Human Resources Committee on April 25th, 2022

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to direct my question to the chamber of commerce, but before I do so, I wonder if Ms. Black would be prepared to share the report and the analysis that she referred to so that we could have a look at the report in full detail.

[Georgina Black]

Are you referring to Canada's ranking within the OECD countries?

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

You mentioned a report that came out of your research. I think the title was “catalyst for change”.

[Georgina Black]

Yes, we can share the “Catalyst” report with you.

We also have one on aged care, which addresses many of the issues. We'll send those along. Thank you.

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

Great. Thank you very much.

My question then will go to the chamber of commerce.

First and foremost, let me say that our local chambers of commerce have been invaluable resources to many small businesses, particularly during this past pandemic. They've been able to organize subject matter experts to advise their members as support programs were introduced, and even when they were updated. They've been a very important bridge to small and medium-sized enterprises that don't have the resources of larger multinational organizations, but these SMEs do create a large percentage of new jobs with the widest range of skill set requirements.

My question to the chamber, to whoever wants to respond, is this: Where do you see the biggest gaps in labour shortages from a small business perspective? What kinds of programs should be expanded, introduced or changed to resolve some of these issues?

Could someone from the chamber respond to that, please?

[Daniel Safayeni]

I'll take a stab at that first, and Michelle, please feel free to jump in as well.

We'd be happy to provide the committee with our latest “Ontario Economic Report”, which provides a sector-by-sector breakdown of labour shortages within the province, both by sector and more specifically by region beyond that as well.

Unfortunately, it's not a very tight answer, because what we're experiencing is that certainly some of the usual suspects are disproportionately being affected by skilled trades, such as construction sectors or anything that has required hand-to-hand contact in the service industry, including restaurants, food and accommodations. These industries are being disproportionately impacted by it. We do have a report that outlines this, and we would be happy to provide that to the committee.

As a few points on the solution front, number one, I think, is appreciating that there isn't going to be a one-size-fits-all approach, as we're finding out here. Labour strategies that are going to address this need to be sector-specific and also, ideally, regionally targeted.

Certainly a number of the training and retraining programs that both the provincial and federal governments have rolled out have been enormously helpful. The tax credits for on-the-job training are particularly helpful for those smaller organizations that might not be able to compete with larger multinational firms in terms of talent attraction and retraining.

Also, we need to be amenable to a constant feedback loop. We're at a time right now in which a number of the federal government's supports are being wound down, so it's important for us to take stock of which programs have been the most helpful in filling some of these talent gaps and perhaps double down on them in a thoughtful way that addresses the unique concerns of sector A versus sector B. Talent attraction might look very different in each, and, therefore, the solution is going to look very different for those sectors.

[Michelle Eaton, Vice-President, Public Affairs, Ontario Chamber of Commerce]

I'm Michelle Eaton. I'm the vice-president of public affairs at the Ontario Chamber of Commerce.

I want to go back to the labour market information gap, because what we really need—as I'm sure you've heard from other witnesses—is labour market information analysis and demand-side workforce planning for key professionals in the care economy. An example is early child care educators, because that can play an enormous role when we look at these efforts.

Two other reports from the Ontario Chamber of Commerce that I think would be great for this committee to look at would be “The She-Covery Project: Confronting the Gendered Economic Impacts of COVID-19 in Ontario” and “Realizing the Full Potential of Virtual Care in Ontario”. We have various policy councils that do some incredible work looking at some of the issues you are working on. We would be happy to share those with the committee.

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

I would appreciate receiving those reports as well.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you.

There are only a few seconds left, so we will end the first panel in today's committee meeting.

Thank you, Mr. Van Bynen.

Thank you to the witnesses for appearing today on this very important study and providing the detailed information that you did.

We will now suspend for a few minutes while we set up for the next hour. I want to maintain maximum time for the minister and department staff.

Thank you, witnesses. We will suspend for a few minutes while we change.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Committee members, we will now resume the second hour of the committee meeting today, welcoming back committee members on this study on the care economy.

I've reviewed the procedures you should be following during the committee hearing. If you lose translation, please let me know, and please follow the health protocols in place. I remind members and witnesses to speak slowly for the benefit of the interpreters. That would be great.

At this time, I would like to welcome back Minister Qualtrough.

Minister, it's good to have you back before the committee, as well as your department officials. They have all introduced themselves, so I'm not going to repeat that.

