Human Resources Committee on May 7th, 2018

[Nobina Robinson]

I would concur, but I don't have data points at hand, because in the end, a student is a student is a student. We're not asking them those kinds of things. However, I will say this. I am an immigrant myself. There was a large tradition of immigration from certain South Asian countries. Those parents are also part of the bias system. They come to Canada because they want their kid to get a degree. Are we educating immigrants about the opportunities in the labour market offered by these trades professions?

You can think about how we're all British-inherited countries. Whether you're from India or Pakistan or certain countries in Africa, this notion that newcomer parents want their kid to have a degree means that therefore they're not going into the trades. That's a bias issue.

[Mona Fortier, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

So what do we do to change that perception of the differences? I completely agree that a degree and an apprenticeship program should be considered on the same level. In my opinion, both are equally valuable and equally important. How can the government find solutions, in your view?

[Nobina Robinson]

We're all talking about awareness. One solution is awareness through data. Another one is to talk about the success stories.

As well, how about a module on national labour market information for guidance counsellors across the country? We would get the information to those in grade 6 and grade 7. There may be other organizations that could do this. For instance, my organization wouldn't, but we really need to get to the people who have the first contact with the young person.

[Mona Fortier, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Okay.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you.

Karen Vecchio, you have five minutes.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Thank you very much, and thanks for allowing me to come back today.

Thank you for speaking on what you're talking about. I've had children in post-secondary education, and of course I also went to school. I remember how back in the 1980s, if you said that you were going to college, that was, like, not cool. You needed to go to university. There was too much a dividing of things. I think it's really great that we've brought that up.

As has been discussed, a lot of times that disconnect is because very few people who are teaching in our high schools, other than those in automotive and welding, have anything but university education. We know that there's a total disconnect.

Ms. Robinson, I really like your idea about how we get that information out to our schools. Last year I had a principals' meeting, and we talked about a program called “meet the maker”. The chamber of commerce in our community put together the meet the maker program. All of the different manufacturing groups came together and allowed the students to come through and see what they did. There was some hands-on experience.

Are any of you familiar with programs like meet the maker, where students are able to come and see for themselves in a different forum, while not going into the setting of the manufacturing facility, what people are actually doing with their skills? Are there any other things like this across Canada?

[Nobina Robinson]

First of all, I think we really need a repository of all the good things that are going on. I know that the research at the Canadian Apprenticeship Forum does that. My colleague Matt has a couple of little anecdotes to tell you. In this case, perhaps the plural of anecdote is “data”.

Matt.

[Matthew Henderson]

Sometimes it's just those best practices. There's a lot of lament when we visit our members about the absence of shop class in those secondary school programs. In the absence of that, some of our members have been taking initiatives that are targeting pre post-secondary students.

I have two quick examples from Conestoga in Kitchener-Waterloo. Both targeted the under-represented group that is young girls. One of them is called “Jill of All Trades”. It's an event for grades 9 to 12 to pursue careers in the trades. They basically hold an annual event that provides opportunities for almost 200 young women from eight local school boards to explore a variety of trades through hands-on workshops and seminar-style things. It kind of prepares students for what to expect, and encourages them to pursue that path.

The other one is the trades and technology day. This is for grades 7 and 8. So you have something for grades 9 to 12 and then a targeted program for grades 7 and 8. Again, it's very similar, with seminars, workshops, and expectations. This is really just to encourage people on the diversity of pathways, especially at a young age.

It's also an opportunity to show them, as you said, outside of the manufacturing setting, in the schools. As Nobina said in her statement, some of the classrooms are so innovative; all it takes is to go to one, look at it, and say, “Wow. This is great. I would love to learn about this.” It's not just hammer and nails anymore. It's tablets. It's computers. It's apps. It's the whole nine yards. I think programs like that are extremely important in terms of showing the diversity of pathways that young people can take.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

What is the federal government's role here? It sounds to me as though we could do a very community-oriented base development. What could the provincial and federal governments do to assist with this epidemic that we're going to be falling into as Wayne Long talked about. You said it will be 1,200 people shortly. There are jobs and spaces, so what can we do?

[Sarah Watts-Rynard]

I really should point out that the federal government does currently fund Skills Compétences Canada and Skills Canada Ontario and Skills Canada New Brunswick and across the country. Their competitions do include hundreds of thousands of school kids being able to come through and try a trade, in addition to kind of an Olympic-style competition. The Skills Canada Ontario competition is going on now. They do a national competition every year. The winners of the national competition will go to the international competition.

So there are groups like that that are currently funded. Are there opportunities for more? There are always opportunities for more. This is such a small opportunity, but it still gives kids hands-on opportunities across their experience.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

That's awesome.

I have one more question. The retention rates that we see in the STEM fields for women university graduates are rather low. Do you see the same things in trades? Once women have graduated from the trade programs, do you see the retention is there or is it like what we're seeing in other STEM fields?

