Citizenship and Immigration Committee on April 16th, 2008

[Rick Clarke]

Well, it hasn't proven successful, so I guess I'd have to say if it's not working, it's difficult to agree with. I don't know what other provinces are doing, but it's not a large program.

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

A lot of the concerns are that people tend to migrate or emigrate to places like Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver, but if the province can nominate the people who come to meet whatever needs they have, they can direct newcomers to areas outside of those areas and actually build, as you say, the communities where you have families that integrate into the community. It seems to me that if they have a job and a place to stay, they're more likely to remain and integrate wherever they are.

[Rick Clarke]

We've been trying to get government to take another look at how we participate in the immigration--trying to attract new Canadians--and one of the areas that's at fault, and why our retention rate is so low in this province, is because we have a lot of newcomers come into the province and automatically go to some of the larger centres. They go there for a number of reasons. One is that there's a larger community of their own in Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver, but also, we're not yet finding a way to recognize people's skills and qualifications and certifications from other countries.

So they're going to where there's better money, better opportunities, better security.

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

We've opened up something called the foreign credential referral office in each Service Canada office, 320 of them across this country, and there are some here as well. It helps people get referred to the proper assessment agency and it deals with their deficiencies and so on.

Is that an avenue that you agree is the proper one?

[Rick Clarke]

It's not fast-tracked enough. I understand, and I have to take it on face value, when I hear somebody who's a professional elsewhere and is driving a cab here say that they almost have to quit their job to take a year or two or three years of training.

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Wouldn't it be better for that professional to come here when they know they have a job under the provincial nominee program, where we're saying we have a placement for you? They come here and they don't need to drive a cab; we already have a position for them, and we should just match them to that position. Isn't that a better way to deal with it than just having them come to the country without somewhere to go, without a job at hand?

[Rick Clarke]

Yes, if you were looking at it purely hypothetically, but it's not working that way.

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

But it can. The provincial nominee program can nominate--

[Rick Clarke]

It takes more than just the provincial.... I think we need a strategy. It can't be one person at a time. I think we have to get a strategy. If we're trying to attract the people we need here that we want to become landed immigrants--as with skills and professions--then we have to get a strategy that people can look at and know they won't have to wait in a line until they get the opportunity or until they meet the skill requirements at home before they come in.

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

So you're agreeing with the fact that we should find a way, a direct way--

[Rick Clarke]

Yes.

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

--to bring skilled people to exactly fit the demands that are here that are not being fulfilled at the present moment. Do you agree with that?

[Rick Clarke]

It should be through an immigration strategy.

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

We need to do it through an immigration strategy, rather than doing it through a variety of means. We need one direct route to get your skilled people to the right place at the right time to ensure that they get a job as soon as they come here, and do it quicker and faster.

[Rick Clarke]

Yes, rather than the temporary program. I know there are going to be temporary workers. That's—

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Sorry, we're out of time.

Rick and Mary-Lou, thank you very much for coming this morning. We really appreciate your presence here.

In the not-too-distant future we will have a report put out. I don't know when. It's probably going to take a month or more for our analysts to have a look at all the material we have. We'll be making recommendations, and hopefully those will be based upon some of the things we've heard here today.

We'll take a two-minute break while our witnesses leave and the next ones come.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

I want to welcome witnesses who are appearing before our committee today: from the Prince George Hotel, Carol Logan, who is the director of the human resources branch; from the Nova Scotia Tourism Human Resource Council, Lynn McDonagh Hughes, who is the manager of operation; and from the Mainland Nova Scotia Building and Construction and Trades Council, Cordell Cole, the president. It's good to see you. Thank you for being here.

The way we generally do things in our committee is we allow approximately seven minutes for an opening statement. You're from three different organizations, so it will be seven minutes each.

Carol or Lynn, whoever wishes, go ahead.

[Carol Logan, Director, Human Resources Branch, Prince George Hotel]

Thank you.

Good morning. Welcome to the Prince George Hotel. Since I'm representing the Prince George Hotel, I wish to welcome you here. Hopefully, you're having an opportunity to share our fabulous product and our fabulous service.

We take great pride in the people who work here. That's going to get me to talking about temporary foreign workers and our personal experience in recruiting temporary foreign workers, why we did it, what made it successful, and what the future looks like for us.