We will move directly to hearing from the minister for five minutes.

Madam Minister, you have the floor.

[Carla Qualtrough, Liberal, Minister of Employment]

Hi, everyone.

Mr. Chair and members of the committee, thank you for inviting me to appear here today.

I'll begin by mentioning that I am joining you from the territory of the Musqueam and Tsawwassen First Nations.

I also want to recognize our care economy workers, from doctors and nurses to personal support workers and child care workers, to those who take care of our family members at home. They have worked non-stop over the last two years, repeatedly putting themselves at risk to care for others. For the hours they worked, the lives they saved and the people they cared for, we will never be able to adequately thank them.

I also want to thank our colleague, Bonita Zarrillo, for this motion to study this important topic.

Our government is steadfast in its support for Canada's caregivers. We are committed to growing this workforce to ensure that workers are skilled, jobs are filled and every Canadian has the very best care.

I know the committee has heard from an extensive list of witnesses and I commend you on your work. I look forward to your report.

Today I am going to focus on the care economy and share what we are doing to address labour shortages more generally.

At this time last year, my focus was on finding jobs for workers, but these days my focus is on finding workers for jobs. Canada has record low unemployment levels, with growth in many sectors outpacing employers' abilities to find workers. Canada's care sector is one of many that are facing labour shortages.

Our plan to address labour shortages includes investing in the next generation of Canadian workers, helping workers upskill to a changing labour market, maximizing workforce participation, welcoming talent from around the world and addressing the needs of specific sectors, and of course the care sector will benefit from each of these approaches.

Investing in the next generation of workers means supporting students and apprentices and creating first work experiences. Specific to the care economy, we know that many young doctors and nurses graduate with significant student loans to pay off. We also know that Canada's more rural and remote areas don't attract medical professionals as our urban centres to. Therefore, in budget 2022 we are proposing an investment of $26.2 million over five years to increase the forgivable amount of student loans for doctors and nurses who practise in rural and remote communities.

In addition, the government will expand the current list of eligible professionals under the program and review the definition of “rural communities”. In 2019-20, nearly 5,500 doctors and nurses benefited from the loan forgiveness program, and with expanded eligibility, this is only expected to grow.

With respect to skills training, we are working with employers, unions and the provinces and territories to make training accessible for all workers and to help workers stay in the workforce longer.

Every year, the federal government invests more than $3 billion in funding so that provinces and territories can provide training and employment support through the labour market transfer agreements. These investments help more than one million Canadians each year to prepare for their next job through programs ranging from skills training and wage subsidies to career counselling and job search assistance. We are going to renew this partnership with provinces and territories so that we can be more responsive to the needs of workers, businesses and the economy.

In budget 2022, we are proposing to amend Part II of the Employment Insurance Act so more workers are eligible for help before they become unemployed, and employers can receive direct support to re-train their existing workers.

That builds upon work which is already under way. During the pandemic, we partnered with Colleges and Institutes Canada to provide free, accelerated training to 2,600 supportive care assistants. This project offers a career pathway to become fully certified personal care workers, and provides much needed support to long‑term care staff, as they receive training on the job.

Maximizing workforce participation is accessing untapped labour pools and removing the barriers that restrict workforce participation for many historically marginalized or disadvantaged groups. It is about making our workforce more diverse and inclusive.

One such example is persons with disabilities. The more than six million Canadians aged 15 and over that identify as having a disability represent a huge untapped labour pool. Despite many being able to work and wanting to work, employment rates for persons with disabilities are much lower than those of Canadians without disabilities, at 59% versus 80%. We aim to change this. Budget 2022 proposes to provide $272.6 million over five years to support the implementation of the employment strategy for persons with disabilities through the opportunities fund.

As we tap into the talent pools that are within Canada, we also recognize the imperative of attracting workers to Canada and supporting them to efficiently integrate into the labour market. It is also about having a fair and balanced temporary foreign worker program.

For example, internationally educated health professionals too often face challenges in getting their credentials recognized in Canada, so we're investing in projects that will help them put their education and skills to work sooner in caring for Canadians. Budget 2022 proposes to provide $115 million over five years, with $30 million ongoing, to expand the foreign credential recognition program and help up to 11,000 skilled newcomers per year get their credentials recognized and find work in their field. The program will continue to focus its efforts on supporting internationally educated health professionals to help build a strong, resilient workforce in Canada's health care sector.

