Human Resources Committee on July 20th, 2020

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

I call this meeting to order. Welcome to meeting number 22 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities.

Pursuant to the orders of reference of April 11 and May 26, 2020, the committee is resuming its study of the government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Today’s meeting is taking place by video conference, and the proceedings will be made available via the House of Commons website.

The webcast will always show the person speaking, rather than the entirety of the committee. Before speaking, please wait until I recognize you by name. When you are ready to speak, please click on the microphone icon to activate your mike. I would like to remind everyone to please use the language channel of the language they are speaking.

I would now like to welcome our witnesses today. We have Steve Cordes, the chief executive officer of Youth Opportunities Unlimited, as well as Monsieur Bernard Racicot, coordinator at Maison des jeunes des Basses-Laurentides.

Mr. Cordes, please proceed with your opening remarks.

[Steve Cordes, Chief Executive Officer, Youth Opportunities Unlimited]

Thank you, everybody, for the opportunity to be here today.

I want to give you a bit of an overview of Youth Opportunities Unlimited. I understand that in your package you received a letter that we received from a young person who recently graduated from a program at YOU. I'll come back to it, but I included that in the package because most of that young person's activity with our organization took place during the pandemic. He had what we found to be really wonderful insights into his experiences that reinforced what we find is quite helpful in supporting marginalized youth in particular.

What does Youth Opportunities Unlimited do? In a nutshell, we're a local not-for-profit organization, incorporated in London, Ontario. We've been around since 1982. I've been with the organization since 1984 and been its CEO since 1988, so I have a lot of history with this organization.

It started off as a provincially funded youth employment centre focused on providing employment supports for young people who were leaving school early. It was to help address the gap between their not having experience in getting a job and needing access and supports to access the job market when they didn't have experience and had limited education.

As we've developed our organization, we've kept with that same mandate. Our vision is a community where all youth are embraced and engaged and will thrive. Our vision statement is as much about our community as it is about youth and what we do—actually, it's more so about community. That informs key priorities for us.

We're funded by all levels of government. We still provide employment programs. We do a variety of job placement programs, many of those funded by our provincial government. We also have a significant footprint in affordable housing. I know MP Vaughan would know about that because he's been to our facility a number of times in his tenure. We have a growing footprint on that. We also have a long-standing training platform using social enterprise models as a vehicle for training people and preparing them for employment.

How does all that work? In a nutshell, we have 25 or so different programs operating at any one time, funded by all levels of government: the federal government, through a couple of departments; the provincial government, through three different ministries; and the municipal government. We are also funded by the United Way and earn a significant amount of revenue from Youth Opportunities Unlimited's social enterprises. Although this can be messy in terms of administration, from a young person's experience, the programs all interplay with each other beautifully.

A young person can come into our organization at various access points. They may be experiencing homelessness and are looking for a place to eat or a safe place to help them find housing for that night, whether it's a shelter or permanent housing, or they could have graduated from school and are looking for their very first career opportunity. For all of the above there are various access points that put people at the right starting point for them. It might be setting up an employment counsellor or working on a resumé. It might be not touching a resumé for a long time and focusing on how we get a young person in front of some employers who will want to meet with them. It might also be connecting them with a housing adviser to help them find permanent housing.

What's key around those successes really is the relationship with people. While they may come in looking for a particular touchpoint, what really works fundamentally well for a marginalized and vulnerable young person is finding the right person to connect with.

That's where I think the letter jumps into play. Of course I won't read it to you, but as a highlight, that young person—his name is Sam—wrote the letter voluntarily after he graduated from some programs at YOU. He was engaged with YOU after providing physical care for his mom for a number of years. I think since he was a very young child he was caring for his mother. It was through his grandmother that he got connected to Youth Opportunities Unlimited. She was worried about his overall health and worried about her very isolated grandson.

She wasn't sure what the outcome was but she wanted him connected to an organization. He engaged with one of our employment counsellors, which is a provincially funded program at YOU. Through that, he started exploring what options were available to him. He ended up being connected with a federally funded program called ISE, which is delivered through Youth Opportunities Unlimited. Through that, he trained in a recycling facility at YOU.

