Human Resources Committee on June 10th, 2014

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

Good morning.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the 29th meeting of the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities. Today is Tuesday, June 10, 2014, and we are continuing our study on the renewal of the labour market development agreements, also famously known as LMDAs.

For our first hour, as part of our panel, we're pleased to have with us, from the Fédération des communautés francophones et acadienne du Canada, Ms. Suzanne Bossé, executive director, along with her president, Ms. Marie-France Kenny. Appearing as an individual, we have Dr. Donna Wood, adjunct assistant professor. Finally, joining us by way of video conference from Mississauga and also appearing as an individual, we have Ms. Miana Plesca, associate professor and interim assistant dean from the College of Business and Economics at the University of Guelph.

My apologies if I've butchered your name with some pronunciations. I'm not great at French, as you know, or as at least committee members know. We welcome you to our committee to witness today.

Let's begin with Ms. Bossé for up to 10 minutes, please.

Ms. Kenny, if you prefer to go first, that's fine with us.

[Marie-France Kenny, President, Fédération des communautés francophones et acadienne du Canada]

Mr. Chair, members of the committee, thank you for inviting the Fédération des communautés francophones et acadienne, the FCFA, to appear before you today.

My name is Marie-France Kenny and I am the President of the FCFA. I am accompanied by our Executive Director, Ms. Suzanne Bossé.

The Fédération des communautés francophones et acadienne du Canada has been in existence since 1975. Its mandate is to speak on behalf of the 2.5 million francophones who live in a minority situation in the nine provinces and three territories outside Quebec.

More specifically, the FCFA focuses on promoting linguistic duality, developing the capacity to live in French throughout the country, and fostering the participation of francophone citizens in Canada's development.

Our federation includes 21 member-organizations, including 12 associations representing francophones in each province and each territory, and 9 national francophone organizations that are active in areas such as early childhood, literacy, skills development, health and culture, and we work with clients such as young people, the elderly and women.

For the purpose of its mandate, the FCFA is particularly interested in the implementation of the Official Languages Act. I must admit that we are rather disappointed that the officials who spoke before this committee about labour market development agreements, LMDAs, made no mention of the commitments and language considerations that are included in these agreements, or that should be included. We are concerned about this. If the FCFA is here today, it is mainly to correct these shortcomings.

First, the LMDAs that were signed by the provinces and the territories between 1996 and 2008 all include language provisions. A language provision ensures that when money is transferred from the federal government to a provincial government, the province respects its obligations under the Official Languages Act. In fact, these obligations under the law must accompany devolution. These clauses deal specifically with part IV of the act, which requires that federal offices communicate and provide services in French and in English where the numbers justify it. Under the language clauses of the LMDAs, those obligations are devolved upon provincial and territorial governments.

Those very same language clauses contain two significant shortcomings.

On the one hand, as is the case in many federal-provincial-territorial agreements, the implementation of these clauses is imperfect and there are few accountability measures. Provinces basically do not account for how well they have met their obligations under the Official Languages Act.

I would like to point out that during the negotiations on the renewal of labour market agreements, the federal government showed leadership on the inclusion of firm and clear language clauses. We call on the government to be just as firm when the LMDAs are renewed.

That being said, the Official Languages Act is much more than part IV, that is the part dealing with services to the public and communication with the public. Part VII of the act requires that federal institutions take positive steps to support the development of official language minority communities.

The Official Languages Commissioner recently concluded an investigative report regarding a complaint about how the labour market agreement and labour market development agreement had been implemented in British Columbia. The commissioner confirmed that the federal government is responsible for ensuring that language obligations, not only those under part IV on services to the public, but also those under part VII on positive measures, are implemented when it signs funding transfer agreements with provinces and territories.

In the case of an LMDA, what would positive measures to support the development of our communities look like? At a minimum, in consultation with the communities, the provincial governments would have to craft action plans that meet their real needs, such as access to the kinds of training that francophones are looking for, support for job searches, or measures that focus on the specific needs of francophone immigrants looking for jobs.

