Human Resources Committee on May 7th, 2019

[Leslie MacLean]

Chair, I'd be happy to speak to the basic process.

When we go through all the applications, our focus is to screen them all and rate them on the quality of the work experience that is available to the youth. We had a first wave, where members of Parliament would have received confirmation in about mid-April of successful employers. That phase has been completed, and 86,000 jobs have been posted on the job bank. The next phase—

[Rosemarie Falk, Conservative, Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK]

In that phase I had an organization on there, and then in the next phase they were taken off the list. They were approved at one phase and disapproved, deemed ineligible, at the next phase.

[Leslie MacLean]

I'd be happy to follow up offline on this specific case. I'm just speaking to the national program and how it was implemented.

[Rosemarie Falk, Conservative, Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK]

I've spoken to my colleagues, though, and this is happening amongst others, so I don't know if that stat is necessarily accurate if, in the first phase, people were eligible and now they are ineligible. That's just the point that I wanted to make.

[Leslie MacLean]

If there was an error in processing, of course we apologize. The second wave is one that MPs have just been working on to confirm for applicants now. Our focus there will be to put that next wave of approved jobs up on the job bank.

The third piece, which may be the piece you're speaking to, would have been the letters confirming those ineligible. Those would have gone out last week, so there have been three separate waves of activity. As an employer comes back and says they planned to hire five students and could actually only hire three, we do everything we can to reinvest it in the time available.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you.

MP Sangha, please.

[Ramesh Sangha, Liberal, Brampton Centre, ON]

I live in Brampton. There is a diversity of people living in that area who want liberty and equal representation. The theme of the department plan is to have an inclusive labour market and increase the participation of many groups, including women, indigenous people, youth and seniors, new immigrants and all those types of people.

There is a need for the allocation of funding for the success of an organization based on the current regional needs or the past success of the organization. The main estimates request $865 million in contributions towards the training and the employment quota.

How will the department evaluate the success of the programs it funds? How will it determine that these resources are allocated to programs that effectively serve the greatest need?

[Graham Flack]

Maybe I could pick one as an example, although we're trying to take a similar measurement approach for all the programs in terms of better achieving the outcome. The example I'd give is the ASETS program, which is focused on indigenous training and achieving better outcomes in indigenous training in terms of employment.

The challenge we've had in that program is a measurement challenge we often have with programs. We will fund training, but when we're trying to identify the medium-term impact, say over three or four years, it isn't possible for us to go back to the training provider and say, “Well, what's happened to that individual three or four years later?” because they will have lost track of the individual, as would be true of the people we fund under the ASETS program.

We can see short-term impacts: for example, did they successfully complete the training; did they get employment? But we can't identify whether their salary improved over time or over what time horizon.

With the ASETS program, we're using the SIN to be able to access the CRA database. This is done on an anonymized basis. We will not know who the individuals are. We will be able to take all of the individuals who've accessed the program under the ASETS program and then identify what happened to their income levels two, three, four and five years later. We will not be able to report to Canadians on exactly what the results were for each individual, because that would breach the confidentiality of the SIN data, but we will be able to identify which types of training, for which types of individuals, led to which types of better outcomes. That will allow us to have a feedback loop where we can then work with indigenous partners to promote those programs that had better outcomes and move resources away from programs that had weaker outcomes.

It's this medium-term data that is one of our real challenges, just measuring the employment results and where people are in six months. They may be able to get a job, but it doesn't mean they're going to stay employed for a longer period, and we can't do that.

That's one of the examples of how we're doing it in terms of results measurements. I don't know if there are other examples folks want to give.

[Ramesh Sangha, Liberal, Brampton Centre, ON]

Do you think there will be gaps in this while you are calculating regarding this skill training group? Do you think this is enough to address the gaps existing in the program?

[Graham Flack]

One of the positive things of a labour market that is as tight as the labour market we've had is.... In a weaker labour market, employers can be very choosy about who they want to pick, and they may be reluctant to pick up individuals in whom they might need to make more of an investment because of the extra costs. It doesn't matter where we are in the country, or which employer we talk to. I was one of the co-chairs of one of the economic round tables, the digital round table, and at every one of those round tables, businesses identified skills shortages as the biggest issue they were facing in terms of economic growth. The effect is that they have an incredible incentive to pull labour into the market, because they know that there is not going to be sufficient labour from traditional sources for them to be able get what they want. So we're seeing businesses being willing to make investments in indigenous communities and other communities that have had gaps in the area. Women in STEM is a great example of where a lot of companies are making investments upstream, because they know that their rate-determining step of growth is going to be accessibility to high-quality labour.

This is one of the most powerful forces in terms of getting better labour results. Businesses know best what skills are needed for their companies; they are working upstream to try to identify those individuals. That's why I think this work-integrated learning investment—this major increase in work-integrated learning—is potentially going to be one of the most important things in these areas.

I think it's fair for companies to say, “Hiring is an expensive decision; I want to make sure the fit is right.” The work-integrated learning allows them to bring in individuals who are just exiting the post-secondary field. They can then customize their work to what they're doing through a co-op program and the job, and then they have a much better sense, in the hire, that the individual is going to be a fit.

It's a combination of these things that will be really critical in getting the numbers. I'm optimistic that the labour market pull here is creating the conditions in which we're likely going to have better effectiveness from the programs, because companies are looking to do this.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you.

MP Diotte.

[Kerry Diotte, Conservative, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

This is relating to the Canada training benefit. I'm wondering if there is a concern that we'll be funding people to take training courses that are currently offered by universities for free and are available online on platforms like Coursera and edX.

[Graham Flack]

This is one of the things we're going to need to focus on in the consultations and discussions with the training institutions. You mentioned universities, but there are not a lot of university courses you can take for the $250 the grant provides, although there is always the ability to save it up.