I mentioned our social enterprises. We use them as a platform to train people, in this case, with recycling, not because he necessarily wanted to work in the recycling industry, but he'd never drawn a paycheque before. If you had the opportunity to read the letter, you will have learned that he suffers from significant mental health issues and addiction issues that were profound. In his own words, every time he went to bed, he didn't care if he woke up the next day. He wasn't actively trying to prevent it from happening, but he didn't care. It was his grandmother who got him connected to us. He was not ready to go out looking for work, so that recycling facility was an opportunity for him to start getting a place of security, a place of grounding, and to start building a community for him.

Out of that, he ended up going back into some provincially funded programs, and most recently he was hired through an online interview with Home Depot. He's been with Home Depot for just over a month and he's already had one promotion. He and I shared a panel sponsored by CAMH on serving youth with mental health issues during COVID. His insights were that he probably would not have connected with this program, with this organization, if not for COVID. His anxiety was so much that he could not have envisioned himself walking into an office and sitting across a table from strangers. An online platform made it easier for him to do that.

That gives a bit of insight into why I chose to use that letter.

I'm going to talk a little bit about what we have under [Technical difficulty—Editor] because they provide insight, particularly around the COVID time right now. We have a couple of projects on the go that really focus on housing. One is a project with our partnership with the Children's Aid Society, our child welfare organization in London, where we're providing housing for young people aging out of care—young people as young as 16 years old who, otherwise, would be experiencing homelessness. There is a shelter in town right now that they could go to. There is shelter space access for them. Many of these young people have experienced human trafficking, they've experienced horrible trauma, and they just won't go into a large shelter. They'll sleep on the streets instead. They'll couch surf with friends. They'll get by. They'll trade off and find a place to live, but they won't have a home. This place provides an access path towards a home. There are six apartments, each of them independent. Every day they have some contact with a staff member from Youth Opportunities Unlimited and ongoing care from Children's Aid Society. The program has been an amazing success. It actually operates without additional government funding, just through the funding relationship between YOU and Children's Aid Society.

MP Vaughan will be interested in knowing this. Our shelter actually completes construction this week, Adam. It will open to the public on August 17. We've created, over the past three years, a concept for a 30-bed youth shelter. As it turns out, it's an amazing resource in COVID because unlike most shelters, there's no dorm style. It's 30 individual rooms for 30 people with 10-foot-wide hallways. Why did we create that? Certainly, we envisioned it long before there was a pandemic, but we know that young people who come into shelters have experienced physical and emotional trauma in many ways. To put them in a dorm style, many young people would choose to sleep outside instead of that. Thirty beds for 30 people allowed us to support people of the LGBT2Q community without feeling like they're at risk, people who need the emotional respite of having their own room, or people who need isolation for the safety of other people. The 10-foot-wide hallways are for emergency responders to come and go easily because, if they're ever on site, it's an emergency and they need to come and go fast. As it turns out, this is an amazing facility during the time of a pandemic.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

I'll get you to wrap up there, Mr. Cordes, please.

[Steve Cordes]

Absolutely.

What I think works really well, and what I would hope that the government will continue to invest in, outside of just the individual programs that I've talked to you about, is looking at infrastructure that you're investing in that offers leverage opportunities. Our experience over the past 40 years or so has taught us one thing very loud and clear, and that is that young people who have been marginalized, who are vulnerable, rely heavily on relationships. It's not so much about these wonderful programs that get created. It's the people behind the programs that really matter.

As a government, if you could find ways to invest in organizations and individuals who have a track record of supporting vulnerable or marginalized people, you'll get a better result and your communities will get a better result. As a national government, I think one of your challenges is how to offer a national program that is really delivered at a local level. I would urge you to continue to find ways for local flexibility and local delivery organizations because that's where change really happens. Again, the glue is these local partnerships, these local experts.

I think I'll stop there because I know there'll be some questions, and to make room for the other panellists.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Thank you, Mr. Cordes.

Mr. Racicot, you have the floor.

[Bernard Racicot, Coordinator, Maison des jeunes des Basses-Laurentides]

Good afternoon.

My name is Bernard Racicot and I am the coordinator at the Maison des jeunes des Basses-Laurentides. Unfortunately, Ms. Manon Coursol cannot attend this meeting because she is on holiday. She sends her apologies.

The Maison des jeunes des Basses-Laurentides is first and foremost a gathering place for young people, mainly aged 12 to 17, from the greater Sainte-Thérèse region. They come here to spend quality time and are accompanied by the team of counsellors who give them a warm welcome. This place must be safe, lively, motivating and dynamic. We also want it to be a place in their image.

