Evidence of meeting #136 for Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was apprenticeship.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:25 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, Ontario Construction Secretariat
It is different. Coming from Winnipeg.... I have lived in Ontario now for more than half of my life, and the culture is different in the greater Toronto and Hamilton area.
12:25 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, Ontario Construction Secretariat
The problem is that parents do not understand how high tech the jobs have become. They don't understand my career path. You can start your own business. You can become a contractor. There are a lot of contractors making really good money.
They don't see that path. They see the university path or the college path.
12:25 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, Ontario Construction Secretariat
To your point, it would be great if some of the students got their journey ticket, then went back to George Brown, learned about accounting and all the business, and then started their own business.
12:25 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, Ontario Construction Secretariat
There is so much work going on, but they are not aware of that. They are not connecting those dots. I think it's an awareness.
I don't think it's a dead end. If more parents are seeing that.... I have four kids. One of my son's best friends who studied political science—I'm not slamming political science—couldn't get a job for two years. My son took a four-year program in construction management and got hired right out of school. He's been on the same job for four years. Some of his buddies who took arts degrees are now going back to George Brown and taking construction stuff because they are getting jobs that way and are not graduating with $20,000 in debt.
12:25 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, Ontario Construction Secretariat
That whole debt thing is now resonating with a lot of people where, hey, in those four years you could be making a lot of money, you have your journeyman ticket and you have no student loans.
12:25 p.m.
Conservative
Rosemarie Falk Conservative Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK
Even when our economy was doing better—I'm right on the border—Alberta's politics and economy very much influenced Saskatchewan.
It was interesting to see kids, 15 and 14 years old, sweeping up a shop, and the owner would say, “Oh, you're interested in doing this? Okay, well, let's apprentice you.” I literally graduated with kids who were in their second year. They were graduating high school and had their second year already in a trade.
12:25 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, Ontario Construction Secretariat
There's the OYAP program in Ontario that starts in Grade 12.
12:25 p.m.
Conservative
Rosemarie Falk Conservative Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK
Yes.
This is where I'm struggling a little bit with this, because I see this across Canada. I actually see this as a bigger cultural issue. How do we break that bubble? You don't need to be white collar; blue collar is fine.
12:25 p.m.
NDP
Scott Duvall NDP Hamilton Mountain, ON
Thank you.
To Ms. Moreau, when I was looking at your presentation, I thought it was very good. Thank you.
You're saying that small-time businesses are having trouble attracting people or cannot get enough labour. Some high officials in the Hamilton area have told me—and this is their exact statement—that it's not that we have a shortage of available labour but rather a shortage of employers willing to pay a decent wage.
Do you agree with that?
12:25 p.m.
Vice-President, National Affairs, Canadian Federation of Independent Business
For some reason, this one sticks. I don't know why because it's just the small suppliers who have to bear the brunt of that.
I did share the stats about the number of our employers looking to increase their wages and benefits and the work that they're doing to keep existing employees because of the investments that they make. Part of it is because there's a disconnect in the amount of money a small employer, in particular, pays to train someone. Often, they're training the person on the job who's never worked before. That isn't the case necessarily for big businesses. This is just how it works. Small businesses are the training ground for the Canadian economy. They sink a lot of their funds into training those individuals, and then they leave.
We've had many business owners tell us they understand that's the path and that's what's happening. Other countries recognize that sacrifice the small businesses made. In France, if a big business poaches a smaller person's employee, it gives a sort of finder's fee equivalent. There are other things we can do. If this is where we're going to focus this issue—that the wages are the problem and it's those small businesses that just aren't coughing it up—let's find other ways to liberate their cash. Maybe that's increasing training credits and recognizing that on-the-job training. Small businesses in Canada spend $14 billion a year doing on-the-job training. Some of that is formal and some of that's informal; $9 billion is informal.
You can't apply for a government program because you don't get a certificate after having someone off your line for two weeks training a new person. Around the Canada job grant, and when there were other initiatives a few years ago, we worked closely with officials to try to design some way to recognize those initiatives. It's just ephemeral, and government doesn't want to fund that. That's a problem. If the issue is going to be wages, then let's free up more money for small business owners on top of the 60% who have already increased the benefits and salaries of their employees and the 80% who have increased them for existing employees on top of that.
12:30 p.m.
NDP
Scott Duvall NDP Hamilton Mountain, ON
When I was a steelworker in the factories, you could go into a lot of jobs when they wanted semi-skilled workers.
12:30 p.m.
Vice-President, National Affairs, Canadian Federation of Independent Business
Sure.
12:30 p.m.
NDP
Scott Duvall NDP Hamilton Mountain, ON
But the companies or whoever you were employed with, all they wanted you to do was monkey see, monkey do. They didn't want to fully train you for whatever that position was. Then they were stuck. As the older people went out, they didn't bother training the younger generation for that scope of the job. Then they say, well, they're short of skilled people. They can't have it both ways. They either have to fulfill their obligation of training the people or just stagnate by saying, okay, they've got a body there and that's all they need.
Do you agree?
12:30 p.m.
Vice-President, National Affairs, Canadian Federation of Independent Business
Certainly.
I have to say that's not feedback that we often get from business owners, especially as periods of tight labour markets start to increase, as they are right now.
We're seeing two things happen. One is that they can't find a body that they would train, or they have the wrong skill set; they've had someone else leave and now they have employees within their organization but they can't move them over because they don't have the skills they need, so they're still trying to fill that gap.
I think you'd be hard pressed to find small-business owners who would tell you they're unwilling to train and promote employees and invest in them after sinking all of the time and energy that they do because they're worried.... I don't know. I don't agree with the premise. I think you'll have a hard time finding business owners who are unwilling to invest in their employees.
12:30 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Bryan May
That's all the time. Sorry.
Actually, to that point, I'd welcome your coming out to Cambridge, Ontario; I'd introduce you to many employers who have said to me just that. The problem they're having now is that they agree that they have to start training, but they haven't been doing it for 20 years, because there's been a glut of people they can bring from....
So I think the idea is changing—
12:30 p.m.
Vice-President, National Affairs, Canadian Federation of Independent Business
Yes.
12:30 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Bryan May
—but I disagree with the comment that there aren't employers out there who haven't been at least willing to spend the time and money to train people properly.
At any rate, we're up for a second round. I believe Mr. Diotte is up first.
12:30 p.m.
Edmonton Griesbach, CPC
This is basically for the CFIB. We've heard about work-integrated learning strategies. I've heard that there's a fear that the funds are being diverted to areas like clean tech, which is really important, obviously, but they're not being focused on certain sectors where the skills and jobs are needed immediately, such as in construction. Is this a concern that you would share?