Human Resources Committee on Oct. 25th, 2023

[The Chair (Mr. Robert Morrissey (Egmont, Lib.)), Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

I call this meeting to order.

The clerk has advised me that we have a quorum and that all witnesses, as well as those members attending virtually, have been sound tested and are good to go.

Welcome to meeting number 84 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities. Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), the committee is meeting on its study of the Canada summer jobs wage subsidy program. Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format. This means there will be people appearing in this room, as well as joining us virtually.

You have the option to speak in the official language of your choice. For those appearing virtually, you have the translation icon at the bottom of your screen. It's the world symbol. Click on whichever language you wish to participate in. For those in the room, use your earpiece and choose the language of your choice.

If there is an interruption in the translation, please get my attention by raising your hand. On the screens, use the “raise hand” icon. I'll suspend while it's being corrected.

I would like to remind witnesses and members to speak slowly and clearly for the benefit of the interpreters. Please keep your earpiece away from the mike—this prevents popping in the sound system—for the protection of our translation team.

Appearing in panel one today, from Big Brothers Big Sisters of Peterborough, we have Brent Shepherd, executive director, by video conference. From Peterborough Musicfest, we have Tracey Randall, general manager, by video conference. From the Nutty Bean Cafe, we have Sherry Salminen, owner-manager, by video conference. From the Youth Association for Academics, Athletics, and Character Education, appearing in the room, we have Devon Jones, founding director, and Christopher Emmanuel, youth representative.

I will begin with the executive director, Brent Shepherd, and an opening statement of five minutes. I will ask all participants to keep their comments as close to five minutes as possible.

We'll begin with Mr. Shepherd. You have five minutes for your opening statement.

Go ahead.

[Brent Shepherd, Executive Director, Big Brothers Big Sisters of Peterborough]

Thank you for the invitation to be here today.

As you heard, I'm the executive director for Big Brothers Big Sisters.

Big Brothers Big Sisters of Peterborough is a well known non-profit in the Peterborough area that empowers young individuals in our community. Our mission is to foster positive mentoring relationships between young people and caring mentors, to enable them to reach their full potential. We've done this for decades—since 1960—in the Peterborough area. Our organization has played a vital role in the development of young minds, and offers programs and camps that help shape the lives of the youth that we serve.

The Canadian summer jobs wage subsidy program has had a profound and positive impact on our agency, providing valuable opportunities to young people in our community. By offering the subsidies to us, it's a program that empowers organizations like ourselves to create summer positions that not only benefit the local youth but also enable us to enhance our services.

The following are a few ways that has taken place.

First, we have summer programming and camps that we offer. Often, we offer these to children who are on a wait-list, waiting for a mentor to be matched. The summer wage subsidy program has allowed us to expand our summer programming. It allows us to increase our ratios of children to supervisors, and it helps make them more accessible to a larger range of individual children. This has enabled us to engage in a variety of ways and offer summer programming opportunities. It provides a safe and supportive environment for the youth in Peterborough.

Another way is through our mentoring match support. As we match volunteers with children, that requires us to continue to monitor those relationships so that they remain positive. This subsidy helps us to facilitate the hiring of post-secondary students who are enrolled in a certificate or degree program directly related to the work that we do, ensuring that the mentoring relationships that we facilitate remain at the highest standard possible. This, in turn, has a positive impact on the lives of the children, the young people.

Following that, the valuable experience for young people that also takes place is with those students, and it provides them the benefit of our organization being able to invest in them in a meaningful way. It offers them the opportunity to gain valuable experience within the community that they are either schooled in or have returned to after moving away for school. It provides them with essential skills, improves their employability and supports a sense of responsibility in their community engagement.

While we have these positive opportunities, there are a few areas that I think would be valuable for improvement.

One is providing increased flexibility in the timing and hours. This would allow students, particularly those enrolled in post-secondary education, to be able to spread out their work hours across a broader timeline. This flexibility is crucial for students who wish to combine their summer job experience with other part-time employment or academic commitments.

The other would be a longer duration of the grants. Extending the duration of those grants from eight to 10 weeks to 11 or 12 weeks would be immensely beneficial. College and university students, in particular, are often seeking employment for a longer duration during the summer months. Offering those grants for a broader time attracts more of those students, allowing a more comprehensive summer experience in their related fields and increasing their skill development.

