Human Resources Committee on July 20th, 2020

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Ms. Chabot, could you move your microphone closer, please?

[Louise Chabot, Bloc, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

Yes. It was on top of my head. My inspiration comes from the brain, but that's not where the voice comes from. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Charters, I heard you talk about a panel, the Canada summer jobs program and three recommendations. First, if I understand correctly, you want the program to be available year-round, not just during the appointed time period. Second, you want to encourage part-time employment; this was the first time employers were allowed to offer part-time jobs under the program, if I am not mistaken. Unfortunately, I did not understand what the third recommendation was. What is the third recommendation?

The reason I am asking is that you should know this committee adopted a motion to evaluate the Canada summer jobs program, which had its strengths and weaknesses against the backdrop of COVID-19, in preparation for the next program.

[Owen Charters]

Thank you, Ms. Chabot.

If the program is replaced by a year-round program, from January to December, another call for funding applications must be issued. Our third recommendation is about that. We ran a program in the spring, and I think it needs to be renewed in the fall for other employers and other students as well.

[Louise Chabot, Bloc, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

Thank you.

My thanks to Mr. Fraser-Dableh for his testimony.

I feel that, through federal programs, we tried to meet two objectives. We will not be evaluating the Canada summer jobs program here. It could have been improved, however. The rules were changed. For example, the government used to provide 50% in funding but now provides 100% for public and private organizations. It also permits part-time work. You should know, however, that all this was from the same budget.

You are recommending that a new program be made available in the fall to allow businesses to benefit from this type of employment because of COVID-19. It would also make students, who have a hard time finding work, eligible for this type of employment while still at school.

Is that your objective?

[Owen Charters]

The concept of the program is that there are more students who are now looking. There are so many students that the unemployment rate we've seen for students remains stubbornly high and is higher now during the pandemic. This is a program that, if we can continue it year-round and run a second round of grants for employers and students in the fall, you're going to see that may have a significant impact on getting that unemployment rate down for youth and getting them into jobs. I think we're going to see employers who are back up and operating and looking for jobs to be filled and looking for students to fill those jobs.

It is tricky while doing studies. I think we've also seen the fact, though, that students typically are balancing studies and work as they see the increasing costs of schooling go up. We're also seeing people who are deferring the start of their school year and have the capacity to continue to earn, depending on how flexible the program is to accommodate that.

[Louise Chabot, Bloc, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

I will refrain from commenting. I feel that the Canada summer jobs program, which is precisely for the periods between school semesters, aims to help many students get jobs, in youth camps, for example. I will stop there. What's more, I don't take issue with student jobs, even when people are in school. We know that it is uncertain when the school year will start as well. Thank you for the recommendations. They are worth considering.

I have another question. As you know, the Canada emergency student benefit, CESB, was designed for students. It was supposed to give students and businesses access to more jobs. The Canada summer jobs program is not the only program. People have made negative comments. They said that the program was not flexible enough and that full-time jobs were being shunned because of the program.

Have you assessed the CESB? Do you feel it could have been improved, like the CERB, to be more flexible and allow more hours and more jobs?

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Give a very short response, please. We're well past time.

[Owen Charters]

In fact, as we've looked at the CESB, which is $1,250 a month to cover living expenses, it doesn't, in fact, cover a lot of living expenses as it currently stands. There is also the fact that students are usually employed not just to cover expenses but to earn an income that allows them to save for school, and in some cases, they are contributing to family expenses as well. We see youth increasingly in a position of multiple pressures, where they are providing both for their education and providing for their family.

The current benefit, the emergency student benefit, isn't significant enough to replace what many students would have earned in a job. Our understanding of the CERB is that, because they're not in standard employment, they're not eligible for the CERB in the way it operates. What we're looking for is a program that has students in jobs and being employed, which we think would benefit the economy and would benefit students in terms of both experiences and income overall.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Thank you, Mr. Charters.

Thank you, Ms. Chabot.

Next is Ms. Kwan, please, for six minutes.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thanks very much, Mr. Chair.

To our witnesses, thank you for your presentations.

I'd like to follow up on the issue around Canada summer jobs. I mean, part of the problem, as in my own riding, is that it's consistent every year that the dollars are deficient in funding all of the applications. In fact, this year only about a third of the applicants actually got funding, and it's not 100% funding by any stretch of the imagination. The government also asked us to identify additional groups for them that were tied to COVID. We made our recommendation, we phoned around and contacted everybody, and still, as it stands right now, barely any of those organizations that I submitted got funding at all. Hence, we have a situation where there's a lot of hype about it, but the reality is that there are not a lot of resources to support the groups. This has been an ongoing problem for as long as I've been a member of Parliament.

Mr. Charters, I'm particularly interested in the notion of doing a year-round program. Aside from creating flexibility and stability for organizations, there's the perspective of the kinds of resources that would be required. I wonder if you could speak to what kinds of granting resources we would need to see for this program to be effective in that way.

