HANSARD
Printed and Published by Nova Scotia Hansard Reporting Services
STANDING COMMITTEE ON HUMAN RESOURCES
Mr. David Wilson, Glace Bay (Chairman)
Hon. David Morse
Hon. Christopher d'Entremont
Mr. Chuck Porter
Mr. Charles Parker
Ms. Joan Massey
Mr. Percy Paris
Mr. Michel Samson
Ms. Diana Whalen
In Attendance:
Ms. Jana Hodgson
Legislative Committee Clerk
Mr. Gordon Hebb
Legislative Counsel
WITNESSES
Department of Labour and Workforce Development
Skills and Learning Branch
Mr. Stuart Gourley
Senior Executive Director
Mr. Dale Crawford
Acting Director, Apprenticeship Training
[Page 1]
HALIFAX, TUESDAY, APRIL 28, 2009
STANDING COMMITTEE ON HUMAN RESOURCES
9:00 A.M.
CHAIRMAN
Mr. David Wilson (Glace Bay)
MR. CHAIRMAN: Okay, let's start, folks, it's nine o'clock somewhere. Let's start, for the purpose of recording, with your names please.
[The committee members introduced themselves.]
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you. There are a number of items on the agenda this morning, none the least of which is our appointments to the agencies, boards and commissions. Let's leave them to the last, if we can get the committee to agree to that first, may we? Mr. Porter.
MR. CHUCK PORTER: All I was going to say is I had hoped they would be first because I may have to leave early due to some conference calls and things like that, just on this issue down home. How many do you need for a quorum?
MR. CHAIRMAN: Five.
MR. PORTER: Okay, we're good, we'll wait.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Because there are a batch of them . . .
MR. PORTER: David may come too.
MR. CHAIRMAN: . . . from the last time but if you want to - I don't like to - just in case our presenters - do you have a tight schedule today? We can go ahead, if you wish.
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All right, let's start off then with the appointments which were supposed to be done on - when? - March 31st. Okay, here we are. You have the list in front of you.
From the Department of Agriculture, the Nova Scotia Crop and Livestock Insurance Commission. Mr. d"Entremont.
HON. CHRISTOPHER D'ENTREMONT: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I so move James Baillie as a member of the Nova Scotia Crop and Livestock Insurance Commission.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Any further discussion? Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.
The motion is carried.
MR. D'ENTREMONT: Mr. Chairman, I'm going to excuse myself for the next one.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Mr. Minister.
From the Department of Community Services, Cobequid Housing Authority. Mr. Porter.
MR. PORTER: I so move Aubrey M. Chapman as a member.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Any further discussion? Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.
The motion is carried.
The Department of Education, Dalhousie University Foundation. Mr. Porter.
MR. PORTER: I so move Jamie Baillie as a member.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Any further discussion? Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.
The motion is carried.
The Cumberland Regional Library Board. Mr. d'Entremont.
MR. D'ENTREMONT: Mr. Chairman, I so move Paul Hopper as a member of the Cumberland Regional Library Board.
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MR. CHAIRMAN: Any further discussion? Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.
The motion is carried.
The Department of Finance, Halifax-Dartmouth Bridge Commission. Mr. Porter.
MR. PORTER: I so move Timothy A. Olive as a member.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Any further discussion? Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.
The motion is carried.
The Department of Justice, Nova Scotia Legal Aid Commission. Mr. d'Entremont.
MR. D'ENTREMONT: Mr. Chairman, I so move Donald G. Harding as chair, and James L. Chipman and Patrick J. Murray, Q.C. as members of the Nova Scotia Legal Aid Commission.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Any further discussion? Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.
The motion is carried.
Moving on to the appointments for today, Tuesday, April 28th, starting with the Department of Education, Eastern Counties Regional Library Board. Mr. d'Entremont.
MR. D'ENTREMONT: Mr. Chairman, I so move Lester Wood as a member of the Eastern Counties Regional Library Board.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Any further discussion? Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.
The motion is carried.
The Department of Health - Health Authorities, starting with the Annapolis Valley District Health Authority. Mr. Porter.
MR. PORTER: Mr. Chairman. I so move Dian B.M. Odin as a member of the Annapolis Valley District Health Authority.
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MR. CHAIRMAN: Any further discussion? Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.
The motion is carried.
The Capital District, Queen Elizabeth II Health Sciences Centre and Nova Scotia Hospital. Mr. d'Entremont.
MR. D'ENTREMONT: Mr. Chairman, I so move Paul A. Adderely, Gwendolyn R. Haliburton, Shannon M. MacDonald and Thomas J. McInnis as members of the Queen Elizabeth II Health Sciences Centre and Nova Scotia Hospital.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Any further discussion? Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.
The motion is carried.
Colchester East Hants District Health Authority. Mr. Porter.
MR. PORTER: I so move Sheila Peck as a member of the Colchester East Hants District Health Authority.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Any further discussion? Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.
The motion is carried.
The Cumberland District Health Authority. Mr. d'Entremont.
MR. D'ENTREMONT: Mr. Chairman, I so move Paul M. Hill, Nancy McLelan and Ron Scott as members of the Cumberland District Health Authority.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Any further discussion? Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.
The motion is carried.