[Sarah Watts-Rynard]

We're finding retention in apprenticeship is low, but retention post-certification is higher. They now have the certification and they can open their own business. They can move to wherever their skills are in demand. But certainly within the scope of the apprenticeship, retention rates are poor. That is a workplace culture issue we have to address.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you very much.

Madam Sansoucy, go ahead for three minutes, please.

[Brigitte Sansoucy, NDP, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

A number of you have said that we could be doing what they are doing in Europe. Last September, I accompanied the Minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Labour to Turin. We visited a centre there that the government had mandated to stimulate enrolment in training and apprenticeship programs for young, disadvantaged immigrants, specifically from the flood of immigrants from Africa.

The people in the centre, whose mandate was to properly pair up employers with apprentices, noticed that a third person, a social worker, was needed. The employers, who were often SMEs, were somewhat ill-equipped to deal with the family problems the apprentices could be going through, either because of their children or their parents. Apprentices could also be experiencing various difficulties, or could come from a criminal background, and the employers did not have the resources they needed to support them. So the centre received funding to meet the young peoples' needs in all aspects of their lives, and to set them up for success in their apprenticeship programs.

Do you think that could be transferred here to complement existing apprenticeship programs?

[Sarah Watts-Rynard]

I certainly think there are lots of opportunities to engage newcomers. We speak to the youth across the country. We actually held an event very recently with newcomer youth. They said their biggest barrier was not a disinterest in the trades, but simply because, as Nobina has said, that their parents would be disappointed in them. They've given up so much to come Canada, given up so much in the move, that they really feel as though they owe it to their parents now to pursue as much education as they can possibly get and to have a job as a doctor or a lawyer or an accountant, because those are considered by their family and by their friends to be—

[Brigitte Sansoucy, NDP, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

I was asking about disadvantaged young people, not necessarily immigrants.

[Sarah Watts-Rynard]

What we see is that there are a number of programs that try to deal with youth at risk and deal with under-represented groups. As you say, the trick is making sure we're supporting them through all of the additional challenges. They have the same challenges every apprentice has. White male apprentices have difficulty completing their apprenticeship and becoming certified, so all of those additional challenges that might be related to their home life or language and all of those things.... We have to be able to surround those people with the kinds of supports they need, so absolutely programs like that work.

[Brigitte Sansoucy, NDP, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Ms. Robinson, do you have anything to add?

[Nobina Robinson]

Yes, I just wanted to broaden this out. I'm not sure in which country you saw that model.

[Brigitte Sansoucy, NDP, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

It was in Italy.

[Nobina Robinson]

We need to talk about the fact that we are bringing in newcomers of all ages, not just young people. One of the things the education system can do that is really important is a bit of advisement and navigation...skills assessment, skills advisement, and “Did you know...?” That can broaden into, “You need this academic gap filled, you need that workplace skill, and in Canada, workplace culture is like this.” All that advisement is an important public good. Who does it? How does it get delivered? This provincial program is sitting on top of that federal program. It's a complex mess. I think some of the work that you will be doing in coming back to ESDC—in your report around all of this—is there should be better career navigation, advisement, and helping people with things like skills assessment: "Here, did you know you're good at that?" We call that prior learning assessment. That's something colleges and polytechnics do regularly.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you very much.

That brings us to the end of the second round of questions. I don't often ask a question, but I haven't heard something that I was hoping to hear.

We talked a lot today about culture. We've talked a lot about some of the challenging issues with teachers and guidance counsellors. I think those are valid, but when comparing our situation and our current system with Europe, there's something that we have not talked about. I challenge anybody here to challenge me if I'm mistaken, but you were talking about the professionalism.

There are two really big factors as to why the trades are much more respected in Europe. One, they're paid more. Two, they're stable. This is why I think part of the culture here in Canada—whether it's right or wrong—is parents don't necessarily want their kids to go into construction, because they don't believe it's paid sufficiently compared to a university degree, and it's not stable. You hear about all these people getting laid off and so on.

I ask anybody up there if there's anything you can add to that idea, about whether we should look at those two things?

[Terence Snooks]

Ms. Robinson mentioned that there's not enough data on the wage earning to tell people what they're actually making. I'll tell you that a journeyman plumber, steamfitter, pipe welder, or service tech makes $55 to $60 an hour. There are not a lot of jobs in this country that are going to pay $50 to $60 an hour, but you need to sustain that.

That goes to an argument over where you're situated.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Right.

[Nobina Robinson]

The harping on about Europe is something I've been going on about in all the time that I've done this job, but then I realize that in Europe, a banker can be an apprentice. We don't do that here, right? Our trades professions are limited and defined, compulsory, non-compulsory, jurisdiction....

The beauty of the European model—be it in Switzerland, Finland, the Netherlands, or Germany—is that many more professions are apprenticeable than we permit in Canada. We didn't say that all of these other technicians and technologists are apprenticeable. When you get into the apprenticeable trades that we have here, we need to talk about the earning power. That's where I had begun.