Natural Resources Committee on Nov. 23rd, 2011

[Ted Hsu, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Do we keep statistics on the types of jobs? I'm thinking of skill levels, because that corresponds with the salary levels.

[Tom Hoefer]

I'm not sure how detailed they get, but I'd certainly make the same observation, that because the educational levels in the aboriginal community in the north are lower than in the non-aboriginal community, most of those jobs are at the entry level, the semi-skilled, the apprenticeship and trades area, which is increasing all the time.

There is also a program that one of the mines calls the aboriginal leadership development program, to try to take those workers who have demonstrated that they want to move on but don't have the skills, and help with their training, so they can move up in the ranks into supervisory roles.

[Ted Hsu, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

I'm wondering if the industry has ever considered setting targets to have a certain percentage of highly skilled jobs filled by locals by a certain year, or some similar kind of schedule that the industry could aspire to. Is that something you would be in favour of, or have already?

[Eberhard Scherkus]

Any time you set percentage targets it becomes very difficult. We've had that difficulty in some of our contracting out, where the Inuit association requested a minimum target of Inuit people, and when we asked for the local Inuit entrepreneur to meet that commitment, it became difficult. I think it has to be on a best efforts basis. These numbers are very tough to meet, because we're starting from so far behind.

[Ted Hsu, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

You have a few seconds.

Does anyone else want to respond to that? Yes, Mr. Merritt.

[John Merritt]

Just to answer the first question, I don't think there are reliable statistics in terms of Inuit participation in resource projects in all four Inuit regions. There are statistics for public sector employment. Generally, there is 40% to 50% Inuit participation.

In terms of objectives, the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement—I'll refer to that one—has a very clear target in terms of an ultimate objective, and that is to have a representative workforce in both the public and private sectors. In the case of Nunavut, that would be 85% participation. That's not a surprising principle, because you see it in the Public Service Employment Act. The Public Service of Canada should reflect the people of Canada. I don't think anyone would object to the worthiness of that as a target.

The more difficult thing, as my colleague said earlier, is trying to get there. What are the practical measures? There was discussion earlier about education. Certainly ITK and other organizations have always said that the problem here is on the supply side. Organizations don't say that there's a conspiracy to keep Inuit out of a job. There's not a problem of discrimination comparable to the U.S. south 50 years ago. It's not that kind of situation. Seventy percent of the kids aren't coming out of the schools. Whatever efforts are being made by the mining industry, and some of those efforts are quite creative, it's not fundamentally their job to fix the major problems in the public education system. That belongs in the public sphere.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you, Mr. Hsu.

We go now to the five-minute round. We'll have Mr. Anderson, for up to five minutes.

Go ahead.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

I'm going to follow up on that, because human resources acquisition is an element we're hearing about. We had folks from Saskatchewan here. They were talking about a need for 15,000 or 17,000 people in the next seven or eight years. We heard a couple of days ago, I think, that 5,000 to 8,000 folks are going to be needed to work.

What are the plans? This is not a long time period. If you're talking about fixing the public education system, you're probably talking about a longer time period. Do you have specific plans for being able to meet those kinds of resource requirements over the next five to ten years? How will immigration play a part in that? It's playing a big role in my province right now. Are you just looking to local education and training to meet those demands?

We'll work our way across the table.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Mr. Hanks.

[Chris Hanks]

I think, in the first instance, Mr. Anderson, we would want to look at the local situation. If you take the area in Nunavut we work in, for instance, the six communities closest to us have a mean age of between 18 and 24. The wave in the birth rate coming in behind that is substantial. There's a very good workforce potentially coming along, and they're people who are young enough that they can either stay in school or go back to school.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Can I ask a question? As you see the employment levels rise, do you see changes in the social structures so that people are more willing to stay in school? They see a reason for doing that. Is it fair to say that?

[Chris Hanks]

It is, and the example I would use would be the Tlicho people, the Dogrib people in the Northwest Territories. I was involved with BHP in the construction of Ekati. The first time we went out to give scholarships in 1995, there was one Tlicho citizen in post-secondary education. Within three to four years, there were over 100 a year in regular post-secondary education. You saw a real transformation in their society as that became more of a norm. Now, 15 years later, the number that have stayed in school has really made a difference in the success of their companies, in the penetration of their own businesses, and in changes in their leadership.