The Pictou County District Health Authority. Mr. Parker.
MR. CHARLES PARKER: I so move Paul V. Beesley as chair and member of the Pictou County District Health Authority.
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MR. CHAIRMAN: Any further discussion? Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.
The motion is carried.
South Shore District Health Authority. Mr. d'Entremont.
MR. D'ENTREMONT: Mr. Chairman, I so move Christopher L.A. Clarke, Albert D. Doucet, Walter Freeman and Doug Nauss as members of the South Shore District Health Authority.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Any further discussion? Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.
The motion is carried.
South West Nova District Health Authority. Mr. Porter.
MR. PORTER: Mr. Chairman, I so move David Stewart Pierre Dow and Terrence Lloyd Smith as members of the South West Nova District Health Authority.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Any further discussion? Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.
The motion is carried.
The Department of Labour and Workforce Development, Occupational Health and Safety Advisory Council. Mr. Porter.
MR. PORTER: Mr. Chairman, I so move Lisa Anderson and Rae Anne Aldridge as employer members; and Jeff Brett, Kathy Dauphney and Cliff Murphy as employee members.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Any further discussion? Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.
The motion is carried.
As agreed at a previous meeting, our guests today and presenters are with the Department of Labour and Workforce Development, Skills and Learning Branch: the Senior Executive Director, Mr. Stuart Gourley, and the Acting Director for Apprenticeship Training, Mr. Dale Crawford. Good morning, gentlemen, thanks for appearing before us this morning.
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It's pretty well informal, the floor is yours if you want, and following whatever presentation you have we'll open it up to the members for some question and answer sessions.
MR. STUART GOURLEY: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. If I might, I'll just make a few very brief opening remarks around the three subjects that I'm bringing to the table this morning. The first of those is the apprenticeship training system in the province, which has been around since 1937 and has pushed through about 56,000 Certificates of Qualification. So it's a long-term effort in the province and a relatively successful one.
In front of you, you will have a fast-fact sheet, which gives you some information on the 2008-09 statistics for the Apprenticeship Training Division and I think those are very interesting. What we're most proud of is that we have 5,000 active apprentices and roughly 2,000 employers who engage those apprentices across the province. We issued 852 Certificates of Qualification last year and 716 Interprovincial Red Seals.
From the apprenticeship perspective, the Interprovincial Red Seal is our star. It allows a journey person to work anywhere in Canada for the most part. There are some exceptions in the Province of Quebec; however, anywhere else, an Interprovincial Red Seal allows immediate access to the workplace in the jurisdiction at hand.
We have registered last year an additional 1,500, approximately, new apprentices, so this is an attractive way of learning for people. I want to stress the fact that this is a learning model built around the exchange of experience and knowledge from an expert - a journeyman or a mentor - to the learner, to the apprentice. About 85 per cent of the learning that occurs, occurs on the job by transfer of that knowledge. So we have long-term experienced people transferring their knowledge to individual apprentices.
In addition to that, there's about 15 per cent that is technical training, which is formal training inside a classroom and that's done through a number of different mechanisms in the province. Certainly the Nova Scotia Community College is a major piece of that, but I'm proud to say that the United Association of Plumbers and Pipefitters also delivers training on behalf of the apprenticeship system through their excellent facility in Dartmouth. We've had that partnership with them to deliver the pipefitting training for some number of years.
The second topic that I'm going to talk about a little bit this morning is the LMDA - the Labour Market Development Agreement - which we are devolving from the federal government effective July 1st of this year. This program, which equates to about $80 million of programming to support EI-eligible clients, will come to the province with its federal staff, which up to the point of July 1st have been Service Canada employees, and 77 of those will transfer to the province and to the NSGEU out of the federal PSAC organization.
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We will be hiring about 40 people on top of that because there were about 120 support staff at Service Canada but not all transferred, for various reasons - they either retired or they took jobs in other sectors of the federal government or they'll be retiring very shortly and chose to stay with the superannuation program of the federal government. So this is an opportunity for provincial employees currently or for provincial citizens on the street to apply for a significant number of jobs that will become available very shortly. We have posted our first tranche of hirings, I believe it was on Friday last.
The LMDA supports, as I said, EI-eligible clients and it does that in a number of different ways. One of the most interesting of those is skills development agreements with individuals that support tuition payment. So an individual comes and identifies a return-to-work plan which says he would like to become a welder, that he has a job opportunity in the labour market, we then support tuition through the LMDA. In addition to that, he is receiving EI benefits at the same time. So this is a nice model.
It also supports group-type activity through EAS contractors such as The Job Junction, which is one that you would see over at the Halifax Shopping Centre, or near it. These are organizations that do attachment work with individuals, so they will do job hunting skills, they will do resumé writing workshops, they will do networking kinds of efforts for individuals, and they will do some essential skills training. So not to be trite about it, but it's good to show up at an interview with the right clothing on and all those kinds of things. So it's just sort of basic labour market entry kind of work.
[9:15 a.m.]
The third item is the Labour Market Agreement. Oh, I should go back just a second for the LMDA. The LMDA has no expiry to it. It is $80 million of programming per year and it goes on until somebody changes the EI Act in Ottawa, so it has no expiry to it. It is funded by the contributions made by individuals, as well as employers. That's the distinction because the LMA, which is the next one I'm going to talk about, does have an expiry date.
