Human Resources Committee on March 28th, 2022

[Josée Bégin]

I will turn to my colleague Vincent to see if he has anything to add.

[Vincent Dale]

Maybe I'll take a step back and explain the data that Madame Bégin just referred to as new data that we've developed in the past several months using the labour force survey, but also additional information we had collected that allowed us to identify people with disabilities.

Traditionally in Canada we've relied on the census of population and the Canadian disability survey to measure labour market conditions for people with disabilities. We have enhanced the labour force survey to start to include statistics on people with disabilities. Unfortunately, that data is very fresh, it's very new, and we don't yet have a trend to be able to speak to exactly the medium-term or even the longer-term dynamics.

One thing maybe I'll mention is that the short analysis we did publish recently pointed to the very dynamic nature of disability itself. We saw, for example, an increase in the number of people reporting disabilities in the labour force over the pandemic period, especially people with mental health disabilities.

One of the challenges in responding to your question is that the group of people with disabilities is not a stable group. It in fact changes, so I would invite you to think of a dynamic situation where disabled people are becoming employed or unemployed. However, employed people are also becoming disabled or not disabled. It's quite challenging to separate those factors, especially for very specific periods of time or very specific geographies.

Now, having said all that, we will pull together some analysis for you and do the very best we can to respond to your specific question.

[Tony Van Bynen, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Okay. I'd like to shift very quickly from the trailing indicators to leading indicators.

During her appearance before the committee on March 3, Leah Nord of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce called for the federal government to play a leadership role in facilitating, convening and funding efforts to improve labour market information for analysis purposes for demand-side workforce planning for key professions and sectors in the economy.

What kind of labour market information does Statistics Canada currently collect? To what extent have you been able to engage with businesses to look at the labour force demand management?

We'll start with Ms. Bégin.

[Josée Bégin]

Mr. Chair, I thank the member for his question.

As my colleague Mr. Dale mentioned earlier, Statistics Canada collects a variety of labour market indicators that we need to look at together to fully understand the nature or the dynamics of the labour market at a specific time of the year.

For example, we collect labour market information through the census and the Labour Force Survey. We also collect information on employment insurance benefits, earnings from businesses, and job vacancies. The Job Vacancy and Wage Survey, which my colleague alluded to earlier, covers about 100,000 businesses in Canada every month and every quarter, which means it's a broad survey.

Your question also touched on Statistics Canada's relationship with business. Over the last few years, Statistics Canada has done a lot of work in terms of its outreach activities, namely with the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, to build relationships and to understand the challenges that businesses are facing, whether they are related to the labour market or the pandemic, among other things.

For our part, in terms of labour market indicators, we also participated in these discussions in order to improve our understanding of the required and relevant indicators that would help companies better understand the labour market they are dealing with.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Ms. Bégin.

Your time is up, Mr. Van Bynen.

Mr. Collins' is up too.

Now we go to Madame Chabot for six minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all the witnesses for their presence and testimony today.

I have several questions for Statistics Canada officials.

Ms. Bégin and Mr. Dale, thank you for being here. Either one of you can answer me.

First of all, Mr. Dale, I appreciated your comment. It is something we should also think about when we talk about job vacancies. There cannot be a single explanation for the notion of vacancies or for labour shortages, because they can be either structural or organizational for various reasons. Even if there are overall statistics, the means and solutions cannot, in our opinion, be the same for each activity sector. Your research is important.

Ms. Bégin, in the second paragraph of your presentation, it reads: “Job vacancies in the fourth quarter rose 80% compared with pre-pandemic levels, reflecting broad based increases across [...] industrial sectors.”

Do you have disaggregated data to share with us?

You mention an overall increase of 80%, but which industrial sectors are you talking about?

Do you have data broken down by province or territory?

[Josée Bégin]

Mr. Chair, I thank the member for her question.

Yes, we do have the data broken down by province, but also by industry sector. I don't have the information with me today, but Statistics Canada will be able to provide detailed information after this meeting that compares the most recent data we've published with pre-pandemic data from the beginning of 2020.

Thank you.

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

Thank you.

Without going so far to say that it shocked me, one point in your presentation raised questions. You said that by the end of 2021, 10% of workers with a high school diploma or less were in skilled jobs, as they are sometimes called in the jargon of the world of work, meaning university-level jobs.

Can you tell us which specific areas or sectors of activity are affected?

In Quebec, when we look at the overall employment situation, we see that skilled jobs account for the largest number of job openings.

Is what you're saying a response to that?

[Josée Bégin]

Mr. Chair, I will turn to my colleague, Mr. Dale, who led this part of the analysis published by Statistics Canada.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Is somebody following up on Madame Chabot's question?

[Vincent Dale]

I'm sorry; I forgot to unmute, and I hope I'm following the right protocol by responding in English on the right channel.

We will have a look at our ability to break down that observation by province and by industrial sector. Often what we do in our analysis is to look at national level findings as signals or indications of what's happening in the broader labour market. It's not always possible, because of sample sizes, to break those types of observations into smaller groups, but we'll do our best and reply back to the committee with as much detail as we can.

