:
Merci. Thank you very much.
Good morning, everyone. Good morning, Mr. Chairman, and good morning, members of the committee. My name is Alfonso Argento. I'm the current chair of the Canadian Construction Association. I'm also a contractor. I'm president and chief operating officer of a company called Seven Brothers Construction based here in Quebec and Montreal. We are a family operated business.
With me this morning is Jeff Morrison, who is CCA's director of government relations and public affairs.
On behalf of the Canadian Construction Association, I want to thank you for your invitation to appear before you today. We are pleased to present our views respecting the consultation on employability in Canada. Certainly this matter is of significant interest to CCA and its members.
CCA is well positioned as the national voice of non-residential construction in Canada. CCA's activities benefit more than 20,000 enterprises in the industrial, commercial, and institutional sectors of the construction industry in the country.
[Translation]
The Canadian Construction Industry is facing an unprecedented labour shortage, due primarily to the aging workforce and exceptional economic growth in Canada for some years. In fact, a recent study by the Construction Sector Council shows that the Canadian Construction Industry will have to recruit at least 190,000 new trade workers over the next eight years.
We recognize that no single initiative can deal with the increasing demand for workers and solve the labour shortage issue, be it apprenticeship programs, immigration, worker mobility, or career promotion in non-traditional construction jobs. We will have to take an ongoing, multifunctional and multidimensional approach in order to identify all facets of the problem. That approach will require government support at a number of levels, as well as the support of construction industry stakeholders.
The main focus of this committee's study is employability in Canada. In the brief we have submitted to the committee, we have highlighted the following points, which in our view require additional measures.
First, the pool of Canadian workers will have to be increased. Second, the challenges and opportunities associated with the permanent and temporary immigration of foreign workers will have to be identified, and third, worker mobility across Canada will have to be promoted.
I would like to take the time I have left to make a number of comments on some of the points raised in our brief.
[English]
Concerning national apprenticeship standards in Canada, there is no question that a smooth-functioning construction industry is dependent upon a highly skilled, occupationally and geographically mobile labour force. To that end, we call on federal and provincial governments to work towards the development and implementation of national apprenticeship standards for Canada.
Under the current apprenticeship system in Canada, ten provincial and three territorial governments set the training standards for apprenticeship in their respective jurisdictions. This is often done without concern for what prevails in other jurisdictions. Resulting from this diversified approach to apprenticeship, we find differences in trade names, training curricula, and in which components of a trade they are compulsory and in which they are on a voluntary basis. The criteria differ from province to province, from territory to territory. We do not have a uniform system.
CCA believes mobility will be facilitated by development and adoption of common apprenticeship standards for Canadian skilled workers. We may already have that standard in the interprovincial Red Seal certification program. CCA is a strong proponent of the Red Seal program; however, its applications are limited to a small number of trades. Currently, only 45 of more than 300 designated Red Seal trades have the Red Seal standing. We believe the Red Seal program ought to be expanded to cover the broadest range of occupations for which apprenticeship or significant training is required.
Concerning support for apprentices, we applaud the federal government's recent demonstration of support for apprenticeship by way of the apprenticeship incentive program announced in the May 2006 federal budget. Although these initiatives are a good start to encourage apprenticeship in the trades, more can and must be done.
For example, the application of the tax credit and the tax grant is limited to Red Seal trades. It is our view that these federal budget initiatives must be available to all trades, since it should be clear that all construction trades meet the budget inclusion test of being economically strategic.
We believe that the earn while you learn nature of apprenticeship ought to extend to the in-school portion of apprenticeship training as well as the on-the-job training portion. We therefore call on the federal government to address provisions of the Employment Insurance Act that serve as barriers to allowing apprentices to earn while they are taking the in-school portion of their apprenticeship program.
Concerning challenges and opportunities offered by immigration, both on a permanent and temporary basis....