Make no mistake: we are not talking about consulting communities in a vacuum. There is a much broader benefit for provincial and territorial governments, and for our communities, when the latter can participate in consultations that include various civil society groups for the purpose of developing LMDA-related action plans. When that happens, there is a much greater chance of the issues and concerns of our communities being fully integrated within these action plans.

Finally, in order to ensure effective and efficient implementation of the LMDAs and any related action plan, one must also ensure that all relevant stakeholders within our communities participate.

The other official languages issue I would like to speak to you about is that of data and research. Currently, the federal government's labour force surveys do not include a language component. It is therefore very difficult to have systematic information on how many francophones are employed, how many are unemployed, which age category is the most affected by underemployment and unemployment, and what kind of training is offered, in what language and where.

This is a major issue. It is a major issue for federal institutions and for provincial and territorial governments that may want to know more about the employment situation of francophones in order to take targeted positive steps for a specific francophone community. It is also an important issue for organizations like the FCFA and its members, that federal institutions and governments often turn to when they are trying to better fulfil their language obligations.

I will end my remarks with a few recommendations that sum up my comments.

First, your committee must recommend that the government insists on strong language clauses that include implementation and accountability measures for the purposes of both part IV of the Official Languages Act, that is service to the public and communications, and part VII, on positive measures to foster community development.

Second, these language clauses must include wording about consultation, cooperation and collaboration with all key stakeholders in francophone communities in order to ensure efficient and effective implementation of the LMDAs in a way that meets the real needs of these communities.

Third, the federal government must strengthen its capacity to collect language data on Canada's labour force in order to fill our knowledge gap on the employment profile of francophone communities.

Finally, we support the recommendation of the Institute for Research on Public Policy to adopt a standardized approach for information and data collection, which would allow for a better understanding of that information.

Thank you.

I would be happy to answer your questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

Thank you very much, Madame Kenny.

Ms. Wood, we'll now go to you for up to 10 minutes, please.

[Dr. Donna Wood, Adjunct Assistant Professor, University of Victoria, As an Individual]

Thank you.

Good morning. My name is Donna Wood. I'm an adjunct assistant professor of political science at the University of Victoria. My area of expertise is comparative federalism. I'm interested in comparative federalism; I used to work as a public servant with the Government of Alberta before I moved into an academic role.

In my work in looking at comparative federalism, I've studied how the European Union, Australia, and the United States manage employment programming, but most of my experience has been on the Canadian situation in terms of how we manage federal-provincial relations in employment policy.

Quite specifically, over the past two years I have been assessing the governance arrangements post-devolution in all provinces, involving over a hundred interviews in all 10 provinces across Canada. I'm pleased to be here at this committee today, because I've just returned from doing 25 interviews in Atlantic Canada to understand better how the Atlantic provinces are implementing their LMDAs post-devolution, particularly the new provinces that have come on after 2009, which are Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Prince Edward Island, but I also did stop in New Brunswick.

So on the basis of these interviews that I've been doing over the past two years, how is the system working today?

Every developed country has a public employment service to match job seekers with employers. A robust public employment service ensures that all Canadians have an opportunity to access the labour market and that employers can get the skilled workers they need.

It needs to be public so that those who are having difficulty finding work, especially youth, immigrants, aboriginal people, and disabled people, as well as those dependent upon government income support, which includes employment insurance recipients as well as social assistance persons, have access to the individualized services and supports they need in order to get a job. Also, it needs to have federal government leadership in order to ensure that there is a pan-Canadian cohesiveness and coordination of this system across Canada, to ensure that there is mobility of workers across the country, and to ensure that there are comparative information and research at all levels—local, regional, provincial, national, and international.

As you know, until 1996 Canada's public employment service was managed directly by Ottawa through a network of 500 Canada Manpower offices across the country. Since then, the system has been transformed, with 80% of the programming now designed and delivered by provinces and territories through a variety of bilateral federal-provincial agreements, 49 of them in total, of which the labour market development agreement is the most important of this basket of agreements. The LMDAs transferred to the provinces over 3,600 federal staff, assets, and almost $2 billion in funding from the unemployment insurance account.

