Human Resources Committee on May 7th, 2019

[Dan Ruimy, Liberal, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, BC]

Thank you, Minister, for being here with us today.

Over the last four years, with all of our budgets, what I've been really attracted to is the fact that we've been focusing on our people, on trying to move the bar forward.

In my riding of Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge in the last four years, I've talked to hundreds of at-risk youth who are struggling to find jobs, not because the jobs are not available, but because they don't have certain skill sets. They don't have even basic skill sets. That's a problem, because they get left out. Nobody wants to tackle them.

When I talk to them, one of the things I ask them about is whether they have looked at getting a student loan to take a year-long program that will upgrade their skills and allow them to get a decent job. Most of these young kids will spout the line that they don't want to go into this massive debt, because they've heard of somebody who had massive debts. It's frustrating, because it's a great vehicle for them in order to move forward.

Could you tell us about the improvements you're making with the Canada student loans program?

[Patty Hajdu, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON]

Thanks very much, MP Ruimy, and I will agree. I've heard that story.

It's particularly profound when it comes from people from lower-income settings. Because you're right. The idea of accumulating debt—especially if you've lived with debt in your family, or you don't see a way out, necessarily, in terms of your increased prosperity—can be quite overwhelming.

That's why one of the first things we did was to increase the amount of support for non-repayable Canada student grants by 50% to help those from low- and middle-income families. It's important to let those young people know that they may be eligible for much higher grants as well, which will reduce the amount they have to borrow in many cases.

We're expanding the eligibility for Canada student grants and loans for part-time students, such as students with dependent children, because we know that going full-time is not always a possibility, and that you do need additional money. If you're raising children, there can be additional costs. Also, we're changing the repayment assistance program so that applicants don't have to repay their Canada student loan until they're earning at least $25,000 a year. Again, people worry about those payments immediately kicking in if they haven't been able to find a job.

This year, in budget 2019, we took it a step further. I want to thank all the student activists across the country who have been calling for this for years and years. We'll be lowering interest rates on student loans. This change will help more than 1.1 million borrowers, and it's going to provide the average borrower about $2,000 worth of savings over the life of their loan. As well, the six-month grace period, which was a grace period from payments but not a grace period from interest, will be truly interest free. Students will have that six months upon graduation to find a job, to do that job search without worrying about the compound interest that will accumulate during those six months.

We think these measures will help provide some relief across the country to the kinds of students you're speaking about.

[Dan Ruimy, Liberal, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, BC]

You mentioned our labour shortages and where we are in trying to increase our “make it Canadian”.... I can't really remember the term you used, but for me the investment that we make in the youth today is for our workers of the future, and we will benefit from that.

I see that your department is reporting an increase of $334.5 million for Canada student loans and grants and apprenticeship programs. Can you explain to the committee what this increase represents and how this is going to help the students?

[Patty Hajdu, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON]

This increase is from the implementation of budget 2016 and budget 2017 changes we made to the Canada student loans program. These changes were made because we believe that every Canadian who wants to attend a post-secondary institution should have the supports they need to do so. We know that this is about creating real opportunities for people. This change means that more than 450,000 low- and middle-income students who couldn't before are now able to afford post-secondary education. We know that when education is more affordable, it's more accessible. I have a personal attachment to this, as someone who grew up in a low-income household.

I believe that education is the game-changer. It doesn't only change the lives of the people who are able to acquire that education, it's generationally changing. Many times, for children or young people who are the first in their family to attend post-secondary education, it changes the way that family thinks about education, and access to education, for generations. It unlocks that intergenerational poverty we see people trapped in.

That's been my driving focus, and this government's focus—that people have that fair chance to succeed. It's good for that person and their family, of course, but it's also good for the generations that will follow.

[Dan Ruimy, Liberal, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, BC]

There was a previous question about getting the provinces on board. Can you quickly tell us what the value is of working with provinces, rather than not working with the provinces? In B.C., with an NDP government, we work quite well together. While we have disagreements, they actually do take advantage of a lot of the programs we offer.

Can you expand on that a little more?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Do so very briefly, please.

[Patty Hajdu, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON]

I think it's really important to partner with each other. You're right, we can have different perspectives, but it's important that we keep the goals in mind: a prosperous province and a prosperous country, where people have a fair chance to succeed. We know that when people have fairness and equity in their personal situations, they can contribute to their full potential, which makes better business owners, better employees and better citizens. That allows us all to prosper.

