Evidence of meeting #75 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 young.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Dan Ruimy Liberal Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, BC
I'll get to that one in a second, but I want to come back to that 7,000 number. Is this just a summer program, or is it—?
President, Public Service Commission
Yes, it's a summer program, but it's very flexible. Once the students are hired, they can continue beyond the end of the summer on a part-time basis, for example. There is opportunity to extend.
For example, here at the Public Service Commission we've kept our summer students over the fall and winter on a part-time basis, and then they're available next summer if we want to rehire them, or if we potentially want to hire them on a full-time basis when they graduate.
Talking about pathways, it's a really interesting way to create a pathway towards longer-term employment or a career.
Liberal
Dan Ruimy Liberal Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, BC
I agree. My office has had four summer student interns through the parliamentary system, and I kept them all on afterwards.
I'm a little shocked, however, at the number. There were 55,000 student employment applications, but only 7,000 were hired. That's why I'm curious to know whether you are keeping statistics to see why more are not being hired.
President, Public Service Commission
We're doing that kind of analysis. In some cases students may be available but want to work in a particular region, yet there are no positions available in that field. If they want to work in the scientific field but want to live in northern Ontario, there may not be a direct match. At the end of the day, there are many reasons that you may not have a direct match.
As I said, depending on the budget they have available, individual managers may have more money available from year to year, or less. There's been an ebb and flow. During periods in which there has been less budgetary availability, we've seen a dip in the employment of students; in other years we've seen an increase. Right now I think we are on the upside.
Liberal
Dan Ruimy Liberal Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, BC
Who's connecting? If I'm a student and want to get a job, I send my application in to where?
Liberal
Dan Ruimy Liberal Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, BC
I send it to you, and you guys actually do the matchmaking?
President, Public Service Commission
Yes, and after that we do the referrals. We do the matchmaking based on the interests of the student and what the manager is looking for. We'll refer a number of people. They then can assess five or 10 of them and decide who they want or whether they want to hire all of them.
Liberal
Dan Ruimy Liberal Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, BC
Does the post-secondary co-op program work similarly?
President, Public Service Commission
The co-op program is a much more flexible tool, because at the end of the day we have agreements with universities and colleges across the country. Those agreements are the basis upon which the student matching is done. If you're at—I don't know—the University of New Brunswick, and you have 20 students who are specializing in nursing, and you have an arrangement with Veterans Affairs, and they're looking for nurses—
Liberal
Dan Ruimy Liberal Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, BC
Let me jump in; I have only a short period of time to ask you questions.
Again I'm going to ask you: you get 53,000 graduate recruitment applications, and...that's the co-op program, right?
President, Public Service Commission
No, this is for the post-secondary recruitment program.
Liberal
Dan Ruimy Liberal Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, BC
I'm sorry. I'm going to jump ahead, because your notes say of the co-op program, “I admit the program is under-utilized outside of the National Capital Region.” You've brought in 4,500.
My question is, if it's underutilized, how do we take advantage of it? How do we make it more utilized? How do people from my riding take advantage of these programs?
President, Public Service Commission
That's one of the challenges I've set for our organization: how do we better promote those programs, how do we make sure that the fine universities that have those programs are better known by departments and agencies in the federal government, and how do we encourage regional managers to better utilize these programs?
In the NCR, we don't need to do a lot of promotion. People know where the programs are and know where the students are—
President, Public Service Commission
As you saw in my notes, we do a lot of outreach. We want to be more targeted in our outreach and spend more time with those institutions in trying to make some matches.
Liberal
Bobby Morrissey Liberal Egmont, PE
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to follow up on my colleague's question.
If you have the high demand in the capital region, what are we doing to better educate the students and those other universities and colleges about this program so that they can be successful? We have a lot of federal offices outside of Ottawa that would be a great opportunity for young people to utilize.
President, Public Service Commission
This is part of our outreach strategy. We have deputy ministers assigned to be the champions of particular universities and colleges. They have the role to go to those universities and promote employment programs and opportunities and try to help with the matchmaking. The Public Service Commission is there to support those deputies.
Last year, we had a really interesting experience—
Liberal
President, Public Service Commission
I don't know; perhaps 40 or 50. We're looking at making sure there's a deputy for each university so that we cover the whole country.
Last year we had a really interesting experience. The champion for the University of Montreal is Hélène Laurendeau, who is Paula's boss. She arranged with the university to have a group of 60 or so students actually bused to Ottawa. When they came to Ottawa, a dozen or so departments with managers were there and did what they called speed staffing. This was for co-op assignments. As a result of just that activity, half of the students were placed in a co-op assignment.
That's an example in which, with a university we might not naturally have gone to, we brought people together and ended up having a pretty successful outcome. Half of the students eventually got co-op assignments.
Liberal
President, Public Service Commission
Do you mean reasons that candidates were turned down when they had been referred to managers?
President, Public Service Commission
That would be pretty complicated. We'd have to go back and survey. If we refer five candidates and the manager takes the one who they feel is best suited, it may also be that when they're talking to the candidates, the candidate says, “That's not really what I want; I want something else.” There could be a multitude of reasons.