We're not hearing any indication from universities or other training institutions that they're going to try to put a cost on courses that are already available. I think our bigger worry as we go into the consultations is that we need to have some kind of quality assurance around the courses. If it's a community college or a university, there's already a certification process that assures this. I think our worry is more that, given the nature of this, we are going to have to identify lower costs and training opportunities available for shorter durations. The people we're really trying to get at are adults who are not going to go back to university for two years but might want to do a training course for a week or two. And of course, the issue around certifying is going to be a real one.

I'm less concerned about people...if the courses are free now and they're available online, it's going to be difficult for folks to monetize them, because they're already out there. However, I do think we need to identify more training opportunities in this lower-priced area that are maybe for a subskill, rather than a mature market in terms of what we would need to do to certify legitimate training opportunities. That's where I think it's going to be more of a challenge in the consultations.

[Kerry Diotte, Conservative, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

You based Canada's training benefit on Singapore's SkillsFuture program. I'm wondering what guarantees you have that you'll be able to prevent the type of scams that we saw in Singapore, where $80 million was funnelled into shell companies on bogus claims for training.

[Graham Flack]

Fraud is going to be a big issue and that's why I was getting at these...if a university is offering a course and it's already certified, I have a high level of confidence that it's a legitimate course. Because of the cost we're talking about, however, the fraud issue you raised is a real one. You have institutions that might offer training without necessarily being certified and recognized, so we have to determine how we would certify the courses.

The route Singapore has taken to address what you're describing is that they are certifying each and every course. As you can imagine in a country as vast as Canada, that could prove a highly challenging endeavour. So there are real design issues in what you're describing.

To have success on the training bond, generally for individuals who are out of school and looking to acquire adult learning, there are five conditions for success: financial resources, time, permission to take time from their employer, volition, and evidence for what works and what doesn't. The last two are probably the most important. First, in respect of volition, we don't necessarily see all of these individuals having a high starting position in terms of wanting to go back to do training, so we're going to have to create those conditions. Second, in respect of evidence for what works, we're going to need a kind of TripAdvisor for training courses on what's effective. And of course, embedded in all that is the risk of fraud, and we have to protect taxpayer dollars. So those are some of the issues we're going to have to work through. The point you raised is a very legitimate one.

[Kerry Diotte, Conservative, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

How do you explain the $60 million discrepancy between the budget estimates and the cost estimates of the PBO for the training credit?

[Graham Flack]

We'll have to talk to PBO about that. My guess is that it is based on estimates of take-up, and I think it's fair to say that all of us are making guesses about what the take-up will be. So different guesses are legitimate. Ultimately, as with other benefits like this and tax credits, it's difficult to estimate what the take-up is going to be. However, we're happy to follow up with PBO and work to understand the discrepancy.

[Kerry Diotte, Conservative, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

We now have a final question from Madam Sansoucy.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Like many of my colleagues, I can state that the Canada Summer Jobs initiative brings significant benefits. That is the case for organizations and the municipalities of the Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot riding, whether we are talking about leisure activities for young people or the environment, an area in which there are many projects. However, once again this year, demand was twice as high as the available funding. Dividing up the funds equitably among the various organizations and municipalities while meeting their needs required a lot of mental gymnastics.

Are you considering another increase to the funding for Canada Summer Jobs? There is a major need. There are a lot of students. Demographically speaking, there will be a whole cohort of young people. How can we help a maximum number of students and organizations at the same time?

[Leslie MacLean]

I can't predict what Budget 2020 will contain, but applications for the program are certainly continuing to increase. This year we had almost 900 million requests, and the current funding for the program is on the order of $270 million. It is very clear that the number of requests for summer job placements far exceeds the current funds. We will see what happens with the next budget.

In the meantime, regarding the emphasis we placed on the quality of student jobs, we've received proposals that provide good opportunities and placements that not only give students summer jobs, but also very good career development opportunities.

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

Yes. In fact, I organized an after-work get together last summer. I invited students who had taken part in Canada Summer Jobs programs. I heard some very positive stories about some of the very relevant experiences the students had had.

In another connection, the minister spoke about hiring more mediators. However, the annual report of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service pointed out that the number of cases has been in keeping with the averages over the past ten years. Why do we need an additional investment? Why were these funds allocated to dispute resolution rather than to the enforcement of the Labour Code or to the resolution of individual complaints from non-union workers, for instance?

[Chantal Maheu]

The Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service provides an essential service. It is the only group in Canada that helps federal employers negotiate collective agreements. Every year, more than 325 collective agreements expire. At this time there are 19 mediators in the 6 regional offices. So they provide all of the service.

Another thing the service does and would like to do more of is work that is upstream from the negotiations. In other words, it wants to work with employers and unions to develop dispute settlement skills, before the actual negotiations begin. We see that that is fruitful and fosters better labour relations. Those resources will also help us to do that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you to all of you.

Can I just have everybody's attention before you scatter to question period? There are a few notes for future business. On May 9 and 14 we'll be continuing with the draft report on M-194, which we started this morning. On May 16 we will have Minister Duclos and Minister Tassi rounding out our main estimates.

We have some good news and some bad news. The bad news is that the May 16 meeting will be the last for our current clerk, Stephanie Feldman, who will be moving on to Journals. This is a great opportunity for her. The good news is that we're being left in very good hands. For those of you who are wondering who this extra person is at the table, I can announce this is Jubilee Jackson, who we welcome. When we come back after the break, Jubilee will be our new clerk.

Let's have a big round of applause for both Stephanie and Jubilee, please.

[Applause]

Thank you to all the officials for being here with us, and thank you, everybody, for putting in the extra hour today.

The meeting is adjourned.