Evidence of meeting #29 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 youth.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Bryan May
—but we do need to stay on time today.
Before we get started with questions, we are getting notice that there will be a vote this morning, so we are going to have to cut things a little short. The bells are going to start shortly after 10. If we can carve an extra 10 minutes out of that, obviously I'll have to ask for unanimous consent at that point. In the interest of trying to give everyone an opportunity, there was a really good suggestion from MP Warawa that we switch from six minutes to five minutes, and I will be incredibly diligent to keep everybody on time.
Are we in agreement that we can move forward with that?
Liberal
Conservative
Mark Warawa Conservative Langley—Aldergrove, BC
Just on a point of order, so the clock isn't starting, the focus of every one of the witnesses today was on youth. Was the purpose of this section today to focus on youth poverty? I understood that the study was going to be just on education broadly, and didn't necessarily have to be focused on youth. Is that correct?
Conservative
Mark Warawa Conservative Langley—Aldergrove, BC
Thank you.
Thank you to the witnesses for being here. I listened closely.
With the environment of poverty that youth find themselves in, would the family likely be also in poverty? I think we can make an assumption, very safely, that if youth are in poverty, probably the parent or parents who are raising those children are also in poverty, so the source of the poverty would be the family setting. I'm going to start from that premise. It would be nice if the family could be removed from poverty and if we could help address that situation.
I have a question for the Canadian Council for Career Development. Each of the presenters was presenting a perspective on the importance of youth poverty, and while the mandate of the Council for Career Development is, I think, to work with people of all ages, my focus is poverty for seniors. This is where I'm trying to fit this puzzle together.
I received an email yesterday from a lady by the name of Christie Lane. She has a company she started three years ago in the Kamloops, B.C., area called Happy to Help, a community outreach support for seniors. She started off as a business of one person and now has 14 employees. Her company is helping seniors who need help so that they can age in place.
The Canadian Council for Career Development has the mandate to focus on helping people in all age groups. We have a growing population of aging Canadians. We cannot afford to build housing for this aging population, but we can afford to take care of them and have them age in place. There's a huge opportunity for our youth to be trained in home care, geriatrics, and palliative care. This is a great opportunity to take people out of poverty, both the parents and youth, for whom there are great employment opportunities.
My question is to the Council for Career Development. They mention that the blame game gets us nowhere and that we need a national strategy. What I've heard from across Canada is that we need a national seniors strategy, and under that broad national seniors strategy will be other strategies.
Would you agree that we need to have a strategy that provides education, training, and employment opportunities in the “demand sectors”, I think you called them? The senior sector, that aging population, has a huge potential, a demand sector that we can actually encourage training in.
Thank you.
Executive Board Member, Canadian Council for Career Development
Wow!
Our focus in our field is on helping people navigate learning and work. I agree with you that we have not had a focus on the issues of seniors, because they are not necessarily accessing the labour market any more. There is, however, a whole movement called third age career development. which we have not been very active in but which is looking at how you meaningfully engage seniors.
I want to make a comment about your reference to all the opportunities in the caregiving sector. I think there is potential there. I don't know the stats, but maybe Emily does. I think, however, that we really would have to look at the wages that are offered for people who are in positions of giving care, because usually those are minimum wage positions, and usually they offer very limited benefits, so they're not the answer for most young people.
I don't know all the stats—if Emily did, I'd appreciate it—but I think you need to be very careful about saying that this is an answer and that there's a lot of demand there. There is demand there, but whether we can build systems so that there are actually opportunities for young people is another question altogether. A lot of abuse goes on in that system, and the abuse is low wages, no benefits, long hours, and actually quite intolerable workplaces. I think we need to be very careful about this. I'm not at all saying that seniors do not deserve help, but our focus is not on seniors.
May I just give one example, however, of something—?
Executive Board Member, Canadian Council for Career Development
One example that we did work with—again, it's in New Brunswick—was with social assistance. We worked with single mothers who were interested in the future of their children, and they were offered workshops that would help them become coaches for their children to get them out of social assistance.
These were very short interventions and very inexpensive, but the interesting thing was that they got a heck of a lot out of them. The fascinating thing was that these women said that, “Not only is it helping me with my child, I'm going to move myself out.”
Executive Board Member, Canadian Council for Career Development
I think one of you mentioned the importance of encouragement and mentorship. It all ends up being the same thing.
Executive Board Member, Canadian Council for Career Development
It's somebody who really helps you take a step towards optimism, and we need to have help to make that happen.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Bryan May
No, that's okay. That's why I get paid the big bucks, so I can cut you guys off.
Monsieur Robillard, go ahead, please.
November 17th, 2016 / 9:30 a.m.
Liberal
Yves Robillard Liberal Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC
I will take only one minute for my question in French.
Liberal
Yves Robillard Liberal Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC
I understand, Ms. Smith. Given my 16 years of teaching experience, I know that teachers are often the first to see family problems, such as poverty and its effects on children in class. You are right to encourage the Government of Canada to improve learning opportunities in order to reduce and eradicate poverty among children in Canada.
Can you tell us more about this point and the innovative possibilities you were referring to?
President, Canadian Teachers' Federation
To begin, I just want to say yes, teachers are often the first to identify, but they're also the first to have that sincere interest.
In 2014 we did a survey at CTF that asked teacher respondents what they felt CTF should be advocating for at the national level. The first thing was child and youth mental health, but second was poverty, including child poverty. Well over 90% of respondents said that was where we needed to put our focus.
I know the opportunities for apprenticeships within schools are there—they are in pockets in some places, and they are better in some provinces and territories than in others— but the other thing is—and I go back to the standardized international testing and other standardized testing in schools and those have narrowed the curriculum. They've narrowed the curriculum and narrowed student choices within schools, because they have requirements to graduate. If students are looking to move to post-secondary education, they're really choosing those subjects along the way and that limits their opportunities to choose apprenticeships, to choose co-op programs, or to choose some of those other opportunities that they might otherwise choose.
I can say that, having had the experience of my own three children. They were gearing towards post-secondary and they wanted to have some of those opportunities in schools, but they just didn't have them.
Again, we want to make sure we don't target students in high schools so there is an expectation that this is the career they have to do. Education at K to 12 levels is broad-based so students can experience other things but also develop those skills that will help them in any workplace and not target them or stream them into a particular career.