[Translation]
The policy and process underpinning immigration in Canada are structured to ensure that Canadians have first refusal on job opportunities in Canada, and preventing the hiring of foreign workers from having a negative impact on Canadians' job opportunities. The Canadian Construction Association vigorously supports the policy. However, given the unprecedented growth in the industry and the difficulty of recruiting Canadian workers in sufficient numbers, the Canadian Construction Association believes that temporary and permanent immigration could significantly contribute to the availability of construction workers in Canada.
In July, the CCA published a series of recommendations on how the government could reform the immigration system to meet human resource needs in the construction industry. The recommendations included the following:
First, review the points system used to assess skilled workers, put a stronger focus on criteria associated with experience and arranged employment. Second, extend the list of trades eligible under the temporary foreign workers program to include the greatest possible number of construction trades. Third, expand the seasonal Agricultural Workers Program so that it also covers the construction industry. Fourth, establish a process other than deportation for workers without papers, so that they can stay in Canada and have legal representation while they are in Canada without forcing them to go back to their countries of origin and then come back here, with all the frustration that entails. In any case, these are workers we need here, now
The Canadian Construction Association believes that, with these changes, Canada's immigration system would be much more useful in meeting labour market needs in the construction industry.
[English]
Next is promoting labour mobility in Canada. Employment in Canada in the Canadian construction industry is, by its very nature, characterized by high mobility. Construction projects are always a temporary work site, and it's not uncommon for construction workers to be moved about regularly among numerous job sites. For the most part, mobility is limited to movement within a region or a province, such as the region of Montreal or the province of Quebec. There are times, however, especially in periods of economic growth--or recession, for that matter--when workers need to be mobile on an interprovincial basis. The current economic boom we are experiencing in Alberta and B.C. is a good example of that, and you see a massive movement of people from east to west.
We were encouraged by the announcement of September 7, 2006, coming out of the committee of federal-provincial-territorial ministers responsible for internal trade respecting the goal of unrestricted mobility for Canadian workers by April 1, 2009. We believe this is a worthy goal and one that will allow labour market decision-makers at the provincial and federal levels to focus on the issue of enhancing labour mobility in the country. Notwithstanding the existence of the Red Seal program, other barriers can limit interprovincial mobility.
There is considerable cost involved in moving temporarily to a new location to seek employment. There are the costs of travel and accommodation, as well as general living costs just to go and look for work in a new location. There are also the other costs of maintaining a second home, as most workers will not want to disrupt family situations to move to temporary employment. We believe these costs could be reduced by assisting unemployed workers to relocate to new employment. This could be accomplished through the reintroduction of the exploratory component of the federal government worker mobility program that was in place in the mid-1970s. Under this program, an exploratory grant was available to workers to help them defray the travel and accommodation costs incurred in seeking employment in another location of the country.
I will conclude, Mr. Chairman. The Canadian Construction Association is pleased to have had this opportunity to provide our input to your deliberations on employability in Canada. The reports we are receiving clearly suggest that Canada is stricken with a serious labour force deficit in the immediate years ahead of us. We believe the federal government must take a leadership role to ensure that Canada is able to maintain its global competitiveness by ensuring that we have an adequately skilled labour force to meet the demographic challenges the country faces in the immediate term and the economic growth that is projected for the coming decade.
Thank you very much.
:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[English]
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
If you don't mind, Mr. Allison, I will address you in French, as it is my mother tongue, but I would be more than pleased to answer questions in French or English, depending on who is asking.
[Translation]
We are very pleased to be here today. The Canadian Federation of Independent Business is an organization that represents SMEs from across Canada. You have before you a presentation of a few slides that I will come back to briefly, so as to allow a time for discussion afterwards.
Some of my colleagues already appeared before the committee in Newfoundland and in Moncton. Many members of the Federation are present since the issue of labour shortage is one of the constant priorities of SME leaders, throughout Canada as well as Quebec.
In the past few years, we have seen that the labour shortage was closely linked to several problems, be it the tax burden, be it administrative and regulatory burden or employment insurance. The heads of SMEs talk to us about the labour shortage every year, because this is a constant priority for them. And their concerns in this regard have been growing in the past few years.
In the slides that I distributed, you will see that the concerns of the heads of SMEs are not necessarily tied to unemployment rates. One might tend to think that the labour shortage is inversely proportional to the problem of unemployment, but that is not necessarily the case.