[Dan Ruimy, Liberal, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, BC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Madam Sansoucy, please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I thank the witnesses for their statements.

Madam Minister, you spoke about improvements to the Registered Disability Savings Plan. That is not clear to me yet. The main estimates show an increase of 44% over the previous fiscal year. The program has existed for ten years, and the participation rate is not very high.

Men are overrepresented at present. How do you think you could increase the participation rate for women? Are you considering reviewing the eligibility criteria? Currently this is based on the disability tax credit, which is not refundable. There are people who do not ask for it, or don't know about it.

I'd like to know how you are going to bring about this increase, please.

[Carla Qualtrough, Liberal, Delta, BC]

Thank you very much for your question.

It's a problem I'm quite familiar with, and I am deploying major efforts to solve it.

The RDSP has been a game-changer for the financial security of Canadians with disabilities. It has just passed its 10th year, and certainly, in conjunction with the disability tax credit, it could benefit from an updating. That's what we've started. We started it at the CRA on the side of tax policy, with the minister reconstituting the disability advisory committee. Its report is coming out very soon on how we can better serve Canadians through the DTC and related tax measures. Then we recognized that in the meantime, we could address things going on with the RDSP proper. We know that many Canadians who qualify for the DTC do not avail themselves of it, and we're looking to figure out why that is. Is it the group to whom it's targeted? Are there barriers implicit in the program itself? We're looking at that.

I'd say we've made three changes. The first happened several years ago through our government. We made it possible for nurse practitioners to fill out the forms related to qualification for the DTC. That too was a game-changer for many communities that don't have access to doctors or couldn't afford the cost of filling out a form, which again, is a barrier we need to address.

Then this year we made two changes to the RDSP specifically. The first has to do with repayment of grants and bonds when someone no longer becomes eligible for a DTC. We heard loud and clear from the community that was unfair. When they qualified for DTC, they got those grants and bonds. They felt it unfair to have to repay them if they became ineligible, so we've changed that. That will particularly help Canadians with episodic disabilities.

The second one has to do with bankruptcy and protecting RDSPs from seizure in bankruptcy, as RRSPs are.

We're also targeting women with disabilities who qualify for the DTC. Again, I share your concern that the DTC, as a non-refundable tax credit, has limits, because it doesn't benefit those Canadians with disabilities who don't work. We are working with provinces on awareness campaigns. CRA has sent out letters to every eligible Canadian who qualifies for a DTC to raise awareness about the RDSP. We're doing targeted campaigns and outreach within disability communities. We're holding awareness days where people can come in to see if they qualify for this. We're working with banks to see if there's an option for some kind of auto-enrollment.

There's a lot on the table. It's a bit premature for me to tell you much more than that, but I can assure you this issue is one of my pressing top-of-mind, not-so-secret, secret objectives that I want to fix.

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

Thank you.

Minister, regarding the Canada Learning Bonds, for those who have a registered education savings plan, there is a 16% increase in the main estimates. This is a complex program that requires a long-term relationship with a financial institution.

I'd like to know how you intend to increase the popularity of the plan, to encourage low-income families that are difficult to convince to open an RESP. Are you planning something to simplify registration? How can we see to it that every child will have access to an education savings plan?

[Patty Hajdu, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON]

I'll build on Carla's comments a little bit about people with disabilities. There's a piece in my portfolio as well that increases eligible grants for services and equipment for students from $8,000 to $20,000. Also...harmonize definition of “disability”, so if there's a severe and permanent disability when studying, a student can receive loan forgiveness. That's just to build on Minister Qualtrough's comments about trying to make sure that we are being thoughtful in terms of supporting people with disabilities in accessing education.

The Canada learning bond is an amazing tool, but you're right, there has been a low uptake. In my mandate letter from the Prime Minister, I was mandated to ask those same questions about why that is. What is it that we're doing wrong as a government, or is it that people don't know about it? Are we not getting to the right people at the right time?

This year the one-millionth child received the Canada learning bond, meaning that one million Canadian families do have that head start. But we know there's more to do. We know there are still about 1.8 million eligible children who are yet to receive the Canada learning bond. That's why we have decided we can't do it alone, and we've launched this call for concepts. We're seeking submissions from partner organizations that often are better suited and are interacting more closely with families that would benefit from receiving the Canada learning bond to see how we can increase awareness and the take-up of this bond in an innovative way.

I talked about this at a local agency in my own community that does a variety of counselling with low-income families, including credit counselling. To be able to use agencies that are embedded in the communities and have those relationships with people who could be benefiting from the Canada learning bond is one of the ideas we've had, thus the call for proposals and concepts.

