HRPD Committee Meeting

STANDING COMMITTEE ON HUMAN RESOURCES DEVELOPMENT AND THE STATUS OF PERSONS WITH DISABILITIES

COMITÉ PERMANENT DU DÉVELOPPEMENT DES RESSOURCES HUMAINES ET DE LA CONDITION DES PERSONNES HANDICAPÉES

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Tuesday, May 25, 1999

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[English]

The Chair (Ms. Albina Guarnieri (Mississauga East, Lib.)): Order. Seeing as we have quorum, we'll begin.

Our guest today is Mr. Grant Schellenberg from Dataquest Consulting.

We're certainly eager to get on with it. Please, you have the floor.

Mr. Grant Schellenberg (Partner, Dataquest Consulting): Thanks very much, and good morning. It's a pleasure to be here. I thank you for the opportunity to speak before the standing committee.

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As a quick biographical note, I was a senior research associate with the Canadian Council on Social Development for six or seven years, and just recently left that position. While I was at the council, I wrote a book as well as a number of articles on older workers and the retirement transition. It's based on that research that I'm appearing before the standing committee today.

In the following eight to ten minutes, I want to discuss two broad sets of public policy issues pertaining to older workers. I want to discuss these in the context of diversity. The first set of issues is that of older worker displacement. The second issue is that of the trend towards early retirement.

Older workers, particularly in their exit from the labour force, have been characterized by a tremendous degree of diversity through the 1990s. When we look at the age at which people retire, the 1960s and 1970s were really characterized by an age of retirement clustered at or around age 65. Over the last 10 to 15 years, we've seen a tremendous de-standardization, as I've called it, of the retirement age. It now spans 15 years in the life course between the time people are in their early to mid-50s to when they're in their mid- to late 60s.

Through the 1990s we also have seen tremendous diversity in the processes through which older workers are leaving the labour force, and the reasons for it. The 1990s have been characterized by a tremendous degree of corporate reorganization and restructuring in both the public and the private sectors. That has had a wide range of impacts on older workers.

I think many older workers have tremendously benefited from that restructuring process insofar as they were able to retire early with financing and wanted to leave the labour force, but others were pushed out of the labour force—through lay-offs, plant closure, and so on—into a period of unemployment. I think for them, retirement has largely been a disguised form of unemployment. So we have had not only diversity in the age of retirement but also tremendous diversity in the process or transition of retirement.

Thirdly, I think we've seen tremendous diversity in the financing of retirement insofar as there is differential access to early retirement incentives and early pension plans; some do not have access to such things.

So we see tremendous diversity in, again, age of retirement, process of retirement, and the financing of retirement. This diversity is evident in two sets of policy questions now pertaining to older workers.

The first issue is that of older worker displacement. I guess the key question here is, what do we do about older workers who are displaced from the labour force? There's a common set of facts that I think is often raised around this issue.

For example, older workers tend to have lower levels of education, lower levels of literacy skills. They tend to be employed in industries characterized by low or negative growth. Older workers tend to be less geographically mobile given the established roots in their communities, or their home ownership. They tend to have poorer job search skills, in some cases because of their long tenure with previous employers.

Given this set of attributes, re-employment following displacement tends to be very difficult. This poses serious policy challenges, as I'm sure you're aware.

A second set of issues arises here. This is around the demand for labour. Here we get into issues around employers' perceptions of older workers' abilities, perceptions of skill level, ability to retrain, and the issue of age discrimination.

I think the key point here is that there's a core group of older workers who are vulnerable to displacement, who have poor success in finding re-employment, and who are likely to lapse into retirement as a disguised form of unemployment.

That's only one of the really important sets of policy issues pertaining to older workers at this point in time. The second set of policy issues pertains to that of early retirement. Over the next decade, the baby boom generation will begin to retire. More people are going to be leaving the labour force than ever before. Expectations and anticipation of early retirement are widely held by this group.

The question is, what is the implication of this coming wave of retirement, especially given that it's going to be largely early retirement? I think there are many issues we can identify here.

First, the issue of succession planning within firms, within occupations, and within industries is very important. For example, currently a third of the federal public service is between the ages of 45 and 54, and will be eligible to retire in the next four to five years. Succession planning becomes critical.

