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, November 18, 1997

• 0904

[English]

The Chairman (Mr. Reg Alcock (Winnipeg South, Lib.)): Let us come to order. Welcome, all, to meeting number 7 of the Standing Committee on Human Resources Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities.

Today, as part of our continuing series of briefings on this monster department, we are going to talk about the social union and get an overview on upcoming policy issues.

I note that James Lahey is not sitting at the table. Is he not appearing this morning?

Mr. John Knubley (Director General, Social Policy, Department of Human Resources Development): No, he's not.

• 0905

The Chairman: So we have Mr. Knubley, who is the director general of social policy. In the area of children, we have Margaret Biggs, special adviser to the assistant deputy manager, strategic policy; and Karen Jackson, director general, labour market policy. Do we not have a Suzanne Clément?

Ms. Karen Jackson (Director General, Labour Market Policy, Strategic Policy, Department of Human Resources Development): No, sir, we don't. Suzanne is ill today and won't be able to join us.

The Chairman: And Mr. Lahey is not with us because...?

Mr. John Knubley: He wanted me to send his apologies, sir. Another commitment took him away from the table this morning.

The Chairman: Well, you will tell him I'm not very happy about that.

Mr. John Knubley: I will, sir.

The Chairman: Thank you.

Mr. John Knubley: Maybe I'll start. I want to check with you, sir, in terms of how we want to proceed. We have prepared for you three very short decks: one called “Social Union”; one called “Building a Better Future for Canada's Children”; and one called “Equipping Canada's Youth”. They are each about five pages in length.

What we propose is one for each one us. I will go through the “Social Union”; Margaret Biggs will go through “Building a Better Future for Canada's Children”; and Karen Jackson will take us through the youth deck. We propose to do that quickly at the beginning and then open the floor to questions on all three of these decks. Is that okay with you?

The Chairman: That would make sense.

Mr. John Knubley: All right, good.

The Chairman: Please proceed.

[Translation]

Mr. John Knubley: As I just said, my presentation will focus on what is usually called the social union. I am going to give an overview of the social union.

My colleague Margaret Biggs will talk to you about the various aspects of the initiatives for children, and Karen Jackson will speak to you about youth and the measures planned to help them break into the labour market.

I will start by referring to the Throne Speech, which indicated, with respect to the social union, that the federal, provincial and territorial governments had adopted a collaborative approach to strengthen and modernize the Canadian social union.

[English]

That means that the government has identified in the Speech from the Throne the national child benefit as an early result and that the government welcomes partnerships, particularly the premiers and territorial leaders' continuing interest in working together. The Speech from the Throne identifies as a next step the first ministers meeting to discuss youth unemployment, health care, and social policy renewal. I think it's in this context of the Speech from the Throne that explains in part why we're here today setting out what a social union is and how the national child benefit and children's initiatives and youth fit into that context as we lead towards a first ministers' meeting.

In terms of thinking about the social union, I think the first question is, what is it? In its simplest form it's a new approach to social policy reform. In the last year we focused on—and this comes from the Prime Minister's directions at the last first ministers' meeting in June 1996—addressing child poverty and persons with disabilities. Those were the two areas we were tasked as officials to work on.

I think in the broader context there are other issues in the social union agenda. Labour market agreements, in effect, were part of our social union initiative, but they also followed really a different track in terms of what we're talking about today.

While youth has been identified as an issue for the next first ministers' meeting, looking back over the past year, while there have been initiatives within the federal domain, it has not really been part of the administrative work we've been doing on what we call the social union, and I'll try to explain what I mean by this.

So again, what is the social union? It's focused on these projects of child poverty and persons with disabilities. It's more than programs, however. I think it's about core values and principles. I think there's a sense that Canadians see that their health care system and their social safety net represent something fundamental for them in terms of Canada. That means it's about obligations and rights related to the charter. That means it's about developing common principles and standards in the area of social policy for Canadians.

• 0910

It's also about a relationship to the economic union. The social union and the economic union are interlinked. I think there's growing recognition that a strong economy is dependent on strong human resources. Some even see Canada's social policy as a competitive advantage relative to other countries.

It's in this broad context that we're looking at the social union.

Margaret Biggs, before her current position, was on secondment to CPRN, which is Judith Maxwell's think-tank. She prepared for Judith and for us a book called Building Blocks for Canada's New Social Union, and I think it's important to talk about what she reported on about the social union. She set out really three dimensions of the social union—

The Chairman: That book you referenced: is it possible to have copies circulated to the members of the committee?

Mr. John Knubley: Yes.

The Chairman: Thank you.