We are also modernizing the temporary foreign workers program. We recently introduced more flexibility into the program to help employers access workers more quickly and in a way that meets their needs. What's more, budget 2022 set aside funding to establish a trusted employer program and to create a new agriculture and food processors stream to the program.

Finally, we need to develop talent for emerging sectors and industries and find sector-specific workforce and labour shortage solutions.

Specific to the care sector, we recently launched a call for proposals under the new sectoral workforce solutions program. Investing in the health care sector was a top priority for this call. We look forward to finding projects to help address challenges in the sector, including labour mobility, mental health needs of the workforce and integration of internationally trained health professionals.

Mr. Chair, colleagues, our focus and investments are about making sure that the care sector has all of the support and human resources it needs to be the best it can be and that we are addressing labour shortages with historic investments in people. We're going to continue these efforts.

Thank you. I look forward to your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Madam Minister.

We'll now open the floor to questions, beginning with Mrs. Kusie for six minutes.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Thank you very much, Minister. It's always a pleasure to see you.

I wish your family health. I hope that everyone recovers soon. My family went through the same thing over the holidays.

I have just a couple of things before I get to my questioning.

I thank Member Zarrillo for presenting this motion, but I would also like to point out that I believe all of the opposition parties were united in the idea of a labour shortage study.

That includes the Bloc Québécois.

Certainly Ms. Zarrillo added the nuance of the care economy, but I think everyone was eagerly interested in studying the labour shortage.

Secondly, to your comment about how last year you were focused on finding jobs, unfortunately, this is part of the reason we find ourselves in the labour shortage situation now. It's my belief, backed up by the economist from your department, that the number of increased jobs we saw—what was previously the one million talked about by the government—was really the natural recovery of the pandemic as people went back to work. Nonetheless it has occurred, and that's a good thing.

That brings us back to the main issue of the day, which is the labour shortage. Many of the items you talked about in your opening statement are items you put in place both within budget 2022 as well as previously. To outline, some of those were the new foreign labour program specifically for agriculture and fish processing. Of course, one can't mention that without recognizing the Auditor General's report, which indicated that working conditions for temporary foreign workers in both agriculture and fish processing were not upheld. Unfortunately, we didn't really have an opportunity to discuss that here.

In addition, the LMIA stipulation that you put in, increasing the validity of the LMIAs, I think was very good. I also have that you referred to the temporary foreign worker program workforce solutions road map. You mentioned some of these items, such as making the seasonal cap exemption permanent. I mentioned previously longer validity for labour market impact assessments, as well as the removal of the 6% refusal to process policy.

What I'm seeing repeatedly, and what was brought up in the last hour by a witness from the Ontario Chamber of Commerce specifically, is that these initiatives by your department, and certainly you and your department are to be commended on these things.... However, the overarching theme is that, despite more budget and program allocations toward these problems, the solutions are not being found, and the overarching problem is with backlogs of immigration processing.

My first question would be, how are you working with and encouraging the Minister of Immigration to process these backlogs? It just seems to me that almost every single program you mentioned that is implemented or brought forward to solve the labour shortage is not being addressed as a result of these immigration backlogs. What are you doing together, please, in an effort to resolve that? Really, all of your suggestions hinge upon the resolution of the backlogs.

[Carla Qualtrough, Liberal, Delta, BC]

Of course, when it comes to the temporary foreign worker program, there is a partnership between the LMIA process and the processing of the visa. ESDC and IRCC work in close collaboration to make sure the timing for processing on both sides, the LMIA and the visa, is as quick as possible. There are massive backlogs that are being addressed.

I apologize. I have the LMIA data, but I don't have the immigration data in front of me. However, I can assure you that it is an all-hands-on-deck effort at IRCC. There were significant investments made in both budget 2021 and 2022 to increase the capacity to address these backlogs quicker, but I hear you.

What I will say, though, is that some of the measures we put in place in the workforce solutions road map will help to address that, by increasing the validity of an LMIA period, which was originally a six-month stay, to 18 months, for example. That means that an employer doesn't have to apply two or three times during the same period as historically they had to. They only have to go through the process once, so that reduces, theoretically, the number of applications.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Thank you, Minister.