The exit of a large chunk of the baby boom generation is also going to have implications for labour supply and the aggregate costs of labour.

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Finally, what are the financial costs of an aging population, and what is the impact of early retirement on that? I'll quote to you from the OECD:

...the burden of supporting an older population...will depend critically on the extent to which the population of working age in general, and older workers in particular, will participate in the labour market.

So here we have two sets of questions: one, what do we do about displaced older workers to try to get them re-employed; and two, given the aging of the baby boom population, what do we do to try to retain older workers with necessary skills and expertise in the labour force, given preferences for early retirement?

Getting back to the issue of diversity, which I started out with, I think we're dealing with two very different sets of older workers in these two sets of policy questions. On the one hand, the issue of displacement is, at the risk of oversimplification, a question for persons who are basically at the bottom of the socio-economic spectrum. These are people who tend to have lower levels of education, lower literacy skills, probably lower levels of human capital, displacement from jobs in declining sectors, and probably fewer prospects or fewer financial resources.

The issue of early retirement I think really pertains to and is critical around persons with high levels of education and lots of marketable skills, people employed in managerial, professional, and technical occupations. They have financial resources and so on.

What do we do about these two very different groups of older workers?

As I was doing my research on retirement, what really struck me was the extent to which pathways into retirement really varied across these different characteristics. There are many different pathways into retirement. As we enter a new type of labour market and into new employment relationships, I think the retirement transition, as we've commonly understood it, as a very clearly defined transition from labour market to non-labour market participation, is going to change, and it is changing.

To digress very briefly, our traditional understanding of old age and retirement and the interaction of public programs with the life course was encapsulated by three strands that really hung together. Individuals grew old, and when they reached the age of 65 they made a transition in their employment. There was a transition from employment to non-employment at age 65. Age 65 was also a demarcation point, where people moved from middle age in the life course and were officially old age at that point. That corresponded, thirdly, to the structure of public policies that old age security and CPP and these types of programs were structured around.

What's happened in the last 10 years is that those three strands have become disentangled. People are leaving the labour force by either choice or necessity before the age of 65, before they're eligible for public pensions in many cases, and before they're old in any physiological or chronological sense. I think that's one of the fundamental things we're struggling with now in terms of understanding this stage in the life course.

Looking at this diversity in retirement among older workers raises serious challenges for public policy. First, in some countries the issue of displaced older workers has been addressed by lowering the age of eligibility for public pensions. Basically, it closes the gap between age of labour force exit and age of eligibility for pension by lowering the one. That certainly addresses the issue of displacement to some degree. It has reinforced expectation of early retirement and accelerated the trend towards early retirement, which I think is going to become an increasingly important public policy issue in the next 10 years.

Conversely, increasing the age of public pension eligibility to offset the trend towards early retirement or ensure adequate financing of the public pension system, as has been done in some countries, has been criticized insofar as it increases the gap between age of labour force exit and age of eligibility and increases the financial costs for displaced workers. So obviously there's a tension around that issue.

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Another pubic policy issue is the retirement transition through self-employment. Between 1991 and 1996, the share of men 55 to 64 years who were self-employed increased from 20% to 26%. We've seen a staggering increase in self-employment. I expect that this will continue and that self-employment will be an important bridge into the retirement phase of life. Given that, such things as business training programs, start-up capital, and entrepreneurship programs could be very useful for many older workers, particularly those at the top end of the socio-economic spectrum. However, I'm quite dubious about the extent to which workers with low levels of education and poor literacy skills, perhaps residing in economically depressed areas, are going to benefit from those types of programs.

The point here is that while I think self-employment offers a considerable opportunity for a bridge into retirement for older workers, we have to be cautious in our estimates of how many people it's going to help and which people it's going to help.

I have some other points here around training. I think I'd like to return, maybe later on during the questioning, to the issue of training and also the question around what tomorrow's older workers are going to look like compared with today's older workers. I've started to see an increasing number of statements....

Maybe I'll just touch on this briefly as my last point before I stop.

When we look at today's older workers, we have these findings around education and literacy levels. When we look at people who are 45 to 54, we see a tremendous difference between today's older workers and tomorrow's older workers in terms of education and literacy and so on.