The Maison des jeunes is also a meeting place for a community that cares about young people, their experiences and their opinions, where ideas emerge, where discussions are lively, sometimes very lively even, and where awareness, problem-solving and prevention projects take shape. As a partner in the community, the Maison des jeunes is involved, in its own way, in concerted action plans with the municipality, public safety, the various levels of government, the health and social services centre and other community partners. We work as a team.

Our mandate is to be a privileged gathering place so that teenagers who come to see us experience the most harmonious transition possible into adulthood. We accompany them through the various stages of their lives. During the summer period, we are present through community work in various targeted locations in the municipality where some young people are about to adopt risky behaviours.

As I said earlier, our clientele is made up of young people aged 12 to 17 who live in the Sainte-Thérèse and Lower Laurentians region. First of all, they come out of curiosity. All the young people who come to see us do so of their own free will. Second, they come because they find a place in their image. We also want to identify with them.

Customers are not excluded on the basis of their age, but rather on the basis of their behaviour. We will make sure that young people behave in a respectful and community oriented manner at the Maison des jeunes. They must respect themselves, respect others, and respect the ethics and values of the Maison des jeunes.

Our mission is to foster the development of self-esteem by offering presence and active listening, by providing individual and group interventions, by leading young people to experience success—this last point is very important—by helping them to adopt values related to respect and autonomy, and by developing their social skills so that they can live with others, despite their differences, without experiencing rejection.

Our interventions take the form of promotional activities. We include all young people in our awareness and referral activities. Social intervention encourages the development of ties with young people to enable them to communicate, exchange, open up and feel important and reassured. Educational intervention helps develop social, academic, cultural and athletic skills. Broadly speaking, this is what we do at the Maison des jeunes.

We organize several activities. I'm a music teacher, so music activities are more part of my role as a counsellor. We want to put young people in a context of success by organizing events with them where they will be put in the spotlight, producing studio recordings or concerts. This is a flagship activity at the Maison des jeunes.

We also have activities where young people learn to cook with what we have at the Maison des jeunes. For example, in the "pimp your food" activity, we try to see what we can do with a box of Kraft Dinner to make it better. We also do theatre and improvisation. We teach young people to develop their response mechanisms, respect for others and speech, as well as their ability to live as a team. We also organize sports activities and games. All this is aimed at building a relationship with young people.

Our young people feel marginalized. There is a lot of poverty in our community, in Sainte-Thérèse, but also a lot of anxiety. Our activities are therefore aimed at reaching young people in their community.

Our grants come mainly from the City of Sainte-Thérèse and the governments of Canada and Quebec. Our fundraising activities are very important. The events we organize, such as music concerts, allow us to raise a lot of funds.

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected us in several ways. We had to close our doors on March 16. Since we are a youth centre, we had to stay closed. We were not able to carry out any activities until mid-May. So we organized meetings with young people on social networks—Messenger, Instagram and Zoom. It became very popular and it allowed us to communicate with youth where they were. We found out on social networks that young people who were taking courses on Zoom or through other means were very unmotivated and isolated. It was hard to reach them.

The crisis related to COVID-19 also forced us to cancel several concerts and fundraising activities. On May 8, we had planned a fundraising event, a lobster night, which usually raises between $30,000 and $40,000 in donations. We had to cancel that event. It was quite difficult for young people to accept that, because it's an opportunity for them to speak publicly and to highlight what we do.

In addition, we had to cancel concerts this summer, as well as the activity at Camp Péniel, which is very important. It was a three-day stay in the country. That too was very difficult for them to accept.

We resumed our activities on June 1, but unfortunately, we could not open the Maison des jeunes. All our activities take place outside, in the courtyard. We bought a garden pavilion to welcome young people, even when it rains and it is very hot. The young people come to see us in the courtyard, but we can unfortunately only accommodate 10 at a time.

We also go to the village of Sainte-Thérèse to try to reach out to young people. We announce our activities on social networks.

The strength of the Maison des jeunes is to be creative in its ways of reaching young people. Our watchword this summer is to adapt to the situation. Because of the pandemic, that is what we do every day. We take one step forward and two steps back. Our strength as a community organization is our ability to adapt.

Thank you for listening to me.

I'm ready to answer your questions, if there's time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Thank you very much, Mr. Racicot.

We will now begin with questions, starting with Mr. Albas, for six minutes, please.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for coming today, Mr. Racicot and Mr. Cordes. I would like to start with you both.

