Human Resources Committee on March 3rd, 2022

[Rachel Wernick]

Okay.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Ms. Chabot, you have the floor.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses.

This is a very important issue. Thank you for your documents and some of the statistics. I have a question on that very subject.

How do you collect data on labour shortages, both nationally and regionally?

I'm trying to understand, but I don't want to make my question too complex.

In terms of labour, there are structural shortages, which arise from an imbalance between the number of trained people and the demand in the labour market, and there are organizational shortages, which are linked to the organization of work.

I am trying to properly understand your statistics. For example, there are job titles that don't match from province to province, such as care support workers; in Quebec, they use other designations.

How do you collate the data to ensure you have the right numbers?

[Pierre Therrien]

In terms of how the data is collected, the first thing to understand is that Statistics Canada is a very important source of information when it comes to job vacancies. That said, a vacancy does not necessarily mean that there is a shortage. Statistics Canada carried out a census of employers to find out how many vacancies there were in the country. It is normal to have vacancies. They may indicate that a business is growing, that employees are retiring and that staff needs to be hired.

Currently, the number of vacancies is a little bit higher than it was before the pandemic, as you have seen.

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

Thank you.

I appreciate the nuance; indeed, vacancies do not necessarily indicate a labour shortage.

I have a few examples to give. In Quebec, full-time nursing positions are vacant, because there are people who don't want to take full-time jobs for all sorts of reasons.

On the other hand, in Quebec, there is Opération main-d'oeuvre for priority sectors. The Minister of Labour and the government of Quebec have invested $3.9 billion over five years to achieve the objectives of attracting, training and requalifying the workforce, in the care economy, as you call it, as well as in information technology, engineering and construction.

Are there examples of similar measures being put in place by other provinces? You mentioned that labour is a provincial jurisdiction. Could we have some data?

[Rachel Wernick]

I have a few examples of work in provinces. The Government of Canada transfers approximately $3 billion to provinces through the labour market transfer agreements, and with that funding we know we have had reports of several different projects related to health care. For example, there is work in New Brunswick on personal support workers where they use the funding to pay tuition for training seats. There is work in Prince Edward Island that is focused on increasing the number of licensed practical nurses and resident care workers. There is a two-year pilot in Alberta, where they are offering a pathway of English as a second language for health care aides. In Ontario there is a virtual training program in the long-term care sector. Those are some of the examples we know about of programming in this area that was funded in provinces through the federal labour market transfer agreements.

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

In Quebec, educational child care services are much broader than day care. It takes training and certain qualifications to get a position as an educator.

So when you say there is a shortage in this sector, are you comparing the same type of job? Qualifications may be different from one location to the next.

I wonder if we are comparing comparable data.

[Rachel Wernick]

Yes, I can give you the example of orderlies, because that's what I was going to say in the other answer.

We know that there are 20 positions with different names in this type of work, which require different certifications and training and for which standards are different as well.

One of the things the pilot project was looking at was how to achieve better commonality in the training and the standards for personal support workers.

I'll turn to my colleague Karen Hall if she wants to speak more specifically to that issue with respect to child care workers.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Madam Wernick, we're out of time. You will have to address that information in a subsequent question.

We will now go to Madam Zarrillo for six minutes.

[Bonita Zarrillo, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you so much for the presentation. I did want to start with some hopeful news today for youth. The biggest portion of new employees are youth, and I just wanted to ask some questions on that. Many of my questions today are going to gendered, because work is very gendered. I'm hoping that, through this study in this committee, we can remove some of the stigmas that go along with gendered work.

For the youth, are there federal strategies for women and under-represented youth, including youth with disabilities, that are already in place? Are there some strategies?

[Rachel Wernick]

There are several programs. For youth, we have the youth employment and skills strategy, which is actually delivered by 12 different federal departments. It has a primary focus on reaching youth who are under-represented in the labour market and providing them the additional supports required to successfully secure and sustain good jobs.

We also have a student work placement program, which helps students find work placements in their fields of study, and we prioritize youth who are under-represented in the labour market for that program as well.