As a result of that, there has been some suggestion that labour market adjustment processes for older workers over the next decade will ease. They'll have higher levels of education and will be better able to cope. When we look at that in proportional terms, that's certainly the case. Currently half of older workers have less than high school, and among those 45 to 54, it's less than a third.

Because that upcoming chunk of the population is so large, the absolute number of persons who have low literacy skills, low levels of education, is pretty much the same. Currently 1.2 million people 55 to 64 have less than high school, and 1.1 million people 45 to 54 have less than high school. They represent a smaller share of that population, but there's still a lot of them.

So in that sense, I think the issue of training and the issue of older worker displacement isn't going to go away with the aging of the baby boomer population. There is still going to be a numerical issue to be dealt with, one that's going to continue to face the committee.

I'll leave it there and open it up for discussion. Sorry for going over.

The Chair: Thank you very much.

Madam Ablonczy will begin our 10-minute rounds.

Mrs. Diane Ablonczy (Calgary—Nose Hill, Ref.): Thank you, Mr. Schellenberg. You've packed a lot of information into a short period of time. I know that's not easy to do.

My question is, what can be done ahead of time to prepare older workers for the transition, which you've said is really almost inevitable, rather than try to do things after the fact? Are there things we could do ahead of time to prepare older workers for the transition to maybe part-time employment or new employment or whatever they're going to go into?

Mr. Grant Schellenberg: On the issue of older worker training, “training” is now the buzzword, obviously, but I think we really have to focus on training displaced older workers who now are in their late 50s. It's going to be a very difficult policy issue, and a very difficult problem to solve.

We have 3.7 million people who are ages 45 to 54. That means 10 years from now we're going to have 1 million more older workers than we do now. I would suggest that you start to look forward and have training programs for people who are now in their 40s so that by the time they get to their 50s and late 50s, when that displacement problem is so critical, they've at least had a 10-year period where they've had a chance to adjust and build up training, and become accustomed to training participation. It would dispel a lot of the fears, concerns, and also address employer issues and employer perceptions of older workers' abilities over that time period.

So I would start with the mid-40s now.

Mrs. Diane Ablonczy: To your knowledge, is anybody—any program, any entity—doing that?

Mr. Grant Schellenberg: Not to my knowledge. I know there are some programs in Ontario and Manitoba—and, from what I understand, in New Brunswick—around some older worker training, but looking at the literature around older worker pedagogy, I've found that there is a large amount of literature on age-specific training. A lot of very simple things can be done in training programs.

I'm not a trainer, so I don't want to open that up as a point of discussion, but on the age-specific training issues, there's a very large amount of academic and pedagogical literature on that. From what I've seen in that literature, a lot of people are very critical that this hasn't been taken up within government programs and utilized.

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That perhaps would be another direction I would point in.

Mrs. Diane Ablonczy: That's a helpful observation.

With respect to the kinds of work older workers could be prepared for, or could prepare for themselves, has any work been done on the specific areas where older workers would be best able to fill a market niche?

Mr. Grant Schellenberg: I can't answer that question definitively in terms of knowledge with regard to all of the studies that have been done that way. No, I'd say I can't answer that question, sorry.

Mrs. Diane Ablonczy: If you were to recommend to this committee one thing we could do or put into practice to help prepare for in this area, what would be our highest priority, in your view?

Mr. Grant Schellenberg: There are two issues I would look at. One, for workers between, say, the ages of 55 and 59, European countries particularly have been moving toward income support issues. We've seen this through a number of vehicles.

In the early 1990s, for example, a lot of countries went to somewhat relaxed eligibility criteria around their disability programs. Persons with mild disabilities were eligible for longer benefits than would have otherwise been the case, or if they lived in high unemployment areas.

We've also seen in some European countries long-term unemployment insurance benefits and relaxed criteria around that simply to bridge the gap between age of labour force exit and age of public pension eligibility.

So income support through that critical period would be one area I would look at, particularly given the EI surplus at that point, and at models that don't encourage additional early retirement incentives. I don't think you can build that into the system.