First of all, why did we do it? We did it for our housekeeping room attendant position, which is a position with the expectation for the applicant to clean washrooms, polish tubs, and make beds to a high standard—those rooms that many of you are now enjoying.

We are challenged in finding people to do that front-line position. The labour market has changed, and we are out there actively recruiting from the local market and even provincewide, and we cannot fill those positions. Fifty percent of our employees work in the housekeeping department, and we go out and we partner with organizations—the compu-colleges, the community colleges—and the applicants are telling us, “We don't go to school to come out and clean hotel rooms; that's not what we're doing.” There are so many other opportunities out there, with call centres, more hotels coming, and the shopping mall, that applicants are choosing those positions as opposed to coming in, picking up a mop, and cleaning floors. So we struggle with that, and that's the foundation of our business. We need professional people to do it.

When our general manager heard Carolina Calderon speak at the Hotel Association of Canada conference, talking about the temporary foreign workers program as an opportunity to fill this need, we thought, “Well, let's try it; let's see what happens.”

We've been highly impressed and have had great success with it. We called her directly; we set up a relationship. She put us in touch with El Salvador. She's with the Embassy of El Salvador out of Ottawa. We connected with a coordinator with their Minister of Labour, and he in turn provided us with 12 applicants, who we interviewed via Skype. We recruited four. Through the process in El Salvador, one of those applicants did not qualify, so we ended up getting three of those applicants.

As we were going through that process, which was six months, we were communicating to our employees here, explaining why we were doing it, what it meant to them. They were relieved. They were saying, “Great! You mean we're going to have a summer where we're not going to have to do additional rooms, employees aren't going to stay only a couple of weeks, we'll have someone who's going to come and be here for two years, I'm going to get my two days off, and I'm going to have my vacation time?” They were getting excited by it. Our culture is fairly diverse here, so we shared with them the culture of El Salvador and what that was going to mean.

We started planning. What does it look like for newcomers coming here to the Prince George Hotel? We went out to personally meet them at the airport. We set them up with accommodations. We invested some time in ensuring that they were adjusted to the culture here in Nova Scotia. We set them up with English training. We took them to get their MSI cards, to get their social insurance numbers, and to set up bank accounts. Understanding they were here to make money to support sending some funds home, how does that happen, and how do we help make that happen? We were recruiting the whole person and not just the person to come here and work. That was important. That's important to our business, because if they're happy here, our customers will get that level of service.

We are about to embark on our six-month celebration of having Oscar, Esmerelda, and Grisilda here at the Prince George Hotel. We've asked to recruit additional applicants from El Salvador for these positions, and we'll continue. If we are unable to fill these positions from the talent in the local market, we will continue to recruit temporary foreign workers.

Two years for us in our business is now becoming a long time. No longer are applicants staying for years on end. They don't stay for 22 years, as I did. They stay for a couple of months, six months. They make enough money and they want to travel. So if we're going to continue to be a viable business, we do need some stability in those front-line positions, which we cannot fill from the current local market.

In going forward, the transition has been so smooth, and I hope it continues that way. I'm a little bit worried, if they decide they want to stay, about what that process is going to look like for them when we go through nominee programs. Do they have the right education, skilled versus unskilled, not co-classifications? Where is that? When I look at “housekeeping room attendant”, that's classified as a non-skilled position. If these are good workers, if we can't fill the positions and they want to stay--and we want them to stay--what is that process going to look like? Will they be able to? Will they not be able to? That's what I start to worry about. What are we going to face in the go-forward?

I believe they have something valuable to add. They've been adding lots of value to us currently, and we've had lots of success by building partnerships and taking it step by step—and I hope it continues that way.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Thank you very much, Ms. Logan.

Ms. McDonagh.

[Lynn McDonagh Hughes, Manager, Operations, Nova Scotia Tourism Human Resource Council]

I apologize ahead of time for my voice; it gives in and out, so bear with me.

I'm here this morning representing the Nova Scotia Tourism Human Resource Council and the Tourism Industry Association of Nova Scotia. I'd just like to take a minute to tell you a bit about the organizations, so you understand where I'm coming from.