The LMA is the Labour Market Agreement and is for non-EI-eligible clients and it is about $14.5 million a year for six years. The major distinction between the two agreements - or two major distinctions, I guess - the first one is, it's non-EI-eligible and therefore can support people who have not traditionally been able to be supported in the return-to-work efforts. So someone who has been out of the labour market for more than three years, for example, and was non-EI-eligible, they had nowhere to go; now with the Labour Market Agreement they have a place to go.
The Labour Market Agreement also will support workers at risk with low skills. If you had a company that had been in business for 25 years and whose workers had been working on a plant floor for those 25 years and they were at risk of a plant closure, you can appreciate that transferring to another kind of occupation with another organization would
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prevent significant risk. Those are low-skilled, employed workers, or workers at risk, so the LMA could support them.
The other significant difference between the two programs is the size of the money; $14.5 million per year sounds like a fair bit of money but if you compare that to the LMDA EI at $80 million a year, there's quite a significant difference. In our view, despite the economic downturn in the go-forward over the next two to five years, it will be non-EI-eligible people who will need support, not necessarily EI-eligible. Although we will see a spike in unemployment rates over the next 18 months - perhaps longer, who knows? - we do face a demographic issue in the province which will cause a very significant shift in what we have to do in the labour market.
This economic downturn, again not to be trite about it, is just fog in front of that iceberg because it's there, it's not going anywhere, just look around the room - with all due respect to everyone in the room - you are characteristic of the population. So we anticipate that over the next five years retirements will occur in the order of 45,000 to 50,000 people who will need to be replaced. We don't need to look any further than the primary intake at the public school level to know our birthrate is not big, so replacement is an issue of workers. So I think the go-forward is going to be in the area of work of the LMA.
In conversations with the federal government, we have over and over made the point that we believe the LMA should be extended beyond the six years, we believe the amount of money should be grown, and we believe the federal government shouldn't be dictating to us who is eligible, that we should be able to work with what our labour market is, as opposed to what might be a characteristic nationally. One of the things which is going on with the federal government now, and I suppose it's appropriate in the short term, is there's a huge concern over Ontario and the auto workers. That's an issue for the auto workers in Ontario, for sure, but it's not an issue for Nova Scotia. We have other issues and other types of things that are happening in our province.
So we're trying to say to the federal government, yes, you need to take care of that issue in Southern Ontario, but you need to give us the flexibility to take care of what happens in Nova Scotia - whether it be in Pictou County or Yarmouth County or Halifax County. We need to be able to do what we need to do here in the province.
Having said all of that, I'm quite happy now to entertain whatever questions the members might have.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much, Mr. Gourley. Mr. Paris.
MR. PERCY PARIS: I do have a couple of questions, quick snappers, but before I get into my questions, I just want to say, from my background at Dalhousie University, I'm
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a huge fan of anything that's got to do with apprenticeships. I just want you to bear that in mind.
The statistics that you give with the active apprentices - I'm assuming that's the 2009 statistics - my first question would be, is that up from previous years? I think with the downturn that's happening out West, I'm curious if that's had an impact on the current statistics that you have here now. How would those statistics relate to, maybe, over the last three years? So that's one question.
Also, I was wondering, as they go through the apprenticeship training and as they, if I could use the word "graduate," I'm curious about retention and I'm also curious about how many of those who do "graduate" actually stay in Nova Scotia, gainfully employed.
And a third question, do you have - you talk about partnership with the other stakeholders, so am I to assume from that there's always a strategy in place so that you're looking out over the horizon to see what's next, where the next niche may be? I know you mentioned plumbing and I would think electricians fall under that, but I know when we had the offshore and when the offshore became onshore, there seemed to be a lack of skilled Nova Scotians to do some of those jobs, so I guess my question is, do you work with someone like the community colleges to have a look at what will be the next wave coming in over the next number of years?
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Paris used up his yearly quota. (Laughter) Go ahead.
MR. GOURLEY: In terms of apprentices year over year, I can tell you that last year we had about 4,300, so it has come up for the past year. I could give you statistics; I'd be happy to supply them to the committee that would go back five years so you could see the trend.
In our view, in general, an economic downturn usually brings more people into the training system as a whole. Where we see crunches is, if you see particular sectors get into trouble during an economic downturn, apprentices drop in that sector, but not necessarily in the other ones. So things like electricians and plumbers and stuff like that don't normally get affected by that, but very specific things and certain technologies and so on would because businesses are closing in those sector areas. In general, that would be my response to that, but I'd be happy to provide you with the five-year flow of registered apprentices so you could have a look at that.
In terms of retention - retention is an issue. It's an issue in every jurisdiction in Canada because you have employed people - apprentices are employed - and unfortunately, the way the funding system is set up through EI, when they leave the employer and go back to training they have to quit their job in order to be able to draw EI when they're in training. So if you're employed and you're a first-year journey person, you're earning about 70 per
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cent of what the trade should pay - that's the guideline we give employers. You have to quit your job to go back to training, to take the next step in the training process, and you're going to go on EI. EI is going to tell you that you can only get 66 per cent of what you made, which is already 30 per cent below what the trade is. So there's a disincentive there for people to keep returning.