The second place I would look would be at formulating older worker training programs, and assessing needs and pedagogical tools for workers between the ages of, say, 44 and 50. I would start implementing programs at that point and move forward.

So those would be the two areas I would look at.

Mrs. Diane Ablonczy: Thank you for that input. I appreciate it.

The Chair: Thank you.

[Translation]

Mr. Crête.

Mr. Paul Crête (Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup—Témiscouata—Les Basques, BQ): Thank you for your presentation. I'd like to continue in the same vein as Mrs. Ablonczy.

Wouldn't you agree that the government has a responsibility to target those older workers who are the worst off, physically or financially, and to strive to narrow the gap a little between this group and unionized workers who have solid pension funds and a comfortable income when they reach the age for early retirement? Consider all of the attractive early retirement packages offered to public servants. However, aside from this group of employees, we have a group of blue collar workers who do hard physical labour, whether in agriculture, forestry or some other field.

In your opinion, should the government target this group of workers and resurrect POWA, given that some criticized the old program, which ended on March 31, 1995, for having been a very expensive initiative and for failing to meet the anticipated objectives?

[English]

Mr. Grant Schellenberg: One of the challenges arising is that with increasingly diverse forms of employment relationships, with some workers moving into retirement in a very traditional way; other workers moving through bridge jobs; other workers moving through unemployment; and other workers moving through self-employment—and that doesn't even consider issues of industries and occupations and sectoral differences—what's occurring is that those pathways to retirement and the pathways taken by older workers are far more diverse and de-standardized than what used to be the case.

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Granted, older workers in forestry and fishing and agriculture have long retired earlier, by choice or necessity, because of the arduous nature of the work. There was disability and illness and so on. But I think the challenge today is the increasingly diverse needs of client groups among that 50 to 59, or 55 and over, group. I think a one-size-fits-all type of approach is going to be increasingly inadequate that way.

As I mentioned with the example of the pension, when you set in place a particular program it might have very positive effects on one group but unintended consequences in another area, and I think we have to be cautious about that.

In terms of what you said about identifying those groups who are most financially challenged towards the end of their working career, yes, I would agree with that.

I think there's another thing we need to keep in mind here. When I was doing a lot of my work on retirement, we were coming through the period of the early 1990s. There had been a time of profound economic restructuring, and we had just come through the recession. The impact of the recession on older workers was really foremost on everybody's mind. Over the last four years we've had better economic growth, the labour market has improved, and I think the issue of displacement and those financial costs maybe aren't as pressing, or not as discussed in academic circles, as they were a few years ago.

What I would be cautious about, though, is that when the next recession comes around, whenever that's going to be, we're going to have a lot of hardship, maybe more than we anticipated, on our hands again. I think that's another issue to keep in mind, that the context has changed and continues to change.

[Translation]

Mr. Paul Crête: I'd like you to comment on the effectiveness of active measures aimed at older workers. These include, among other things, training programs. There are those who maintain that such programs are of no real benefit. How would you assess training programs? Given that most older workers find themselves unemployed around the age of 50, 55 or 60, should the government be focussing more on passive measures or should the emphasis be instead on active measures?

[English]

Mr. Grant Schellenberg: In terms of active measures, I think one thing we need to do is to start rethinking that issue. In the past, the training of older workers has been viewed as less cost-effective than the training of younger workers, simply because older workers are going to spend less time in the labour market, so there's less time to realize a return on the investment in their training.

As we move toward a climate where ongoing training and upgrading become a continuing process for workers in the labour market, one might suggest that this should reduce the disincentive to invest in training for older workers, because the anticipated payback period need not be as long. We're no longer in a situation where you train for a job and go off and do it for 20 years, and you don't want to train older workers on the basis of that model. We're no longer in that type of environment. So I think that's something we need to put on the table.

In terms of the passive versus active measures, I think we need to look at both the age and the characteristics of the older worker. For that 45- to 50-year-old, I think we really need to start addressing the needs of older workers, getting training programs in place so that 10 years from now we're not in a situation where our only option may be the passive measures that you're suggesting for people who are 58 and who hope to retire at 60. In that sense, it's a forward-looking approach. Get the active measures in place now with a longer-term payoff that way.

