Industry Committee on April 7th, 2014

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

Yes, in getting some type of an arrangement, some type of agreement with the provinces, what seems to be the biggest challenge?

[Monika Bertrand]

The biggest challenge is in putting these agreements in place. I'm just speaking now to the labour market development agreements because those are our next big set of agreements. It's not that it's a challenge, but we are working in partnership with our provincial and territorial colleagues.

We consult extensively all of our stakeholders. The provinces and territories are key stakeholders in that transformation. I wouldn't say that it is a challenge but it has to be one of our priorities to work closely with them, given that they are the ones closest to the labour market and the program.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

Do they recognize the uniqueness in this industry? Are they beginning to develop new programs? Are you going to do that in conjunction with them?

[Monika Bertrand]

I think the provinces and territories very much recognize the importance of employer involvement in training decisions, that in order to fill the skills gap it is important to have a closer relationship with employers and input from employers, as well as a stronger consultation effort with employers to set priorities, to set training priorities.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

Are we introducing new formats for that? In another study we're doing in finance, we talked about the trade mission to Germany. Their chamber of commerce is involved. Are there people, for instance, in the gaming industry, that are directly in contact with the government and the provinces to develop these programs?

[Amy Mifflin-Sills, Director, Program policy, Skills and Employment Branch, Department of Human Resources and Skills Development]

One of the major findings that came out of the Germany trip was the look at the apprenticeship system. The German model for their apprenticeship system is not just entirely focused on the traditional skilled trades, the ones that we think of: carpenters, pipefitters, and so forth. It actually has expanded into other sectors of the economy, and in fact, the information and communications sector of the economy.

One of the things that could be potentially explored is extending apprenticeship beyond the traditional sectors. Some provinces are starting to do this, and are working closely with their industry, for example, the ICT industry, to expand apprenticeship.

The other thing that we're looking at is working very closely with the provinces and territories to harmonize apprenticeship systems to ensure that more apprentices are completing their programs and going on to be skilled tradespersons in their occupation.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

That's all the time we have.

Mr. Côté, you have the floor. You have five minutes.

[Raymond Côté, NDP, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I would like to thank the officials for being with us to answer our questions.

I would like to focus on the testimony we heard from the representatives of Ubisoft recently. Ubisoft is the largest player in terms of jobs in Canada in this sector. I would remind you that that company lost a quarter of its value on the stock market after it was announced that one of their two major games, Watch Dogs, developed in Montreal, was being postponed. This demonstrates how their inability to hire qualified workers for specific projects can lead to significant consequences.

One surprising problem that Ubisoft told us about was that Canadian workers sent abroad to Ubisoft development centres in Ukraine, France or elsewhere, would come back to Canada to work for Ubisoft, but their spouses and children would only have visitors' visas. So they were unable to study, work or obtain medical coverage.

What would the Department of Citizenship and Immigration propose to solve this problem, which can prevent the development of specific projects?

[David Manicom]

Thank you very much, sir, for the question.

A Canadian citizen who anticipates returning to Canada can sponsor his spouse and children as members of the family class, with a view to permanent immigration. Meanwhile, the children and his wife can get a student visa to study in Canada. A Canadian citizen is entitled to begin the immigration process for his family before returning to Canada. That is a right that citizens have, but not permanent residents.

[Raymond Côté, NDP, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

However, the wait times are awfully long. They are even an obstacle to Canadian citizens, or even temporary foreign workers, accepting contracts in Canada. The representatives from Ubisoft and Warner Bros. indicated that this difficulty in securing skilled workers for specific projects was of increasing concern to them.

[David Manicom]

The spouse and the children can come to Canada if they come from a country where a visitor visa is required. They can apply for a visitor visa.

If foreign nationals were to be automatically given the right to enter and study in Canada before any examination of the bona fides of the marriage, for example, we could certainly expect there to be some abuse in connection with that program. However, the department gives priority processing to applications to sponsor the spouses and children of Canadian citizens as permanent residents.

[Raymond Côté, NDP, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Still with reference to Ubisoft, I would like to point out that the accelerated labour market opinion program was scrapped in July 2013, despite its great popularity with stakeholders. Unfortunately, the representatives from Ubisoft and other companies told us that the average processing time without the accelerated program had gone from two weeks to over eight weeks, not counting the two weeks of advertising, which could quite easily cause them to miss the opportunity to hire highly-skilled temporary foreign workers. As a matter of fact, the needs of the industry were virtually no longer being met. In any case, it required them to make a lot of adjustments.

Is there any hope for a return of the simplified process? Have you had any reports that the loss of the accelerated program has caused a lot of problems specifically for the entertainment software industry?

[Alexis Conrad]

Allow me to answer in English.

Going back in time, the accelerated labour market opinion process was quite popular with employers. They appreciated the faster processing. The suspension of that, obviously, has had an impact on some employers using that program. We have, over the recent months, made sincere and important efforts to improve our LMO processing times to meet employer demands.

Minister Kenney has made some public statements around prioritizing applications from employers who are hiring highly trained, well-paid positions. I don't want to get too far ahead of the minister, but I will say that this issue around needing timely access to foreign workers at the high end of the skill continuum is something that I've heard directly from the gaming sector.

I think as a department we have a fairly robust and good understanding of the challenges that they're facing and certainly have made sincere efforts to improve their access. We are certainly focused on making sure that the time of the process is not an impediment to their meeting their needs.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

Thank you, Mr. Conrad.

