contractors.

[Sean Reid, Vice-President, Federal and Ontario, Progressive Contractors Association of Canada]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good morning, everyone.

It's my pleasure to be here on behalf of the Progressive Contractors Association of Canada to share our perspective on Canada's labour market development agreements.

PCA represents and supports progressive, unionized employers in Canada's construction industry. Our member companies employ approximately 30,000 skilled tradespeople, unionized primarily by the Christian Labour Association of Canada. PCA' s goal as an association is to ensure that Canada has a fair and open construction industry; cooperative labour relations; and a robust, inclusive, and highly capable workforce.

Our members account for over 40% of all energy and resource sector construction in Alberta and British Columbia, and they are leaders in infrastructure construction across the country. Our members also lead the industry in the recruitment of under-represented communities into the trades, including women, first nations, new Canadians, and young Canadians.

In western Canada, where provincial regulations best support the hiring and training of skilled trades workers, registered apprentices comprise over 35% of the total PCA workforce. Despite our leadership in the recruitment and development of skilled trades talent, PCA member companies, like most companies in Canada's construction industry, continue to struggle to find enough workers to meet growing demand. This is particularly pronounced in B.C., Alberta, and Saskatchewan.

Given this context, PCA is pleased to have the opportunity to offer our perspective on the development of the new LMDAs and the role they can play in addressing Canada's skills challenge.

From our perspective, the purpose of labour market development agreements—or more precisely, of the programs they fund—is quite simple. They are designed to provide unemployed workers the necessary skills training so they can quickly rejoin the workforce. This is a worthy objective. If we wish to find made-in-Canada solutions to our skills shortage, we should start by moving more Canadian workers from low opportunity and no opportunity career paths onto high opportunity career paths such as the skilled trades.

So what can be done to ensure that the next round of LMDAs delivers on that promise? PCA is pleased to offer a few of our thoughts.

First and foremost, we believe there is a need, as the home builders echoed, for greater transparency, performance measurement, and public accountability for the programs funded by the LMDAs.

Further, we believe the federal government should adopt the following guiding principles for the new LMDAs. Specifically, the new LMDAs should be employer-driven, market-oriented, and competitive. They should promote labour mobility as much as possible and promote a more dynamic and responsive labour market across Canada.

Let's take a look at each of these principles one at a time.

Employer-driven—similar to the case for the Canada job grant, future LMDA funding should be directed towards programs that incorporate strong employer engagement to ensure that federal training dollars lead to real results. We believe that having employers and employer groups actively participate in the process will lead to more targeted skills training and better matching of talent to tasks.

Market-oriented and competitive—LMDA-funded programs should promote a competitive, market-driven training system. In other words, LMDA programs should allow for competition between training providers as much as possible. A worker should not be forced to use one specific training provider but should have the option to choose a provider that best meets his or her training needs, whether that's through public training, private training, or a union training centre.

Labour mobility—as much as possible LMDAs should promote, or at a minimum not discourage, labour mobility. Workers from areas of underemployment should have the opportunity to move to regions of high employment to get the training they need to ensure they are able to rejoin the workforce. If workers are unable to find opportunities in their home regions, then we owe it to them to provide every possible means to move to a region where they will find an opportunity for meaningful employment. This will optimize their chances of finding a new job after their training is complete.

Related to this, we have some ideas for how labour mobility can be better facilitated by the government. One solution we believe the federal government should take a closer look at is the creation of a work travel grant or a lump-sum training and mobility grant, which would be accessible through the EI system.

Mobility grants allow a person who is unemployed in one area of the country to utilize future unemployment insurance benefits in the form of a lump sum payment in order to relocate to another area of the country where workers are needed. The funds advanced from EI payments would then be used to fund job search, training, and/or relocation costs.

Our final principle is that LMDAs should help promote a more dynamic and responsive labour market. For example, funding earmarked for research and innovation within the new LMDAs, we believe, should be directed as much as possible toward the promotion of labour market information and needs, i.e., in our case promoting the skilled trades. More research, we believe, is also needed on how to better facilitate mobility within the labour market.