Alberta is currently experiencing significant labour shortages. Our SME leaders say that the qualified labour force, more specifically among the young, is moving West, which hurts them. In fact, Mr. Argento asked a question earlier dealing with the mobility of the labour force.
That fact that we are in a period of lower unemployment does not necessarily stop the problem of labour shortage from getting worse.
The Canadian Federation of Independent Business is an organization that polls its members. We asked them questions about their hiring plans for the next 12 months: only 26 per cent of them intend to hire more full-time workers in the next 26 months, and only 13 per cent of them intend to increase their part-time workforce.
These low percentages are closely linked to the problems in hiring workers. Our members will still fill their labour force needs, but by using different strategies. They will hire underqualified staff or temporary staff or even let business opportunities passed them by. Generally speaking, these strategies are not necessarily viable in the long term, because they only fill a short-term need.
The time involved in training new workers often represents a considerable number of hours for employers in all regions of Canada. These employees are not necessarily qualified and need to be trained in order to bring them up to par.
However, the tendency to train new employees is lower in Quebec than elsewhere in Canada, which is somewhat worrisome. Quebec provide 104 hours of informal training and 22 hours of formal training to new employees whereas in the rest of the Canada it comes up at 113 and 23 hours respectively.
It is appropriate to examine the issue of training in greater depth, because that is one of the solutions to the shortage of qualified labour. When we ask our members what government can do to alleviate labour force shortages, we see that labour force training, especially in Quebec, is a very compelling subject for the heads of SMEs.
With the adoption of the Act for the development of manpower training, known as Bill 90, the heads of businesses whose payroll is $1 million or less are exempted from the obligations under this act.
The CFIB has often criticized — and I will get back to this — the burden that this legislation placed on the heads of SMEs. And yet, the CFIB is not against labour force training by SMEs. As we are members of the Commission des partenaires du marché du travail [Labour Force Partners' Commission] and we have a vision on this very issue, we will have opportunities to discuss it further.
Quebec has many areas of jurisdiction: employment, training, immigration, etc. We will soon be publishing an extensive survey on the labour shortage. For the past few years, the federation has been keeping an eye on this issue. Our report on this monitoring, which will also deal with the question of immigration, will be published in the coming weeks.
The federal and provincial governments must coordinate their efforts in order to create flexible approaches, be it on training, employment insurance, immigration, pensions, etc., and find solutions.
We also believe that it is important to educate business, and bring everyone on a level-playing field. One must understand the reality of SME leaders. A SME is not a multinational corporation. The head of the business wears many hats: director of finance, director of human resources, production manager. Moreover, he brews the coffee for his employees in the morning.
You must take into account the reality of managing a SME when you develop public policy. I could discuss this at length, but we will certainly have an opportunity to discuss it in the coming minutes.
Thank you.
:
Ladies and gentlemen, Canadian parliamentarians, good morning. Welcome to Quebec and to Montreal, a region where realities sometimes take a different form which must be taking into account. I am here today to discuss one of the realities we experience from the stand point of regulated professions.
You have received my brief directly, since I am aware of the rule to the effect that one does not transmit documents that are not translated into the other official language. The employees of the Parliament of Canada are rigorous in applying this rule. When it reduces access to information, it does trouble me somewhat. So I therefore sent you our brief directly. Thanks to the fine service of the translators, you will receive the English version, as was the case when we appeared before the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration in April 2005. You might also want to consult the brief that the Council tabled at that time.
These two briefs are quite similar, because in our opinion, these two orders of reference overlap. This only leads us to wonder whether parliamentarians talk to one another. Two standing committees are broaching more or less the same subject: recognition of foreign credentials for immigrants. This leads me to believe that the federal government is experiencing some difficulties, because two or three departments are getting involved in the same issue, namely Citizenship and Immigration Canada and Human Resources and Skills Development Canada. This may make us question the way the government does things, because one has to choose the right interlocutor. I see a lot of people smiling, which indicates that you understand what I am talking about.