In conclusion, we're looking at how immensely beneficial it is and just offering opportunities to expand that. It provides a very meaningful opportunity, both for the kids that we serve in the community and also for those students for whom we're looking to try to increase the amount of job experience and employable experience that they get moving forward.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Mr. Shepherd.

Ms. Randall, you have five minutes.

[Tracey Randall, General Manager, Peterborough Musicfest]

Thank you to the House of Commons and our MP, Michelle Ferreri, for having me.

I have been the general manager here at Peterborough Musicfest for 12 years. We host 18 nights of music with free admission in our beautiful downtown, at a local four-acre park, every Wednesday and Saturday. We try to bring premier, diverse artists to town. We've been doing this for 36 years, starting in 1987.

Actually, I was a student driving a boat around for the first two years of the summer festival. I moved away for 30 years and have come back. I really enjoy what I do here for our community and how much the community relies on this festival year after year. It brings a lot of therapeutic.... During the pandemic we had to stop, and we are really appreciative that we were able to bring it back last year after 37 months away.

We did that thanks to funders. We are provided local sponsorships of upwards of $300,000. Then we get other funding through grants from the municipality, county and city, as well as provincial and federal, such as the Canada summer jobs grant, which we're here today to speak to.

I'm very proud of where we've come from. We move from three employees in the winter months to 15, because we set up and tear down every night at the park. We bring upwards of 10,000 people to Peterborough each night, which totals upwards of 120,000 for the entire summer. We're just really happy to get people back into our restaurants. They're spending money through the cottage area, renting Airbnbs, staying in our hotels over three nights and enjoying the cottage country that we offer throughout our region. We want to continue to do so.

I'm just really proud of where we've come from and how far we've increased the capacity and the genres of music. We've brought hip hop, we have local bands and we bring the likes of Big Wreck and Tom Cochrane. This year we had Little River Band. We're just really proud of how far we've come with free music. Normally, people are paying $100 to $150 a ticket to see this type of artist.

We just really want to thank you, as well, for promoting us and supporting us over the years. We've really relied on this grant. We watch the students that have been hired through this grant become new people. They always come back to me eight or 10 years later to say that it was the best summer they ever had. The odd time we'll have a student come back a couple of years in a row. We just know that we're putting them out into the world with growth in a large event experience, which they'll never see again.

It's an amazing experience, and I'm just so proud of where we've come with these Canada summer jobs students.

Thank you so much for having me today.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Ms. Randall.

Is it Mr. Jones, Mr. Emmanuel or both who are going to give the five minutes?

[Devon Jones, Founding Director, Youth Association for Academics, Athletics, and Character Education]

Do we each get five minutes, or are we sharing five minutes?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

You get two and a half each. It's a total of five. You can split it.

[Devon Jones]

I'll start and Mr. Emmanuel will finish.

My name is Devon Jones. I'm a schoolteacher with the Toronto District School Board. I work in the Jane and Finch corridor. I've done so for some time. I'm essentially assigned staff who looks at issues around public safety as they relate to gun violence in youth. I'm also the founding director of the Youth Association for Academics, Athletics, and Character Education. The acronym is YAAACE.

Over the years, YAAACE has provided infrastructure around family support, employment and training, learning and education, case management, public safety, academics and expanded opportunities in athletics.

Canada summer jobs are conducive for us twofold. Firstly, we get a chance to hire young people and provide them with opportunities they wouldn't normally have. A case in point is the current executive director of YAAACE, who is also a professor at Laurier. His first job was through this initiative.

The efficacy of this program is obvious. We get a chance to hire a number of young people who are themselves from the community. They come to the program and then serve as mentors, teachers and instructors. Chris, for example, worked this summer in the capacity of a student teacher, working with hundreds of youth over the course of the summer. The efficacy of the program speaks for itself.

The program is also amazing because we get a chance to provide kids from one of the poorest communities in the country with opportunities for recreational programming and school through the community school initiative, which is a program we run with the Ministry of Education. We provide them with this opportunity that they wouldn't normally be able to afford.

