Human Resources Committee on March 16th, 2021

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

That's great. Thank you for that.

It's not a new funding bump, then; it's just a maintenance of their $4 million in funding. I'm encouraged to hear that you're maintaining that funding this year, but it sounds like the commitment for years following is still up in the air. I appreciate your response.

I wanted to ask you about the Canada training benefit. This was announced, as I'm sure you remember, in the 2019 federal budget. It was a program that was going to provide a non-taxable Canadian training credit of $250 a year. It was going to provide EI support of 55% of the wage for four weeks for folks to take off and go and seek training. It was also going to provide a leave provision for folks to secure their employment while they go and seek further training.

We've heard a lot about this in the last 12 months with COVID and the COVID experience—that people need reskilling. My understanding from this 2019 budgetary announcement was that this was supposed to be launched late in 2020, but to my knowledge, it has not been launched. Are you planning to relaunch or reimagine this program?

[Carla Qualtrough, Liberal, Delta, BC]

It's a little bit of both, to be honest with you. The training environment has changed so significantly with COVID. In the fall economic statement, we made a commitment to make the largest investment in training, so right now we're working with stakeholders to understand the best way to support workers needing upskilling, different skills or transitional skills, including what the training benefit could do for a broader number of Canadians.

As you said, it was originally conceived to be available for people who were working and were able to take time off to upskill or retrain, but right now we are also very focused on the people who aren't working and who aren't necessarily in the EI system.

We definitely think there's a role to play for the training benefit, and we are working on a comprehensive approach to training, working with the provinces and territories. A component of that will be the training benefit, but there are no details yet to share beyond that. I apologize.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Can you provide an estimated timeline of when we would see something comparable to the Canada training benefit?

[Carla Qualtrough, Liberal, Delta, BC]

I'll get Graham to talk about the elements of the training benefit that are in play right now, but of course with not being able to share the approximate timing of the budget, we will have to wait and see. I'm sorry.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Yes, I understand. That's fine. It sounds as though there's something coming in the budget about that. We'll be looking keenly for that. Thank you, Minister.

I don't have too much time left in my first round, so I'm just going to jump a little bit all over the place here. Can you tell me when you're planning to reopen the Service Canada locations? They've been closed, as we know, for almost 12 months now.

[Carla Qualtrough, Liberal, Delta, BC]

I'll get Lori to give the exact details on openings. I believe some are already open.

[Lori MacDonald]

Thank you very much for the question, Mr. Chair.

In fact, we have 317 Service Canada centres; 309 of them have opened. We were closed from March 27 until the first week of July. We've incrementally opened all of our Service Canada centres [Technical difficulty—Editor] put in to reach people in their homes so they did not have to come into our Service Canada centres.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Okay, but that's not what I'm hearing from my constituents. I'll have to check on the ground to make sure our Kildonan—St. Paul one [Technical difficulty—Editor] except we were lacking a lot of services in that regard. I'm very encouraged to hear that you're actively making sure these are all open across the country.

Minister, with my remaining time, I just want to circle back to....

Well, actually, we'll have to wait until the next time. I have only 10 seconds left. I'm going to ask you about a recent announcement for Manitoba. Thanks.

[Carla Qualtrough, Liberal, Delta, BC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Thank you, Ms. Dancho.

Next we're going to go to Mr. Turnbull.

Go ahead, please, for six minutes.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Good afternoon, Minister. It's great to have you here. Thanks to you and your officials for all your hard work during this pandemic. It's always great to have you at committee.

I have two lines of questioning. One is in regard to supports for people with disabilities, and then I will have more questions on youth employment and the skills strategy. Having heard the voices of people who are impacted by policy decisions, I know it is important to our government and I know it's important to you. We've talked about that before.

Can you tell us how you are ensuring that we are taking a disability-inclusive approach to our response to the pandemic?

[Carla Qualtrough, Liberal, Delta, BC]

Thank you for the question.

It was really exciting and beneficial to have the Accessible Canada Act as the backdrop or as the foundation of the work we could do in our pandemic response to ensure that it was disability-inclusive. We immediately struck what we call the COVID disability advisory group, or CDAG, which really advised our government on pandemic response and how our decisions could or would be impacting people on the ground with lived experience with disabilities. They were just invaluable in terms of the advice they gave and the issues we were able to address.

In partnership with the disability community, they provided advice and expertise to other government departments, such as Public Health, Public Safety, VAC, and ESDC. For example, they identified provincial issues, and that let me and other cabinet colleagues bring forward these issues to our PT colleagues.

We signed a UN statement saying that we would take a disability-inclusive approach, which was signed by over 100 countries. Of course, their effort and their advice resulted in the one-time payment of $600 to over 1.6 million Canadians. They said we needed more employment supports as people transitioned to working at home, so we created the workplace accessibility stream of the opportunities fund. Quite frankly, across the board we were able to understand the impacts that anything we were doing would have on this particularly vulnerable population.

I think, quite frankly, that the way we handled the pandemic will be a baseline for emergency response in the future. No government of Canada will ever go back to not being disability-inclusive.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Thank you for that. I really appreciate the commitment to building lived experience into everything we're doing and seeing how a disability-inclusive approach can cut across all programming and all supports and all services as a lens that we look through. I really appreciate your leadership on that.