I look forward to receiving those submissions and working with Canadians all across the country who have a better sense of how we reach families in need.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you very much.

We're going to Wayne Long, please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good afternoon, Ministers Qualtrough and Hajdu. It's great to have you back before us.

Minister Hajdu, I have two quick points.

Thank you for the Canada summer jobs program. It's transformational and substantial in my riding. It's double what it was under the previous Conservative government, and I am amazed by the impact it has on youth.

Second, I'm also in a riding that's impacted by a Conservative provincial government that is now cancelling infrastructure spending and infrastructure dollars. That is literally leaving hundreds of millions of dollars on infrastructure unspent and cancelling construction jobs and labour jobs right across my riding, which is very unfortunate.

I want to focus on skills training. As you know, in the committee and in my riding, I often hear from employers that they are finding it very difficult to find employment candidates with the skills they're looking for. More young people, as we know, are attending post-secondary institutions than ever before. We frequently hear that new graduates don't have the on-the-job skills that they need to start their careers.

This isn't just a problem for new graduates; it's a problem for employers who need the talent and our economy, obviously, as a whole. Our federal government's investment in employment skills training to date includes a wonderful $2.7-million investment in my riding of Saint John—Rothesay through UYES!, the skills training program. It's a wonderful program. It's already helping to close the skills gap. It's working with almost 200 at risk youth in the riding. It's a wonderful program.

Can you tell us what else your department, especially through initiatives announced in budget 2019, is doing to close this skills gap and to ensure that new graduates can enter the work force right away?

[Patty Hajdu, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON]

You're referring to the modernization of the youth employment strategy and the focus on the youth employment strategy of really making sure the most vulnerable get those skills training needs that will help them move out of their current situation and into employment.

We are also doing something that better addresses the needs of employers. You're right. Sometimes they receive applicants for a particular position, but they either find the applicants aren't well-suited for their industry, or they have learned information that isn't actually custom fit to their industry.

There's also a lot of talk about students coming out of post-secondary institutions without the appropriate soft skills, although a young person told me the other day that youth find the phrase “soft skills” offensive. He said, “Everybody should be aware of how to be a good person and get along with our colleagues. Why don't we call them 'foundational skills'?” I thought this was a brilliant idea from this young person.

Regardless of what we call them, employers are saying that young people are having good technical knowledge, sometimes just not really understanding how to interact within a formal work setting. That's why this program that we launched, the student work placement program, has been so incredibly important to both students and employers.

We launched it April 2017 with a target of 10,000 placements for STEM and business students. We've been hearing unanimous praise for this program. Whether you talk to business people or students, even when you talk to academic institutions, it's actually pulling people together to talk about the skills that are being delivered in academic settings, whether or not they match what that sector or what that employment group needs.

It also is providing a bit of a matchmaker service for students, in that they get hands-on paid experience in the workplace as they're studying that particular topic. That student also gets to develop those relationships with that employer. More often than not, the employer is saying, “I really like these students. I've spent all this time getting them oriented to my business. Why don't we make them an offer?” There's been this really nice coalescence in all of that.

In terms of budget 2019, we heard over and over from businesses, including people like the business and higher education round table, which brings big business together with academic institutions to talk about labour shortage, that this is a great start, but we need more. We need more flexibility. We need to expand this beyond STEM. Even though we do have a shortage in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, employers are saying that the arts are also really important in growing their businesses. That's exactly what we've done through budget 2019.

We would expand the student work placement program to all disciplines and work with partners like ISEDs, Mitacs and this round table that I spoke about earlier, and create 84,000 new student work placements per year. You can imagine that. This is a really huge jump in terms of getting students the experience they need, and making sure that employers get a better integration with the talent that's coming out.

One of the greatest opportunities I had was facilitating a panel with youth who were talking about their experiences in these paid work placements. The students talked about how, when they're in the workplace and they're actually learning things that are contrary to what they're being taught in the academic setting, they have an ability to go back to that academic institution and say, “Hey, you know that information you're teaching me? It's about four years old.” They are actually pushing the academic institutions and professors to be more current in what they're offering, so that it better aligns with industry.

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

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Mr. Hogg.

[Gordie Hogg, Liberal, South Surrey—White Rock, BC]

Thank you, Minister Hajdu.

I've been looking at your budget and estimates. I see there is an increase, one of the largest increases, of $43.1 million, and it's with respect to Canada service corps. Could you explain what that increase will entail and the impact it will have?