I just want to get in one more question. In budget 2022, you announced a union-led advisory table on the changing labour market. I would like for you to address, please, to all of our industry stakeholders, why you are not including them in this advisory table on the labour market.

[Carla Qualtrough, Liberal, Delta, BC]

Certainly we're still working on the specifics of that advisory table. The purpose of that is to look at issues related to labour. That doesn't in any way preclude conversations and the great partnerships we have with industry. We're working on what the composition of that group should be and are very mindful of the need to have all voices at the table when we talk about labour shortages.

Specifically, talking with unions about labour needs is important, and I can assure industry—I think we have a pretty good relationship with industry associations—that their voices are also being heard and being reflected as we build processes and structures to address labour shortages.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Ms. Kusie.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Ms. Martinez Ferrada, you have the floor.

[Soraya Martinez Ferrada, Liberal, Hochelaga, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Qualtrough, thank you for being here today.

I know how seriously you take the cause of people with disabilities, including physical disabilities. In my riding, for example, we have the Quebec Foundation for the Blind. The Government does very important work in terms of funding, especially to support growing and flourishing organizations, like the Quebec Foundation for the Blind.

Can you tell us about funding programs for people with disabilities, and explain how that relates to the care economy?

[Carla Qualtrough, Liberal, Delta, BC]

Thank you for the question.

It's a kind of three-pronged approach when we're dealing with supporting persons with disabilities in employment. We provide targeted funding, so that would be the employment strategy that was recently announced in the budget. That's obviously a key pillar of our disability inclusion action plan and our $272-million commitment, through the opportunities fund, to provide targeted employment opportunities and supports for persons with disabilities.

It's also ensuring that persons with disabilities have access to our broader skills training and employment opportunity program, so we're baking in disability inclusion into these broader programs. One example would be the skills for success program, but I could name 10 others. We really are ensuring that people with disabilities are specifically mentioned under these programs.

Then there are broader efforts to remove barriers to workforce participation globally, such as the enabling accessibility fund to make sure that people can get into buildings because then they can work there. We're investing in child care that is inclusive so that kids with disabilities have a place to go and parents with disabilities have a place to go, as well as in housing and transit.

It's really about taking a system-wide approach to programming that is targeted, broad-based and removes barriers to participation.

[Soraya Martinez Ferrada, Liberal, Hochelaga, QC]

Thank you, Minister.

Mr. Chair, I don't know how much time I have left, but I'd like to share my remaining time with my colleague Mr. Long.

Minister, could you quickly explain to us how women fit into the current labour shortage context, and how that relates to the care economy? How can we ensure, through existing government programs, that women are better supported in the care economy?

[Carla Qualtrough, Liberal, Delta, BC]

It's the same approach is what I would say.

Of course, you've all heard me say that women were both frontlined and sidelined during this pandemic. Women, who are more precariously employed, were the first to lose their jobs. They were on the front lines fighting the pandemic.

Again, it's specific, targeted programming, such as our women's employment readiness program, which helps women and provides supports specifically focused on the needs of women, to reduce the barriers to employment and get them the skills and opportunities they need. It's also providing wraparound supports within our programs. If you look at our sectoral workforce solutions program, for example, if an organization receives money for training, they have to provide wraparound supports for women. That could include accommodation, transportation and child care.

Then finally, it's the big bucket of addressing structural, social and more systemic barriers, and the big one there is child care. Women now, with our child care agreements in place with all the provinces and territories, have a real choice about returning to work. That's unlocking the economic potential of half of our population. Again, it's this three-pronged approach: targeted, broad-based and systemic.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Minister.

Mr. Long, you have a little over two minutes.

[Wayne Long, Liberal, Saint John—Rothesay, NB]

Thank you, Chair.

Good afternoon to my colleagues.

Minister, thanks for coming back to HUMA. I want to touch on skills training and apprenticeship. We've clearly heard from several witnesses that skills training and apprenticeships are key in the care economy to help address labour shortages.

My riding of Saint John—Rothesay is a union-based riding. J.D. Irving alone is looking for 3,500 more workers in the next two or three years just in Saint John—Rothesay. I know in previous testimony you talked about apprenticeship and training. Certainly we've had some wonderful UTIP announcements, with IBEW, ILA and Heat and Frost Insulators. It's key. It's key to training people. I just want to know if you could elaborate on that and some of the programs you're working on pertaining to skills training and apprenticeships.