I've heard from constituents, and I certainly agree with them—and I'm sure you agree—that we need to do more to support persons with disabilities. As you know, Minister, in my riding I have the world-renowned Abilities Centre, which is a massive organization that sees itself as an inclusion incubator. They're doing all kinds of great work right here in Whitby.

The government has committed to a disability inclusion plan. Can you tell us how the plan will address certain challenges that persons with disabilities have faced, and particularly those that they've faced during the pandemic?

I really feel passionate about this. I know my constituents do, too, so any more information on that would be helpful.

[Carla Qualtrough, Liberal, Delta, BC]

Thank you for the question. I give a big shout-out to the Abilities Centre in Whitby. It's a fantastic organization and facility.

Again, with the Accessible Canada Act as a backdrop, and now having the experience of the pandemic and the CDAG, we're moving very quickly to act. That's why we did announce that we would be creating this disability inclusion action plan, because we know that many Canadians with disabilities live in poverty, are unemployed or precariously employed, and lack the supports they need.

It will include, as I said in my opening remarks, a robust employment strategy, meaning we'll support workers and entrepreneurs with disabilities. We'll work with employers to be more disability-inclusive and confident and to understand the business case for disability inclusion.

It will also include the Canada disability benefit, which is a direct income supplement for low-income working-age Canadians with disabilities, modelled after the GIS, aimed at improving financial independence and security.

Finally, and perhaps most generationally impactful, it will include a modernization of how the Government of Canada assesses eligibility for disability-related programs so that we ensure that the challenges we faced in delivering the one-time COVID payment do not occur again. Honestly, it's well overdue to have a more dignified way of assessing disability and to be able to communicate directly with Canadians with disabilities.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

It's very exciting. Thank you for that update.

I'll shift with my last minute or so to a question about the Canada summer jobs program. I met with an organization in my riding today called Nova's Ark. They're doing programming for children, youth and adults with exceptionalities. [Technical difficulty—Editor] offer really great outdoor programming, including animal therapy and all kinds of “out of the box” programming, as they call it. It's a wonderful space and facility. They rely heavily on the Canada summer jobs program, and they've said that they really believe in this program and how much it supports them, but they really want to see the flexibilities in that program that we introduced during COVID-19 continue.

Is there any plan for those flexibilities to be continued?

[Carla Qualtrough, Liberal, Delta, BC]

The quick answer is yes. In fact, we've kept the flexibilities, recognizing how helpful and how much more adaptive they could make these employment experiences if they could make them part-time, if the number of weeks could be longer. Some of the jobs we're funding to 100%, which is really important.

As I said in my remarks, we're kind of doubling down. Last year we funded 80,000 jobs. This year we're funding 120,000 jobs. It is a real cornerstone piece of our youth employment and skills strategy. Employers love it. Young people love it. MPs love it. It really has a great track record.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Definitely. Thank you so much, Minister.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Thank you, Mr. Turnbull.

Ms. Chabot, you have six minutes.

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

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Madam Minister. It's good to see you again. You've made yourself very available to the committee. I commend you for that.

You won't be surprised that I want to talk to you about employment insurance. You talked about the many measures that have been put in place—I won't list them all—to meet the needs of workers. Now, we know that all of these measures are temporary and that they will end in September, in six months.

With respect to the 2021-22 budget, how did you plan your requests for additional appropriations to accommodate this? On what basis did you make your requests? Are these permanent measures starting in September? Will there be enhanced employment insurance measures, measures that take into account the fact that sickness benefits will be increased?

How have you prepared your credits for this reality?

[Carla Qualtrough, Liberal, Delta, BC]

Thank you for your question, which is very important.

Employment insurance appropriations and planning are very complicated. It's very important to have the exact amounts.

So I will ask Mr. Flack or Mr. Perlman to give you the exact amounts.

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

Madam Minister, with all due respect, I am not looking for the amounts, but rather for the basis on which you prepared them.

More clearly, have you estimated that as of September 2021, it will be the status quo EI rules that will apply?

[Carla Qualtrough, Liberal, Delta, BC]

I'm sorry. I understand now.

We will use the amounts and the flexibility until September, and then we will go back to the pre-pandemic system. We have not yet decided to change the system in September. At least that is my understanding, and I would like Mr. Perlman to correct me if I don't have the correct information. We have not made a decision on what to do next.

[Graham Flack]

I can do it, Minister.

It's just that the estimated numbers that are in front of you reflect decisions that have already been made by the government [Technical difficulty—Editor]. They don't take into account decisions that might be made in a subsequent budget. The numbers before you do not take into account potential additional measures.

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

If I understand correctly, as of September 25, it will be the pre-pandemic system for both the sickness benefits that were to be increased and the regular benefits. That's clear. Everything has to be done by September 25.

My second question is going to be about the Canada summer jobs program. Since this is a very important program, do you have any additional money or appropriations or indexing of money from previous years for this program?

I'll tell you why. We are already seeing an increase in applications among applicant agencies for a very simple reason. Because of the health measures and rules that they have to respect, it takes more people to meet the same needs, whether it is for festivals, summer day camps or youth activities in community groups. Consequently, the Canada summer jobs budget would have to be increased significantly. Is this planned?

[Carla Qualtrough, Liberal, Delta, BC]

Yes. We have decided to provide more jobs for young people. Mr. Perlman can verify that as well, but I believe we earmarked $420,900,000 in 2021-22. Is that correct, Mr. Perlman?