Public Accounts Committee on Oct. 31st, 2017

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

When did you start all that?

[Paul Thompson]

Over the last two years we've been doing investments with the provinces with a 20% increase in our training programs through transfers to provinces and quite an active investment in skills development for under-represented groups, including significant new efforts on the indigenous training side as well. There's quite a bit of activity and investment under way on that part.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I would expect that, given the importance of this relationship to all of us, you're going to see more on this, probably, in our report.

If I can, Chair—I'm sure I don't have much time—I just want pick up on where Madam Mendès was. I am totally confused about this on-site inspection, too. I appreciated her stepping forward, because it's just confusing. On the one hand, you say you have to study it, and that's not supposed to happen until the end of next year. You, in your introduction, and the deputy, in her introduction, said that it's obvious, and then at one point you said there were things you had to analyze before you could go there, but now you're telling us you're getting results because you're going there.

I'm confused. Help me understand where you were on on-site inspections, where you are now, and where you want to be.

[Paul Thompson]

I think it's the difference between on-site inspections and unannounced on-site inspections, so we're considerably far into our ramping up of on-site inspections. The unannounced are what the deputy was referring to. We're figuring out the best ways to do that to make sure our employees' interests are dealt with as well as the interests of the businesses that we're visiting.

My colleague can elaborate on that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you.

Was there any more on that?

[Elise Boisjoly]

Yes. We started last year with the on-site inspections, which were announced, so we talk to the employers. We make an appointment within the next few days, and then we go on site visits to look at the working conditions and the wages.

In the case of the unannounced, as my colleague mentioned, these increase some of the risks to the employees and to the workers as well in terms of potential reprisal from the employer, so we want to ensure that we're doing it correctly. There are other departments that are doing it. We're going to leverage our practices in terms of exploring the options and making the analysis of the site.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you.

Mr. Arya, please. Thank you for your patience.

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

Regarding the unannounced on-site inspections, I'm glad that you're still evolving on that. My concern is that this should not be used as a draconian tool by government employees on small businesses, like small restaurants, showing up unannounced.

Continuing on what my colleagues out there talked about, especially Mr. Christopherson on the under-represented groups, you mentioned four groups: indigenous people, vulnerable youth, persons with disabilities, and newcomers.

What is your definition of newcomers here?

[Paul Thompson]

There are different groups that we would work with, which we mentioned earlier. The group with refugees and asylum seekers is one particular area of focus. Generally, we look at newcomers as people who arrived in Canada within the last five years.

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

You mentioned that in the job bank there's an opportunity for indigenous people to identify themselves so that it helps employers. Is that provision available for newcomers too?

[Paul Thompson]

We are in the process of building these abilities to self-identify. I'd have to get back to you on whether it exists for newcomers. It's certainly our intention. We're rolling out groups individually.

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

Thank you.

Recommendation 5.58 is the Auditor General's recommendation that “officers have access to relevant Employment Insurance data and sufficient Record of Employment data for use in their assessments”.

It appears that you're not clearly committed to following the Auditor General's recommendation, but you're merely stating its importance.

[Paul Thompson]

We have taken steps already to increase the look-back period for looking at an employer's pattern of use of employment insurance. I believe that previously we had looked back three months, but now we're looking back 12 months to get a whole year of information on whether any employees in that work site had been laid off.

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

Do officers have to look into this?

[Paul Thompson]

It's part of the assessment process of an application to look at the records of employment of that employer.

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

Thank you.

[Paul Thompson]

When an application is received, that's part of the process.

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

Thank you.

Coming back to when the deputy minister was there, I was asking her about the negative impact of this program on Canadian wages. She said that the Auditor General feels that there may be a negative impact on Canadian wages, whereas she said that the program should not be putting downward pressure on Canadian wages.

We have a massive amount of data over a long period of time. Has it been analyzed to find out if this is the case?

[Paul Thompson]

As I was alluding to earlier, there's rather a complex economic analysis to look at a counterfactual proposition. If the temporary foreign worker wasn't there, what would the wage have been? As I mentioned, we are working with academics on that question and we've also committed to do the best possible analysis in our upcoming program evaluation.

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

I'm quite surprised that it is being done now, even though this program has been in existence for a very long time.

Another thing that I asked the deputy minister, which we did not have time to cover, was about striking a balance between helping employers fill their labour market gaps and ensuring that Canadians have first access. The deputy minister said that this balance is important, but it's quite difficult to achieve. She also mentioned that there are national, regional, and industry-specific considerations.

What are those specific considerations when it comes to industries like fish or the restaurant industry?

[Paul Thompson]

Sectors have a diverse set of challenges around recruitment and retention of workers. There may be unemployed people in the vicinity of the employer, but perhaps they don't have the right skills or perhaps they're not living in the same location. There are issues of mobility, retention, and skills and training. Those are some of the complexities that vary from employer to employer. Some are in small, remote communities where there are significant demographic challenges and those recruitment challenges are particularly acute. That's why, rather than trying a one-size-fits-all approach, we're doing a review of each of these individual industry sectors to get a better sense of the dynamic and maximize their potential to recruit every Canadian possible, so that the TFW program is there to deal with residual demand.

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much, Mr. Arya.

For the final section of questions today, we'll go back to Mr. Deltell.

You have five minutes.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Thank you so much, Mr. Chair.

It's always a pleasure to talk to you.

Since this is our last opportunity, I want to emphasize that the most important question raised today is that every effort needs to be made to ensure that hiring foreign workers is really something employers do as a last resort. In this regard the Auditor General's report is quite scathing. This is what it says:

In cases where, in our opinion, the information provided by employers warranted further questioning, we found that program officers did not sufficiently question employers in 40 % of the cases.

The same report also says this:

We examined almost 500 records of employment issued by these plants over a three-year period and found that just over 80 % of the Canadians they laid off had claimed EI at the same time as the plants were employing temporary foreign workers.

The report also says this:

[...] expanded the department's powers to inspect up to 21 program requirements and to act if employers were not meeting them.

Nevertheless, the Auditor General points out that:

However, we found that, in general, the department inspected employers for compliance with only 7 requirements [...]

In closing, I will ask you a question which will, I think, give you an opportunity to summarize the situation well.

What measures are you going to take to be even more rigorous, and to ensure that businesses offer the jobs to unemployed Canadian workers before seeking to hire foreign workers?

[Paul Thompson]

It is true that hiring temporary foreign workers presents an opportunity to strengthen recruitment measures. We in fact use this information to increase our labour training and development efforts, as well as provincial and territorial efforts to improve the skills of their populations, while applying the rules of the program more strictly, including the measures you mentioned.

I'm talking about the overall measures on compliance and inspections and other elements of the program to make sure that employers are following the rules when there has been a positive labour market impact assessment given.