[Owen Charters]

That's quite a good question, because I think there have been critiques of the granting program from the start in terms of not just availability but also timeliness. There have been times where I think organizations.... I myself can recall applying for grants and getting calls on the Easter long weekend to finalize applications for positions. When you look at small businesses and non-profits especially, they're waiting for this grant to decide if they will hire. Many university students are looking for those jobs back in January, yet we can't post or be certain that the jobs are available until pretty much too late, towards the actual start of the summer employment program period.

One of the pieces in flexibility that I think would be beneficial is if this became year-round. It seems to me you would ideally have civil servants dedicated to this program who could begin processes earlier and keep those processes running. If there were two or three granting cycles, those processes would be more cyclical. I think you might have a program that's able to listen to and really benefit what employers are looking for and what students are looking for, instead of one that happens on a seasonal basis, as it currently does.

I think part of that is the idea of being able to really understand the needs of employers. Clearly, right now the needs of employers have changed significantly due to the pandemic. Being able to really understand what employers are looking for and what students are looking for out of the program, I think in a more dedicated way, would be pretty fantastic.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Related to the funding stream and what the government decided, it's a huge controversy, as we know, with the WE funding, with almost a billion dollars going into volunteering, and then effectively, if you count out the hours, it's minimum wage, and in some cases less, for young people. Some would argue that directing those dollars into the Canada summer jobs program would be a far more effective means.

I don't want to get into all the controversy around WE. That belongs somewhere else. I'm talking about investment in young people and making sure they get the employment opportunities as well as the earnings and experience. I wonder if you could speak to the value of redirecting dollars, such as those allocated for volunteering in the WE program, toward Canada summer jobs.

[Owen Charters]

I'm happy to talk about the fact that.... First of all, I think volunteering is fundamentally important. We are actually a founding member of Canada service corps. We firmly believe in the incentivizing of volunteering amongst young people. I think it becomes a lifelong value that people really benefit from.

That said, in some of the conversations we had with other potential partner organizations, we had that conversation, and we declined with our clubs, because we felt that employment was a much more significant priority for our clubs. Our clubs work in fields where, given the fact that we work with children and youth, security checks are high. Training needs are significant. We want to be sure that people we're putting in front of our youth, our members, have had the capacity and commitment to go through that.

While there are possibilities to get committed volunteers, for us staffing was job one. We have about 7,000 staff across the country. Many of those staff are youth. They are hired for the summer months to work in summer camps and to work with children and youth. We saw 6,000 of those staff laid off at the beginning of the pandemic. They slowly came back on, as CERB and other programs allowed for.

In our case, employment was first and foremost the priority, and we believe that in terms of the summer jobs program. With regard to any investment that can be put in, whether that comes from other programs or other investments, that's up to the government to decide. For us, I think, a greater investment in our jobs program would see the greatest benefit for most youth of this country.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you very much.

I disagree with you about the value of volunteering, but I think there's a difference between what was done with the WE program and what should be done.

In any event, I'm going to turn to Ms. Spinks for a minute. With all the data that she provided to us, I wonder whether she can shed some light with a gender impact analysis, if you will, of COVID, and particularly its impact upon women and the value of a national child care program.

[Nora Spinks]

Sure.

We had a ton of data that model very clearly that women are disproportionately affected by COVID. There's no question. Financially, physically, emotionally, intellectually—all of that—they are much more impacted.

We know that this is particularly so for women who are at risk of violence or who are vulnerable in terms of their attachment to the labour force, whether they are essential workers and their vulnerability is about getting sick or they are caregivers and their vulnerability is about not being able to provide that care, particularly since long-term care facilities have been really locked down.

Also, financially more women are either leaving the workforce in order to care for their children or are thinking that if schools do not return on a full-time basis in the fall, they will not be able to continue working from home remotely and home-schooling and raising children all at the same time—particularly those women who don't have other adults around to rely on or to support them. Definitely, women are disproportionately represented.

They're also disproportionately represented in the research. In a crowdsourcing survey, for example, more women will respond than men, so we have a really good voice of women in the data. Women are articulating that they're quite pleased and satisfied with the government measures that are in place. The “very satisfied” or “somewhat satisfied” ratings are at 76% at the federal level and 79% at the provincial level.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Let me interrupt for one second. I wonder whether in that data there's any information about the need for child care? I'm hearing that a lot in my own riding. People are saying that we need a national child care program.

[Nora Spinks]

Absolutely.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

We're well past time. It absolutely is a fascinating discussion.

Ms. Spinks, please feel free to supplement or augment any of your answers, including the answer to that last question, by following up in writing.

Folks, we're past the hour. I want to thank all of you. It's good to see you again, my colleagues.

Ms. Spinks, the work of the Vanier Institute is extremely important and influential for our policy-makers and for the national discourse. Thank you for what you do.

Mr. Charters, I can't let you go without telling you what a fantastic job Amanda Beazley is doing at the Boys and Girls Club in Charlottetown.

Mr. Fraser-Dableh, 41 years ago I took my first job, as a student at Fredericton High School, at the convenience store on Regent Street. Just be careful, then, about the path you take; you may end up here.

To all members, thank you very much. We'll see you in a couple of weeks.

We're adjourned.