Mr. Cordes, you mentioned that the approach you've taken in your municipality is highly localized. Could you explain a bit how Youth Opportunities Unlimited started and why you think it's so important to have a bottom-up community response to some of the challenges you see in your community?

[Steve Cordes]

We started as a provincially funded youth employment secretariat, and although it was a hard start, I'd say a real benefit of the start was that the provincial government at the time would invest a certain platform of dollars and match either donations or in-kind contributions to the organizations. They might have approved a couple of hundred thousand dollars in funding, but only if you got a couple of hundred thousand dollars' worth of contributions from the community. They would match that. I'd say that created within this organization a spirit that is phenomenally community based.

For example, we have a federal training program that's delivered through something called ISE. We can purchase short-term training from a registered educational institution to leverage employment opportunities in high-demand areas for youth. In London, for example, we purchase customer-care training from Fanshawe College. They deliver it on-site at our facility.

The young people who we support would not go to the college. It's a physical barrier and an emotional barrier. They just wouldn't go. We can coach the college staff. They have amazing expertise, but what they don't necessarily have is a platform for how to engage with a vulnerable population, with a marginalized population. We work with them on curriculum adjustments, and the feedback we get from the youth who go through this program is amazing.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

That goes back to the relationship you said you have. It's not about the programming. It's about the trust they have. Is that correct?

[Steve Cordes]

Exactly. About 25% of our clients want to go on to post-secondary education, and a significant number of them do actually go on to Fanshawe College or even some of the schools at Western University, in London. It's these partnerships that start opening the bridge to help them redefine themselves. They would not walk in those doors otherwise.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

I'm going to move to Mr. Racicot.

Mr. Racicot, is it the same thing for you?

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Mr. Racicot, would you please move your microphone away from your shirt a little? When it makes contact with it, we can't hear you properly.

[Bernard Racicot]

All right.

Could you repeat your question, Mr. Albas?

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

It's about the work you do in your community. From what I understand, the local approach is key to improving young people's situation. Is that right?

[Bernard Racicot]

You can speak in English, too, if you're at ease with that.

Yes, and that's the case with everything that affects young people and the work we do with other organizations. We are part of issue tables. That's crucial when we want to intervene. Concerted action is of major importance in our community. We always work with other organizations and with those who intervene with us in the community. This is the basis for young people's success in school. I don't know if that answers your question.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

Do you also have a similar approach to funding? Are you exclusively funded by government, or is there a combination of matching funds between the private sector, charity from individuals and local...?

[Bernard Racicot]

We're asking for funds from the private sector and we also have matching funds. Everything we can take, we're taking.

We also receive grants from the Government of Quebec. We always have these partnerships, which are very important. With the Chamber of Commerce, we organize events. Private sector partners are also part of our fundraising. Having said that, the levels of government are really essential to our operations, especially at this time.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

I appreciate hearing about the importance of having funding from government to give you that sustaining amount and about the fact that it's the community itself that supports the enterprise and that it's not being forced on the community in any way, shape or form.

Perhaps both of you can share how your organizations have handled COVID-19.

Mr. Cordes, I'd like to hear you speak specifically about how every day at the affordable housing shelter there is contact between your staff and the young people.

Monsieur Racicot, you've said a bit about the gazebo. Maybe you could give us an idea of what other alterations you've had to make since COVID-19.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Gentlemen, we're out of time, so we're going to need very brief responses from each of you, please.

[Steve Cordes]

We have gone to a bit of a blended model. For our housing support programs there is a mobile housing team, and for our daily food programs, those are still delivered in person with all protocols, distancing and so on.

Our employment supports are delivered online. We have workshops that are delivered online as well as individual employment counsellors who make a point of reaching out and connecting with young people probably more frequently than what they would have seen when there were actually in-person appointments.

We're about to relaunch more of our in-person employment counselling over the next couple of weeks.

[Bernard Racicot]

I would like to thank Ms. Chabot and her team, who made it possible for us to have an additional summer job.

This summer, our team's work will focus on organizing a survey to reach out to local youth and understand how they experience the pandemic. This will guide the interventions we will make with them when they return to school and give us a very clear answer about their needs. Our team is organizing a survey and meetings with them. In addition, we are taking advantage of our activities in the small pavilion and in the city to distribute this survey and to really get feedback from the youth of Sainte-Thérèse and the region.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Thank you, Mr. Albas.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Next we're going to go to Mr. Turnbull for six minutes.

Go ahead, please.