Human Resources Committee on May 28th, 2018

[Dr. Wolfgang Lehmann]

That is a very important question. Of course, apprenticeship is one of these forgotten transition pathways in Canada but is one that offers tremendous opportunities. As it happens, some of my other research is about apprenticeships. I have done interviews with young apprentices, mostly young people who started in high school apprenticeships either with the Ontario youth apprenticeship program or the Alberta registered apprenticeship program.

One of the issues that has emerged in these interviews mostly with apprentices rather than employers is on concerns that employers have about investing in young people and having that investment stolen by other employers who don't invest. It's a fear of poaching that seems to be a big issue, and the expenses of training and maybe not knowing whether the trained person will stay with you over time.

As you can probably tell from my name, I am German. I grew up in Germany. My father was a tradesperson and he apprenticed, so I have some kind of personal connection even though I have never been one.

I think we need to find a way in Canada to make apprenticeship a better pathway for young people, but also for employers. This means to a large extent, in a lot of the efforts I am familiar with through my work, attracting young people into apprenticeships and giving them an incentive to go into apprenticeships. That's been through public relations campaigns.

I don't know if you recall 10 or 12 years ago during the height of the oil boom in Alberta, you'd go to the movie theatres and there were ads for apprenticeships before the movie started. That's one part of it, but at the same time we need to advertise to employers that this is a valuable pathway. It's part of a social contract in which you can play a part in terms of training and developing the next generation of workers.

You are absolutely right, trades workers are retiring. A lot of trades are not as much at risk of being automated as many other jobs we have in manufacturing. You can't easily automate construction work. You can't easily automate other kinds of work where apprentices are being trained. Considering we are in a period where we are rethinking energy and how we use energy and what kind of energy sources we're using to produce things and build houses, it is a huge area for young people to become involved in.

In my experience, the young people who enter apprenticeships tend to be exceptionally proud of the work they do and tend to not regret being apprentices. They find that they contribute a lot to society. In interviews I have done, there is a lot of pride in seeing a house on which they worked or seeing people leaving a car dealership with a car that's running properly, and an immediate sense of satisfaction that people like me don't usually get in the work we do. I think that's a pathway.

To come to your question, should the government financially support employees, I think definitely there are ways that could be done. As we all know, the carrot probably works better than the stick. People have tried tax levies for those who don't train or tax subsidies for those who do train, but I think subsidies for companies that are willing to take on apprentices and make that contribution would be a very important step forward.

[Karine Trudel, NDP, Jonquière, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

You have 30 seconds.

[Karine Trudel, NDP, Jonquière, QC]

I think I'll wait until the next round to ask my question.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you.

Next up we have MP Long, please.

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

Thank you to our witnesses this afternoon.

Ms. Speevak, I want to start with you. In my riding, Saint John—Rothesay, we have a lot of poverty. I do a lot of work with non-profit organizations in the riding. Volunteering and unpaid internships obviously speaks for itself, but in fields that you want to do...it's crucial. There are a lot of low-income youth and families who can't afford to volunteer or take unpaid internships because they have to work somewhere. They have to make some money. Obviously, that's an economic barrier.

Can you tell me what you would suggest? In your opinion, what would be the ideal Canada youth jobs program to alleviate that?

Then I'll go to Mr. Lehmann with the same question.

[Paula Speevak]

That's a good question.

I make a distinction between unpaid work and volunteering. At Volunteer Canada, we don't promote unpaid internships. For us, internships are either paid internships or they're associated with an educational program where there are clear learning objectives and are part of a package where someone gets accredited and so on.

When you volunteer, typically speaking, you would do so six to eight hours a week perhaps, if you're doing a half day or a full day, but we don't promote volunteering full-time. That is because it is understood that would be taking on a role that likely ought to be paid. Also, particularly for people in work transitions, whether it's a parent on parental leave trying to come back to the workforce, or a youth, or a newcomer, we want to make sure there is time and space for other pursuits. That's one thing.

The second thing is this. You're asking about balance, and I think that one could look at the concerns you have about community, and shaping your community and being active participants in neighbourhood associations or community associations. That's a very important type of volunteering, particularly in terms of creating the future in the community and society that you want. I think that's why in Quebec there's a different sense. The words used for volunteering would be “autonomous community action”, that's the best translation, and there's a sense of entraide, people supporting one another in informal ways as well. We promote that in addition to those experiences that can also develop skills.

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

Do you see any opportunity to tweak the Canada summer jobs program at all into a hybrid? I don't know if you'd call it that or not. We've done interviews. Last week we had meetings with CASA, and there were two representatives from UNBSJ SRC with CASA. They're proposing an expanded Canada summer jobs program that also goes into the school year because they have a challenge. They have these great Canada summer jobs programs, but when they go back to school they have to start looking for a job again because obviously the non-profits, or what have you, can't continue on.

Do you see any way we could tweak that program to entice people to stay with it longer? Maybe if they volunteer so many hours, they can have an extension of the program into the fall or winter. Do you see any way we can tweak that program to make it better?

[Paula Speevak]

I have a couple of thoughts.

If there's summer employment, one of the things we also encourage at Volunteer Canada is for employers to support employees in volunteering as part of their workday. You may know that of the 12.7 million Canadians who volunteer, a third report that they get support from employers. For example, it could be a half a day a month, or it could be a group volunteering activity. Perhaps as part of that commitment, employers, in taking on and hiring summer students, could be looking at personal goals and looking at some kind of community.