[Patty Hajdu, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON]

The Canada service corps is a new program for the Government of Canada. Last week we held the first-ever youth summit to celebrate and recognize the work that young Canadians are doing all across this country as volunteers and as participants in their communities.

This event, just like the program, recognizes that young Canadians give so much and have the ability to give more back to their communities in a meaningful way, and that it also helps them to develop relationships, the skills that will help make them fabulous employees or employers or business owners in their future.

It actually is an idea that came out of our Prime Minister's passion for youth engagement and youth civic action. I think about my own time as a volunteer as a young person. It really is a time of exploration. You have an ability to learn about the kinds of things you're passionate about and how you can best make a difference. You also have an opportunity to participate in skill development in ways that you might never have in paid employment that early on in your life.

In January 2018, we launched the design phase of the Canada service corps with a commitment to establish the program in 2019. Through that design phase, we listened really carefully to young people. What we heard from them was that they need a variety of different service opportunities. There are some people who want those long-term immersive service opportunities, like the Katimavik programs, which is one of the partners that we're offering experiences with.

Also, we wanted to support youth who can maybe volunteer a couple of times a week for a particular organization in their community. We also wanted to support young people who have fabulous ideas but just need a little money or support to get those ideas off the ground. The $67.6 million reflected in the mains is part of the proposed $314.8 million dedicated to the Canada service corps in the 2019 budget.

This builds on budget 2016's commitment. It will allow us to scale up the program to 15,000 placements per year by 2023-24. This is really about making sure that, no matter where that young person is situated, or what kind of way they want to be involved, we have different pathways and opportunities for them to serve.

[Gordie Hogg, Liberal, South Surrey—White Rock, BC]

Our committee has been studying precarious work for some time, and within the framework of precarious work we have been looking at whether there is a need to modernize some of the labour standards.

I note that you have appointed an expert panel to look at some of those issues. I wonder what the terms of reference of that panel are. I'm sure you'll be referring them to the wonderful work that this committee has done to help inform them about the directions you should be taking with respect to the modernizing of the labour standards.

Can you tell me a little about those terms of reference and whether it's included in there to pay enormous attention to the HUMA committee?

[Patty Hajdu, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON]

I would expect nothing less than the experts we have appointed to pay attention to the research, including that which has come from the HUMA committee, on some of the more challenging aspects of modernizing the Canada labour standards.

The seven members of the expert panel bring a variety of different backgrounds and valuable expertise in areas such as labour policy, law, economics and business, and possess a well-rounded understanding of employer and employee perspectives. They've already been at work gathering evidence and engaging with a wide variety of stakeholders since its establishment in February 2019.

These are the questions that we've asked them to look at. One of them is the federal minimum wage. The idea of a federal minimum wage has come up a few times before. We'll leave that now, but there was a bit of a discussion about that in the previous election that was quite confusing to Canadians.

Other questions include the labour standards protection for non-standard workers, how we protect people who are not in a standard relationship with their employer. Also there's the ability to disconnect from work-related e-communications outside of work hours. Sometimes this is known by the phrase “the right to disconnect”. Of course, with an increasingly digital economy, there is some tension around employees having to be connected 24 hours a day and how to manage the needs of business with people's need to take a break.

There's access and portability of benefits, especially for people who have rapidly changing employment. Also there's collective voice for non-union workers.

Again, I'm looking forward to the results of the panel's deliberations and to see the advice that it'll be providing the federal government on potential steps that we can take.

[Gordie Hogg, Liberal, South Surrey—White Rock, BC]

One of the things we have been looking at is the issue of wages as well. The notion of a living wage has come up, so they're trying to get a definition of that, given that the costs of living across our country are so divergent.

If I have time for one quick comment to Minister Qualtrough, I think the registered disability savings plan is one of the more creative ones, which was brought in by Jim Flaherty. I think it's been very creative. When I was the minister of children and families in B.C., I was trying to get to the process where everyone, the moment they were designated into that category, would have funding. We placed funding with the Vancouver Foundation to try to do that. For some reason, the Vancouver Foundation's terms of reference didn't allow it to do that.

As you're looking at identifying, I think if somehow we can progressively look at being able to make a payment as soon as people are identified with a qualifying disability, it would make such an incredible difference to those families over the long term.

[Carla Qualtrough, Liberal, Delta, BC]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Agreed. That's fantastic.

Up next we have MP Falk, please.