The other piece of it is, employers get busy. Electrical firms and whatnot have contracts and they need the apprentices, they need the workforce, so they're a little bit reluctant to release when the training is offered, as opposed to when it's convenient for the employer. We try to be flexible with that - we've offered programming in non-traditional times in order to be able to meet employer needs - but the fact of the matter is, you win a contract when you win a contract. That could be tomorrow morning, it might be next month or it might be six months. So retention is an issue.
We have put into place two things to try to - well, the feds have put in some incentives, tax incentives as well as reimbursement incentives, to try to retain first and second year. We went in with a scholarship fund which said if you completed third year, you got a scholarship of $350 and then if you completed your fourth year, you got another scholarship payment, to try to draw people through the system.
Our graduation rates have been pretty stable and this program only just started, so we'll have to wait and see if it's effective. The federal government system has only just started as well. This will be the first tax year where you'll be able to actually make application through the tax system. So we'll have to wait and see if that works.
Do graduates stay in the province? I can only answer that anecdotally. We have no way of tracking once graduation occurs, except by actually going and chasing you down in some survey process; we have no way of tracking whether the graduate stays. We can tell you how many plumbers are registered in the Province of Nova Scotia, but it has nothing to do with whether you graduated yesterday or whether you graduated 30 years ago.
MR. PARIS: There's no mechanism of tracking somebody once they do graduate. You mentioned earlier about demographics. When you talked about the demographics in this room, I know you weren't including me because I'm probably much younger than everybody else in this room. (Interruptions)
MR. GOURLEY: Certainly me.
MR. PARIS: I'm curious about the apprentices. Of the 5,000, do you do anything with respect to tracking the diversity of who they are?
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MR. GOURLEY: We do two types of tracking: one that's age-related - we know that our apprentices are roughly around their mid-20s, and off the top of my head I don't know what that is - and the other thing we do is gender, so we do know how many women and how many men.
MR. PARIS: You don't do anything with respect to First Nations or those of African descent?
MR. GOURLEY: No, we don't track them, but we do work with them as separate groups. We have worked with the Preston community, for example . . .
MR. PARIS: BBI?
MR. GOURLEY: Through BBI, that's exactly right, to try to make the apprenticeship system more attractive to that community and to try to break down some of the barriers that have existed.
We've also worked with the Aboriginal community - particularly up in Eskasoni and the area in Cape Breton - quite aggressively, actually, in three different ways. We attempted to bring the training onto the reserve and that didn't work all that well, so we took it back to the community college and that didn't work all that well. After some fairly significant investigation, we found out the issue was the Aboriginal community wanted to go through the college system but there was no way to get from the reserve to the college. Sometimes it's the simplest of issues that stand in people's way. So we supported a transportation mechanism that got people back and forth to the college.
By doing that, we were able to increase fairly significantly the number of Aboriginals off that reserve. So we are trying to work with the communities.
As a branch, we have hired an Aboriginal labour market coordinator who's embedded in the community. We are also going to do the same thing with the African Nova Scotian community, as well as with the immigrant community and the disabled community. These will be provincial civil servants working in our branch who will provide navigating services through the multiple programs and entryways, and all of that, to specific communities, who will be officed and embedded in the community. We think that's the best way to really get our message across and work with the structures that exist within those communities.
You talked about forward-looking strategies, do we know what's coming over the hill? We have multiple methodologies for looking at that. Just in the last week we have completed an employer recognition event in Yarmouth where we got together with employers to recognize the fact that they are in the apprenticeship system, or are at least interested in becoming part of the apprenticeship system. In those kinds of events, we include
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conversations - consultations, if you will - that say, what are you seeing coming down the road?
From employers, we get some sense of what might change relative to the economic profile of the province but, more importantly, we find out what the different technologies are that may be coming over the horizon. That's equally as important as knowing what new occupations may show up - it's what new technologies might show up. You would hope in a conversation like that you would find out from a pulp and paper mill that they were going to introduce a high-speed calender machine and what that means to the training system in order to be able to bring up the workers who are currently there to work with that machine, so that's one piece of my branch.
But over here, with the college and the apprenticeship system, you would want to know that new technology is now in place in the province and you have to have a curriculum that supports that.
[9:30 a.m.]
In terms of more occupational and activity-based work, our best example of that would be with the Construction Association of Nova Scotia and the Canadian Construction Association where we've done a lot of labour market projection work over the next five and 10 years to get a good sense in Atlantic Canada of what's coming. In Atlantic Canada, particularly in the construction industry, we're really talking about a very mobile, very fluid group. If you get two major projects - the oil refinery in Saint John and something here in Nova Scotia - you have people moving around all over the place. You have your formers going to Saint John, they get that done and then they come over here - it's a very fluid kind of process.
So we've done a lot of projection work around that with CANS, and part of that work is also with the Nova Scotia Community College - they participate in those LMI processes so they get a sense of what the demand is from the employers. They have their own systems for getting that information, as well; they do a lot of consultation with their employers. In fact, I have to credit profusely the work the NSCC does with employers to try to get a good handle on what they really need in terms of training, as well as what's coming down the pipe in terms of numbers and things of that nature.
