Human Resources Committee on Feb. 28th, 2019

[Graham Flack]

There's a pre-apprenticeship program as well. There are some individuals who we find we can't just put into an apprenticeship program, so we design a pre-apprenticeship program to try to get them ready to be able to do that.

I'd say the full suite is used to try to get better results, but these are jobs that we have a high level of confidence—even given the changing nature of work—are going to continue to be required. They are good, stable jobs, and the program suite, as you indicated, is designed to address those issues.

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

Thank you for that.

My riding is very industrially based.

[Gordie Hogg, South Surrey—White Rock, Lib.]

What is your riding?

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

It's Saint John—Rothesay, and we are the home of Canada's largest oil refinery, strong unions and strong trades in the riding. We always hear about—and we've heard certainly on HUMA really for years now—great opportunities for people in skilled trades, but we continue to also hear that there are challenges in attracting certain populations into these skilled trades, including youth, women, recent immigrants and indigenous Canadians. Moreover, recent data indicates that over half of those who begin apprenticeships never finish their training and get their certification.

Just as a sidebar, with respect to women in trades, I know Irving Oil, in conjunction with several unions across Canada, has many initiatives to get women into welding and things like that. The trades offer tremendous opportunities. They're understaffed. I know in the riding alone, Irving's saying they will need 1,500 to 1,800 new tradespeople within the next two or three years.

Am I out of time?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Wrap it up quickly, please.

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

The trades offer wonderful opportunities.

Can you tell us about the federal government's initiatives to get more youth, women and recent immigrants into skilled trades? What are you doing to attract them?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

I'm afraid he has given you no time. Maybe we'll have a chance to come back to that. I'm sorry.

Honourable member of Parliament Leitch, welcome. The next six minutes are all yours

[K. Kellie Leitch, Simcoe—Grey, CPC]

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much for coming to present to the committee. It's great to see all of you again.

I have a few questions with regard to disabilities, particularly the registered disability savings plan. I'm not sure who has ultimate responsibility for that in the department, but one of the issues that I know has come up at committee is the issue with respect to the closing out of the RDSP. I recognize that there are funds allocated here for accessibility, etc., but have you spoken to the government or to the minister with respect to grandfathering the opportunity for those grants and bonds so that individuals are not placed in a position of hardship? Obviously, the government has set an expectation with those Canadians, and then all of a sudden to be reneging on that and asking for them to repay the funds is really a challenge for organizations and individuals who are already in a position of hardship.

I recognize there may be about $4 million, maybe $5 million, here for accessibility infrastructure, but to be quite frank, I think individuals are far more important to deal with. How is the RDSP issue being dealt with? Is the government willing to grandfather those grants and bonds for those families in need?

[Chantal Maheu]

Maybe let me spend a few minutes on what's in the estimates, and then I'll specifically address your question.

[K. Kellie Leitch]

I'll ask you to be brief, though, because I have a second question for you. Okay? Thank you.

[Chantal Maheu]

Okay, and I won't speak too quickly.

Just quickly, you are right. The registered disability savings plan is an important program that supports families and Canadians who have severe and prolonged disabilities. In these current estimates, we're asking for an increase of $5 million that relates to that. As part of normal forecasting, we need to make some adjustments to the amounts that are there for the grants and the bonds. Every year officials make a forecast based on expected demand, and now we're at the point where we realize that we need to make some adjustments.

For the disability grant, we'll increase it by $44 million, and for the bonds, we're decreasing it by $49 million. That's what's covered in the estimates.

More specifically, to your question that ties the disability tax credit to the eligibility for the program, that is an eligibility condition that is part of the legislation. As you've mentioned, if someone loses their eligibility for a disability tax credit, then their registered disability savings plan would need to be closed, and there is a requirement for them to start repaying, within a year, the amounts that have been provided by government, not their own contribution, but the grants and the bond.

The individual has the possibility to seek a medical practitioner to certify if there's a likelihood that the person will be eligible in future years for disability. Depending on their condition, that may be the case.

[K. Kellie Leitch]

Yes.

[Chantal Maheu]

If that's the case, that the medical practitioner certifies it, then there's a possibility of holding the account for five years in the financial institution. The money would remain there, and there would be no need to repay.

[K. Kellie Leitch]

In your allocation of funds in the estimates, it is important to educate individuals on that ability. I can be very frank with you, functioning as a physician who deals with both children with disabilities and their parents, in saying that parents do not know that. I might be the only physician in the country who does.

I would say to my colleagues on the government side that I think we have a duty of responsibility to these parents, as well as to individuals with disabilities. I encourage the government to grandfather what has already been granted, so these individuals who have disabilities are not found disadvantaged.

I have a second question, so I'll be quick. With regard to Canada's student loans, yes, the trend has been downwards over, I guess, 15 years now, going into the 16th. I commend the department on that. I have some knowledge of the programs put in place for dealing with that.

My question, again, goes to whether or not the government and minister have been spoken to about the choices as to whether or not that forgiveness should be done earlier and therefore save the expenditure on the back end of actually trying to collect, since we seem to be forgiving literally hundreds of millions of dollars of loans.