Despite the rather broad mandate the committee has taken on, we only intend to deal with the issue of recognition of credentials and labour force mobility, since the Conseil interprofessionel du Québec is a group of 45 professional regulatory bodies in Quebec. We do not represent business people and we do not represent other groups that have an interest in the other issues that you wish to address. We only represent organizations that regulate professions. That is already quite a lot. If you follow the news, you will note that this is often the example that is given to cast a few stones or express good wishes on this issue.
Today, I would like to give you some examples of the reality of the situation, beyond perceptions and prejudices. Facts prevent us from thinking what we want, and it is important to know those facts. It is all the more important for parliamentarians. If you are taking a tour across Canada — which must be costing you a pretty penny — it is because you want to be aware of the reality. You want to make up your own mind about this reality. Well, we will explain some of these facts.
What is professional regulation? I know that the reality may be different in other jurisdictions, but in Quebec, which has its own Code des professions, professional regulation has relied on the notion of protecting the public, for the past 30 years or so, because there are risks associated with certain activities. It is important to monitor professionals as soon as they start their practice, in order to ensure competence at the beginning of their careers and throughout their professional life. This is a provincial jurisdiction, not just by tradition, but also because most of the time, such services must be delivered locally. The Fathers of Confederation understood this correctly 100 or 200 years in advance. They understood that it was good idea that the legislative assembly closest to the people be the one with oversight over professions in order to provide services close by.
To our mind, professional competence is the foundation of the quality of the professional act and the risk management associated with professional practice. From that standpoint, we assure quality for the people of Quebec through 45 professional orders, be it the College of Physicians, or associations of engineers, professional technologists for which my good friend André Lavoie worked a few years ago, or regardless of the field where there is a professional order. It is from this standpoint, that this legislative framework is applied in Quebec. For us, employability means competence within the context of risk and legal responsibility.
Now what about mobility? A professional licence is a tool for mobility, but since professional legislation is designed for the territory where it is expected that most professionals will practice, of course, the specificities, the criteria and the standards are Quebec owns.
I have some concerns about the way the health care system and physicians are overseen in British Columbia. I go there perhaps once every five years. For me, the nearby service is in Quebec, and it is Quebec legislators that I will call upon to reflect my concerns as a citizen with regard to the implementation of oversight standards for physicians who treat my loved ones, my family, my friends and colleagues. Therefore, professional regulation is a reality that is still mostly local and regional. There is mobility, there are inter-jurisdictional services, and in this regard, there are to be certain mechanisms in place.
Quebec professional orders fully participated in the drafting of the agreement on internal trade. Over two thirds of them signed agreements with their counterparts, where they exist, because there are institutional realities that vary from one province to the next. They signed mutual recognition agreements in order to facilitate this.
Quebec was even an avant-garde by lifting certain traditional restrictions associated with professional regulation, notably with regard to citizenship. Professional orders must adopt training equivalency rules in order to recognize the reality of the labour market and the experience acquired on the job.
For many years now, together with several stakeholders in Quebec, we led a reform, or one might say a revolution, regarding the recognition of the foreign credentials of immigrants. In fact, I have an exclusive for you: we have just received an award from the Canadian Association for Prior Learning Assessment, for the actions that the Quebec inter-professional Council — in other words, all of the professional orders of Quebec — have taken since 2001 to promote recognition of prior learning by immigrants. Quebec is now the leader in this field in Canada among professional regulatory organizations, with regard to measures taken to foster recognition of immigrants.
What about the federal legislator and the federal government? The economic challenge, which is one of the consequences of the demographic challenge, must be a constant concern for any legislator in any level of government. When it comes to taking action, it has to be effective. Action must be taken wherever you find the people who can deliver the goods and where the problems and the reality arise.
In Canada, there are five economic regions whose systems and labour force structures vary. Of course, there are exchanges between the regions, but the fundamental realities, the geographic realities, the economic realities, the structures of the economy and the structures of the industry are regional in Canada. There have always been and there always will be five economic regions, and each one experiences its own reality when it comes to the labour market.