We work a lot - at least in the last year, I have to say - with Nova Scotia Business Inc. One of the constraints that I found when I came a few years ago was, we had an arm through Economic Development and through the formation of NSBI that was into business attraction - which is a good thing. The disconnect is, you wouldn't know that the business was here until you opened The ChronicleHerald and you found out that XYZ business had just established itself in Nova Scotia. It's a little late in the season to put the training in place for
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Nova Scotians - it's your oil patch example - to attach to those jobs. What would happen is a lot of recruiting would go on externally to Nova Scotia and people would be brought in.
We've worked with NSBI over the last two years to try to close that gap. So we're there in the conversation around, we're working hard to attract XYZ company and they may show up in a year. As soon as that happens, we're able to go to our various training modules and say, you may want to consider doing this. We wouldn't specifically say we need X, Y, or Z because you wouldn't want to let the cat out of the bag as to what they're working on, but you would want to have a sense of what type of occupation was coming down the pipe so you might go to Dal or to another formal training system and say, think about doing this, think about doing that.
We have occasionally worked specifically with companies that hadn't yet established - Butterfield is a classic example of this - but they were here about six months ahead of time. So we were able to take the president of Butterfield to Dalhousie, sit down with management and the accounting dean and say, we need to think about putting some curricula and some programming around investment banking in place now. So they had that in place before the company came. It's a good example of the kind of work to be done if you're ahead of it quickly enough.
Another example of this would be the kind of work that's going to go on around the fiscal stimulus stuff. Shovel-ready is one thing, but you have to have somebody at the end of the shovel, so we're working hard to try to figure out where all this money is going to get spent so we can go to our training systems, both formal and informal, and say, how do we get you focused so that when all of a sudden we need X number of heavy equipment operators, we have those in place and we're not having to delay projects because we don't have hands on the end of the shovel.
So we have five events going on in the province now that are in that process of connecting all of those pieces together because we're about the connections. We're not about the actual delivery of the program - we don't actually do any training in my branch. Well, I shouldn't say that; we do some but it's very limited. We do the connections between the formal and informal system and so on. So there are a lot of different ways we look over the horizon, but it's a very important piece of the puzzle, particularly when you put the demographic issue beside it.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Paris, thank you. Mr. Parker.
MR. PARKER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and good morning, folks. I guess I had the benefit of this same presentation just last week at our caucus meeting, so some of my questions or comments might be repetitive, but I'm just looking for an update, I guess, on a couple of items.
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First of all, in Pictou County we've lost one of our major employers - that's ICT. We talked last week about a transition centre to help the employees transition to other training opportunities or hopefully other jobs. Can you give us any update on progress at the transition centre?
MR. GOURLEY: You're talking ICT here?
MR. PARKER: Yes.
MR. GOURLEY: We've become expert in these transition centres, unfortunately. In terms of the particular ICT project, Shawnna Sequeira, my Manager of Skill Development, has pulled together all of the partners that we need to be at the table. She's met as a group with ACOA, NSBI, Economic Development, Community Services, and Service Canada, as well as the employer, so she's met with the director of personnel, whose name I don't know off the top of my head, in a committee meeting to say, okay, these are the range of services we can offer, this is the order of services that will be delivered. First out of the gate, of course, there has to be some funding to flow, to set up with the local career centre because they deliver the programming, they do all of the organization, so we're negotiating that contract right now.
The second step is, Service Canada will come in and do all of the EI information sessions that are required, as well as do registration for EI, and make sure that all of the issues associated with going on EI are addressed, because there are issues around how they treat non-salary payments and things like that - payouts or vacation pay due or things like that. Sometimes that can surprise employees, so we like to make sure that Service Canada is there.
The third step on that will be to develop a sense of what's around the area to know where people want to move. So in developing return-to-work programs, what should we be counselling people to move towards in terms of labour market attachment over the future and/or they may make decisions of their own that say, no, I'd like to relocate - unfortunately - from where I am now to somewhere else, to Halifax or to - so what's the training that has to go on.
MR. PARKER: Do you have an anticipated date when the transition centre would be up and running? I believe the end of June is the last employment date.
MR. GOURLEY: Right. I would anticipate that by mid-May, for sure, it would be in place.
MR. PARKER: Okay, another issue then. Just this week somebody came into my office - he's a welder and he's having difficulty getting the training that he needs to upgrade his certificate, the Red Seal certification or whatever it is. He has a job in Alberta, but the
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employer can't take him until he gets his interprovincial ticket, and he was hoping that our local community college was going to offer it so he could get what he needs, but apparently not. Maybe there aren't enough who want to take the course or whatever - for some reason it's not being offered. This is not the first time I've heard of this. There have been a number of - particularly welders - it seems they just can't get their interprovincial ticket even though they've got a guaranteed job on the other end. Is there any way to facilitate that or make it easier for people to get that ticket?
MR. GOURLEY: It's a case-by-case basis, because you don't know all of the circumstances behind it. The easiest way for you to deal with that is to actually call Dale and say, I have "Mr. Smith" who is in this situation, here's his contact coordinates. Dale or one of his staff would get hold of him to see what his circumstance is. We can very often make accommodations - not always, but in many cases it's a question of just either plowing the field or finding another location they can take the training or whatever the circumstance might happen to be. That's the easiest way, on a case-by-case basis.