Mr. John Knubley: There are three dimensions to the social union. When we approach any issue, such as children or persons with disabilities, we come at it looking at it from three dimensions. Can we improve and modernize social programs? What does it have to do with the federation; can we pursue partnerships with other governments? Lastly, there's a governance dimension, or a citizen engagement dimension, where we're focusing on how we can involve Canadians in the development of social policy. So when we think about the social union we think about these three dimensions, and I think there are elements of these whether we talk about children or persons with disabilities, or even youth.

How do we arrive at this new approach, this social union? I don't think I'll spend a lot of time on the history. I'll just say there was social security reform at the beginning of the last mandate. There were changes to the CHST. This brought, in relations with the provinces, more flexibility in their ability to deliver programs. At the same time it allowed for the provinces to develop new approaches to social policy.

In March 1996, in the context of the federal government pursuing its own social security reform, the provinces prepared a ministerial council report on social policy reform and renewal. There they basically indicated there were four main elements of social policy reform: principles, ground rules, mechanisms for dispute resolution...and they set out a broad agenda for a ministerial council, which included social services, health, and financial arrangements.

This led to a discussion on social policy at the first ministers' meeting in June 1996. The ministerial council report was discussed, as well as the broader context of social security reform. First ministers agreed a federal-provincial-territorial council on social policy renewal should be created and the focus of initial activity should be on child poverty and persons with disabilities.

I'll come back to explaining what the federal-provincial-territorial council does. In fact, on page 6 I set out an organogram that describes the ministerial council. This sets out a relationship among first ministers with a ministerial council on social policy renewal. Its main purpose is to support and co-ordinate the work of central ministries; that is, the ministers responsible for social services, health ministers, labour market ministers, justice ministers.

The members of the council are appointed by first ministers. Currently Minister Pettigrew is the federal co-chair, Minister Rock is our federal member, Russell King is the provincial co-chair, although for most of last year it was the Alberta minister, Stockwell Day. The reason for that is the provincial co-chair rotates according to who is in the lead in the provinces for the annual premiers' conferences.

• 0915

I think the idea of the council itself is to take a horizontal, integrated approach to making social policy. This means that it's not only working in partnership across governments, but also across departments. The idea is that in order to make good policy about children or persons with disabilities, it's important for social service ministers to talk to health ministers, labour market ministers, etc.

[Translation]

Quebec is not a member of the Federal-Provincial-Territorial Council on Social Policy Renewal. However, the Quebec government is participating in ministerial meetings, especially those involving social services ministers. Quebec is therefore not a member of the Council, but does participate in ministerial meetings.

[English]

Turning to page 7, in terms of what has been accomplished, we tried to set out the accomplishments in terms of the three dimensions I talked about earlier.

On the one hand, there is the notion of strengthening and modernizing social programs. I apologize for the list of acronyms, but I think that for the purposes of display we needed to go with the acronyms.

So in the area of children and poverty, we have moved forward on a national child benefit and national children's agenda. Margaret will talk to you about that.

In the area of persons with disabilities, we're working on modernizing the vocational rehabilitation for a disabled persons program, some harmonization initiatives, and a vision and framework for a longer-term agenda. I think that Martha Nixon and I will be back on Thursday to talk to you about the disability area.

I think there are other initiatives of note that relate to the social union. On the health side, there are a number of initiatives there, but I'll defer to my colleagues from the health department on that.

As I mentioned, the labour market was certainly an important initiative, but it was not part of at least the administrative work of the council, which I described in the previous slide.

In the area of youth, the fact of the matter is that it's coming onto the agenda of the social union. That's what the first ministers meeting coming up is about.

In terms of the other dimensions, I think it's important to note that on the federalism side, we have a new instrument, this council, that provides horizontal policy-making. In addition, in support of that horizontal policy-making, there were a number of new institutional structures put in place. There were a number of working groups on children and persons with disabilities that are now working effectively and regularly on these issues that weren't in place before.

On the citizen-engagement side, I think there's a sense that we need to do more to engage Canadians, but in the area of the national child benefit, we moved forward in the areas of public reporting. There was a joint publication involving the provinces and the federal government on the national child benefit. In addition, in the area of persons with disabilities, we're working on accountability regimes that are focusing less on government accountability and more on how governments relate to citizens.

Let me just conclude by talking about progress in this mandate and where we're heading. There was a meeting of social services ministers on October 7. We discussed the national child benefit and reviewed the July 1, 1998, launch date and the preparations for that. We talked about progress on provincial reinvestments and the commitments being made there. We talked about steps in relation to the public reporting and how we will let Canadians know how the national child benefit is doing in relation to them. We talked about the national children's agenda and its progress not only within social services, but within the health, justice, and education departments. We talked about persons with disabilities in the three areas I've already identified.

