Human Resources Committee on May 7th, 2019

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

Okay, thank you.

Finally, the minister mentioned that the department is doing a review of the DTC RDSP to improve uptake. This committee recommended in its report on motion M-192 that the government consider ensuring that those who are eligible for CPP disability be eligible for the DTC.

Is that something the department is looking at as part of its review of these programs?

[Chantal Maheu]

The department is looking at all options, but as it stands now, the eligibility for the RDSP is tied to DTC. That hasn't changed. The government hasn't made changes to this.

As Minister Qualtrough has indicated, they may change the RDSP to allow people to keep their account in cases where they lose eligibility. It's already a measure that will facilitate people who have episodic disabilities keeping their funding and the access to their accounts.

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

Okay.

[Chantal Maheu]

Also, as she mentioned, it's so that they can keep their RDSP in case of bankruptcy.

Those were the new measures that the government has put forward.

At this point, the eligibility remains linked to the DTC.

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

Okay, thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Up next, we have Madame Sansoucy.

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

Thank you Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for being here.

In the departmental plan on page 50, we see that the rate of health and safety violations in federally regulated workplaces has increased by 50% over two years.

I would like someone to explain that trend to me.

Will the amounts requested in the supplementary estimates allow you to deal with this issue?

[Chantal Maheu]

Thank you for the question.

I'm sorry, I don't have the page.

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

It's on page 50 of the 2019-2020 ESDC departmental plan.

[Chantal Maheu]

I may have to do some follow-up regarding this specific question, to see which statistics have increased by 50%.

As for the increased budget for the employment program, the 2019 budget announced the allocation of one million dollars a year for a mediation and conciliation service, that is to say for the team that handles collective agreement negotiations, not the team that deals with the implementation of health and safety regulations and standards.

Those are different measures. So the funds are not associated with the increase you mentioned as such.

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

I thank you in advance for sending the clerk of the committee the answer to that question.

One of the themes that recur in the departmental plan is the inclusive character of the labour market. When we talk about inclusion, we are talking about the participation of many groups, such as women, indigenous persons, young people, seniors.

In 2018, the Office of the Auditor General noticed that the department had compiled no information on the Aboriginal Skills and Employment Training Strategy or other funds. There were no indicators allowing you to verify whether programs were providing the expected outcomes. The Auditor General also pointed out that the department had not allocated funds to the organizations according to current regional needs or prior successes.

This leads me to the following question. In the departmental plan, you mention labour market participation rates for a certain number of groups. If you have no targets or indicators, how will you determine if you have attained the objective of making the labour market inclusive?

[Graham Flack]

Through Statistics Canada we can get an overall idea of the number of people from these groups on the labour market.

The challenge the Auditor General identified concerned the employment training programs for indigenous persons. The programs funded courses indigenous organizations put in place. The courses lasted about six months. We were able to measure outcomes for that short period of time. We obtained results regarding the employment of the people concerned. But the measure built into the program was for the long term. We were unable to measure the results because three years later, those organizations could not tell us what had happened to the people who took the training.

So this was a statistical challenge. Here is what we did, and are continuing to do: we use the social insurance number, or S.I.N., but anonymously. In this way we will be able to measure medium-term outcomes for such programs, and determine the impact on income for the people concerned, without breaching confidentiality.

We cannot say that a particular person took part in the program and that this had this or that impact on their salary after a certain number of years, but we can say that those who took a particular type of training had an outcome of x percent. We can't say that having taken part in the program was the only reason for an earnings increase, but that will help us to better measure the outcomes.

I would not say that we have not seen results thanks to the programs. We had good results, but we were unable to measure them in the medium term because we did not have access to the data. We are correcting that.

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

Thank you.

The minister spoke to us about placements.

The main estimates refer to expanding the Student Work Placement Program. We know there is an issue with the lack of alignment between the skills students possess and the jobs that are offered. How can the department ensure that the jobs become a springboard toward real jobs on the labour market subsequently?

[Graham Flack]

Here is the context: in 2017, we funded 10,000 placements. The purpose of the additional investments in Budget 2019 is to get to 84,000 placements.

How do we make sure the work is also an interesting experience? That can be done mostly by establishing partnerships with the companies that will hire these people.

There are three parts.

The first is the post-secondary institutions that will in the context of their co-op programs continue to find placements. I would say that that is the most traditional part.

The second part is a commitment from the business world and enterprises to making additional investments. The government will also make investments to target interesting positions within their companies.

Finally, the third part is the Business/Higher Education Roundtable, an organization that brings together both groups to identify potential candidates.