The Nova Scotia Tourism Human Resource Council is a sector council for Nova Scotia, and one of the founding members of the Canadian Tourism Human Resource Council, which operates out of Ottawa. The council promotes and enhances professional development in the Nova Scotia tourism sector, with a mandate to develop a skilled and professional workforce for the Nova Scotia tourism sector.

TIANS is the provincial advocacy organization for tourism businesses in Nova Scotia, and we represent over 1,200 operators.

One of the reasons I'm here this morning is our sector's increased demand to both understand and access the temporary foreign worker market. The Conference Board of Canada forecasts an increase in tourism goods and tourism services sales to reach $220 billion by 2025. That same year, our forecast labour shortage will reach 348,000 full-time jobs. The shortage by province is expected to be most acute in Atlantic Canada.

Nova Scotia operators have been slow to respond, as the current significant shortages have been primarily occurring in the western provinces and Ontario. However, during the past two years, we have seen the labour shortage affect our sector's ability to recruit and retain workers. Historically, temporary foreign workers have not been a key labour market for our sector to access, for two reasons, mainly. First, the majority of our operators do not know how to access temporary foreign workers. Second, the process has been perceived as cumbersome.

With the changing demographics toward fewer younger workers, we've had to change our recruiting methods, and for the first time, temporary foreign workers are being considered. With the positive results and experience Carol has just shared with you from the Prince George Hotel, other hotels in the Halifax area are considering this option as well.

Many of us are aware of the influx of overseas recruitment agencies elsewhere in Canada. While many of these companies fulfill their commitments professionally, there are a number that are operating with questionable ethics and standards. We would encourage government to ensure that agencies recruiting for temporary foreign workers follow standard guidelines and that checks and balances be put in place to follow up on workers once they are here. The reason for this is twofold: to ensure that employers provide the agreed-upon type of work at a fair rate of pay for the employees, and that employers are receiving the quality of labour appropriate to their needs.

In our sector, we are facing serious shortages in front-line occupations, such as housekeeping room attendants and line cooks. Demand for front-line positions is forecast to increase dramatically over the next few years. These occupations need to be included in the occupations that are identified as being under pressure. We would like to see certain occupations identified for expedited processing of applications.

So what can we do? Some suggestions are: making the application approval process more responsive to market needs, including making the process less onerous for employers or finding ways to reduce processing times and costs; working with the sector councils to accurately identify regionally driven occupations under pressure; recognizing and using current labour market data from a reliable source, such as the Nova Scotia Tourism Human Resource Council and national affiliates; using certification for competency-based assessments to help illustrate workers' qualifications and skills transferrable to the Canadian workplace; and recognizing foreign credentials, which will be key for our sector to be able to attract workers in the skilled trades, such as cooks and chefs.

While the rest of Canada has been experiencing increased demand for temporary foreign workers, Nova Scotia is in the early stages of how to access this program as an attraction strategy for our labour shortage. At present, the foreign worker program presents limited opportunities for the tourism sector, due to the financial burden placed on employers to finance the airfares and to facilitate the accommodation and medical coverage of temporary workers. The costs are beyond the capacity of many employers, 40% of whom have fewer than five employees. However, we feel that with coordinated assistance, small- and medium-sized tourism businesses may partner in the recruitment of groups of foreign workers in specific tourism occupations, possibly even harmonizing the seasonal needs of employers across Canada.

Municipal, provincial, and territorial coordination is the best way to ensure that employers are able to take full advantage of the foreign worker program.

I thank you for the opportunity this morning to share the tourism sector's perspective in Nova Scotia.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Thank you.

Mr. Cole.

[Cordell Cole, President, Mainland Nova Scotia Building and Construction Trades Council]

Good morning, and thank you for taking the time to come and listen to our submissions.

First of all, I'd like to introduce myself. My name is Cordell Cole. I'm the president of the Mainland Nova Scotia Building and Construction Trades Council. We're a group that was formed in 1952 with a mandate to lobby common interests and goals to promote the livelihood of unionized construction workers in the province. Currently, we have more than 12,000 members represented by more than 12 trades.