When I look at Atlantic Canada and the possibility for older workers in Newfoundland, the big question that arises here is, “Retraining for what?” I don't have an answer there. I can't see retraining for a 57-year-old laid-off fishery worker as being an answer to his problem when there's still three years to retirement at age 60. In that sense, the passive measures, I think, would be more appropriate.

The Chair: Mr. Scott.

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Hon. Andy Scott (Fredericton, Lib.): Thank you very much.

I have three questions. First, you mentioned the fact that the educational problem is diminishing in relative terms, but in absolute numbers, 1.1 million people will replace 1.2 million, or something like that.

Isn't it also the case that the bar is rising? Consequently, while less people have less than high school, high school in and of itself isn't nearly as valuable, if you like. Is that not fair?

Mr. Grant Schellenberg: Absolutely.

Mr. Andy Scott: Second, I would like to explore a little bit whatever research you have or whatever you can bring to this in terms of to what extent this is something we can target in terms of both region and sector. In fact, the region and sector may overlap considerably—i.e., the fishery or whatever.

So we could deal with the fact that we have this continuum, if I understand your argument, that shows one group of older workers who are highly skilled, where the problem is keeping them in the labour market, and another group that is not highly skilled, where the problem is the fact that we can't keep them in, or get them in. I would think the strategic response has to be sectoral and/or regional. I'm curious as to how much we can do of that.

Finally, if training's an issue, and you claim particularly on the preventive side that's the answer, how much of a problem is the fact that a lot of our federally driven support for training, if I can call it that, is related to EI, and the breadth of EI is shrinking because of self-employment?

Mr. Grant Schellenberg: Your first question was with regard to the 1.1 million and the 1.2 million. When we look at the labour market performance of groups by level of education, the graphs are absolutely staggering. When we look at persons with college and university, there's a continuing upward trend. By the time you look at high school, or less than high school, it's just plummeting.

So the bar is absolutely going up. The fact that a decade from now we're going to have 1.2 million older persons with less than high school, when the bar is rising, means the problem is all that much more pressing.

Secondly, when we're talking about the region and the sector, absolutely the province is here. Because so many of our older persons actually live in urban communities, I've even gone back and looked at the census, at the proportion of older workers, and even the proportion of older workers with lower levels of education by CMA. You find absolutely staggering differences in the age composition and the vulnerability of older worker groups by city. It depends on the occupation and the industry base as well. So the need for region and sectoral recognition of that is absolutely important.

As well, in terms of the older worker issue, look at a place like Saskatchewan, where there's so much self-employment. With regard to discretion and control over the labour market and retirement issues, Saskatchewan and Manitoba really stand out as compared with places like Ontario and Quebec, where the rate of self-employment is far lower. So I would agree with you there.

On the point around EI, you said the breadth of EI is shrinking given the rise in self-employment. Again, I guess that comes back to the question of program delivery for persons in different segments of the labour market.

I'm a sociologist, so I come back to all these “conceptual box” things.

Mr. Andy Scott: This is a good thing.

Mr. Grant Schellenberg: Our understanding of what it means to be retired and what it means to be employed or to make that transition has really changed over the last 10 years. Many of our traditional conceptual boxes aren't as useful as they used to be. The world's a lot greyer and more slippery than it used to be.

When we look at labour market categories, such as paid worker versus self-employed, we have so many people now.... As I mentioned, the number of self-employed older workers has gone from 20% to 26% of the employed labour force.

The division between what it means to be a paid worker and what it means to be a self-employed worker—these are the categorical or conceptual boxes—I think we also need to rethink this. We have so many people who are engaged as freelance consultants, independent contractors, and so on, many of whom are doing work for their previous employer, that the labour market is changing in that respect as well. That's why our programs in some respect are out of sync with labour market changes. I think we're trying to keep up with that.

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Looking at employment relationships—for instance, self-employment and paid employment—I think we really need to come up with a new lens on some of those issues.

One thing I would suggest the committee do is to go back. It would be useful to do so. When I look at Statistics Canada's analyses—I use a lot of their surveys and so on—there's a growing number of questions we are unable to address with the current boxes. The issue of self-employment versus paid employment is a critical one. It has impacts on who is the employer and on who is responsible for training. Is it an employer's responsibility or an individual's responsibility? I think many of the surveys and much of the data we have are inadequate to address many of the realities in the labour market today.