The next steps are the first ministers meetings on December 11 and 12. Youth employment, health care, and social policy renewal are all on the agenda. Social union initiatives are at the centre of discussions.

With those words, I'll let Margaret elaborate more on what's going on in the area of children.

Ms. Margaret Biggs (Special Adviser to the Assistant Deputy Manager, Strategic Policy, Department of Human Resources Development): Thank you, John. Thank you, committee.

• 0920

As John indicated, issues around children have been at the centre of the discussions so far between federal and provincial governments on social policy renewal. They also figured prominently in the Speech from the Throne as a priority for the federal government and as an area of partnership and shared priority with the provinces and territories.

I thought I would briefly talk about three areas that are identified in the Speech from the Throne: the national child benefit, the national children's agenda, and some other items that the federal government is going to be undertaking in the area of children.

First, some of the background as to why children have emerged as not just a priority for federal governments, but for all governments, is probably quite well known to you. There has been quite a convergence of thinking around children's issues. Children are important in their own right, they have inherent worth, and we care about them as individuals. Not only that, we also understand that childhood is a very important stage in the life cycle in terms of preparing people for a knowledge-based economy, a healthy life, and citizenship.

Issues around children have been identified from a number of sectors, whether that's in the area of social services or health. The National Forum on Health identified early childhood development as being key to re-orienting health systems toward more preventive approaches and healthier outcomes.

Similarly, the area of criminal justice has been identified by the National Crime Prevention Council as being an important investment in terms of trying to prevent problems downstream in the criminal justice system. Similarly, in the education area, it's well known that early interventions pay off in terms of downstream problems and learning issues.

I should also mention youth, which has become a priority as well in terms of focuses around youth unemployment. Some of that has to do with the nature of the economy. Some of it has to do with whether or not children are acquiring the skills, learning, and adaptive behaviours they need to succeed through their early adolescence and adulthood.

There's also a great deal of research—I know many of you are aware of this—on what we've learned over the last five to ten years in terms of the importance of early childhood and in terms of laying down the pathways for learning and cognitive development, etc. Investments in early childhood and through childhood really are some of the most successful in terms of what they can achieve. It's often much more advantageous than trying to undertake remedial actions later on.

In the Speech from the Throne, there were three broad commitments in and around, first, the national child benefit, and second, the national children's agenda. There were also federal actions in three specific areas.

As for the national child benefit, the Speech from the Throne committed the federal government to continue to work with the provinces and territories to address the problems of low-income families with children. It is committed to enriching the Canada child tax benefit, which was announced in the 1997 budget, by at least another $850 million over the course of this mandate.

The area of the national children's agenda hadn't had specific federal commitment up until the Speech from the Throne. There was a commitment to work with the provinces and territories in this area to develop this broader, more comprehensive framework. This is knowing that income is important, but there are many other issues that need to be addressed in terms of healthy child development. So this would be to develop a more comprehensive strategy toward the health and well-being of Canada's children.

The Speech from the Throne also identified three specific actions that the federal government wanted to undertake in the first instance on behalf of children.

The first was to measure and report regularly on children's readiness to learn. This would be based on the national longitudinal survey on children and youth, from which we now have results.

The second action was to expand the Head Start program for aboriginal children to an on-reserve situation, which will be done as a Health Canada initiative.

The third one was to establish centres of excellence for children's well-being. Again, that is a Health Canada initiative.

I won't speak to the latter two.

As for the national child benefit, as John indicated, this was really the first area in the social policy renewal area to take on some specific actions. The effort here was really launched in June 1996 by first ministers, who tasked their governments to go look at an integrated approach to child benefits in the country.

• 0925

As you know, the current federal child tax benefit provides support to 85% of Canadian families with children. The provinces themselves have child benefits within their social assistance system. Some of them also have income supplements and income benefits as well.

The issue that governments faced was that although there were significant efforts with respect to children, these systems were not co-ordinated. As more governments were interested in moving on the area of child poverty, there was a great risk of working at cross purposes and not generally meeting the needs of Canadian families.

One of the key issues that I think all governments agreed on was that, unfortunately, because of the way in which the systems came together, families were often better off on welfare than they were when working. This is largely because when low-income families are in the marketplace, their wages do not reflect the fact that there are children in those families, whereas if you're on assistance, basic needs are met in some way, and the fact that you have one or more children is taken into account in terms of the income benefits that you're provided.

When families move off assistance they usually lose the benefits that go with the existence of a child in the family, and they also often lose what we call the in-kind benefits of medical, dental, and optical care that families can have on assistance. In addition, they must begin to pay taxes while also providing for child care and other kinds of work-related expenses.