I do understand that the federal government is concerned with development overall, and with Canada's performance on the international scene and its competitiveness and that it wants to take action. But let us be careful here: when it comes to the constitutional areas of jurisdiction of Quebec or the other provinces, when it comes to being effective, it is hard to believe that it is preferable to manage things from Ottawa. We had high hopes, given everything the Conservative Party had said during the election campaign about respecting areas of provincial jurisdiction and working with the provinces. Unfortunately, the arrival and announcement of an agency for the recognition of prior learning which will be superimposed on what has already been done in many provinces and especially in Quebec, where mobilization is well anchored and delivers results, is very troublesome to us. We are worried about this. We feel that it is a waste of resources and pointless overlap.
We are here to tell you that things are going well in Quebec. We still have a great deal that needs to be done, but we are moving in the right direction. The Quebec government is well connected with its partners, the professional orders and support groups for immigrants. There have been reports, documents that are very clear, very concrete, and we are at the stage where we are taking action. If the federal government creates another structure, another place for discussion or intervention, there will be overlap, inefficiency and worse, it will mean that the problems will persist even longer. This is not beneficial to immigrants, nor to Quebec or to Canada. Let us work with the people who have the solutions and who are already in the field.
If the federal government wants to earmark money — and we all hope that this will happen — it should transfer the money to Quebec. Quebec already has a well-organized system and the results speak for themselves. So let's go forward then.
:
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
I will begin by combining both groups, namely the Canadian Construction Association and the Canadian Federation of Independent Business. Please let me know whether I am heading in the right direction. Thirty-one per cent — which is almost 33 per cent — of the members of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business in Quebec are companies which operate in seasonal sectors, not only in Montreal, but also in outlying areas. This would include the restaurant and hotel sectors, and even agriculture and construction.
I am convinced that you each face challenges as far as retaining workers is concerned in these various sectors. Because of the specific type of work involved, seasonal cycles are bad for business. You cannot harvest potatoes or broccoli, or work in some areas of construction, 12 months a year. It's possible in some sectors, but not in others.
Is it difficult, for either one of your organizations, to retain workers for the next season? In some sectors, the timelines may seem short, but if there is no work ten months out of 12, it's vastly different. Generally speaking, how do your members deal with the problems associated with seasonal work?
:
That's a business which is benefiting from climate change.
In fact, one of the biggest problems faced by these types of business leaders is that they must comply with regulations which are not necessarily adapted to the specific workplace conditions of their companies. For example, Quebec has had a parental insurance plan for about one year now, which is different from those of other provinces.
Let's take the case of a businessman who grows small fruit or vegetables and who employs foreign workers, such as Mexicans, on a seasonal basis. This businessman must, because of existing social programs, pay the same employment insurance premiums for these workers as he does for his permanent staff. This puts the seasonal workers and the permanent employees on equal footing. Perhaps we should give that a little more thought.
Lawmakers are beginning to adopt measures which take into account the size and specific conditions each business operates under. For too long, the Quebec government — even though the federal government also does not have a perfect record — based its policies on large companies. The reality of smaller businesses was not taken account, whether they were seasonal businesses or other types.
Over time, the size of a business was taken into consideration and we are beginning to see policies and laws which take this reality into account. When you develop your policies, I would encourage all federal or provincial legislators — and I will not get into a debate on areas of jurisdiction — to take the reality of these people into account.
I will conclude by saying that, on average, Quebeckers work between 32 and 33 hours per week. There has recently been a long debate on this subject, but I will not get into that issue this morning. Forty per cent of small- and medium-sized business owners work 40 hours or more a week, and 30 per cent of them work 60 hours or more. This applies only to sectors which produce goods and services. These people do not work these hours just to comply with regulations or legislation. So I think you should take this into account when you develop your policies, whether it be at the federal or provincial levels, or elsewhere.
:
With your permission, let me follow up in these statements.
I do not mean any offence to my colleague André Gariépy when I say that the provincial regulatory systems are not entirely perfect. We saw this during the dispute between Quebec and Ontario regarding construction. It took several years to resolve. And I do not mean only legislation that has to do with professions. In Quebec, the construction industry has specific features, such as a specific law that deals with labour relations in the construction industry. Now this is where problems arise.