If there was to be something else I would put on the table, it would be to go back to many of our data collection measures and critically assess those conceptual boxes.

The Chair: Questions, Mr. Wilfert?

Madam Ablonczy or Monsieur Crête?

Thank you very much for a very thoughtful presentation. It'll be very helpful in our deliberations. Thank you for coming.

Mr. Grant Schellenberg: Thank you very much for having me.

The Chair: We will proceed now to the main estimates.

The committee resumes consideration of its order of reference from the House of Commons, dated March 5, 1999, in relation to the main estimates for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2000, and, pursuant to Standing Order 81(7), its consideration of the report on plans and priorities.

HUMAN RESOURCES DEVELOPMENT

Corporate Services Program

Vote 1—Program expenditures ...... $86,205,000

The Chair: Shall vote 1, less the amount of $21,551,250 voted in interim supply, carry?

(Vote 1 agreed to on division)

Human Resources Investment and Insurance Program

Vote 5—Operating expenditures ...... $158,343,000

The Chair: Shall vote 5, less the amount of $39,585,750 voted in interim supply, carry?

(Vote 5 agreed to on division)

The Chair: We have notice of Madam Ablonczy's motion. It reads as follows:

That Vote 10 (Human Resources Investment and Insurance Program/Grants and Contributions) for Human Resources Development Canada in the amount of $765,926 thousand be reduced by $10 million to $755,926 thousand.

Shall the motion carry?

Mrs. Diane Ablonczy: Can I could speak to it, Madam Chairman?

The Chair: All right.

Mrs. Diane Ablonczy: It's just so that other members of the committee know why this motion is brought forward.

As you know, the department is responsible for spending about $60 billion. This motion refers to vote 10. It falls under the human resources investment and insurance program, which spends about $2.5 billion. About a third of that is for these grants and contributions in the amount of $766 million. This motion would be reducing the allocation for these grants and contributions by about 1/76, which is $10 million.

I want you to know my reasons for bringing this forward. I think it's important that this committee make an assessment as to the way the money is being spent, and I have concluded that the administration of these expenditures leaves something to be desired in terms of efficiency and effectiveness and also careful management.

I would remind my honourable colleagues, Madam Chairman, that we are responsible for ensuring accountability of these dollars. They're taxed from Canadian workers. We're the only ones, as their representatives, who have the ability to make sure that these expenditures are carefully scrutinized and thoughtfully allocated.

The fact of the matter is, there is mounting evidence that administrative practices in the allocation of these moneys are not all that Canadians could or should expect. We do need to make sure there's some accountability.

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If we just continue to pass all of these allocations without the slightest scrutiny or debate, we're really saying to Canadians there's no accountability in this system, and whatever is on the paper gets passed without even discussion, never mind any real or thoughtful accountability.

As you know, some of these moneys are spent before business plans have even been submitted. This is clearly unacceptable to Canadians. I would appeal to members of the committee to exercise our responsibility to Canadian taxpayers and to have these debates, and to allocate and reallocate moneys so that they're administered properly.

We're really doing Canadians a disservice by simply jumping up and voting these through, just like that. It's not right. We're not doing our job.

My motion is intending to, in a small way, start that process of us, for good reason, limiting the moneys that we don't believe are properly administered and perhaps reallocating them to some of the programs we're talking to today, where they can be better spent on behalf of Canadians.

I would certainly urge my colleagues to vote for this small measure and have a real debate about where this $10 million could be better applied.

Thank you, Madam Chairman, and thank you to my colleagues.

The Chair: Thank you.

Mr. Scott.

Mr. Andy Scott: I think the capacity of the department to reallocate the moneys if, for instance, they think or we think they're investing inappropriately inside of a $765 million package....

By reducing it by $10 million, it's all in the same circle. The programs we're talking about here—let's say a program for older workers—are all inside this investment.

The critical question is, do we believe the federal government is in fact spending enough money on the issues we face? Invariably, the people who appear before us here will say we aren't.