It has taken over 17 years for all provinces and territories to assess, negotiate, and sign a devolved LMDA, one at a time. In taking on these responsibilities, each province has rationalized their internal infrastructure and their relationships with employers, service delivery providers, post-secondary institutions, and their community organizations. Many have transformed the training programs on offer, as well as the supports and services they provide to social assistance claimants and other vulnerable groups. It has been a huge undertaking for provinces to take on these responsibilities.

In my estimation, devolution has led to many positive outcomes.

Provincial governments, as well as their regional and local offices, have now developed a significant capacity, expertise, and knowledge in the policy domain. The current agreements have provided provinces with enough flexibility to match programming to local conditions, thereby improving program effectiveness. This is a key OECD recommendation: that labour market programs, in order to be effective, must be matched to local conditions and have that degree of flexibility. The other thing is that devolution and the clarification of federal-provincial roles and responsibilities that came with it have also increased harmony in federal-provincial relations in the sector, and this has been a major accomplishment.

But what are the problems with the current arrangements? Even though successful, devolution is incomplete, and governance problems remain.

First of all, there is the absence of a Canada-wide multilateral strategic framework or agreement on goals, objectives, and measures within which these provincial programs rest. That's because they're governed by 49 bilateral agreements. We don't have a multilateral framework.

Second is executive dominance, including weak federal-provincial coordination and limited opportunity for stakeholders or citizens to participate in what these programs are, either on a pan-Canadian basis or, in some cases, at the provincial level.

Third is a lack of transparency, reporting, knowledge-sharing, comparative research, and processes to facilitate mutual learning between the provinces that are now running these programs.

Fourth is a continued fragmentation and residual incoherence resulting in weak accountability. Our 14 governments are inextricably intertwined in labour market matters. The policy area cannot be managed as watertight compartments or through unilateral federal or provincial action. The federal government should not aim to dictate a detailed program design, as was attempted through the Canada job grant. Ottawa's role should be strategic not operational.

What do I suggest in concrete terms? I suggest the following.

First, our 14 governments should collectively undertake to reform and expand the forum of labour market ministers, with a mandate to act as a multilateral, pan-Canadian intergovernmental forum responsible for consulting on and determining all aspects of employment training and policy in Canada.

This forum already exists. It needs to be made more robust. In order to make it more robust, it would require the creation of a larger and permanent secretariat and establishing a formalized way that relates to the FLMM to secure business, union, community, expert, and aboriginal input into labour market programming. It would also require building linkages with other intergovernmental forums, like the Council of Ministers of Education, Canada, and the ministers of social services, because of the interrelationship with social assistance programming.

Second, I believe that a new national agency needs to be created and I'm calling it the Canadian institute for labour market information. This agency would be charged with identifying, maintaining and disseminating labour market information; data gathering and analysis for comparative research; monitoring and sharing of best practices between the provinces; assessing trends and policies across Canada and internationally; and evaluating labour market program results.

It would perform for labour market matters a similar role as the Canadian Institute for Health Information, called CIHI, provides in health care, and would operate under a similar collaborative federal-provincial governance structure. That collaborative governance structure is essential for this to be successful because of the interconnection between the federal and provincial governments.

Third, I would recommend that provincial and federal governments finish the work needed to consolidate, affirm, and fully operationalize the devolution decision, including negotiating the transfer of programs for youth and persons with disabilities to provincial governments.

The only remaining direct federal oversight, in my view, should be in regard to programs for aboriginal persons, which are managed through the ASETS program. But these programs need to be better co-ordinated in defined ways with provincial programming. This final step would also include the recognition of an enhanced federal role in research co-ordination, comparative benchmarking, and pan-Canadian reporting.

To conclude, what do I think should happen next to ensure effective labour market programming?