Thank you, Mr. Côté.

We will now go to Mr. Warawa, who has five minutes.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses who are here today.

Mr. Jonathan Lutz, the vice-president and CFO of EA Canada, commented that:

Obviously, we would always much rather hire locally. We have a very, very experienced recruitment team that looks across the industry and would always hire a Canadian first....

What changes have we been making to the current programs under CIC and ESDC to ensure that Canadians are not overlooked for jobs?

Also, in line with that, in ESDC's presentation today, you said that industry:

...simply cannot find Canadians or train them in time to do critical work, particularly skilled jobs at the top end of the talent continuum. This is either because the age of the industry in Canada means that not enough Canadians have had time to develop these very high-end skills or because some jobs are so highly specialized that there aren't [enough] Canadians who have that knowledge.

So what are we doing? What changes are we making to current programs to ensure that Canadians aren't overlooked, and that we have a growing pool of potential Canadian employees at these companies?

It is an evolving industry, where skill sets that they have today will be even more stringent for them to be competitive in the industry. So how are we changing, how have we changed, and how are we going to be changing?

[Alexis Conrad]

Certainly, over the last year the government has announced a lot of changes to the temporary foreign worker program, most specifically on the labour market opinion process. We have amongst other things introduced a processing fee for labour market opinions to ensure that taxpayers aren't subsidizing the process. We have put in new compliance tools to ensure that employers actually live up to the commitments they've made in the labour market opinion. We have removed some wage flexibility to ensure that temporary foreign workers are paid at the prevailing wage rates.

We have certainly made more efforts to ensure that Canadians know that there are jobs out there in terms of increasing the recruitment requirements. We've asked employers to advertise more widely and more broadly to ensure Canadians know where jobs are and have an opportunity to apply. We have also announced and will implement relatively soon something we call transition plans, so when employers apply for temporary foreign workers, they present with their application a plan for how they're going to transition to a Canadian workforce over time. The purpose of the transition plan is to make sure that companies are taking their human resource responsibility seriously and that temporary foreign workers are indeed used as a temporary bridge when Canadians aren't available.

I've spoken with the entertainment and gaming sector and they have certainly impressed upon me that for the positions they need to fill and the critical need for specialized talent at the top of the skill continuum, there are times when Canadians just aren't available or don't have the skill set they need. But one of the things that really impressed me about their work was the investments they've been making in training schools and in universities to actually develop the next generation of Canadian talent. I think their view is that over time they can reduce their reliance on temporary foreign workers and transition to—I don't want to say “complete”—a higher proportion of Canadian workers.

I was also struck, when I looked behind the scenes, by the numbers of temporary foreign workers they bring in. They are almost exclusively at the top of the skill continuum. I think their feeling was that as the industry gets older and people have a chance to naturally come up the talent continuum, that they'll have more opportunity to hire Canadians at that level, but there will always be some really specific needs for foreign workers. So I really think one of the points of the transition plans for companies is to be able to explain to us the investments and efforts they're making to hire and train Canadians so that they can reduce their reliance on temporary foreign workers over time.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

Thank you very much, Mr. Conrad and Mr. Warawa.

Now on to Ms. Nash.

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My question is for ESDC and we heard from some witnesses that internships were crucial to facilitating the integration of a new graduate into the video game industry and especially these higher-tiered jobs.

In the last budget the government did announce a program to support internships in high-demand fields like the video game industry. How many of the 3,000 new internships will be in the video game industry?

[Monika Bertrand]

That is very difficult to say, because there are no quotas in terms of which industry these internships are going to be in. They will be in high-demand areas, which includes STEM jobs and it will include the skilled trades.

When we're talking about STEM, for example, it does include software engineers and designers, computer programmers, and web designers. So all of these jobs are included in these internships, but in terms of how many, I will not be able to tell you.

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Could you confirm that there will be internships in this—

[Monika Bertrand]

There will certainly be internships. The availability is there, right? So I would assume that there are companies out there that are interested in providing these internships to skilled youth.

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Okay. So we'll have to take a look afterwards then—

[Monika Bertrand]

Absolutely.

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

—and look back and see how that developed.

Mr. Chair, I'd like to use the rest of my time to move my motion:

That the Standing Committee on Industry, science and technology undertake a study of recent wireless plan price increases by Canadian wireless carriers and their impact on the affordability of life for consumers and report its findings to the House by April 30, 2014.

I know this is something that the government has expressed interest in. Certainly our goal in putting forth this motion is that as New Democrats we believe Canadians deserve access to the most reliable networks and the highest speeds possible at affordable prices. Canadians deserve clear and consistent action to improve competition in the market and bring down prices for our consumers. That's certainly our goal on this side.

It seems to us that the government has not handled this file well. They've spent in the area of $9 million on ads to fight Canadian companies when that money, energy, and time would have been better directed to actually improving services and costs for consumers. Our view is that the new entrants have been left by this government to wither on the vine and the government has signed off on further concentration in the industry, leaving consumers with fewer choices at higher prices.

We think this study would be welcomed by the industry and consumers. But I do want to say that there has been some confusion that stems from media reporting of this motion. The media was alleging—and I certainly wasn't, with this motion—that this motion spoke to an allegation of collusion in the industry, which was not at all the point of this motion.

There's been some debate on this and a retraction of recent media reports on the issue, but—

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

I have a point of order.