So on one level, I think, your rationale is correct. We need to hold people to account, to get better performance and so on. But I don't think the way to do that is to say that we should reduce the amount of money they have to invest in these programs. Rather, we should do what we're doing today—that is, bringing in people to talk to us about older workers, about disability, or whatever it might be.

That, in my mind, is the way we're going to get better programs, not by simply saying to the department we're going to reduce how much you get, from $765 million to $755 million, and then let you be creative with $10 million. The reality is, the money is inside the system now.

So I wouldn't support the motion simply by virtue of the fact that I think it sends the wrong signal that we're of the view that, somehow, the problem is, they're spending too much money. In reality, I think the problem is that inside the expenditure, we can do it better. That's what we're discussing almost every day.

Mrs. Diane Ablonczy: To respond, I hope I stated my point correctly, which was not that too much money was being spent but that the money was not being effectively or efficiently spent. I could go on at length about that, if you wish me to do so, but I simply alluded to that and to some of the evidence of that.

So if money is not being effectively or efficiently spent in this particular vote, then we should reduce the expenditure to ensure more effective and efficient spending. I'm simply pointing out that we then have $10 million of tax money that we can either give back to the taxpayer, which many would agree with, or that can be spent in ways that would be more effective on behalf of Canadians.

I don't necessarily mean we should spend it on older workers. That was simply an example, Mr. Scott.

The Chair: Thank you.

Mr. Godfrey.

Mr. John Godfrey (Don Valley West, Lib.): I guess my concern, Madam Chair, is that I certainly appreciate the oversight function that has been given to us a committee, and I don't think it should be trivialized, but unless we were to take very seriously the specifics of the things Madam Ablonczy is raising, and put it on our work plan, along with the disabled, children at risk, older workers and so on....

If we could try to figure out what the pattern is we could approach this in a more systemic fashion rather than simply arbitrarily—and, I think, rather superficially to an outside observer—reducing the overall sum by $10 million.

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I don't deny their seriousness, but if these are serious matters, then I think it's up to the steering committee and then the committee as a whole to allocate a sufficient amount of study time to do this right.

Presumably, as we look forward to the fall, these abuses or whatever they are that the honourable member has referred to are not going to disappear. If we are to honour the seriousness of our work, I suggest that might be the period to allocate time to get into the substance of the issue.

[Translation]

The Chair: Mr. Crête.

Mr. Paul Crête: While I understand what Mrs. Ablonczy has in mind, I'm not certain that we will achieve the results we want by cutting program funding. If Mrs. Ablonczy wants the committee to endorse Mr. Godfrey's proposal, I think we should call in some witnesses and have them talk to us about the transitional job creation fund. We could then examine the situation and look at how the money is allocated, what criteria are used and what role politicians play. I'm not prepared to concede that politicians have no role to play in this matter. We are the elected representatives of the people.

I would prefer to support a motion calling for the committee to consider this issue rather than a motion to cut funding by $10 million. If we endorse a $10 million cut, how are we to know what program component will be affected and who will suffer the consequences. Departmental officials would have to come up with a new proposal and decide where exactly to cut. Ultimately, there is no guarantee that the cuts will address the problem of poor program management. There is a danger that people who were in no way responsible for the system's operational shortcomings will be the ones penalized.

The Chair: Thank you.

[English]

Mr. McCormick.

Mr. Larry McCormick (Hastings—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, Lib.): Thank you, Madam Chair.

I certainly appreciate my colleague from Alberta's motion here. I think Diane brought a similar type of motion in front of us at another time. It's something we should look at. I don't think Mr. Scott and Mrs. Ablonczy are that far apart here, that this money could be spend perhaps in better ways.

I want to refer to when the minister sat here a couple of weeks ago. I know I haven't been on the committee enough...and looking at some rural issues. I asked a question of the minister about the re-mapping of zones of employment rates across this country outside of cities. This would be in all provinces, especially perhaps in Ontario and Quebec. The minister said, well, we wanted to get Y2K out of the way before even looking at changing these zones.

There are moneys going into some of our major cities that I think could be used as well in other locations, so I don't think it is a matter of too much money. I'd like to hope that this committee could have more input, and I'm going to push strongly for this re-mapping of these zones. The minister said we can start doing that this fall. It will be one of the greatest changes ever in this country, and I would encourage members to take a look.