I'm aware that Minister Kenney's office is undertaking consultations, with limited provincial involvement, on LMDA renewal. These are happening in one province at a time, but I also believe that these consultations are inadequate to achieve the kind of collaborative transformation and labour market programming that is needed.

These discussions should be replaced with a broader, longer, and more transparent consultation process that is shaped by our governments with the help of pan-Canadian groups, many of whom you have heard from today and other days in terms of this LMDA renewal process.

These pan-Canadian groups would represent employers, community organizations, and research institutes. This process should be managed by a credible external organization such as a research institute.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to present to you today.

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

Thank you very much.

We move on to Ms. Plesca, who's with us from Mississauga on video conference.

You have 10 minutes.

[Dr. Miana Plesca, Associate Professor and Interim Assistant Dean, College of Business and Economics, University of Guelph, As an Individual]

Thank you. I hope you can hear me well; if not, ask me, and I will speak up.

I'm a labour economist at the University of Guelph and I think I'm here because my specialization is in program evaluation. Most of my work looks at how to evaluate all these active labour market policies: what the right methodology is, the literature, what the conclusions are, how we can interpret all of these findings.

First of all, I want to congratulate whoever put out the report. It's an excellently written report, and it's public. I'm going to use it in class. I wish the media would use it more often, because there many misconceptions going around. It had lots of numbers, which I love.

I think I'm here for the part about the employment benefits and support measures evaluation. There has been a medium- to long-term evaluation of outcomes over five years for people who have gone through these programs.

Now, I have to say that I'm lost in acronyms, Maybe you're better than I am with the acronyms—I don't know—because although we define the same concepts, the literature has one name, and each country has its own definition. So I'm going to try to be less confusing.

Again I'm going to talk about the evaluation of EBSM, employment benefits and support measures. We can split them into two, employment benefits and support measures.

Employment benefits are a bit more expensive. They refer directly to cash that we pay for individuals to go to training, or targeted wage subsidies, or creating jobs especially for the individuals who come to these programs. On the support measures—the other part of EBSM—I'm only going to talk about employment assistance services, which the literature also calls job search assistance.

Let me from the get-go mention that when we look at these evaluations, we as economists tend to focus on the efficiency goal of these evaluations. There is also an equity level, about which we say, perhaps these programs are in place to help the neediest, who otherwise would have access to no other types of services. While we acknowledge that, when we look at the hard numbers we are focused mostly on the efficiency side, and so we tend to ignore the equity part, although the other speakers have well addressed it, and we tend to see how much these programs are worth—what the bang for the buck is, if you want.

This long-term evaluation has found very large impacts for the skill development programs. These programs are for unemployed people who are on benefits and can qualify for training. We look at the impact on four types of outcomes: their earnings, their probability of being employed, their probability of being on EI, and the amount of benefits they claim on EI for one and up to five years after they have gone through this program.

We looked at the impact of the program in the early 2000s. What the evaluation found was very large impacts for the skills training programs, I think a bit larger than the literature finds, and for a couple of reasons.

One is that maybe the methodology is somewhat geared—and if I have time, I may explain why—towards finding higher impacts. That's one possibility that goes against the large impacts that were found.

Another possibility is that we looked at long-term impacts. Most evaluations look at a year or at most two years after the training happens, but here we go up to five years. There is an emerging literature that shows that longer-term impacts could be higher for people who have gone through these training programs.

So let us go back to the expensive programs. The skill development, the training, seems to have a very large impact. On targeted wage subsidies and earning supplements, there is mixed evidence. People seem to move on and off employment insurance in subsequent years. Maybe they learn how the system works; maybe being in a targeted wage subsidy program gives them enough labour market experience that they can claim benefits. That is a more mixed kind of evidence.

We have very bad evidence for self-employment programs, but the report acknowledges, and I agree, that we don't measure self-employment programs well, because we look at earnings outcomes, and the self-employed have other types of benefits—the way they file taxes, the way the tax incentives are, the way they build the business. We should look at the rate of success or failure of their self-employment business, because the outcomes that we look at currently are not very relevant for them.