Through the TDSB, we have certified teachers that we can use to address this gap in achievement. We can provide this ecosystem that provides young people with a viable alternative to guns and gangs.

The program, for us, makes a lot of sense. The efficacy speaks for itself. The only suggestion I would make is, firstly, that the program become year-round. Secondly, like the first speaker said, the duration should be somewhat longer.

[Christopher Emmanuel, Youth Representative, Youth Association for Academics, Athletics, and Character Education]

Good evening.

My name is Christopher Emmanuel. I am a student at the University of Toronto studying accounting. I'm pursuing a degree in that field.

I have been a part of YAAACE for the past eight years and a part of the working team for the past four.

Some of my most memorable moments at YAAACE were not just of the athletic or academic sides of it, but of the mentors we had growing up. Having people who looked like us and people who grew up in that same neighbourhood really showed and gave us the opportunity to look at what we could be in the future as young Black men in these types of areas.

I have been a part of this wonderful team helping young African American youth really strive to be the best possible versions of themselves in their academics. As Mr. Jones spoke about, these past two years I've helped by becoming a student teacher in the math department for our grade eights. They've been working toward a grade nine math credit, so that they'll have that before entering their four years of high school. I've really enjoyed the job. It has really been very beneficial, and not just for me but for my peers and colleagues.

People I've grown up with are still part of the YAAACE team and are still a part of a team where they can benefit not just from making money during the summer or things like that, but from being able to put money toward their tuition or by helping young kids growing up by showing them role models and being those role models for them.

It has been a great opportunity to be part of this team, and it has benefited me in so many ways. It was my first job, and it is still one of the best experiences I've ever had, coming up from being a camper to now being a student teacher helping push the next generation to somewhat resemble me and continue to push for their dreams and achieve their goals—not just athletically but academically.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you so much for your opening presentation.

We had a fourth presenter, but we've lost them in the cyberspace.

Just before we go to the questioning round, I want to advise the committee that we have resources for the full two hours. We'll be going for the full two hours to get everybody in. I will remind members that I will keep you pretty close to your time allotments, because the last time we lost a couple, which was not fair.

To begin the first round of questioning, we have Ms. Ferreri for six minutes, please.

[Michelle Ferreri, Conservative, Peterborough—Kawartha, ON]

Thank you so much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to our witnesses for being here today. It's great to hear your feedback and it's obviously nice to have Peterborough represented. I'm proud that way.

I think there was a theme. It was really powerful to hear you, Mr. Jones and Mr. Emmanuel, talk about the power of mentorship alongside Big Brothers Big Sisters. It's really great to see that—without planning it—highlighted today. I think it's one of the things our kids and our future need more than anything in terms of mental health.

Going back to Canada summer jobs, I'm going to start, if I can, with Tracey Randall from Peterborough Musicfest.

Congratulations on all that you guys have achieved. It is Canada's largest free outdoor concert, and it's incredible, in Peterborough and the Kawarthas.

You have some recommendations, Tracey, which we can put in the report, of what you would like to see improved in the program. Can you share those with us?

[Tracey Randall]

Thank you, Michelle.

Yes, certainly. I've been in this program for 10 years, and it's come a long way. I'm very thankful for things that I have seen, such as increasing the age to under 30. That has really helped, and we appreciate that we can bring students in from our local Fleming and Trent school facilities, which are so important to me because I'm an alum. I was in the tourism program.

I love to bring in people from Fleming, but one issue we had this year was that we wanted to bring in international students to show diversity. It's something we would like to do, and Fleming is increasing in the number of international students. The program that I was in currently has only six domestic students. We hired a lovely girl from east India. We had a work permit, and we were turned down because she wasn't a Canadian citizen.

My question to you is this: On a job posting, how will I specify that candidates must be Canadian citizens, when I'm looking for diversity and when there are all these wonderful people who have come into Canada as new Canadian citizens? That's one thing that I'm stuck on, and I just don't want to have to put that on the posting.

Also, it would be good to have an answer back earlier, as you've been hearing from quite a few of the grant holders. Obviously, we are trying to hire before April 15. Our season starts in June, and, if we don't get those students in here and hired, we lose out. Most of them are keen, and they already have jobs by the time we receive confirmation on our funding. They've already been hired by other businesses. This year our successes were based on people who left those jobs and came and joined us when they saw the job posting. I don't like to hear that they were hired elsewhere and then quit and came our way, so I think it's important that you try to get us an answer back at least by April 15.