Alternatively, has there been thought to increasing enforcement, as there has been in the past, in an effort to not just create flexibility in programming, but also to increase the enforcement, so that we can actually try to close out this program and get it down to a more reasonable number? It could be similar to what we see at a bank, at about 5% to 6% as opposed to.... I know it was at 19%, and then 10%, and as I say, I commend the department for getting it to the halfway point.

What can be done in order to make sure that we're recouping those funds? I'd rather see those funds in the hands of other students, or, quite frankly, individuals who may have disabilities or other needs as Canadians, as opposed to our expending a lot of funds with respect to trying to collect.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

You have 45 seconds.

[Graham Flack]

First, the student grant is one mechanism. When a higher portion of what is provided is a grant, you don't put the financial pressure on the student in terms of what they have to pay back.

The flexibility mechanisms we put in place—no payment until you hit the $25,000 income threshold—have helped by not putting pressure on individuals who may have a bridge period. Also, the flexibilities in how we allow them to repay have meant that people who would otherwise have gone into default and we wouldn't have been able to collect from, we are ultimately able to collect from.

However, we agree that there is also a collection side of this, in terms of ensuring we are being responsible with tax dollars. It's the mix of those things that we're hoping will keep the downward trend moving. At the rate we're going, si la tendance se maintient, we would be at 0% in nine years. I'm sure that won't happen, but it has been a steady 1% decline on this three-year default rate over a decade.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you very much.

I understand we're splitting time.

First of all, welcome, Emmanuella.

MP Lambropoulos has the first half of the six minutes.

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

I'll be sharing my time with Mr. Hogg.

I'd like to go off of what my colleague, Mr. Long, was saying as well. I know money was put into the skilled trades, and I'd like to know what we're doing in order to entice or attract women to the field, as well as the indigenous communities and other people who are less likely to gravitate naturally towards that field, or who think it might not be as available to them as to anyone else.

[Graham Flack]

Maybe I could talk about the indigenous piece for a bit. I talked earlier about one of the programs we have that is designed to entice more women into the skilled trades. On the indigenous side, there's been a revamp of the departmental program, previously the ASETS program, which has now been revamped with a funding increase.

The difference between this and other programs I've seen in government is it really focuses its efforts based on the assessment of indigenous communities themselves in terms of what the needs are. Rather than those needs being assessed by people in the national capital region, the funding is provided to indigenous organizations who have expertise in this area and can determine locally on the ground what the most appropriate approaches are.

Saskatchewan is one of the best examples we have, with an excellent organization that's been doing this for years. They are very familiar with the local labour market needs and have had real success on the skilled trades side in being able to stream funds into approaches where they have success rates. As was indicated earlier, one of the challenges has been the dropout rate in terms of people who start but don't finish. When you add the pre-apprenticeship piece to help people get ready, you have a very local focus on what the needs are and what works. The results on the indigenous side have been improving in those communities that have had success. That's one of the reasons we think the additional funding that's gone into this will continue to ensure success going forward.

Benoît, I don't know if there's anything else you wanted to add on the other piece.

[Benoît Robidoux, Associate Deputy Minister, Employment and Social Development, Department of Employment and Social Development]

Yes, we could maybe add to that. I will repeat a bit, but as you said, we have the apprenticeship incentive grant for women that has been put in place, which is $20 million over five years to provide incentives for women to participate in the trades. We have the women in construction fund that has been announced, too, through the national infrastructure program, for $10 million over three years, again to support women in the construction trades.

We mentioned the pre-apprenticeship program, which is accessible to everybody but where we pay attention to groups that have less access to trade, such as indigenous people, newcomers and women. It's not only a general program. We pay attention that, and we try to target those people more.

There are other programs that have been created, too. The list is long. There is the union training and innovation program. Again, this is with unions, to make sure that they get more training. We try to pay attention to the under-represented groups. Finally, we have the foreign credential recognition program for newcomers, where we are trying to have their credentials recognized in Canada, including in the trades.

I think that's the list of programs that we have to support these under-represented groups participating in the trades.

[Graham Flack]

For Mr. Long, I think we have a need to add the Atlantic apprenticeship piece, which is designed to attempt to harmonize apprenticeship standards across the Atlantic provinces to reduce friction and barriers between the two.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Mr. Hogg.

[Gordie Hogg]

I hope you'll geographically mention British Columbia along the way somewhere as well. Thank you.

Following up on the question that was just asked with respect to the groups that are under-represented, you've called them “targeted”. I understand targeting, but after you target them, what are the incentives that actually engage them?

[Benoît Robidoux]

In the case of women, it's really the grants. There's a national grant to incentivize them to participate. In the case of the pre-apprenticeship program, again, many of these groups are not able to get into the trades and be accepted right away, so this program tries to give them more wrap-around services to integrate the trades. Basically, the program is set up so that the call for proposals tries to make sure that we target these people and get more of their participation. It's the same for the foreign credential recognition program. It's only targeted to newcomers. This is how we try to make sure....

In fact, I would say that in most of our programs we do that, not just in apprenticeships. We are always trying to pay attention to these groups so that there are always greater incentives, either through cultural proposals or through our service delivery, to try to support these people and often to provide them with more wrap-around services than for other clients that we have.