MR. PARKER: Okay, I'll talk to Dale after and get your numbers so that we can contact.
MR. DALE CRAWFORD: I was going to say that the best method would be, here you could call me and we put them in touch with our training officer. We have to find out what the individual has and what the individual needs because we have a very slick process, actually, to apply to write that Red Seal, and there are criteria. In the case of welding there are additional tickets that they have to have from the Canadian Welding Bureau.
Welding is - I wouldn't say it's an anomaly but it is a little bit different because there are a few other pieces. So that one is very important for us to deal with the individual case-by-case. We can work with the community college as we're the prime funder.
MR. PARKER: Okay, I'll get your contact information afterwards, then.
I guess, if I can ask one more question, Mr. Chairman, and, Stuart, I did bring this up last week, this whole issue of non-EI-eligible workers. We have a lot of people who are working at McDonalds or Tim Hortons, or in retail somewhere, and they very much would like to become a plumber or an electrician, or whatever, but they're sort of caught in the middle; they can't afford to quit their job because therefore they're not eligible for EI, and then they can't get sponsorship, and they have commitments - they've got a car payment or a mortgage or rent, or whatever, so they're really caught in the middle. They really want to be a plumber, we need more skilled tradespeople, no question. I know this LMA is maybe working towards that, but is there any way to facilitate it faster or make it easier for people to be able to do that?
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I'm not saying that everybody is going to go out and quit their job because they're going to get sponsorship to take a training course but legitimately there are people who really need to and want to do that, and financially it's not possible at this moment.
MR. GOURLEY: It's a typical and absolute gap client piece for us. I'll try to give you the same answer I gave you last week: we are working on eligibility criteria to do exactly what you're describing. If I had a buck for every MLA who has come through the door and said to me, look, I've had Fred quit his job, he wants to get into this training and he has a job beyond that, he already knows he has a job, but because he quit EI he's out of luck. That has been, in my view, a very serious pain over the last four years and this LMA will allow us to deal with that.
What we're in the business of doing right now in the next 30 to 60 days is to design eligibility criteria that will capture those people but also not capture folks who are just going to go to university and they could have paid their own way. We need to make that distinction, it's not a student loan program that we want to set up. We want to set up something that traps people or catches people who really do not have the capacity to move up the labour market and that's what you're describing, from Tim Hortons to a paralegal or to something else. So we're in the process right now of designing those criteria. We hope to have it in place by September.
MR. PARKER: By September.
MR. GOURLEY: We hope.
MR. PARKER: Okay, sounds good. Okay, I guess those are all of my questions, Mr. Chairman.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Mr. Parker. Just for my information, the Labour Market Agreement, for instance, if you had someone who hasn't been in the workforce for over three years, what do they qualify for? What kind of funding, for what?
MR. GOURLEY: Well, once we have the criteria designed, they could qualify for what's called Skill Development Agreement, so they could qualify for training, payment of tuition and possibly some supports, such as transportation or child care. They could qualify for reattachment training through the EAS contracts, resumé writing, job search, that kind of thing. They can qualify for all of the same sorts of things that you would get under the LMDA but the LMA is what is used to pay for it.
The reason it's able to do that, and this is perhaps more information than you need, is because the funding source isn't through the EI account, it's through just general budget appropriation out of what they call the consolidated revenue fund and that allows us to use it for anybody.
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MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you. Are there any further questions? Ms. Massey.
MS. JOAN MASSEY: I did have some questions around - I think Percy was asking how you track diversity, and gender is a big issue within this committee - for me, anyway, and I know various other committee members are very interested in that. When you say that you have 5,000 apprentices, how many are female?
MR. GOURLEY: Off the top of my head, I would say about 200, would be my guess, but we can find that out. Our problem is not attraction into the apprenticeship system, our problem is what happens when they get to the workplace. That's where the problem is.
[9:45 a.m.]
We can provide the best training in the world but when they get to the shop floor and there's no female washroom or there's inappropriate behaviour going on, there are all kinds of things that drive them out. We have a fair number of fully qualified journey persons who are female who have left, who no longer practise their trade for that exact reason - to me, that's a travesty. I'm hoping through other work that we're doing, Employer of Choice and a few other kinds of interventions, we'll be able to try to affect that. But if I go back in my memory, people who have been at this for 20 and 30 years, we're aren't going to solve it in a couple of years. But we are very cognizant of it and we fund things like Women Unlimited and Techsploration, efforts of that nature.
Women Unlimited is an actual training mechanism to take women into the apprenticeship system. The Techsploration piece that Dale has just mentioned is actually working with female Grade 9 students to help them explore these options early on so that they consider them as careers. I think, perhaps, there are still a few issues maybe in the public school system that still stream folks by gender into sort of traditional kinds of occupations. We have to work with that.
We've had some successes with a number of the school boards across the province where we've introduced programs- the South Shore is a particular example - where we've been able to work with high school students to bring them into non-traditional workplaces and help them explore those kinds of occupations. But if they get back into the classroom or back on the bus and the teacher goes, well, that was nice, but maybe it's not for the women on the bus or something like that, we've lost it all. So you have to go back and start again. So it is a sensitivity to us and we don't have as many as I would like us to have.