With respect to women, we have launched a women's employment readiness pilot program to really explore and better understand what women from different backgrounds require as tailored supports—racialized indigenous women, women with disabilities, women from the LGBTQ2+ community. That's another area of focus.

Finally, you spoke of youth with disabilities. Youth with disabilities are a primary recipient of our opportunities fund for persons with disabilities, which provides pre-employment supports training to youth with disabilities but also works with employers to create accessible, inclusive workplaces and hire more youth with disabilities.

[Bonita Zarrillo, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

Just to follow up on that, are there data and disaggregated data collected on those programs to understand which industries, which channels—potentially gendered, age and race—are picking up in those programs?

[Rachel Wernick]

We do have some disaggregated data. I will be frank that some of the programs have better data than others, but we could provide in writing what demographic data we have on clients for our programs.

[Bonita Zarrillo, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

Thank you.

I have one other question on youth before I move on to the difficulty keeping skilled people. I want to ask about housing. What I'm hearing for those who work with personal support workers and those in the care economy, even not-for-profits, they're having a very hard time finding workers because of the housing crisis. Is there any data correlations made between labour markets and house prices focused on youth? It's for everyone, but is there data around youth, the labour market and housing?

[Rachel Wernick]

The subject that you are pursuing of course is very vast. There is research that shows that there are systemic barriers that impact people's success in the labour market in acquiring and keeping jobs, which range from adequate housing to child care to access to transportation. There are different barriers that can definitely impact the ability of youth in that sense specifically.

Again, we are from the department on workforce development. We would work with some other departments to pull together some of that research on housing and its impacts on employment if the committee was interested.

[Bonita Zarrillo, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

I'm just interested in whether you choose a career or a job because, as you said, you're close to transit or you happen to live in a place that has a hospital or child care facility nearby.

I'm going to move on to the difficulty keeping skilled workers due to poor working conditions. Again, this is a data question. Is there additional data or information on some of these problematic working conditions, and is there some disaggregated data, again, on that thinking about how work is so gendered?

[Rachel Wernick]

I can start, and then Pierre and Philippe may want to add something on the data sources. They are the data experts.

We have seen a wage stagnation in Canada, but it is starting to improve. Over the last two years, due to the impact of the pandemic, employers have increased wages in many occupations where labour shortages continue to be an issue—

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Madam Wernick, could you hold for a moment?

[Rachel Wernick]

I'm sorry. Somebody is—

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Yes. Do we have that cleared?

Continue, Madam Wernick, and we'll let you answer that question in full.

[Rachel Wernick]

I'll pass it over to Pierre, because I think the member is interested in the different data sources.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Please keep your remarks short.

[Pierre Therrien]

Yes, I will just say that this is an important question. I'll go back to what I said before about the labour force survey, which has good data.

The last budget provided additional money for Statistics Canada to provide more disaggregated data, so those are coming. They are in the process. We don't have all of this data yet, but I know that Statistics Canada is working quite closely with the provinces, and so on and so forth, to get better gendered and also disaggregated data.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Mr. Therrien.

Now, Mr. Ruff, you have five minutes.

[Alex Ruff, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for coming.

I represent Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, a very rural riding in Ontario with a very aging demographic. I think I have the second-oldest demographic in the province of Ontario.

The labour shortage is huge. It's the biggest thing I heard throughout the most recent federal election. It doesn't matter what sector. I'm hearing it from my farmers, the agricultural sectors and the food processors like Exceldor and Maple Leaf Foods in my riding. The Wood Manufacturing Cluster of Ontario has reached out to me. As for the auto industry, you can't even get a mechanic. They're robbing Peter to pay Paul. As well, the PSWs and the health care sector.... Everybody is hurting, and you can understand why.

One of the issues they've all reached out about and that has been a common thread across all sectors is the need to augment and do an emergency temporary foreign worker program. As such, I'd like feedback from the witnesses on the viability of this as a recommendation. If a specific industry experiences a job vacancy rate of over 5%, would it be viable to remove the requirement for a labour market impact assessment, an LMIA, to hire temporary foreign workers?

Then, when that vacancy rate drops back under 5% for six consecutive months, that LMIA could be reinstated. Can you give any feedback?