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

If I may, my question was those with a high school education or less who are in jobs that require a university education.

Do you know what particular sector this applies to?

[Vincent Dale]

I'm sorry, I don't have that information offhand. We would have to go back and look at it.

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

I understand. You're saying that it's possible to obtain this information, yes?

[Vincent Dale]

The only constraint on sharing that information with you is the sample size, the number of observations that we have. Beyond that, we'd be happy to give you as much detail as we can.

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

Very well.

I have one last question, Mr. Chair.

Regarding the higher proportion of Black and Filipino people among care workers, is it possible to get that information broken down?

When you talk about care assistants, we would like to know exactly what you mean, because there are many designations. In Quebec, for example, orderlies have qualified training. Does this mean that there are Black and Filipino workers in those positions without qualified training? Can we have more information in writing for these questions?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

We would ask the witness to provide that information to the committee in writing. It's a detailed question, so could you follow up with a detailed answer to the committee?

Now, we go to Madame Zarrillo for six minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all the witnesses today. I want to go to Ms. Lightman about her research that really exposes the exploitation of and the discrimination against personal support workers in long-term care. I want to ask a few more questions or hear more about the challenges these workers find themselves in.

You mentioned that many of them have credentials but they are not able to realize work that accepts those credentials, so could I have a little bit more information on the challenges of having credentials recognized and the limitations that keep them in these precarious jobs?

[Naomi Lightman]

As stated, we know that there is vast overqualification of immigrant women working as personal support workers in long-term care. Some figures estimate as many as 44% of caregivers worked as nurses prior to migrating to Canada and, according to a Statistics Canada report, 67% of nursing graduates from the Philippines are considered to be overqualified for their current jobs.

Based on the research that I've done in trying to unpack this labour market mismatch, we know that the process of transferring credentials needs to be accelerated. It needs to be faster, it needs to be easier and it needs to be more affordable. Many of these women are sending remittances to their home countries, are working multiple part-time jobs to make ends meet and are supporting families, and the current process does not allow them the time or the financial means to go about upgrading their skills. This leads to quantifiable downward labour market mobility relative to other workers, as well as being stuck in precarious working conditions.

I think there's a lot of work to be done to reduce the barriers these women experience to their working in the jobs for which they were trained in their home countries.

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

Thank you, Ms. Lightman.

I also want to touch on the points you made about systematic exclusion from decision-making and also the lack of mental health support. I really want to understand if there any types of supports for these women and these workers who have precarious immigration status as well. They're tied to these jobs, but do they have the ability to speak out or are there repercussions? Do they fear repercussions from speaking out based on the precarious nature of their work, and even as it relates to mental health support or family support that isn't available to them, are they concerned about their loss of status or work by speaking out?

[Sarah Watts-Rynard]

Absolutely.

I think the intersection of precarious work and precarious immigration status leads to highly vulnerable working conditions for these women. The pandemic has really exacerbated the physical and mental health challenges of these jobs.

The women I spoke to talked about increasing demands on the job due to the pandemic, heightened levels of stress tied to fears of becoming personally infected with the virus or fears of infecting their family and their children, and overwhelming feelings of loss and helplessness as a result of watching long-term care residents die of COVID-19 in large numbers.

Many of the jobs they're working on do not have supplementary health insurance, meaning they're often having to pay out of their own pocket for any physical or mental health supports they need on top of basic services. Especially for these jobs that we know are very much on the front line and that we see as being essential services and sort of valorize in the language we use, there's a need for more structural physical and mental health supports. These are also very physically demanding jobs.

To speak to the second part of your question.... I'm sorry. Can you remind me? You spoke of mental health. What was the other component?

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

It was just that they couldn't speak out because their immigration status was tied to a job, and if they were to speak out, they'd lose the job and their status.

[Sarah Watts-Rynard]

That's certainly true for those who are waiting for permanent residency through the caregiver program, but even for those who do have permanent resident status, there's a very top-down decision-making structure within many health care institutions.

Those who are personal support workers or health care aides, certainly from the research I've done, do not feel they're in a place to speak out in terms of their thoughts about what could make the system work better. Certainly those in publicly funded and unionized work environments felt more free to speak up, but the overwhelming trend I saw was of workers who felt that, even as they saw institutional mismanagement, not enough PPE and very low staff-to-resident ratios, they had a limited voice to speak up.

I think that's a space where we need to include their voices in the decision-making processes going forward as we rethink our long-term care institutions in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

A short question and a short answer, Madam Zarrillo.

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

Thank you for that.

This is a question for Stats Canada.

There's a saying that you can't improve what you don't measure, and I note that Ms. Nord from the Chamber of Commerce said in her testimony:

I can tell you the age distribution of the construction workforce. I can tell you how many women, indigenous peoples and new Canadians work in the trade. I can even break these numbers down by jurisdiction.

The same can't be said for the care economy. Why don't we capture this over-indexed women's work? Are there plans in place to start measuring the care economy in a greater and more granular way?