MS. MASSEY: So if, for example, somebody goes through one of the programs and they start somewhere as an apprentice and they meet with these kinds of barriers from the other people who are working with them, can they come back? Where do they go for help with that? Is there a program available so that they can learn how to deal - or should there be a program up front when they're becoming an apprentice, going through that program, that
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says, be aware, this may happen to you when you go to this job site, these are the kinds of issues you will be facing?
MR. GOURLEY: What you're describing there is not officially built into the training system. I can't say if it happens just as faculty do their thing. But the other part of your question is, if you have an apprentice, the person who "manages" the relationship between the employer and the apprentice is called an industrial training certification officer. They're spread all over the province.
If an apprentice were to have a problem with an employer, or even an employer with an apprentice, what is supposed to happen is they go to the ITCO and the ITCO tries to work with that. That's what's supposed to happen. What does happen is something completely different - we will just see that "Joan" is no longer an apprentice. We won't know why, we won't know where she went, we won't know what happened, she just disappears out of the system. So we never have an opportunity to work with it or do anything with it.
Our approach to it now is to try to come back through this Employer of Choice program and say to employers, look, part of the retention effort that you have to put into retaining good workers has to deal with these diversity issues. And it's not just gender-based, it's culturally based, it's religiously based now. So we're trying to get that message across, if you will, through training employers about how to be sensitive to it, how to act, what types of things they could consider in their workplaces and those kinds of efforts, but that's the limit that we can go.
MS. MASSEY: What kind of reception are you met with when you reach out to these employers and say, you know, do you realize that if you hire a female that there are certain needs that they may . . .
MR. GOURLEY: This is a pilot down in the Valley - Employer of Choice is. When we went out to the workplace, we asked for volunteer companies to show up at the door to partake in this program. If memory serves me correctly - I can go and check this - we had about 40 or 45 applications from companies. We looked at those 45 applications and because it's a pilot and we're trying to test something here - we need small, we need large, we need quasi, public, we need a diversity of business sectors - we got 17. Those 17 have been very receptive to all of the messaging that we've had and to all of the work that we've asked of them, and I would suspect that those 45 would. The problem is it's a bit like church - it's not who's in the building that you want, it's who's not in the building that you want and getting to those companies is going to be our difficulty.
These 17 have been extremely receptive but, again, I'd say it's because we're talking to the converted, they've recognized the issue of we're no longer going to be able to make decisions because we have 100 applications. Our problem is, we have 100 jobs and only 10 applications so we're going to have to accept this huge diversity in our workforce including
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adjusting the workplace to reflect the fact that you may have a disabled person whose capacity is only 60 per cent but they need to be there, you need them as an employee but you have to recognize there's a 40 per cent give that you've got to have - I'm just picking a number out of the air to illustrate my point. So that flexibility is what employers are going to have to come to and what the 17 are finding is the more they become like that, the higher their retention rates because the loyalty factor kicks in.
It has been an urban myth for years - train them, they'll leave. It is an urban myth - train them and they stay. But I could go and scratch 10 employers out there on the street right now and nine of them would tell me, oh, if I train them they'll take off for the 50 cents down the road. They won't, they'll stay.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Ms. Massey, is that it? If so, I can move on to Mr. Paris.
MS. MASSEY: I just have one other question. The lack of math skills in junior high and high school, is that holding back females, specifically, from entering into certain courses? Like you're saying, you know, females are not really guided by guidance counsellors to go this route, they're more to go this route.
MR. GOURLEY: Really, it's a question, I think, for the Department of Education. I think that there's an issue out there with math that is occasionally exemplified by situations that you may have recently read about at Michelin, for example, who deliver a - in the hiring process, the first thing you have to get through is their workplace inventory skill test, which is a two-hour, time-tested, time-sensitive, time-restricted test around mathematical skills for production workers. The three skills they're looking for: working with fractions, graphing, and estimation. So a 27-year-old who has been, I don't know, working in an auto-body shop for five or six years since graduating from high school, comes in and immediately walks into this two-hour time-restricted test around fractions, graphing, and estimation. When was the last time anybody in this room worked with fractions? Been awhile. It's sometimes just the circumstance.
What we've offered to Michelin, and what we would offer to any employer, is two or three weeks in advance of the test, we'd go through a refresher course on mathematics in general - not related to the test, but just in general - with anybody who wants to apply. So from a 20 per cent pass rate, they went to an 80 per cent pass rate in the WSI. They go through behavioural interviews that screen out a lot of other folks, but around that math question, it's use it or lose it. If you can put in place mechanisms that deal with that question, then you get by it.
The fundamentals coming out of the high school system, I haven't the foggiest idea about. I have a 19-year-old in his second year at SMU, did he struggle with math - yes. That's about all I can tell you.
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MS. MASSEY: That would be a big issue around trying to retrain older workers who have been working as a waitress or at McDonald's or as a retail worker. You really need to upgrade some of your skills to move on to something else.