As always, PCA is ready to be a strong partner with the federal government and its provincial counterparts in the further development and implementation of the LMDAs.

We thank you for the opportunity to provide our input today, and I will be pleased to answer any questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

Thank you, Mr. Reid. I appreciate those comments and for you being as on time as you are.

Now Mr. Martin from the Canadian Welding Bureau.

[J. Craig Martin, Vice President, Public Safety, Canadian Welding Bureau]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you all very much for the opportunity to speak with you today.

I serve as the vice-president of public safety with the Canadian Welding Bureau, known more commonly as the CWB. The CWB is an independent, not-for-profit organization funded solely from the industry that we serve. Since 1947, our certification programs have expanded beyond the welding of steel, and we now offer programs for aluminum welding, resistance welding, welding electrodes, and welding inspectors, to name but a few. In all cases, our programs are based on standards produced by the Canadian Standards Association.

With offices in Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, and Nova Scotia, the CWB's team of 160 staff provide services right across the country. The majority of our services are provided on the shop floor, providing guidance and oversight to multiple industry sectors involved in welding. The CWB is accredited by the Standards Council of Canada as a certification body, and is the only national organization with a primary focus on welding.

Today, the CWB has over 7,000 welding fabrication companies certified across Canada and the world. Our primary mission is to help protect the safety of Canadians. To support this mission, the CWB provides its services not only to Canadian organizations but also to organizations around the world that supply welded structures and products to Canada.

Each year the CWB witnesses the welding of over 90,000 test plates completed by welders, and trains thousands of welding supervisors, welding inspectors, and welding engineers. In addition, CWB staff provide an independent review of over 30,000 welding procedures to ensure compliance with national standards. It's this combination of qualified welders, qualified welding supervisors and engineers, and qualified procedures that will help ensure a high-quality and a safe weld. If one of these elements is missing, the risk of weld quality issues and failure greatly increases.

The welding industry contributes over $5 billion to the Canadian economy, and employs over 300,000 individuals. Through our membership and advocacy arm, the Canadian Welding Association, we are actively involved in working with our over 45,000 members to ensure the industry in Canada remains healthy.

One of the biggest issues facing Canadian welding is that this sector is in the midst of a skills shortage. With an aging demographic and a strong demand for welding professionals in several industries, including mining and natural resources, an active effort must be made to attract young people to the industry, and ensure that we have the trained labour force required to meet the needs of the industry, both today and into the future. To put the issue of demographics in context, the average age for most skilled welding positions is fast approaching 60.

In our most recent member survey, conducted earlier this year, two-thirds of our industry still quotes skilled trade shortage as the number one issue facing their business. The current skills shortage in the welding sector not only creates difficulties in finding skilled tradespersons, but it introduces the risk that those who are doing the work may not have the level of skill that we have relied on in the past. We are working with our members in government to ensure that there is a pool of skilled workers for both short-term and long-term needs around several issues including the Canada job grant, worker mobility, and immigration.

The CWB welcomed the federal government's intention to address training initiatives in budget 2013, and we are pleased that agreements were reached with the provinces on these initiatives earlier this year. The CWB also welcomes the Canada apprentice loan program announced in budget 2014.

However, the CWB believes that there are several other actions that must be taken to address the skills shortage in welding.

First, the creation of a national training curriculum for welders would provide colleges and other training institutions with a current and comprehensive approach to creating a first-class generation of skilled trades. Government, industry, and training organizations must work together to meet the needs of the future. We must also work to tap into specific demographics—such as women and aboriginals—to seek this next generation of skilled workers.

Secondly, we must also work to improve the ease of labour mobility from province to province to ensure that skilled tradespersons can go where they are needed.

Thirdly, in addition to training Canadians, a key part of this solution is ensuring that when skilled foreign workers are needed, they must meet the needs of Canadian industry from a skills perspective. We believe the federal government's recent changes to the federal skilled trade program is a positive step forward, and CWB is already working throughout the world to ensure that potential immigrants to Canada are trained to Canadian standards and requirements, so that they are job-ready when they arrive.

