You don't have to snicker.
One of my summer jobs was working on recreation programs for a boy's club, which was associated with the local United Church in inner city Winnipeg. We brought in 40 or 50 volunteers per night to provide student recreation programs at the local level in an area where children did not have much opportunity.
A month or so ago I was talking to a woman who was a contemporary of mine. She had been involved in the program and had become heavily involved in the work of the United Church in offering this program. I asked her whether she still did those programs and she replied: "No, we spend money lobbying people like you". That is an interesting change. Rather than investing their dollars in terms of providing a rooted, community based activity directly designed to meet those problems, they were mobilizing to lobby the government.
Is there a way we can make government a partner in that area? Is there a way government can help the local boys' club or church organization? That is why I want to decentralize the department. It will give far more discretion, far more autonomy and far more accountability at the local level so it can make decisions and work out its business plans. I believe this is a very exciting opportunity.
The other night in Winnipeg there was a major conference put on by the Institute for Advanced Research on children's problems. The institute brought together from across Canada about 20 different agencies which were pioneers in bringing together community based responses to the problems of children and youth at risk. It was a heart warming and encouraging experience. We saw how schools, agencies, local police, local municipalities, the provinces and our department all came together at the same time to provide a range of services. They could make use of the resources. Rather than having single silos or pyramids built all over town, they were now bringing them together.
Their request to us was to have an information network which would link them across Canada so they can share experiences and resources, so they can get common procurement and look at common training for their workers. That is a simple way of hooking them up to the information network.
Look at the connection. One of the reforms we are introducing in our department is the new labour market information system across Canada. Individuals can tap into that system to find jobs whether they are in Gander or in Prince Rupert. If we can provide the same information network to those child centres, all of a sudden we have substantially enhanced their resource with very little cost to us and we have made them much more effective in their local communities. That is the vision the department is trying to put forward.
How do we take this very large department, which has 27,000 employees and a budget of $60 billion, and really make it an active, involved participant at the community level along with its other partners?
At times I show some frustration at the old debate about which level of bureaucracy will control the money. I am saying the real problem is at the community level. That is where it really counts.
It gives us the opportunity to help to clarify the roles between levels of government. Contrary to the charge that there is a big intrusion, one of the direct results of the department will be to give far more space for provincial governments to begin to make decisions at their level of responsibility and jurisdiction. I firmly believe that. The time has come for us to take a much closer look at the respective roles and to build bridges to bring us together.
That is why we have formally invited the provinces to work with the Government of Canada on the decentralization of the delivery of services so we can tailor them to local labour market needs. That is the key. We cannot do it unilaterally, as some provinces want; we must do it together.
As the federal government simplifies its programs and further defines their scope, the roles of both levels of government will be clarified, and major sectors of the labour market will be open to the provinces.
That is a very major task we have set for ourselves. We have already started a number of discussions with many provinces about how we can do exactly that. One of the most important results of the new legislation we are preparing which will be introduced very shortly will give us the ability to make a much better, more effective clarification of the respective roles and to create far more space for provinces to make their decisions.
Rather than getting into the bare knuckle federalism that some people in the House have advocated, in which they seem to enjoy confrontation, it is time to start building a partnership of federalism. In that wonderful world of Judith Maxwell, one of our important social and economic confreres, said: "Is it it not time governments look at the potential of federalism, not its problems, not its disputes, but the potential of federalism?" That is what we are trying to discover and search out as we deal with the new issues, the potential of federalism, the potential we can bring together.
As I said earlier, we have already succeeded in building that in a number of new delivery systems. Let me give an example of the things in the past year we have been able to do working with the provinces in those areas.
One good example is from Newfoundland dealing with a serious problem, as my colleague from St. John's knows well. We established a collaborative approach to deal with youth unemployment. As a result of the student work and service program, 2,700 young people including 1,000 on social assistance were given an opportunity to work for a period of 16 weeks in either the private sector or community agencies. Upon completion of that work they were given a voucher and could then choose to go back to school or use it for self-employment.
A full 97 per cent of those young people on social assistance have used or intend to use those vouchers to go back to school. They worked, they earned it, they have the voucher and now they understand the importance of education. That was done with full collaboration between two levels of government working with youth agencies, schools and colleges in that area.