Thank you.

[Michelle Ferreri, Conservative, Peterborough—Kawartha, ON]

Thank you so much. That's great.

I have about five minutes to ask questions, so if I seem fast or rushed, that's the issue there.

Could you expand a little bit, Tracey—I do want to get to Brent and ask him a question too—did the folks at Canada summer jobs explain to you about the new Canadians? Was that clearly communicated to you? Did you feel supported in the program? Did you feel that it was easy to navigate and to get through to a person when you were dealing with these kinds of questions?

[Tracey Randall]

It was very easy to get hold of somebody—thank you—yes, and we did hear back fairly quickly. We had to get some proof of citizenship and send it over, and we thought it would be clearly accepted. They were quite good to help us and get us through it. It's just hard, when we've already hired the students, to let them go, so we kept them on. Obviously we thought that they were great workers, so we just kept them on.

I am just afraid, moving forward, of asking for only Canadian citizens when we have all these people in this program who are international students, and they're great workers. But, yes, I had great support from the Canada summer jobs staff.

Thank you.

[Michelle Ferreri, Conservative, Peterborough—Kawartha, ON]

Thank you for that.

Brent at Big Brothers Big Sisters Peterborough, I love what you do. I think it's invaluable.

If you didn't have this funding from Canada summer jobs, how would you fund these positions?

[Brent Shepherd]

We would have to try to find ways to fund the position. It's critical funding for us. When we look at our budget over the year, in some cases, we would have to go without hiring a student. We would have to try to make it work with the staff we currently have, and that would affect the number of children and young people we could have in our program in the summer, as I mentioned at the beginning with regard to ratios.

[Michelle Ferreri, Conservative, Peterborough—Kawartha, ON]

Thank you, Brent. I don't mean to cut you off.

[Brent Shepherd]

No, it's okay.

[Michelle Ferreri, Conservative, Peterborough—Kawartha, ON]

I just have one last question for both you and Tracey.

The way the criteria is broken down with Canada summer jobs is that only 10% of the scoring criteria is given to local priorities, and 90% is given on a national level. Obviously, local is critical. It's what makes up the country, so I would ask you this: Would you like to have on the record for the report that you would like to see that 10% increased, that scoring criteria to be valued more, for local incentives and local programming, so that you get a higher value in the scoring for Canada summer jobs to be eligible for the grant because of your local component and what you offer locally?

I'll ask Tracey first.

[Tracey Randall]

Absolutely, that should be increased. I grew up in this town, and I would not be where I am if I did not have music in my life. Definitely we need to increase that. I want to hire local people and I do. We have five positions that we normally apply for, and we have two coming back. They are students who were raised here. They're athletes, and they love music. We're very much an arts town, so please increase that, absolutely, Michelle.

Thank you.

[Michelle Ferreri, Conservative, Peterborough—Kawartha, ON]

Thanks.

I'll go to you, Brent.

[Brent Shepherd]

I would also support that. Again, we serve our local community and try to do that with excellence. We are finding, similar to Tracey, that the students are from university and college. We have to get them early, and they're often local—so yes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Ms. Ferreri.

Now we have Mr. Van Bynen for six minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll be splitting some of my time with Mr. Coteau. I only have three minutes to work with, so I would ask for concise and crisp answers.

I really respect what's happening with Big Brothers Big Sisters. You've been active in York Region. You do some great things for the community, and the support that you're providing youth is critical to building our community.

I will ask you a question, Brent, as I've heard some mixed information here with respect to the scoring data, about how the data is scored and what the process is. When you complete your applications, would it be helpful to know more specifically what both the local and the federal Canada summer jobs priorities are and how they are scored so that you can ensure that your programs align better with these priorities? Do you know how your applications are scored and how they're prioritized, and would that be helpful, because there's some confusion?

I'm hearing that 10% local is not an accurate number. Would it be helpful for you to have that information?

[Brent Shepherd]

Clarity is always helpful. I think it promotes honesty and integrity in the process.