If your riding is right inside downtown Toronto or something, it won't affect you, but if your riding takes in part of a city or some fair-sized small cities and extends into a rural area, immediately when he changes these zones or has his department do it—I know this will take forever—there will be a need for more money. So I think we have to have much more than $10 million at our disposal to manipulate.

I'd like to discuss and to learn how we can have more input on how the money in HRD could be used within the programs, Madam Chair.

The Chair: Thank you.

One final comment.

Mrs. Diane Ablonczy: I appreciate my colleagues' interventions and the thoughtful way they've approached this. My intention was to send a signal to the department, through this very small change to the estimates, that we are serious about oversight of spending. It would give an opening for us to say, okay, now we expect departmental people to come back and convince us and educate us and have a dialogue with us about departmental spending and about priorities and allocations and administrative efficiencies.

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My concern is that I've been here six years, as have many of my colleagues, some longer, and I have never, ever seen this discussion take place. Unless we send that signal, my concern is that it never will take place. I really believe we need to start somewhere. This would be a very small way to start but it would send a strong signal of our intentions and our seriousness about this process. I think this would be a good way to proceed, and I would ask my colleagues to support that.

Thank you, Madam Chairman.

The Chair: Thank you.

Shall Madam Ablonczy's motion carry?

(Motion negatived)

The Chair: We'll continue with our voting on the estimates.

Human Resources Investment and Insurance Program

Vote 10—Grants and contributions ...... $765,926,000

Labour Program

Vote 15—Program expenditures ...... $45,498,000

Income Security Program

Vote 20—Program expenditures ...... $73,977,000

Canada Industrial Relations Board

Vote 25—Program expenditures ...... $7,535,000

Canadian Artists and Producers Professional Relations Tribunal

Vote 30—Program expenditures ...... $1,559,000

Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety

Vote 35—Program expenditures ...... $1,728,000

The Chair: In order to save time, shall votes 10, 15, 20, 25, 30 and 35, less the amount voted in interim supply, carry? I've grouped them all together in order to be more expeditious.

(Votes 10 to 35 inclusive agreed to on division)

The Chair: The votes will be deemed reported to the House.

I want to make a very quick announcement. Apparently Lenore Burton has sent us a letter telling us she unfortunately won't be attending our meeting tomorrow. So we have a cancellation. We're going to try to book the Canadian Association of Firefighters, who have requested to meet with us. It's very short notice for them, but we're going to see if they can come up tomorrow and replace Miss Burton.

As well, Mr. Baldwin, from the Canadian Labour Congress also wants to postpone the meeting tomorrow. He feels he needs more time to prepare adequately.

I'll make sure you're all notified on e-mail what the status is of our meeting tomorrow.

Thank you.

Monsieur Crête.

[Translation]

Mr. Paul Crête: Madam Chair, could you refresh my memory as to the timetable for our study on older workers? Are we planning to table a report before the summer recess?

The Chair: I'll let our research officer field that question. We're all aware of the fact that there isn't a great deal of time remaining.

Mr. Paul Crête: Perhaps less than we realize.

The Chair: Yes, indeed.

[English]

Do you need more time to start drafting? Do you feel you have enough?

Mr. Kevin Kerr (Committee Researcher): No, not really. The committee has really only heard from four witnesses, excluding Statistics Canada and Human Resources Development officials. Members have asked a number of witnesses to appear. As well, there have been some staff suggestions. I thought the thinking was that the committee was going to pursue the older workers study in the fall, when Parliament returns.

[Translation]

The Chair: We'll try, Mr. Crête, to...

Mr. Crête: I'd like us to prepare for the possibility that the House might prorogue. If that were to happen, when we return in the fall, we would have to start all over with a new program. I'm wondering if we might possibly put out a meaningful report before the session ends, even if this means recommending that we pursue the matter further.

The Chair: Mr. Crête, if you and the other members were amenable to this, we could convene additional sessions to pursue the matter further and prepare an interim report.

Mr. Paul Crête: Fine.

[English]

The Chair: Thank you.

Are there any other comments?

The meeting is adjourned.