Evidence of meeting #75 for Public Accounts in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was employers.

A video is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Michael Ferguson  Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General
Louise Levonian  Deputy Minister, Department of Employment and Social Development
Paul Thompson  Senior Assistant Deputy Minister, Skills and Employment Branch, Department of Employment and Social Development
Glenn Wheeler  Principal, Office of the Auditor General
Leslie MacLean  Senior Associate Deputy Minister and Chief Operating Officer for Service Canada, Department of Employment and Social Development
Elise Boisjoly  Assistant Deputy Minister, Integrity Services Branch, Department of Employment and Social Development

10:20 a.m.

Conservative

Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB

Okay, so that's the wage that would be paid to a TFW or whatnot.

10:20 a.m.

Senior Assistant Deputy Minister, Skills and Employment Branch, Department of Employment and Social Development

Paul Thompson

And a Canadian. We look at the wages paid across the sector including Canadians and TFWs.

10:20 a.m.

Conservative

Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB

But there hasn't been any analysis at what wage somebody would go off EI and work at the plant. Is that correct?

The point I'm trying to make is that the TFW program is a market intervention by government that depresses wages. The Auditor General's findings go to this point.

I'm an Albertan. I've seen this problem. I've had Tim Hortons store owners in my office yelling at me saying that we shouldn't have made the changes to the program, yet I still have this position.

I'm wondering if your department has done any analysis or has any economists working for you who are looking not at what the prevailing wage is but what the actual wage would be that would get somebody off EI and go to work in a certain sector.

10:25 a.m.

Senior Assistant Deputy Minister, Skills and Employment Branch, Department of Employment and Social Development

Paul Thompson

Doing that kind of wage analysis is rather complicated. You need to figure out what the wage would otherwise have been in the absence of temporary foreign workers.

10:25 a.m.

Conservative

Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB

Right.

10:25 a.m.

Senior Assistant Deputy Minister, Skills and Employment Branch, Department of Employment and Social Development

Paul Thompson

It's a counterfactual proposition that's difficult to analyze.

10:25 a.m.

Conservative

Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB

I didn't ask if it was difficult. I was asking if it's been done.

10:25 a.m.

Senior Assistant Deputy Minister, Skills and Employment Branch, Department of Employment and Social Development

Paul Thompson

There are some efforts under way. There are some discussions with academics on the possibility of doing it. There is no silver bullet for looking at it. I would say, though, that—

10:25 a.m.

Conservative

Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB

What sorts of discussions have been undertaken to do that work?

10:25 a.m.

Senior Assistant Deputy Minister, Skills and Employment Branch, Department of Employment and Social Development

Paul Thompson

We're looking at the available wage data and what the trends and the impacts on wages are of temporary foreign workers. Our policy is that they have to pay at or above the prevailing wage. We know that temporary foreign workers represent about 0.5% of the labour force, so the impact—

10:25 a.m.

Conservative

Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB

You're saying that there is work that is being undertaken by your department to work with economists, academics, whatnot, in the seafood processing industry specifically to—

10:25 a.m.

Senior Assistant Deputy Minister, Skills and Employment Branch, Department of Employment and Social Development

Paul Thompson

No. It's generally across the economy, because there are a number of sectors where TFWs are—

10:25 a.m.

Conservative

Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB

Do you think it's possible to actually issue LMIAs?

Maybe this is a question for Mr. Ferguson, based on his audit. Is there a missing policy piece? Are we actually able, under the rules right now, to issue LMIAs in the absence of that type of data?

10:25 a.m.

Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General

Michael Ferguson

The only thing that I can say is that, when we do an audit, we look at what the department says they need to do. They need to understand things like what the labour market situation is, so we look to see what type of information they have on that. When they say they need to assess the efforts that the employers went through before they hired, we go through the files to see whether they have done that.

We don't try to recommend what the policy should be. What we do is to simply ask, “Did they do what the policy already required?”

10:25 a.m.

Conservative

Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB

Right, thank you.