According to my data, approximately 30% of those who took part in the older programs and obtained a temporary job ultimately were offered jobs.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Ruimy.

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

Thank you very much for being here today.

I tend to focus on the youth in my riding of Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge and the challenges that they have in trying to move forward, especially the ones who are at risk.

We hear a lot of talk about the youth employment strategy, but for people who are watching, I don't know if it's clearly defined. What is the youth employment strategy?

[Graham Flack]

I'll start, but Leslie may want to pick it up.

In addition to the component members around the table know best, there has also been a series of programs across 10 different departments in the federal government to try to engage youth, for different purposes—Canadian heritage, museums, etc. All of the programs were sensible in their own area, but for youth, navigating what they needed to do was rather complex.

One of the core principles behind the youth employment strategy is to try to integrate all of these opportunities, whether they are with not-for-profits or government departments financing these programs, to ensure there is no wrong door, and that wherever they go, they can identify what they're interested in.

There are plans to take that further, with a youth digital gateway that will go beyond merely a listing of courses, to help youth identify where they are, what their interests are and how to navigate where they may want to go.

Eventually, the plan would be to use the information we glean from how people navigate the site, through algorithms, to better refine for individuals in these kinds of conditions, and with these kinds of interests, that this might be the pathway to where they need to go.

We're at the front end of that redesign of the elements right now, but we're very much focused on how we ultimately deal with what you could call a good problem to have, in a country of labour shortages. It means there's tremendous opportunity, if we can match skills correctly, to get youth placed in employment.

It's important to highlight that there has been a real focus in this strategy on youth who have historically had more difficulty accessing the job market. Throughout the suite of programs we work on, if you look at the results for indigenous youth, youth with disabilities or in specific subfields—for example, girls in STEM fields—those individuals have had more challenges navigating our thicket.

Leslie's folks administer this. Leslie, do you have other things you wanted to add?

[Leslie MacLean, Senior Associate Deputy Minister of Employment and Social Development and Chief Operating Officer for Service Canada, Department of Employment and Social Development]

Thank you very much, Graham. I don't have much, other than to say that it's important to use the youth digital gateway to understand what youth are seeking, whether it's a volunteer opportunity, a learning opportunity or paid employment, and how the digital gateway can help youth navigate that moment of their lives when they're figuring out what to do next.

I would also note, further to the comments made by the minister, that there was a youth summit over the last couple of days, and we did take the draft version of the youth digital gateway, and received live feedback from youth on what they liked about it, how it worked and what we could do better. We'll be looking to incorporate that into the next version.

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

It sounds great, wonderful and super, but I keep coming back to the disadvantaged youth I meet in my riding. They likely have no clue. They've never heard of this. They don't know where to go. They don't even know there's a place to go.

How do you propose to do this so that it reaches the intended audience?

[Graham Flack]

There are two differences in how we're approaching this. One is in outreach, through partners, to the communities that have been more challenging to get to. For example, the indigenous training program that Madam Sansoucy mentioned has used those partners to reach out further upstream to youth in those communities, to make them aware of the program. Historically, when those individuals hit the traditional website—which was not always easy to navigate—we believe there was a higher drop-off rate.

Minister Hajdu challenged us, saying, “I'm not worried about high-performing kids, because no matter how bad the web design is, they'll find a way through it and apply. You need to design this for individuals who may not necessarily have challenges navigating the site, but don't have peers who have done this kind of program before, and don't think it's for them, even if the pictures show different kinds of kids or people, with different opportunities.”

Those are the twin challenges—outreach, and how we can make the site truly more welcoming, to pull people in and make it clear that it is for everyone.

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

How do we intend to measure these outcomes? Is there something being built into the program to measure the outcomes?

[Graham Flack]

There is, and I'd say that beyond the traditional measurement what will be different about how we go about this is the user-centred design we've used for the digital gateway will be an evergreen process. We'll be measuring the feedback from people, on an ongoing basis, on how effective we are at doing that. That will allow us to unbundle how different youth are reacting to it. But our aim isn't to build the perfect thing and then go away. We're very much looking at this as “beta-ing” it and continuing to update it.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

MP Hogg, please.

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

I'm interested, in particular, in the issues around accessibility. You've broken them down into a number of areas, so to get a better grasp for understanding, I'd like to focus on autism spectrum disorder. In the budget, you're showing $336.6 million for the Canada disability savings bond, in payments. I'm wondering whether that will be able to be applied now to autism spectrum disorder, diagnosed people, and how they might access that.