In early September, a forum was held on the Quebec construction industry at Mont Saint-Sauveur. The entirely issue of manpower mobility was raised. In Quebec, it is a serious internal problem. The federation also represents construction entrepreneurs. It is difficult for them to move people, even in the regions.
If people from other provinces offer their skills to Quebec entrepreneurs but it does not agree with the current accord, for example such as the one between Quebec and Ontario— and this is very obvious in the Outaouais region, which borders on Ontario—, there are problems. Thus, we must encourage all the work done in promoting mobility, from the interprofessional Council, among others.
Later, I will deal with the recognition of workers' qualifications, both at home and from abroad.
:
I must clarify what I said, Ms. Savoie. I said that when the legislation was implemented in Quebec, the incentive was of a financial nature, meaning that the purpose was to increase investment in training. The way to go about this was to create the
Fonds national de formation de la main-d'oeuvre [The Quebec Labour Force Training Fund]. An employer who could not demonstrate that he had invested 1 per cent of his payroll in labour force training automatically had to send a cheque for the corresponding amount to the Ministry of Revenue, which then sent on the money to the Labour Force Training Fund. We have always said that was not the appropriate approach.
Let us be clear here: the CFIB is in favour of labour force training development. In fact, quite recently, a parliamentary commission examined the five-year report dealing with this legislation. We are certainly not asking that it be abolished. Quite the contrary: following the raising of the payroll ceiling to $1 million or more, we accepted an invitation from the Minister of Employment at the time to sit on the Commission des partenaires du marché du travail [Labour Force Partners' Commission] in order to make Bill 90 more effective, that is the Act to promote the development of manpower training.
We also contributed to developing the General Framework for Skills Development and Recognition, which is a much more appropriate approach for small business leaders, as it takes into account their reality. We want more mechanisms and flexibility, because there is a lot of informal training going on.
As I said earlier, a small business owner manages 5 to 10 employees. It was complicated to ask him if in fact the very informal training it provided Joe this week complied with the criteria of Bill 90 and whether he could consider this a training expenditure. What we are saying is that the accounting approach is not the right one.
Training has to be concentrated in certain regions. It is difficult for an isolated company in a given region to work toward implementing a training pool and motivate employers to participate in it. Right now, we have a training program that results from the framework for skills development with sectoral committees. We establish occupational standards. We have to get companies to bring their employees skills up to par. That is far more promising and fruitful.
It was in that sense that we were against the legislation as it stood. We were working toward an amendment to the Act to foster the development of manpower training, that is unanimously supported by employers, unions and community groups who sit on the Labour Force Partners' Commission. This is a step forward.
I want to be very clear: we are not against the development of labour force training.
:
I'm glad to see that you were a proud member of CFIB.
Indeed, lowering the tax burden is always one of the highest priorities of our members, and I would say there are numerous ways of doing it. Whether it's on payroll taxes or on tax credits or on EI, there are numerous ways of putting some money back in the pockets of small business owners. In the last budget there was some very good news from a tax point of view, such as the $400,000 threshold for small businesses.
In a way, what we're saying is that you need to be able to give a bit of a break to the small business owners from a tax point of view in order to help them reinvest this money into their businesses. This is contrary to big businesses--and I don't want to attack big businesses--but of course big businesses answer to shareholders. Normally big businesses can be there to make profits, obviously, and of course they want to put dividends in the pockets of their shareholders.
It's very different in the independent business. If you give a tax break to a small business owner, what is he going to do with it? He's not necessarily going to put it in his pocket. He's going to put it back in his business. He's going to create more jobs. He's going to create more opportunities for training. He's going to create more opportunities for investing in technology in order to improve his business performance. This is basically what we're talking about.
As for your second question, I guess it was on a different way of cutting taxes. As I said, in the last budget there was some very good news and we were encouraged. I'm going to give you an example. The taxe sur la capitale, the capital tax, is against logic. You tax the profit before the business has even made one cent. It doesn't make sense. Everybody says it's against logic. I think the governments have to attack that sort of bad taxing that basically is counterproductive to businesses.