As a result, for many families in low-income situations, they're often better off staying on assistance. In terms of what they can provide for their children, they have to slip back onto assistance if they have been in employment and put one foot back into the welfare system in order to try to acquire some of these other things that are of benefit to their children. This becomes a deterrent or disincentive to work, despite the fact that most people want to work, even though it's often difficult to find employment. Parents, being rational, want to provide what's best for their families, and they end up oftentimes having to slip back on to assistance. That was one of the main rationales behind the agreement on the part of governments in terms of the creation of the national child benefit.

The goals of the national child benefit were really taken from the objectives actually laid down by first ministers and then agreed to by social services ministers, both federal and provincial. The first was to prevent and reduce the depth of child poverty; the second was to promote attachment to the labour force; and the third was to try to harmonize federal and provincial systems in order to prevent or reduce overlap and duplication.

The 1997 federal budget announced the first major federal investment towards this initiative. Many provinces have invested significantly in this area over the last couple of years—approximately $800 million in terms of their own kinds of investments and in the creation of income benefits and earned income supplements. Not all have done so, but many of them have. And they also have agreed that as the federal contribution increases, they will reinvest funds towards programs, services, and benefits for low-income families.

As John indicated, Quebec has not been officially participating in this process. However, Quebec has been present at ministerial meetings and has participated in working group meetings. The objectives of the national child benefit are ones that the Government of Quebec has indicated it is in agreement with, and they are extremely consistent with the unified family allowance that has been adopted in Quebec. So I think there's a convergence across the country in terms of policy objectives and priorities. The Government of Quebec is not participating officially, however.

The second major initiative that has been undertaken by federal and provincial governments in the area of social policy renewal with respect to children is something that we call the national children's agenda. This grew out of work both on the social services side and in the health sector, where they were increasingly looking at healthy child development from a population health point of view. It sort of came together last January at the Federal-Provincial-Territorial Ministerial Council on Social Policy Renewal, in an agreement to work together under the leadership of social services and health ministries in order to develop this broader, more comprehensive approach to the national children's agenda.

• 0930

To a certain extent, it's also a recognition that the national child benefit is an important building block or cornerstone in terms of what governments can do in the area of children, but you need to also look much more broadly at a wider range of issues that affect child development.

So preliminary work has begun in this area. This work was strongly endorsed by premiers at their annual premiers' conference in August and, again, it was also strongly endorsed in the Speech from the Throne. The work is being led by health and social services sectors, but it involves the justice sector, and provincial education ministries are also being involved at a working level. Again, I think that reflects the consensus that has emerged across the country and from a wide range of sectors on the importance of working together in an integrated way on children's issues.

As I said, the children's agenda is currently working on this shared understanding of what we currently know from the research about the importance of child development and about what some of the critical windows are in terms of child development, particularly for the zero-to-three or the zero-to-five and -six age group, and in terms of how important it is to set down good pathways for development, for learning and for adaptive behaviour early on. I think all sectors and governments are looking very broadly at what we call the determinants of healthy child development. Income is very important. We know it relates directly to how children fare, but it's also very important to look at those early opportunities for development, to look at parenting and at the family supports, and to look at communities, which have a vital role at the local level. Many communities are key determinants in helping children in their neighbourhoods to be on a healthy path for development, while other communities do not fare so well.

So we're looking very broadly at the range of determinants that affect children and at what kinds of policy directions would flow from that.

I think there's also a very broad recognition that when we're talking about a national children's agenda, as important as it is for governments to pull in the same direction on this and to get their efforts co-ordinated, both in terms of orders of government but also across sectors, truly children are an issue shared by all sectors and communities in the country. You can't really effect change and truly have children well launched if you don't think much more broadly about the many players and partners you need to bring in. In the national children's agenda, I think governments will be looking to see how things can move beyond just governments.

Another area of the Speech from the Throne also mentioned something that I think will be key and that all governments will share, and that will be to focus on outcomes around children and how we can monitor our success in this area.

That brings me, on page 8, to this issue around measuring outcomes. There was one specific initiative mentioned in the Speech from the Throne that was built on the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth. Some of you may have already seen the publication last year called “Growing Up in Canada”, which was the product of the first round of results coming out of the national longitudinal survey.

