Human Resources Committee on Oct. 9th, 2025

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Madam Desrochers.

Mrs. Gill, you have two and a half minutes.

[Marilène Gill, Bloc, Côte-Nord—Kawawachikamach—Nitassinan, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I was wondering if that was more specific to the science sector. The Quebec education system, which I know well because it's my specialty, is a little different. For example, we have attestations of collegial studies, diplomas of college studies and diplomas of vocational studies in most trades. There's also university. There are internships everywhere, not only at the end of the educational process, but also sometimes during the process. That gives everyone the opportunity to know an employer. Students sometimes go back home or just stay there. We see it everywhere.

Mr. Henderson, you're in the field of artificial intelligence, and you talked about the defence field and somewhat specialized training in science.

Is that mainly where there's a need to establish a connection between the employer, the workforce and students?

[Valerie Walker]

Just so I understand, do you mean in those sectors. Is that where...?

I would argue every sector. I would say, in addition to the student to employer, it's the employer and the educator, so that connection can also happen as well, and that would be equally beneficial, no matter what industry sector we're talking about.

[Robert Henderson]

If I could supplement with the Quebec question—

[Marilène Gill, Bloc, Côte-Nord—Kawawachikamach—Nitassinan, QC]

I'm sorry, but you could send us your answer in writing. That said, I didn't understand what you said about the educator. There has to be a connection with the young person's employer, but also with the educator, right? We also have people who oversee internships—we call them intern supervisors. They also have a connection with businesses. They're already in place.

What you were saying maybe had more to do with science, since you talked about biotechnology, for example. However, you're saying that it would really be everywhere in the rest of Canada.

[Valerie Walker]

No, it's a really good question. Traditionally, work-integrated learning has been focused in the STEM disciplines: science, technology, engineering and math. We have data, as do others, showing that in every field of study, students benefit from connections to employers no matter what, whether that's social science and humanities or the sciences.

It is critical for the educator to be a part of that, so that they can adapt their curricula and their training to align with the needs of the employer.

[Marilène Gill, Bloc, Côte-Nord—Kawawachikamach—Nitassinan, QC]

I'll let you answer, Mr. Henderson.

[Robert Henderson]

I couldn't agree more.

The other thing we have to remember is that these are businesses. One of the biggest gaps and the biggest needs, our market research has indicated, is things in marketing, needs in marketing, sales, finance. These are all industry-agnostic professions, all highly educated.

I think we have to be careful, because we have to understand that in biotechnology we don't only do science; we have to commercialize, and that requires sales, marketing, business development, etc. As Dr. Walker mentioned, these are required in every sector.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Madame Gill.

Ms. Falk, you have five minutes.

[Rosemarie Falk, Conservative, Battlefords—Lloydminster—Meadow Lake, SK]

Thank you very much, Chair, and thank you to both of the witnesses for being here today.

My questions at the moment will be directed to Dr. Walker. This committee has studied the Accessible Canada Act, which has the stated goal of creating a barrier-free Canada by 2040, and in the previous Parliament it also examined the progress that was made on this front. We heard repeatedly in the study that significant barriers persist.

Given your organization's stated goal of promoting accessibility, but also from what we've heard thus far in this current study of the dignity of the person, this assists with a sense of purpose. Having someone or something, like a workplace, that needs that person, that employee, and having that employee contribute not only to the workplace but also to co-workers contributes to that sense of self, a sense of purpose and a sense of dignity. From your perspective, what are the main barriers that Canadians with disabilities face when trying to enter or remain in the workforce?

[Valerie Walker]

We're actually doing a study looking at exactly that right now, funded by ESDC through their skills for success program. We're looking specifically at the barriers for employers in hiring students with disabilities, and a lot of the findings apply equally, of course, to persons with disabilities.

To answer that fundamental question, students with disabilities graduate on par with students across Canada, yet their employment rate drops significantly relative to the population. In our early explorations and in order to make sure employers are in line with that new legislation in federally regulated industries, we've identified several barriers that employers have at all stages of that onboarding procedure, from how they look to recruit people into the workplace to how they interview, how they onboard and then how they develop those people once they're in the workplace. The way we're looking at breaking that down is to identify particular interventions at each step.

I will come back to the skills articulation piece in terms of the early stages and helping students with disabilities understand those social and emotional skills, the resilience and the problem-solving that they've gone through because they are a student with a disability in and of itself. If they know how to talk about that and articulate their value and their perseverance, sometimes it helps employers understand the benefits and the immense value that persons with disabilities bring to the workplace.

[Rosemarie Falk, Conservative, Battlefords—Lloydminster—Meadow Lake, SK]

I also took note in your opening remarks of the importance of helping youth identify or name their skills. Plain language is something that society definitely is missing out on. It's better for everybody. It's easier to understand and easier to navigate. You aren't making assumptions, and we all know what that means when we're assuming something. It just makes the whole process easier.

When will that study be completed? Will we be able to able to access that information?