Concerning job creation partnerships, the [Inaudible--Editor] employment created jobs. I hope there is not a typo, because while the report didn't talk much about it, there were huge employment benefits in years four and five. If it's not a typo, I think we really need to look into it. If it does have huge employment benefits, maybe it's even a contribution to the theoretical literature, because we tend to think that these job creation programs don't do too well. It's true, if we look at our own evaluation that I am talking about, they don't do too well in the first year or the second year; they pick up in year four and year five. And if this is true, and further evaluation shows that this is true, maybe we should put more money and more energy into these job creation partnerships, if truly the impact in years four and five is this high.

So these are the expensive ones. The cheaper one is the employment assistance service, the job search assistance programs where you just teach people how to write their resumé, how to dress for an interview, and what to say at the interview. It is the darling of all labour market programs because it's very cheap. It doesn't cost as much as to retrain a worker in a new occupation. You just put them in a classroom or one-on-one interventions and just tell them how to behave at an interview, and it's very successful. The impacts are modest. They are not huge, but they are very consistent all across time and easy to implement, easy to deliver.

So what has happened is that a lot of the provinces have switched their attention and focus on these employment assistance services because they work and they are cheap. I don't want to put them down too much, but I think we have to be very careful here because emerging evidence shows that, while they are effective, they are mostly displacement programs. They do not create new jobs; they do not benefit in terms of productivity. It's just that you direct an individual to a job that could have been occupied by another equally qualified individual, but this other individual gets displaced from the job because they didn't come to this particular program. So yes, they are cheap and they seem to be effective, but they do not create new jobs; they do not improve productivity.

So, again, it depends on what the government has in mind with all of these LMDA policies. If the goal is to increase productivity and to make the Canadian labour force more productive, then I think we should be careful about the displacement effects, which nobody has measured in the Canadian context because it is hard to measure them. But the literature seems to indicate that the skill development programs do build skills and do have an impact on productivity. Employers see that the skill is there and create new jobs to attract the skill. There is an extra layer that we do not address with evaluation because it talks about the productivity effects and general equilibrium effects that are more likely to be important for skill development rather than for the cheaper employment assistance service.

I'll just say one more thing. In terms of the methodology of the report, we are worried that what we measure in this evaluation of the EBSM is a bit too high, because claimants can be selected into the different streams. Either they self-select or the case workers may select them because case workers are graded on managing for results, so there is an incentive for the case worker to take the best workers and assign them to treatment because then these workers will be successful. The problem is that the workers who get assigned to these treatments and who we measure the effects for might have been more successful regardless, because they are cream scheme; they are selected in this context.

That's why I think that all of these impacts are a bit too high. If we measured them properly in a random assignment trial, for instance, they would be a bit lower, but I still believe that the impacts are there and I think the point that I take home from this is that long-term impacts are even higher and that all of the these programs seem to work in the long term.

I'll stop here.

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

Thank you very much for that.

Now we'll move on to our first round of questioning, of five minutes each.

Madame Groguhé.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for speaking to us about LDMAs.

Many things were said. When we are talking about matching jobs that have to be filled and individuals looking for a job, clearly skills development is important. That does not include today's literacy level in Canada. This is a significant problem which has already been pointed out to us. The statistics that we have been provided with are troubling.

My question is for you, Ms. Kenny.

When LMDAs are being renewed, how can literacy be accounted for within minority francophone communities? What would you recommend?

[Marie-France Kenny]

The language clauses we were talking about are very important for this. In some of our communities, such as in New Brunswick, the literacy levels are lower than those of anglophones. Therefore those are needs that must be accounted for.

We told you that positive measures have to be taken under the language clauses because we need to be assured that the province will work with francophone groups on everything that is related to the development of skills and literacy.