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

I believe it's contagious. I used to be involved with a hockey team. We initially made our players volunteer, but after that first round, they wanted to volunteer.

Mr. Lehmann, do you have any comments on how we can create a better Canada summer jobs program? Also, perhaps you can comment on the economic barriers for people with low incomes or living in poverty, and how they just can't afford to volunteer or have unpaid internships.

[Dr. Wolfgang Lehmann]

There are two things. Don't make it a summer program. Make it a Canada youth employment program and have it run. Young people want to work. We know that. Often when we look at young people, we're looking at the old south and sweatshops, but young people want to be out working. It's a great idea to give them opportunities to develop skills and help them in the ways some of the speakers have spoken about.

Part of an expanded summer employment program could also be understanding how this kind of work complements what they do at school, enabling them to see some connections between what they learn at school and what they learn at work, and to observe a skills transfer between the two. Maybe it would make school more meaningful for people who are also working if they could see how school connects to what they do in the workplace. Particularly in the case of students at risk, it may help them to see the value of being in school. That's often a really tricky thing, but there are real benefits to it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you very much.

[Dr. Wolfgang Lehmann]

If you don't mind, I want to quickly do a shout-out to the housing volunteering program that Luisa Atkinson spoke about. It seems to me that this is the kind of volunteering program where there is an immediate benefit to those who volunteer, in terms of developing housing that they can live in or benefit from, or that improves the housing condition. Maybe that's a bit of an answer to your question as well, in the sense that even if you work for free, it's not exploitative if you develop something that directly benefits your own community. More of that would be great.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you very much.

Now MP Fortier, please.

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

I wanted to thank you and I want to continue with Madame Atkinson and your presentation. You described one program to us, and I'm curious to know if you have other programs you'd like to share with us, that would either be similar to it or could broaden some of the youth opportunities that we have in our country.

[Luisa Atkinson]

This program is specifically geared towards indigenous youth, but CMHC has other research and other housing programs that are not specifically apprenticeships or volunteer programs. We work hand in hand with non-profit organizations or housing providers so that they can create their own programs. If anything comes to mind, it's Habitat for Humanity, for example, where we don't lead the programs but we support them in running their programs.

This one is more uniquely specific to indigenous people because the housing market in communities is not the same as everywhere else in Canada.

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

Madame Speevak, I was wondering if you had any data on the community of youth newcomers, if they participate in volunteering, and if a similar program might be interesting to integrate youth newcomers.

[Paula Speevak]

As I was mentioning, 44% of Canadians aged 15 and over volunteer. For newcomers who have been in Canada for less than five years, it's 39%, which is not significantly less. The difference, though, is that in many small cultural communities, particularly where there are many newcomers, they may be very active in providing informal support to neighbours, other family members, and extended family members who are new and arriving, so a lot of informal support and mutual aid happens within newcomer communities, in addition to newcomers volunteering in the community at large.

That's definitely the case. In fact, one of the things that's quite interesting is looking at youth, who acquire language quicker than their parents, actually volunteering to help parents acquire language skills. That's been awesome. You've probably heard many stories about youth acting informally as interpreters for their parents, but there's been some formalization of that as well, which is quite wonderful.

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

I'm thinking now about evaluation, and the data or information that you receive on the youth when they participate. What kind of feedback do they give—either Volunteer Canada or maybe Madame Atkinson, in your program—on the experience they've had? Is it generally positive? What would be something that could be constructive in understanding whether what they're doing is really helping them move forward?

[Paula Speevak]

One of the things that we learned in doing some focus groups with youth volunteers is that there is, unfortunately, some ageism in the non-profit sector at some points. I remember a youth who was saying how concerned he was about food security, so he went to a meal program wanting to participate in providing meals and interact with people who were participating. He was put alone in a room, asked to fold tea towels with the floral pattern outside for hours. Someone came in and criticized that some were not folded the right way. It was so boring and so demeaning. What a heartbreaking story for someone who was so passionate about food services. Sometimes there's an assumption that youth don't have a lot to offer in terms of their passion and compassion. I would say that's one thing we have heard and really encourage people to think about: the whole person, no matter what age, has a lot to offer.

The second thing we learned is that those who have a chance to reflect on their experience and make sense of it gain much more. It's one thing to work in a shelter or to interact with folks who are having difficulty, but to then have the opportunity to make sense of it, to think about what you've learned about yourself, about community, helps you then integrate it, whether it's for your life or for your career.

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

I don't have much time left but I would like to ask Ms. Atkinson or Mr. Lehmann if they had a final comment. I have about a minute left.

[Luisa Atkinson]

I agree very much. At the end of their apprenticeship, we ask most of the interns a set of questions. We get a feel for how they learned or what they applied they skills to. Overwhelmingly, their eyes are open to the need in the community and what they can do to help change things. They start off trying to get a job and then they build a passion for housing and for helping their community.

One example I can give you is of a young lady in Wagmatcook First Nations. She was there to do some interviews with elders and building contractors to really find out what the needs of the community were. Having those conversations and asking the elders of the community about their need for housing gave her that inspiration to keep on going. As soon as you open that universe for youth, they step into it and they develop that passion.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

You have about 10 seconds left.

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

Sorry, Mr. Lehmann, maybe you could answer in next round.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Next up we have MP Falk, please.