Human Resources Committee on May 9th, 2018

[Wayne Long, Liberal, Saint John—Rothesay, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to our presenters this afternoon. It's very, very interesting.

My background is in small business and I'll get to some of those questions for Mr. Snider in a few minutes.

Lat year our government began rolling out a $73-million investment for the student work-integrated learning program to create 10,000 paid student work placements over the next four years. The intent is to facilitate stronger partnerships between employers and partnering polytechnics, universities, and colleges. In addition, budget 2017 announced $220 million for Mitacs to provide research internships with the goal of creating 10,000 work placements per year. ESDC also committed that more than 400 of the work placements under the student work-integrated learning program would be allocated primarily to post-secondary students from under-represented groups in STEM fields.

Ms. Bowkett, how will these investments in work-integrated learning complement and help bolster existing co-op and work-integrated learning programs?

[Gail Bowkett]

Are you asking specifically about the Mitacs model?

[Wayne Long, Liberal, Saint John—Rothesay, NB]

Yes.

[Gail Bowkett]

I think what distinguishes the Mitacs model is the focus on the applied research element of our placements. In many cases work-integrated learning opportunities do not necessarily have that research focus. All the research projects we support go through a peer review process so they are all validated scientifically.

We have a team of people across the country that work with the business partners and the academic institutions to develop a shared goal, a shared interest, around a research project that will serve the innovation needs of the company, but also benefit the student in their own research programming. I think that has been the distinguishing feature.

As I mentioned, we began with a real focus on graduate students. We started initially with Ph.D. students and expanded to post-docs and master's as well. We are looking at that layer within post-secondary institutions. Those are our roots; that's where we began. We see the need for this research focus of work experience right across all levels of PSE institutions, and across all disciplines as well.

[Wayne Long, Liberal, Saint John—Rothesay, NB]

That's perfect. Thank you for that.

Saint John—Rothesay, my riding, leads the country in child poverty. We have some major generational poverty issues. The 30% overall poverty rate is twice the national average.

In my constituency office we work with young people from low-income households, struggling to transition into the workforce and find well-paying jobs. Do you believe the work-integrated learning program investments adequately target young people from such backgrounds? Is there more we can do to target those from under-represented groups? I want to get a comment from Ms. Dawson and Ms. Fannon, after you, Ms. Bowkett.

[Gail Bowkett]

That's an interesting question. Obviously the Mitacs programming is very much focused on people coming through the post-secondary education system. I think beyond those opportunities there are other government programs in place that help to support employment of young people, and maybe we need to consider work-integrated learning experiences before kids get to the point where they're at a university or a college.

That's not an area we are currently operating in. Others may have different experiences or expertise with that, but I think Canada should consider that.

[Wayne Long, Liberal, Saint John—Rothesay, NB]

Mr. Dawson and Ms. Fannon, I know you would like to see funding target more non-profits and adequately target under-represented groups. How do you see that flowing out?

[Anne-Marie Fannon]

As we mentioned, we have received statistics that indigenous students and students with disabilities are disproportionately enrolled in programs like social sciences and the humanities. Right now with this program being limited to students who are only enrolled in STEM and business industries we're not reaching the broad spectrum of Canadian post-secondary students.

The other thing we're not accounting for is that those arts and humanities students can be working in those STEM and business industries. The question of how we expand beyond STEM co-op students, is one of the things that we speak very specifically about at Waterloo.

My day job is the director of our professional development program at the University of Waterloo, and we have a centralized co-op model, which means that in most instances every student can apply for every position, and it's up to the students to articulate their skill set to the employer and convince the employer that they can do the job. That's much more reflective of the labour market.

We see graduates working in a spectrum of positions that may or may not be directly related to their academic program. When we think about those centralized open accessible models for our students we're helping every Canadian post-secondary student.

[Wayne Long, Liberal, Saint John—Rothesay, NB]

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Now we'll move to MP Sansoucy, please.

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

I thank all of the witnesses. I will have questions for you.

I know we asked you to be patient in the beginning of the meeting. I would ask you to kindly wait a little longer because I need to speak to the committee about another topic. As it is something that affects one Canadian out of two, I think you will agree.

Mr. Chair, I'd like to take a minute to explain to my committee colleagues why I would like us to vote on the motion I tabled concerning employment insurance sickness benefits.

In the beginning of 2016, the minister told us that he would be tabling an in-depth reform of the Employment Insurance Act. After two and a half years, we are still waiting for it, which forces our committee to urgently review various aspects of the Employment Insurance Act. I would prefer that we study it in its entirety, but I think it is important that our committee make recommendations concerning sickness benefits. That aspect of the act has not changed since 1971. But in the intervening 47 years, reality has changed.

As I said earlier, one Canadian out of two will be affected or is affected by cancer. These people are working men and women. One-third of the people who receive sickness benefits will use up all of their 15 weeks of benefits. My colleagues and I see these people in our riding offices. We are faced with people who find themselves without any income after 15 weeks, while they're still undergoing treatments. Not everyone has access to private insurance. It makes no sense whatsoever that the mother of a single-parent family has to go back to work when her doctor tells her she needs to rest after chemotherapy or radiation therapy.