[Tara Christie]

Could I just add to that? In answer to your question about specific training programs, every mining company has a training plan that takes local people and puts them into various positions. We've also worked very closely with many of the training associations, the Yukon, Northwest Territory, and Nunavut training associations, that were funded by ASEP. They were tremendously successful in helping people move into higher positions, because often they provided some classroom content, which we as companies can't always provide. They ended up placing some of their trainees in various mining companies. There were lots of programs.

I've personally seen the success stories of many individuals. With respect to the numbers, it is really individuals. You watch the progress of one young mechanic as he goes from partying with his friends to actually valuing his job and his work and being proud of it so much that he finds a new circle of friends and moves on. It's those individual stories of success that really speak volumes. It will be those ones who move up into the higher positions and provide leadership for the coming generations.

I really think that putting more funding and effort into those mine training associations, which are job specific, will provide value.

[Larry Connell]

I'll follow up on that.

With respect to the Meadowbank operation, our in-house training programs take skills from entry level and improve those skills so that a guy who comes in at an entry-level position is moving up the skill ladder. On top of that, we participate in the Kivalliq Mine Training Society. That's a society we created along with the Government of Nunavut and the federal government to take people who have no entry-level skill and train them to get that first job at the mine. It was a three-year program. It was funded under the ASEP program, and it targeted 50 new people to enter the workplace in each one of the three years. The program has done better than that.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Can I interrupt you? I think my time is running out here quickly.

The numbers we got the other day showed a real difference between unskilled workers, of which a fairly low number are now required, and skilled workers, in terms of the trades and those kinds of things. Is that where you're trying to take people as quickly as possible then?

[Larry Connell]

We're trying to do both. We're trying to do it right from the entry-level people who have no prospect of getting of a job. We're also working on trying to get people into upgrading their skills. We're working on those as two separate levels.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

How is that working? Mr. Scherkus said he has four. I got a sense there was a bit of frustration there that there weren't more. I'm wondering how that is working for you folks.

[Larry Connell]

We work for the same company. For example, we're trying to fill 14 mechanical apprenticeship positions right now at Meadowbank. We have four. The reason the other 14 aren't filled is that although we have good candidates who have aptitude, we cannot get them through the trades training entry examination. They don't have the basic literacy and numeracy skills. So we've recently done a memorandum of agreement with the Government of Nunavut for some trial programs to focus on getting some kids into that. It comes right back to what ITK has been saying to you, that there has to be fundamental help given to improve the basic level of education in Nunavut. We are failing to give kids a proper level of education in Nunavut. That failure in turn impairs our ability to take them up the skills ladder.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

So is it a lack of resources or a lack of ability to get children through to the point where they—

[Larry Connell]

It's a lack of investment in the system. The reasons are very complex. It's not just a matter of throwing money at it; it's also making the appropriate investment of that money. There are a lot of complex reasons for it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you, Mr. Anderson.

Mr. Allen.

[Mike Allen, Conservative, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to our witnesses for being here. I'll just follow up a little bit on what Mr. Anderson was saying.

Mr. Scherkus, I think you commented that the government seems more focused on social programs than on employment. What specifically were you referring to in terms of those social programs? Maybe you've accomplished some of that in your discussion so far, and the comments from the other folks will be helpful too. Specifically how would you suggest we change that paradigm?

[Eberhard Scherkus]

Probably a bit more frustration will come through. When we look at the GN over the five years we have been there, we can say there's been emphasis on day care and housing assistance, and when you look at the budget and the focus, there's been very little emphasis on economic development. I talked to the Minister of Health two weeks ago, and she mentioned something that I mentioned here as well. We have an 11% increase in the GDP on an annual basis, but only in the last week was the premier of Nunavut able to take time out to come and visit the development of the Meadowbank Mine. So you ask yourself where their emphasis is if during the three years that this mine was being built and the first gold was being poured, nobody visited it. As it was, it was snowed out so they couldn't land.

[Mike Allen, Conservative, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

Do you want to comment, Mr. Hoefer?