The construction industry, by far, is different from any other industry. I'd like to take you through some of the characteristics that are significant in the construction industry. Across Canada the construction industry is a multi-billion-dollar business. It represents about 12% of Canada's gross domestic product and it employs one in every 17 Canadians. The construction industry is unique in nature, and in saying that, it should be treated differently when public policy is made by governments. Despite common belief, the construction industry is not seasonal in nature. It is, however, very cyclical in nature, which makes it very vulnerable to the so-called “boom and bust” cycle. These boom and bust cycles vary from province to province, even within regions in certain provinces.

Both the employers and the workers who work in this industry are transitory, meaning they temporarily travel to the region where the work is located. In the construction industry, you can't simply wait for the work to come to you; you have to go to the work. The construction industry also has a very mobile workforce. These workers will temporarily leave their homes and families to work elsewhere. The transient workforce, while working away from home, bears the burden of expense to support a temporary residence as well as paying mortgages and supporting their families back home. So when they're away from home, their expenses are twofold.

The other thing I want to mention is that all construction, by its very nature, is temporary. When the project is done, the workers are laid off, and then they're off to look for employment on another construction site.

On the temporary foreign workers issue, I just want to make everyone aware that our council, the Mainland Nova Scotia Building and Construction Trades Council, is not against immigration. We support immigration. The trade unions across Canada are full of landed immigrants. Many members across Canada are people who came to Canada, became legal immigrants, and joined trade unions.

The temporary foreign workers issue has gained much prominence, probably not in this province in the construction industry, but more so in the Alberta oil fields, and in British Columbia, surrounding the 2010 Olympics.

However, several years ago we did have an instance in Halifax, not far from here, actually, located on the harbour at the Halterm container pier, where some temporary foreign workers were allowed to come in and construct two post-Panamax cranes, which would be operated by the longshoremen, of course. During the time these temporary foreign workers were in, right here in Halifax there were probably at least 200 skilled trades people who were out of work, and some even had no EI benefits because work was slow in the area at the time.

One of the problems our trades council had was the lack of consultation or communication on behalf of HRSDC with the trade unions to even ask, “Do you have skilled people available who are willing to go down and do this work?” That we see as key--there has to be open communication between government and industry stakeholders to find out if there are skilled Canadians available to do these jobs.

I'm going to go through some of the steps that our council feels we need to take in order to solve our perceived shortage of skilled tradespeople in the country.

First of all, we have a skilled workforce, and as I said, these people are mobile. The first thing we have to do is mobilize our qualified skilled tradespeople to where the shortages may be, and of course currently that would be from the east coast moving to the west.

One of the problems we're facing with our mobilization is that it's very expensive for these workers to leave their homes and move to the west. The nature of these construction jobs is that employers are looking for people on short notice.

I'll give you an example.

Several years ago we sent people to the west--and we continually send people to the west. However, when it's on such short notice and they have to be there in such a short period of time, the travel costs are extensive. Some people are paying up to $2,500 for flights. That's a big expense if a person has been either unemployed for a period of time because of the work situation or has been out of EI and has no funding for that. So we feel that one of the issues in the mobilization is if the federal government put in place a tax incentive system whereby these employees, when they relocate to fill these skill shortages, could claim perhaps something on their income tax for the cost of travel, for the cost of their lodging. That would certainly be a help.

The other thing that we believe is key for Canada to be able to fill our skill shortages is to promote apprenticeship programs and skills training to our youth. That is key. Our youth are our future, and they will embrace the training.

Right now, to give you an example, I'm the president of the Mainland Nova Scotia Building and Construction Trades Council, but I am also the business manager of the electricians union. In Nova Scotia, there's a two-year wait now for students to get into the electrical construction program. There are not enough seats.

That brings us to my next point: we believe the federal government needs to create a program to help finance training centres. There has been a program started whereby current training centres can apply for upgrade. If they're going to upgrade their training centre, there's funding available. But we feel we need to take one more step. There are unions out there that would love to be able to build training centres to train our youth, but they can't afford to do so. Perhaps we could look at extending that and look at grants so that we can build more training centres so we can train our young people.

Also, the other community that I think has been forgotten about in the skilled trade shortages is the aboriginal community. I think we need to attract those people. There's a huge opportunity to attract people from the aboriginal community into the skilled trades.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Is your presentation much longer, Mr. Cole?

[Cordell Cole]

Two minutes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

I'll give you a couple more minutes.