I invite my colleagues to vote in favour of this motion so that we can deal with what is most urgent. I hope that we will conduct a general study on employment insurance rather than going about things piecemeal like this. Six hundred thousand people throughout Canada signed a petition saying that this is important to them. Millions of workers have said how important this is. I think we have to listen to them.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you.

We have Mr. Long and then Mr. Blaney

[Wayne Long, Liberal, Saint John—Rothesay, NB]

Mr. Chair, I'd like to move that the debate be now adjourned, please.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

We have a motion to adjourn debate on this motion.

Would you like a recorded vote?

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

Yes, please.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Okay.

(Motion agreed to: yeas 5; nays 4 [See Minutes of Proceedings])

Madam Sansoucy, you started that motion with about five minutes and 27 seconds left. Would you wish to use that time for questions?

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

Yes, indeed. Thank you very much.

I will begin with Mr. Snider. Your organization is very consistent. What you suggested as a recommendation, your organization was already involved in in 2014: that subsidies be granted to employers to allow them to offer work-integrated apprenticeships, and that more research be done by the government on productivity gains related to this type of apprenticeship.

A group of experts on youth employment made several recommendations. That group also found thought it quite important that mentorship be encouraged. In my riding, several employers told me that they wanted to have such a program.

Given your organization's expertise, you suggested that granting such subsidies could encourage the hiring of young people. I'd like to know how we can encourage the success of this program. The group of experts on youth employment recommended that we put together an issue table to create such a program in partnership with enterprises and employers. The organization told us that the government should act quickly so that the program that is put forward meets the expected objectives.

Would that be a good recommendation, in your opinion?

[Patrick Snider]

I'd say that the recommendation to maintain a round table on feedback and get the input from business as to the results of the program is absolutely still a priority.

One thing that we continually emphasize is to make sure that business is included in the process, and that they are listened to when it comes to the outcomes of these programs. I think that absolutely yes, that's still an area where there is a need to make sure, once these programs are put in place, there is accountability, measurement of outcomes.

To give a few examples, we've seen ESDC do some excellent work lately around the outcomes of educational programs using tax data, using employment records, and using employment insurance records. This kind of use of administrative data can be extremely helpful. Student loan records—all of these things can give very strong data points around the effectiveness of these programs. I think that, moving forward, as these funding models are put into place and more resources are given to different programs for supporting work-integrated learning, these other feedback mechanisms will become extremely important and should be looked at as those are rolled out.

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

My second question is for the Mitacs representative.

You referred to 6,000 internships, with 10,000 more to come. These are paid internships, if I understood correctly. In light of your expertise, how much should students who want to acquire professional experience while remaining afloat financially be paid?

As you probably know, the NDP recommends a minimum wage of $15 an hour. That hourly wage would allow students to live decently and to continue their studies.

Can you tell us what hourly wage should be paid to those young people in order to compensate them adequately?

[Gail Bowkett]

I can certainly tell you about our financial model and how we cover the salaries of our interns. Our internships are based on a four-month period. We call them internship units, just for the sake of convenience, but a student can do one internship, two internships back to back, or they could come back the next year. We can use those units as building blocks to construct a research project with our industry partner.

For every internship unit, the student will receive $10,000 over that period, as their salary. There is also a little bit of financing that is made available to the institutions to cover some of the actual research costs involved in the projects, because the interns are co-supervised by an academic supervisor and the outside partner, the industry partner.

That's our current financial model.

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

Thank you.

My next question is addressed to the university representatives.

According to a Parliamentary Budget Officer study released in 2015, new Canadian university graduates have become increasingly overqualified over the past 25 years, and young people are often overqualified for the requirements of their profession. Is that something you have also observed?

What potential solutions could there be to solve that problem?

On Monday we heard testimony from representatives of Canada's Building Trades Unions. They said they found it unfortunate that the best students are directed to jobs for which they are overqualified. People who come through immigration also greatly value degrees.

Have you observed that as well? How can we fight this situation?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

We're out of time, but I'll allow for a brief answer, please.

[Anne-Marie Fannon]

One of the things that we want to highlight with work-integrated learning is that it really does give the student that opportunity to gain some experience and almost what we would call an entrée into the world of work while they're there.

Many employers indicate they're looking for at least one year of experience, whether it's paid employment or co-curricular activities, and those sorts of things. While we certainly are seeing an increase in credentials across the country, one of the things that work-integrated learning succeeds at is giving students that oftentimes-paid work experience while they are in school so that they have that professional network, they are able to move into positions more easily, and as some of the statistics show, get promoted more quickly.

I'm not sure if there's anything else you want to add.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you. Actually, we do have to move on.

MP Fortier, please.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Good afternoon, everyone.

The chair will no doubt be pleased to learn that my husband is a Waterloo graduate and was involved in a co-op program.

I'm from an urban environment and I have little knowledge about the reality of businesses and associations that work in remote rural areas.

How would enterprises or associations participate in co-op programs in remote or rural areas?

To start, I'd like to hear the opinion of the representatives of Co-operative Education and Work-Integrated Learning Canada, Ms. Dawson and Ms. Fannon.