[Valerie Walker]

Yes, absolutely. We have an interim report that is due by March of next year, although we'll have early findings before that. The full study will conclude in March 2027, but we have interim reports coming out in the meantime, and we'd be happy to share them with this committee.

[Rosemarie Falk, Conservative, Battlefords—Lloydminster—Meadow Lake, SK]

For sure. You mentioned that your study so far has identified barriers that employers have with maybe retaining or hiring people who have disabilities. Has your study come across any examples of successful initiatives or best practices that have helped reduce barriers?

[Valerie Walker]

Yes, and primarily those exist right now in the large companies. They're the ones with the internal resources to work on some of these things. One—and it sounds easy, again, but it's not—is to do awareness-raising within the company itself, especially about the different types of disabilities. People might be more familiar with working with someone or accommodating someone with a physical injury that happened on the job versus a congenital or sometimes hidden disability. The HR teams often aren't connected to the actual managers and making it easier for them to share, talk and discuss instead of trying to solve these problems in silos.

[Rosemarie Falk, Conservative, Battlefords—Lloydminster—Meadow Lake, SK]

What we heard, too, during that study was about invisible disabilities. There's this assumption people have that a disability means you need a wheelchair or walker or that you're immobile, when actually there are invisible disabilities where people may not even know somebody has a disability. I think that awareness is key.

[Valerie Walker]

It's a perceived stigma still on the part of the people with disabilities, who worry about disclosing sometimes. They can't get the accommodation they need because they're afraid that disclosing might cause some kind of negative consequence. That, again, is a culture shift, because that's a very hard thing to do in practice, but we need to break that down and start to make it easier for them to disclose.

[Rosemarie Falk, Conservative, Battlefords—Lloydminster—Meadow Lake, SK]

For sure. Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Ms. Falk.

Mr. Joseph, you have five minutes.

[Natilien Joseph, Liberal, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Walker, thank you for appearing before the committee.

We know that young people who manage to find an unpaid internship to further their learning are immersed in a real work environment. Unfortunately, the tasks performed at work aren't always suited to achieving real educational objectives.

In addition, there are employers who don't trust young people or who ask for an unrealistic number of years of experience. Those are issues that our young people are facing.

What mechanisms have helped your organization ensure that federal investments lead to measurable results in promoting youth employment?

[Valerie Walker]

Our WIL program, which is federally funded through Innovation, Science and Economic Development, currently requires us to create.... To be eligible, it needs to either provide a paid placement in the private sector or be clearly associated with a course credit. We ensure, as a requirement, and we put these requirements into our master funding agreements with any partner, that they have one or the other.

We don't fund anything where we can't guarantee, to the government and our funder, that it's being paid by the employer—as I said, our money doesn't go to pay the wages of the student—or that the placement is a quality placement directly related to a credential or program completion for the student as part of their academic journey.

[Natilien Joseph, Liberal, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Okay.

I also have a quick question for you. How is federal support a key factor in the collaboration between employees and post-secondary educational institutions?

[Valerie Walker]

It helps organizations like ours create the resources and tools that make that.... We can help bring them together. Then we need to be able to give them the tools they need in order to work better together.

“Collaboration” is a word that's used a lot these days. In order to create the circumstances for real, genuine, material collaboration to lead to a new program with students getting jobs, there is a public investment that, well placed, can actually lead to quality placement as a result. It's not always a huge amount of money, but the convening power that the government has is huge.

[Natilien Joseph, Liberal, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Thank you, Ms. Walker.

Mr. Henderson, despite the government's investments and numerous initiatives to promote youth employment, many young people continue to face challenges related to job integration, particularly young people from disadvantaged backgrounds.

How do you explain that? What mechanisms are organizations putting in place to address those persistent inequalities?

[Robert Henderson]

Sure.

Thank you for the question.

When the student work placement program that I represent was created about eight or 10 years ago, the only mechanism we did for equity-deserving groups was that they got a higher amount of wage subsidy or an employer's support to do that. That mechanism hasn't changed for the last eight years. Neither has the definition of an equity-deserving group changed. There are some groups that we don't even measure, such as LGBTQ+, etc., as they were not covered in the original agreement. That agreement has only been extended as it is, identically, for the next eight years.

Through the work-integrated learning program and the student work placement program, I believe you have an ability to evolve not only the definition of what we think is an equity-deserving group but also what our expectations are for a successful work-integrated learning placement. Beyond the fact that, as we mentioned, all of our subsidies are paid subsidies as well, there is simply an incentive, not a requirement, to hire a certain proportion of equity-deserving students, such as Canadians with disabilities, the indigenous and newcomers. That condition could be added and better tracked to the program as it goes forward.

The thousands of employers who are already familiar with the program are expecting the program to evolve. They're actually surprised that it has not over the last eight or nine years, with the exception of scale. I think there's a great opportunity here to raise the expectations on the average employer in terms of the use of diversity and inclusion policies, mentorship programs, onboarding that includes cultural awareness, and buddy systems, so that not only students but also underprivileged equity-deserving groups get more attention.