:
Some of the challenges deal with the fact that when you immigrate, you generate a gap because you were trained by your educational institution back in your country of origin, and these institutions train for their country.
There are differences, cultural differences, in the way things are organized. The health services are different. The protocol and the technology used in some countries are different. The way to interact with the client is different. When you're in the health system, the way to interact with pain is a cultural aspect, and the training you receive sometimes is not the training adapted to the reality in Quebec, in Canada, in North America.
There are some gaps, and people are not looking for gaps; they are looking for things that can be recognized. If it's knowledge, everybody is trained with knowledge in a reasonably equivalent way--when you deal with science, it is science. But whenever you deal with some aspect of the way to apply science, the way to interact with the client or with other professionals, the ethics, the way things are organized, then.... And also there's language. It's even important in Ontario because you're facing a situation in which people come and they don't know enough English to be able to practise. Communication in professional relations with a client is at the basis of knowing the needs, then expressing what's being offered as services, then having the consent, and then acting upon it. If you cannot even understand the question in an exam, how can you prove that you have the qualifications and then after that practise? All these things come into play for one person.
The gap is made of two shores. It's like a river. We're responsible for part of it because we've been here for a few hundred years, establishing things--standards, ways to intervene, ways to practice--based on the level of technology we can pay for. Sometimes we don't have the money, but we think we have the money for it so we have a good health system. But for somebody coming from abroad, depending on the country, there will be gaps.
Coming from Ontario, it's a minor gap. Coming from the U.S., then, whoops, it's a larger gap. And when you come from some countries in Africa.... But even in Africa, when you're coming from a Commonwealth country, you can relate to the education system because they kept the British education system in a way. Even in the former French colonies, they kept part of the French education system. If you can relate to the French education system, you can adapt.
So each time it's a challenge, and depending on the immigration wave you receive--from Southeast Asia, from the Eastern bloc countries, or northern Africa--new challenges are coming. And the challenges are getting the information for the immigrant and about the immigrant and the country of origin to make the necessary equivalencies.
Then you need to have efficient tools. Efficient means affordable but also reliable, because we're issuing a permit to act on things that carry risk of harm many times. People are saying, in their institutions in Quebec and in other jurisdictions, when you're issuing a permit, we have confidence in the permit you're issuing, so make sure we face someone who will manage the risk in a reasonable way.
This kind of information, these kinds of tools.... When calling for qualifications recognition, a lot of people are saying, look at the person instead of the papers. Yes, fine, but how? It has to be reliable. A lot of people who are saying we should look at the person and have the necessary tools to evaluate their work experience don't have a clue about the tools available. We did a survey of the tools. There are not so many, and this is why the Quebec government put aside some money to develop tools that are efficient.
It should not be a two-year process to get recognized, but a shorter time with some gap training that is available.
You're not consistent with your officials, say, and the government. You say we will open the doors to immigrants, but at the same time your education system is not on board to provide the gap training. Then the immigrant says you told him he needs that training, and he recognizes that; he knows that in his country he wasn't trained for it, but where does he get the training? Your education system is saying he doesn't have this, so he has to redo all of it. No, that's unreasonable.
This is why, in the November 2005 report of the task force that I was appointed to by the Quebec government, there are all these little things. Forget the big speeches, the big emotions about immigration or whatever; we are way beyond that. We are looking at the tiny problems that make the process a real pain for everybody.
:
: My father immigrated, in a way. He left the Quebec City area to settle in Montreal many years ago. So in my family, I am the first generation born in Montreal. You are broaching something quite nebulous, because we have to understand we are dealing with human beings here.
Every human being has an esthetic ideal in life. That esthetic ideal is created according to what he sees and hears. Television, most notably, shows esthetic ideals in soap operas, comedies and so forth. Everything is very urban and people have a taste to live an urban lifestyle. Being stuck in traffic for some people is perfectly fine because above all else, they are behind the wheel of a car and they love to drive.