On the record, Mr. Thompson, for our report, when your department is evaluating whether or not to issue an LMIA, you're basically looking at unemployment rates and whether or not an employer has advertised sufficiently. Would that be an accurate characterization of the review that's done?

10:25 a.m.

Senior Assistant Deputy Minister, Skills and Employment Branch, Department of Employment and Social Development

Paul Thompson

They have to have demonstrated efforts to recruit. There is a time requirement for the period, and they have to document what Canadians have applied and the reasons they were not—

10:25 a.m.

Conservative

Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB

In terms of a policy instrument, your department, through our legislative framework, is not required to undertake any sort of broader macroeconomic or microeconomic analysis of whether the prevailing wage is depressed by the presence of TFWs, what the actual wage would be in the absence of TFWs, other factors such as working conditions and whether or not they are depressing wages, and/or the broader macroeconomic impacts.

10:25 a.m.

Senior Assistant Deputy Minister, Skills and Employment Branch, Department of Employment and Social Development

Paul Thompson

We are required to do a study, a program evaluation. As the deputy noted, one is planned for 2018.

10:25 a.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Kevin Sorenson

Thank you, Mr. Thompson.

We'll now move to Mr. Christopherson.

10:25 a.m.

NDP

David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON

Thank you, Chair.

On page 7, in paragraph 5.38 of the Auditor General's report:

Departmental policy required that, for low-wage positions, employers should demonstrate that they had tried to recruit from under-represented groups. In the files we reviewed where this requirement applied, 65 percent of employers did not make adequate efforts to appeal to under-represented groups. Nevertheless, the Department approved most of these applications. For example, program officers approved applications for temporary foreign workers in some fish and seafood processing plants located near First Nations communities, even when efforts to recruit from those communities were not found on file.

Sixty-five per cent didn't make the effort. In many cases, a first nations community was nearby, yet your department still granted the applications. Please explain.

10:30 a.m.

Senior Assistant Deputy Minister, Skills and Employment Branch, Department of Employment and Social Development

Paul Thompson

We indeed need to do more on recruitment of under-represented groups and we've done a number of things in this area. We now require not one but two under-represented groups to be recruited. We're bolstering the requirements of the employers to demonstrate this. We're supporting it with program investments—I mentioned outreach to the indigenous service providers we have in these regions—to align training programs, as the Auditor General noted. If there is a skills deficit or other question of preparedness to work, we can invest in those populations to make them better suited for the job. There are a number of efforts in that regard.

We've also bolstered our job bank so that, for example, an indigenous jobseeker can now identify on our job bank as an indigenous jobseeker and an employer would have an immediate line of sight to an applicant from one of those groups.

There are a number of areas where we've accepted the recommendations and have further measures in place.

10:30 a.m.

NDP

David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON

If the Auditor General hadn't come out with this report, it seems to me that you wouldn't have done anything. It seems to me, also, that 65% should have said to somebody in management that we have a problem here. Please, I understand what you're doing to correct it—I get that—and you acknowledged it was a problem, but help me understand. How did you get to this problem? How could it be that 65% were not following one of the basic requirements, yet until the Auditor General did his report, you were just merrily going along?

10:30 a.m.

Senior Assistant Deputy Minister, Skills and Employment Branch, Department of Employment and Social Development

Paul Thompson

Employers sometimes face challenges in how to access these under-represented groups. It's not immediately apparent what the best recruitment strategies are, so we've been reaching out to make it easier to put the tools in the hands of the employers to do that kind of outreach.

10:30 a.m.

NDP

David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON

Sorry, my question was more internally. How did it get to this point? If the Auditor General hadn't given us the report, I have to believe you'd still be merrily going along with this kind of 65% and still giving an approval. I want to know how that got to be.

10:30 a.m.

Senior Assistant Deputy Minister, Skills and Employment Branch, Department of Employment and Social Development

Paul Thompson

We've had continued efforts for a number of years to strengthen recruitment. We've made major investments in indigenous training and in persons with disabilities working with provinces. We've increased, by over 20%, from—