I look forward to answering your questions related to the renewal of the LMDA agreements, and how government, industry, and training organizations can work together to ensure that Canada has access to the skilled tradespeople needed to meet our infrastructure, energy, and economic needs.

While we realize that LMDAs will not provide solutions to all of the labour and skills issues our industry faces, they certainly are our key tool in working towards solutions.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

Thank you, Mr. Martin.

Now we'll move on to questioning from members and they are five-minute rounds.

The first questioner is Madam Sims.

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

Thank you very much.

I want to thank all of you for your presentations.

As you all know, we have a very short five minutes so I'm going to try to get through a series of questions.

My first question is for Mr. Golightly. You mentioned making data more accessible. Can you elaborate? Specifically, I would like to know what data you propose should be more accessible, to whom, and in what format, an online tool, monthly newsletters? How would it best be conveyed?

[Bard Golightly]

Thanks for the question.

There are probably multiple answers to that, unfortunately. Part of it is that we often find the data, particularly from various provinces, is simply not available. It's not so much a question of access to the data; it's simply not published. Your online comment is a good one. Maybe that's the way to do it. It is difficult to coalesce and collect the data from a number of provinces. We have studied that and we can provide information on which provinces provide which types of data, if that's helpful.

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

Thank you.

My next question is for Mr. Reid.

You talk about employer-directed programming and how that's a step in the right direction. The Canada job grant, actually, was meant to be that right at the beginning, as you know. There was a huge backlash. How is what you suggest any different than the original formatting of the Canada job grant?

[Sean Reid]

Respectfully, I'm not sure that my impression of the backlash was related to the employer engagement aspect of the job grant. Quite the contrary, I participated in a number of those consultations and there is pretty strong support, I understand—certainly that was my impression—from employers about the nature of that design. I think there were some—

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

It's not the employers who had the backlash; I'm talking about everybody else.

[Sean Reid]

I think there were some rollout issues. Here's our perspective. If you don't have employers engaged in these programs, then you're training without a reliable prediction of an outcome. That's simply not going to suffice if you want to actually address the specific, and frequently changing, needs of skills in the industry.

Our view is to be more proactive and deliberate, as the Canada job grant is, in terms of bringing in employers who are at the front end to identify what the skills needs are so that the training is directly coherent with the need.

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

Nobody is suggesting the employer shouldn't be involved; it's the key push for the employer to be the driving force. Here, what would competition between employers look like and why do you suggest that's beneficial?

[Sean Reid]

I think you're referring to the competition within the training system.

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

Yes.

[Sean Reid]

We believe competition is good in every industry. It drives innovation. It creates responsiveness in terms of market needs. A level playing field between private, public, and union training centres, we believe, will ensure that the training system is as responsive as possible to the changing industry needs.

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

Thank you very much.

How am I doing for time?

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

You have one and a half minutes.

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

That's good.

Are there any changes you would recommend to the delivery of employment services under the LMDAs? Which, if any, of these recommendations could also be included in a revised framework for federal, provincial, territorial agreements that would guide the new generation of LMDAs?

Let's go to Mr. Martin.

[J. Craig Martin]

Thank you.

We would support the same approach as we need to improve employer engagement. As Mr. Reid said, if we want to make sure that when the training is completed, it's relevant to the jobs at hand, we need the employers to be engaged.

We work with colleges, both private and public, with unions, and some of the best training programs we see are the ones that engage the local employment base and they ask what they are looking for and what skills are missing in the graduates that we have. We do the same thing at the federal level.

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

Thank you.

Mr. Lee, do you have a quick comment?

[Kevin Lee]

I would concur. I think that really getting employers engaged early to make sure that there are jobs available at the back end is absolutely critical. As Mr. Reid mentioned, the more mobility aspects we can work into the system, the better, because as our president, Mr. Golightly, pointed out, if you look at raw numbers, you might say there's no skills shortage, but when you look on a regional basis, we're not matching up employment opportunities with people, so mobility is a big part that we could build in.

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

Thank you.

We go on to Mr. Mayes for five minutes.