For some, the esthetic ideal is to live near the river, in the lower St. Lawrence Valley. That was my esthetic ideal some time ago. A few years before I was hired by the council, I had sent my resume to apply for a position that was quite interesting in Rimouski. My wife and I thought that this would be a good place to raise children. As you can see, these are personal choices.
Mr. Lessard was talking about older people who have a sense of belonging to a group, their family. They are not going to go into exile the way people did in the days of the James Bay project or Manicouagan, or like lumberjacks did when they left for three months to go work in the woods and then came back. Unless we are living in a Ceaucescu-type regime and that we force people to move, every individual has the freedom to make choices in life, and the result of these choices create sociological, geographical and therefore economic dynamics.
I do not have much to say about how you achieve this. There is often a coercive approach, regarding doctors among others. Young doctors are being told that if they want to live the good life in Montreal some day with their Mercedes, first they have to go drive a more modest American car in a region and come back a few years later. This approach causes an outcry, and forcing people in this way is risky, if you think about the Quebec and Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. One can give them an incentive by offering a great deal of money but here again, it does not work. That is the human dynamic.
:
This reminds me of the film the Great Seduction. I do not know wether you have seen it, but this is just the kind of situation it describes.
We must also mention what is going on in certain areas with resources. The crisis in forestry in Quebec has given rise to a new phenomenon. There are regions with resources where, quite often , over the years, big companies were relied upon to develop resources in the area, and this is how cities were built.
There are real tragedies unfolding at this time, in some of these regions. Just yesterday, Norsk Hydro announced that it was closing its Bécancour plant. This is given rise to some tragic situations. Of course, my colleague was right in saying that all the noise made by the media is not helping at all to make these regions more attractive.
However, there are other, more encouraging examples: the region of Drummondville, Trois-Rivières, Gaspe, are entering into a new phase with the development of wind farms. New projects can be created in such regions,.
There is also the issue of the next generation of SME entrepreneurs. Our SMEs will enter into a new phase within the coming ten or fifteen years. Our SME entrepreneur population is also aging. This gives the younger generation a chance to take over the management of those regional companies. I think that if we build our projects around an economy that is more geared to smaller enterprises, we can enable the regions to stand on their own feet, this seems obvious. I think that we should be looking at the positive examples that are out there in order to promote them, rather than give all our attention to big companies that are shutting down.
:
Mr. Lavoie, I agree with you about double billing, both federal and provincial. This is why the sovereignist movement arose en 1970. This is really a dual administration and dual payment. I agree with you, because this is so in many cases.
I was a bit shocked to hear you say just now that SMEs are not at all favourable to parental leave. The business world is complaining about the low birth rate. The way to increase the birth rate would be to offer parental leave and one-year maternity leave, so that the young generation can return to family values. We also need child care centres, because I think that young parents are not ready to leave their baby with a grandmother or an aunt or with anyone they can find out there.
Mr. Argento, I was also rather shocked to hear what you had to say about the mobility of construction workers. If you take someone with a seasonal job on a farm where potatoes or some other crop is being grown and you make a construction worker out of that person, what will happen to the farmer who was employing him? His company might well be an SME. How will he cope with losing his manpower? You are just taking from Peter and giving to Paul.
I think that with the current scarcity of manpower and the large number of school dropouts, we should perhaps incite schools, chambers of commerce and companies to seek out the 15 and 16 year-olds to show them the real meaning of work and education. There is a great potential for recruiting manpower among young people who dropped off school because they do not know what they want and because they have no guidance. With a bit of patience, you could explain to the older workers who are afraid of losing their jobs that they could train the new generation, in this way we could probably solve the problem of school dropouts and scarcity of manpower. But we must not tell them that they have to hand their jobs over; we should rather tell them that they have experience to transmit. In this way, we would avoid emptying the country side and creating urban congestion. Actually, people are leaving the rural regions. The general store is emptying its shelves, Rona is closing down and then the younger generation leaves and we wonder why schools are being closed and the young are not returning to the region.
I would like to hear what you have to say about all this, because I feel very strongly about this issue.