Industry Committee on Dec. 6th, 2007

[Mark Eyking, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I thank the guests for coming here.

It's been noted, I guess, this morning that your industry is going to need more personnel. I think that's a given. Where do you get that personnel? The youth have been talked about quite a bit and as having them prepared and ready, but yesterday we had a group of manufacturers here, and they figure in the next six months there will be 50,000 losing their jobs, and there's a good chance a lot of them aren't coming back. That's probably about 2,000 a week.

So you would do the correlation, and say if your industry needs a certain number of personnel, and maybe there's some way to switch.... And it's very difficult, of course, because there's training, location, and so on.

Over the next year or so, how many people are you looking for in your industry? And secondly, how can we help those people and help you with that transition process?

In my region we've gone through a major transition in the last ten years in Cape Breton. We've worked coal and steel and groundfish. Those three industries have disappeared, so we have gone through our transition. One of the key things we find is the partnershipping that is happening between the new companies that are coming in and the university and of course government, and it's working quite well.

I guess this is more to my point about bridging the manufacturing jobs to yours. Realistically, how many do you need, and how many can we help transfer? What regions? Just give a little snapshot on how we can cushion their blow.

[Bernard Courtois]

The Information and Communications Technology Sector Council, which is a governmental body, and there are councils in various industries, has estimated that over the coming few years there's going to be a shortage of 89,000 people due to retirements, growth in the industry that cannot be fulfilled. But those are specialist jobs. In addition to that, our industry, as it grows, needs people to take care of sales and administration, logistics and all that.

So in a way, it might be difficult to envision someone working on a manufacturing assembly line to be transferred into a computer engineer or a computer developer; but on the other hand, there are a lot of other jobs in our industry that do not require necessarily that degree of expertise and some effort on retraining and support. The economy, as I mentioned earlier, over the last seven or eight years has absorbed those things very well, but for the people who are out of a job, it's a societal problem that needs to be addressed, and therefore there has to be some focus on helping these people retrain.

[Mark Eyking, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

In each area of the country, and probably in every one of the MPs' ridings, we have an HRDC office and they deal with human resources for the country. Should there be something more that these offices provide to help do the matchmaking and the bridging? Should they have certain people who may be in their offices, who can be experts in the transition?

[Bernard Courtois]

I really haven't been able to give that much thought. That's one possibility. Another possibility is to use the colleges, because the infrastructure is there and they are more equipped to do retraining and that kind of thing. Maybe someone could manage a program like that, but it would be delivered through the institutions that already specialize in that kind of activity.

[Mark Eyking, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

That's it, unless somebody else wants some of my time.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Mr. Ivis, do you want to comment?

[Matthew Ivis]

I think you raise a good point. One of the challenges in defining strategies and policies to deal with some of these challenges is having the appropriate data to understand what's really happening, not just in manufacturing but also in the services sector--to understand where the growth is and where the need is across the country. There are different areas of competitive advantage between British Columbia and Alberta, and right across the country. There are different industries and different service needs. Because service has often been a bit overlooked, I'm not sure we have the data necessary available to make those really good decisions on how we can answer some of those questions.

[Mark Eyking, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

Some universities or regions would be more adept at going through the transition than others, for various reasons, so that data would help with the matchmaking.

[Bernard Courtois]

We have a lot of difficulty accessing the data from the universities, because they are very skittish about publishing any data that might show they're not doing extremely well in everything they do. Therefore, as an industry we have to see the government collecting the solid data.

So we need the data and we need a comprehensive strategy to bring all these various activities and efforts together.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Eyking.

We'll go to Mr. Albrecht.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Up until today my colleagues from Manitoba probably though U of W was University of Winnipeg, but I'm glad you've identified the University of Waterloo and the Microsoft presence there with the co-op program that is very successful. Recently Google announced that they're going to have a major presence there as well.

On the Institute for Quantum Computing there, with Professor Ray Laflamme and the Perimeter Institute, that's an amazing story about what Canada is doing in research and development.

What are your thoughts on the recent announcement in March or May of this year on the science and technology strategy? Do you think that will have any impact on some of the challenges you're facing?

Any one of you may answer.

[Bernard Courtois]

We reacted very positively to that announcement. We've been talking about the problems here today of the skill shortage, and women and girls not being attracted to the careers. We were very happy to see the Prime Minister personally say that's not right for Canada and needs to be addressed.

We talk about attracting the best and brightest from around the world, because that's what our future is about. Something has to be said about personal income taxes. That's a negative, and addressing personal income taxes in the higher tax bracket is not expensive, just because of the demographics. There aren't as many people there.

Politically you might say let's not do that, but we're not talking about people who are bank presidents; we're talking about people who are engineers or PhDs doing research. When you're trying to attract the best and brightest from around the world, our personal income taxes are not competitive. It's something a country like ours should certainly be able to address.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

I'd like to follow up on that and the challenge we're facing in getting people to fill these 8,000 positions. Is there presently a huge brain drain--for lack of a better word--to the U.S. as far as the positions you're looking to fill? Is it the other way, or is it equal?

[Bernard Courtois]

For some time there has been a sort of two-way street. People are attracted primarily by the interest, the work, and the working environment. Of course, when we try to attract people from around the world, personal income taxes in Canada are in the negative column.

In very recent years the environment is such that for many people Canada seems to be a more attractive place to go. These high-quality people are still driven first and foremost by the quality of the work they're going to do, so we need to make sure we seize that opportunity while it's there.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

There's another question I want to follow up on with Mr. Seaman. I may not have picked up the entire answer, but I thought you said you make your software available at no charge for charitable groups. Is that accurate?

[Marc Seaman]

For charitable organizations, yes.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Does that include all charitable organizations in Canada, like religious organizations, churches?

[Marc Seaman]

There are some criteria. Sports organizations wouldn't necessarily...and religious.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Would not?

[Marc Seaman]

Not necessarily, no. Most organizations that are under charitable status would receive it.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Do I have any time left?

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

You have a minute and a half.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

We talked a bit about the legislation in terms of piracy and intellectual property protection. I think you're all endorsing any moves to strengthen that piece. I thought I may have picked up a little nuance that it's fine to have the legislation, but we also need the enforcement arm. Are you suggesting there may be a disconnect between the legislation and the ability to enforce legislation that's being considered or even that's currently there?

[Marc Seaman]

Certainly from our end, we're not suggesting there's a disconnect. We're just saying it's equally important that if you have the legislation, you also have the enforcement. We recognize that the RCMP at a border in B.C. may have more pressing issues to deal with than a counterfeit raid or opening some boxes, but it has to be integrated. What we're suggesting is that there has to be support for the border services, there has to be support for the RCMP, and there has to be legislation in place. It has to be part of an integration, which we're hopeful we'll see from the government.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Mr. Courtois, do you want to respond to that?