MR. GOURLEY: Absolutely. With our Targeted Initiative for Older Workers, one of the first things we do with folks who are re-entering the labour market or who have changed jobs, 55 years or older, is essential skills and then basic math, literacy, all of those kinds of things. You're exactly right, it's a use it or lose it kind of conundrum.
MR. CRAWFORD: If I might, on that one as well, in terms of the schools - high schools in particular - we have a youth apprenticeship coordinator and we've had this in place for a number of years. She is on a mission to reach every high school in the province by the end of May, and on target. She's spoken to thousands of students and given somewhere between 70 and 80 presentations to guidance counsellors, teachers, co-op, O2 - Options and Opportunities. She works with the school boards and is very engaged with the high school system, with the Department of Education.
The reason I bring that up is because it gets to the issue of low numbers of women and other individuals in trades as well. The message is about the profile of apprenticeship and the trades. It's for everybody, and the trades aren't just for people who are not doing well in high school. As a matter of fact, as you bring up with math, you cannot be a carpenter and not know math. You can't be a refrigeration and air conditioning mechanic and not know math. There are very few trades you can actually do well and not know math and elements of science which, if you ask people about the trades, traditionally they would think, well, my son or daughter is not doing well in math or science, maybe they should go into plumbing. That's not what anybody wants in their tradespeople.
That's a message that is out there: these are skills that you need and we want you to come into the trades, but if you're going into the trades, you need the maths and sciences. It's a promotion and we're doing things like test drives or taking in DVDs that show people working hands-on in that trade, and it shows them why they need those maths and sciences.
When we go to register an apprentice, or if there are individuals who are thinking of registering as apprentices, we do assessments with them. It's not just, oh, you want to be an apprentice, we'll register you. We actually do some work between the potential apprentice and the employer to find out if they are lacking. If they are lacking, we do what we can to find the appropriate help - it could be a tutor, we'll work with the college, we also have math refresher courses, document-use refresher courses. So there are a number of avenues we're using in our tool kit to address those very issues.
We're hoping that over time, the profile of the trades will be raised. The Department of Education is introducing skilled-trades centres into the high schools, and that will be
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hands-on incorporating the maths and the sciences that are needed for the trades. It's definitely a recognized issue and I believe we're doing a fair bit to try to address it.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you. Mr. Paris.
MR. PARIS: I don't know if there's a question here or if it's just a comment that I want to make, and I guess I'll flesh it out as I begin to verbalize it. When I raised the issue around retention and then I heard your further response - and I think what I heard was, if something is identified in the workplace you would bring it to the attention of the employer and go at it from there. When I hear that I often think about the recent incidents that happened in Halifax around the fire department, where the firefighters had an issue around racism within the fire department. They were recruited and I've heard similar events around when HRM set out its strategy to recruit more persons of African descent as police officers.
[10:00 a.m.]
When I hear these things, it seems to me that one of the initiatives I recall that I was a huge part of 20 years ago at Dal was an initiative to attract persons with a diverse population - persons with disabilities, females, and all of the groups we talk about that are underemployed or unemployed in Nova Scotia. So when we sat down and we planned this, one of my suggestions was - I don't know if this is even feasible with respect to your organization, but my suggestion was, and still is, if you're going to do that, and if retention has always been a problem and is going to remain a problem, then we also have to address those barriers that are causing those individuals to leave that environment.
Part of the strategy would be to have an education initiative for the employer up front as opposed to waiting for the problem to arise - have the education, the personal and professional development in the workplace before. If I'm female and I'm going into that work environment, then have something in place before I get there that will educate the population to be aware of some things. I'm a firm believer that not all of the barriers that exist in the world today are intentional. I think some are, but I don't think all of them are, so I think there's a piece of education that's severely missing.
It goes for persons with disabilities. Why, if I'm a wheelchair user and I have to stock a shelf, what prevents the low-lying shelves as opposed to - if you have the space, have the low-lying shelves that I can reach instead of having them 10 shelves high that I can't reach. Just an education process.
MR. GOURLEY: It's a statement that I wouldn't disagree with.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Mr. Paris. You were right, there was no question there. It was very well said, though.
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Let me thank Mr. Gourley and Mr. Crawford for attending here this morning and taking time out of your busy day, appreciate it. Again, I think during the conversation that we've had, you did say that you would give us some statistics regarding a question Mr. Paris had. If you could provide them to our clerk and the clerk will provide them to all members of the committee.
MR. GOURLEY: Yes, will do.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Is there any further business to discuss this morning? If not, then the next meeting is scheduled for May 26th. You know that when the House is in session, starting on Thursday, we do not do presentations at this committee. We meet only to make appointments to agencies, boards, and commissions.
MR. PARIS: I do have a question around the next meeting. Nobody in here has a crystal ball, but if I listen to the media, I hear these rumblings about a possible election. If there is an election over the next number of weeks, before the next meeting - since I'm a rookie at this - does that cancel everything?
MR. CHAIRMAN: There are no committee meetings because there are no MLAs.
MR. GORDON HEBB: Once the House is dissolved there are no MLAs, so there are no committees.
MR. PARIS: Thank you.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Sad time, isn't it? (Laughter)
Anyway, thanks very much everyone. The meeting is adjourned.
[The committee adjourned at 10:04 a.m.]