I would like to take this opportunity to point out that $7.5 million were included under Canada's official languages roadmap for 2013 to 2018 for literacy and skills development. However, to date there has been no program, no program criteria and no deadline. Absolutely nothing has been done on this since 2013.

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

Fine.

Given how important this issue is, I would not want an opportunity to be missed on the grounds that this is not relevant for individuals who are looking for a job. It is very important that we be aware of this issue. That is why I asked you a question about it.

You said that you had some concerns about how the negotiations on the implementation of the Canada Job Grant had been undertaken, and about the changes that were going to take place.

I would like to know if you have similar concerns about the LMDA negotiations. What kinds of pitfalls do you think must be avoided?

[Marie-France Kenny]

Yes, we do have similar fears. I would say that the language clauses are not all the same for each province. The situation can be different within these negotiations.

In terms of LMAs, we stated that the government made sure that it had firm language clauses which, I agree, was more difficult. The government did demonstrate leadership for the LMAs.

We want to make sure that just as much attention is paid to the language clauses in the LMDAs. That said, it is straightforward to include a language clause. However, there is no point in including a language clause if you do not make sure after the fact that those obligations have been met. Not only must there be a language clause, but there must also be accountability.

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

Witnesses have consistently raised accountability as a concern. Without accountability, how can one assess the outcome of the measures that were to be implemented?

What kinds of specific problems do you think minority francophone communities are dealing with in terms of labour market training? What recommendations would you make to this committee that would help us better meet your concerns?

[Marie-France Kenny]

Well, we already said this. Francophone communities must be included in the other consultations. They could then contribute to the development of these plans, which would mean they would not be crafted in a vacuum.

I can give you a concrete example of the kinds of difficulties one encounters.

Let us take for example a training program that is offered where there have to be 30 participants. It is possible that in our communities there may only be 5 or 7 participants. Under the Official Languages Act the requirement to take positive measures and offer equitable—not equal—service, would mean that the same training in French would be provided to those seven individuals. In other words, the needs and specific characteristics of each community have to be accounted for. One doesn't have to have 30 participants for a course. That is one concrete example I can give you.

Employment problems vary from one community to another. Earlier we were talking about literacy. One must also consider francophone immigrants and their need for extra literacy and skills development training.

In summary, we think that the key to success in terms of language issues truly lies, on the one hand, in firm language clauses, and, on the other hand, in rigorous follow-up to make sure that the obligations under the language clauses and the Official Languages Act have been met.

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

Thank you.

Mrs. McLeod, you have five minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the witnesses as we continue a really important study on the renewal of the LMDA agreements.

I think we've heard consistently about the need for better data to understand what we need to do and where we need to go, and I think two themes have been emerging in the particular issue of the structure. One is to say that Stats Canada should be tasked with some enhanced market information versus what a couple of the witnesses proposed, a CIHI model.

Ms. Wood, you were calling it the institute for labour market information and were certainly encouraging that structure for enhancement as opposed to Stats Canada simply collecting a few more data fields. Could you talk about why you believe that's important?

[Dr. Donna Wood]

I think our research capacity in the labour market field is significantly deficient. I think what we've done with devolution is that we have moved the responsibility to each one of the provinces according to an accountability framework for these various different agreements, and we have not, as a country, been able to even develop research where we can compare one province to another. I think it's very important to do comparative research, particularly interprovincial research to understand what Ontario has put in place and its results compared to other provinces'. I don't think you can do that by having some more statistical models and data collected by Statistics Canada. I think you need a vibrant research institute that actually develops a research plan that would look at what the objectives are that we are trying to achieve with these programs.

That's why I think it's also very important that on a pan-Canadian basis, we not just do everything by these segmented bilateral agreements. Where are we going with our labour market programs? What are our overall strategic objectives? Then, how do the provinces achieve those through the particular defined agreements, and how are they accountable for them? I think you need a vibrant research institute that has a capacity to actually use the data that is collected and to actually increase administrative data that would go to a research institute and would not necessarily go to a Stats Canada institute.