Does that kind of thing not indicate exactly how collaboration is better than confrontation, division and separation? That is the way to get things done, by working at that level of opportunity.
Let me give another example from British Columbia where certain ministers are claiming we do nothing. There is a major child care project going on, almost $30 million invested through our strategic initiative. Again, we sat down and worked it out. We asked how we could provide a better service in child car. The province took the lead in the design and implementation and we provided the resource through which it could establish community based child care centres that provide a series of services for 30 or 40 child care activities. They provide a common procurement, common training, respite care for parents who need it.
The evaluations I shared with a minister in British Columbia again demonstrating we have saved the child care system money because there is a common based service. Those individual child care units can provide a better range of services because there are special remedial programs for disabled children which can be shared among a number of units. That collaboration has resulted in better planning within the community level about how children can be looked after at the community level.
This makes sense, rather than getting into the bare knuckles. It is better to realize the real issue is children and how we can work together to provide that kind of service.
Another good example in Quebec is the APPORT program which the province pioneered with the previous government. It has provided a form of assistance and testing those on social assistance so they can go back to school or to work with the use of an income supplement. While the debate about separation was raging, we were negotiating with the Government of Quebec about how we could combine and collaborate jointly fund the APPORT program and extend it to new kinds of clients so that we could find a way of enabling people, rather than staying on social assistance, to find self-sufficiency and independence in their lives and find a job. This is again an example that while the great political battles are waging over here, at the community level we can do something very useful, very effective and very helpful.
That is one level of the kind of partnership we see as the abiding philosophy we want to put forward. Another very important problem all members of the House are concerned about, because we see it every day in our constituencies, is our young people. They have a much tougher time than our generation had. They have far fewer opportunities because of the higher demands for skill and education. They have far less certainty about what the future holds because the future is so much in turbulence and turmoil.
However there are ways we can work together in partnership. One of the areas we are exploring most actively is how to work with the private sector in this area. The most crucial area and where there have been serious problems is when young people finish their formal education. How do they open the door to new kinds of work experiences? How do they make that transition, build that bridge?
Our department has been working on the establishment of a series of human resource sector councils. We now have 19 in place. These bring together employees and employers, unions and management to work out a human resource plan for their own industry: electronics, software, tourism, horticulture, culture. They recognize, again through experience, is by bringing workers and management together they can do much better than having them separated. They also recognize they have very serious gaps in skills in those sectors and they are working to improve them.
We have just signed an agreement with the Grocery Products Manufacturers Council two weeks ago, the second largest manufacturing group in Canada with about 300,000 employees. Half its employees do not have the level of education required to meet the new kinds of technologies now coming into that business. Therefore they will start with basic on the job literacy programs. The private sector helps to support this program and the provincial governments provide support for the private sector which is taking the responsibility to manage the program.
Councils could provide very important conclusions in youth internships in which we could provide the opportunity, managed and driven by the private sector, to take responsibility for our young people to make that transition. It means that in schools in all provinces there are young people who work half days through a private sector opportunity and go to school half days. The curriculum and standards have been designed jointly by the private sector council and the local school or provincial agency.
This year 25,000 young Canadians will have the opportunity to be involved in that kind of youth internship program. Again, it is a partnership: government with the private sector; government with the local school boards; government with the provinces. That is the kind of philosophy we have to continually talk about because that is what works.
That is what the department is about, finding what works based on dealing with the real individual needs of Canadians and getting better services to them, but also developing a real set of partnerships that will enable us to reach out and cross over to find the linkages, bridges and connections throughout the country with our fellow governments, the private sector and community style agencies to combine resources and focus our efforts specifically on enabling individual Canadians to make a difference and to make a change.
Therefore I strongly recommend to the House the legislation we have before us. I hope members will see it for what it really is, not based on the old prisms and optics of the past, which is to say this is federal or that is provincial, but on the prisms and optics of the future, which is to say let us redefine government as partners with individuals, partners with communities and as partners with each other. That is the real philosophy that underlies the new Department of Human Resources Development.
With the accord and support of the House, we can get this legislation in place. It would give us the authority to bring together the powers of the old department and provide a coherent, concise focus on helping Canadians meet the challenges of a new century.