I think that's why you need something like a CIHI equivalent that would put a research agenda in place for this policy area, that would collect the information that governments would require in order to understand where we're going with this particular policy area. I don't think some additional surveys in Stats Canada would do that.

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

Great. I appreciate that.

You also had some comments about the importance of mobility. Could you maybe flush out your thinking around mobility and how things could be structured? Obviously that is a significant concern of the federal government. These training programs are very insular to each province right now in terms of where people are taking their training and what they do with it. Could you talk a little bit more about that particular issue?

[Dr. Donna Wood]

I can. Part of what I'm saying here is that devolution took responsibility, where the federal government has a continuing significant responsibility, and moved the design and delivery to the provincial level. But I think in this policy area we need to have a national perspective on it so that Canadians can move across the country, and so that we know what services they can get as they move across the country. For me, the fact that we are one country means that this is why there has to be a national dimension to labour market policy. I say this because our research has been significantly weakened in this area. We don't know what the services and supports are from one province to another in a way that we would be able to compare, so that people would be able to easily move from one province to another.

I think that's why we need a national dimension to labour market policy, to enhance the mobility of workers as they move from one province to another. That would be an area of research. Indeed, if you had a research institute, they could focus on these sorts of issues.

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

That's going to end that round of questioning. You only have 10 seconds left, and I would assume that you will not use those 10 seconds. Thank you.

Now we move on to Mr. Cuzner for five minutes.

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

Thanks very much.

I'd like to go to Ms. Plesca first, and I apologize for the actions of our clerk here. She had told me that she was having trouble getting witnesses to appear and she really had to twist arms.

I'll tell you, the testimony today has been excellent with some really good points brought forward.

But I do want to go to Ms. Plesca. Are you suggesting that there would be significant benefit in extending the evaluation period past the five years, going to a seven-year evaluation period? Do you see merit in that?

[Dr. Miana Plesca]

Maybe not, because we already see years four and five with very high impacts. We did some analysis on U.S. data and it picks up up to year 10. We look 10 years down the road and you see the benefits persisting. But even year five is fabulous, I think, because we see that there are long-term impacts, and they pick up. They don't diminish—quite the opposite. They pick up. There are explanations for that, mostly related to occupational mobility. People are going to switch occupations if the government gives them a hand in training. For the new ones, they are going to do better later on.

But my understanding is that now it's conducted across provinces, so the new evaluation that's coming out is going to be across all 10 provinces and maybe the territories, and it's going to have the comparative results that the previous questioner had asked about. That will be interesting as well, because you can have best practices. You see a province getting better impacts and we will wonder why. I think that's coming out in the next year's report.

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

The other one you talked about was those who get training in life skills, interview preparation, resumé preparation, and all that. And it's a low-cost initiative. I'm failing to see the downside of giving people this. A lot of times those people who access those services are lacking in confidence and self-esteem, and it gives them that first opportunity. Maybe it prepares them to go into that interview so that an employer says, this person can fill this job. It's a building block. I'm not seeing where it's any great liability on the government's part to assist people in that realm.

[Dr. Miana Plesca]

Maybe I misspoke.

It's a very good program. What I don't want to see is it becoming the only program, especially if you think of an equity thing. Maybe these really are the unemployable people whom, in the absence of the job search assistance programs, would be stuck. So you do give them this first leg-up, which is good. Especially from an equity point of view, I would like to see it continued.

The trend that I think is happening is that it displaces the other programs. The report shows that across time most resources are going to go to these employment assistance services to the detriment of other programs. Again, it depends on what the government wants. If it's giving a leg up to unemployable individuals then it should focus all the resources on that. If it wants productivity increased from the whole economy then it shouldn't ignore the other aspects, in particular the skills development. Both are very important. They have slightly different macro purposes.

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

Great. Thanks very much.

Ms. Wood, I want to thank you for this term “residual incoherence”. I've raised three young boys, so residual incoherence is something that I've dealt with extensively.

[A voice]

Yes, girls are no problem.