The notion here in terms of developing some outcomes on children would be to build on what we have in the national longitudinal survey. Many experts agree that the issue of learning readiness, which is not just one indicator but is a composite or a basket of child outcomes, is a pretty good predictor of both how well their development has gone up to that point and how well children will succeed later on in life—and not just in terms of their learning or their cognitive achievements, but more generally in terms of their development: how well they will be able to adapt into a fast-moving economy and labour market; how well they will adapt in terms of behaviour and their social connections. It's a good predictor of learning citizenship, etc., it's one initiative that I think the federal government feels it has the tools to develop fairly quickly, and it could be a major contribution to this broader agenda around children.

Finally, I'll just mention that in the area of the national child benefit, there was a strong commitment on the part of all governments to accountability, to public reporting on an annual basis around both what governments were doing in terms of their expenditures and also what they are achieving in terms of their outcomes.

• 0935

So I think that both in the national child benefit and the national children's agenda there is a very strong commitment to looking at the results and the outcomes that are being achieved in these areas.

That's it for children. Maybe now I'll pass it on to Karen to speak to the issues around youth.

Ms. Karen Jackson: What I thought I would do this morning that would be most useful to you is give you a bit of the background by way of the research and analysis we have done over a period of time, which in essence would underpin the commitments you will find in the Speech from the Throne related to youth and youth employment.

As John has mentioned, as an agenda item in a social union context with federal and provincial partners working together, this is a subject area to which not a lot of effort has been put in the past, such as has been done for children. It's indeed happened really with the commitment of the Prime Minister and the premiers to put it on the first ministers' meeting agenda in early December, the first time in a period of time when there will be a focus in that kind of forum.

That takes me probably to talking less about the social union and more about the context and the circumstances of youth employment in the country and what the policy answers to that are.

I would begin, on the first page of my presentation, to make the general point that youth unemployment is a complex issue. It is not one that is easily understood. It's not one where you can make a broad-brush statement that is going to apply universally to all young people in Canada or all regions of the country.

In fact, many young Canadians are very well positioned to find their first job, to enter the labour market. We have the highest enrolment in post-secondary education in training among all the OECD countries.

Having said that, at the same time we have a youth unemployment rate that, while it's starting to come down modestly, remains above 16%.

At first blush, one of the key factors contributing to an unemployment rate at that level is the overall weakness in the economic recovery to date.

Sectors where you find youth employed, such as retail, food, and accommodation, are indeed the sectors where you have not seen or only now are beginning to see job growth. Opportunities in those sectors have been quite flat for a period of time.

The second general point I would make when you begin to think about what lies behind youth unemployment is the structural change that's happening in the economy: rising skill requirements, changing skill requirements within jobs, growing evidence of what we call non-standard work—that is, part-time work, self-employment, contract and casual kinds of work arrangements. Growth in all those types of employment is indeed having an impact on young people as they try to find their first jobs.

I'm moving on to my second page.

I'd say that, based on our research and analysis, we would conclude that there are three key challenges that face young people, that face families, governments, communities, and others who are concerned about that unemployment rate at 16%.

The first is that there is a very discernible long-term trend towards rising skill requirements in all jobs in the economy, and that stretches across all sectors and all types of jobs. I'm sure you know of a notion of the high-tech sector and the growth there, knowledge workers and the fact that demand for that type of worker has indeed been twice the rate of general employment growth over the last period of time.

• 0940

That is a long-term trend, and evidence tells us that it's not about to stop or abate. At the same time, while you have that kind of trend in job requirements, about 15% of young people continue to drop out of high school and do not complete high school by the time they're 24 years of age.

Among that sub-population of young people the unemployment rate averages around 25%. The average youth rate is at 16%. So for this particular sub-population of people without even a high school diploma, it's at 25%. That contrasts with university graduates who would likely have an unemployment rate of about the national average of 9%.

The Chairman: Did you say 15% of youths won't complete grade 12 by age 24?

Ms. Karen Jackson: That's correct.

There are indeed more young people than that who do drop out of high school and do not complete the first time they're there, but who return or who acquire their high school completion equivalencies in other ways by the time they're 24.

But 15% at that age haven't completed high school.

The second key challenge, then, is that of finding the first job, of making a smooth transition from school to work. That too varies by education and by field of study.

Based on surveys, we know that actually two years after graduation a young person today probably has the same employment prospects and the same earnings prospects as they did a decade ago; that is, university graduates and college graduates do.

What we are seeing, however, is something that I have coined a phrase for; we are seeing “a bumpier transition” from school to finding that first job. You will find that about over 50% of job starters—those people in their first job—will be in jobs that will last six months or less. There is a lot of contract work and there's a lot of moving from one six-month job to the next six-month job. In fact, the analysis and the data does bear this out. This is what's happening to a fair number of young people before they find their feet and before they find their first steady employment. They're moving from contract to contract.

At the same time, we also have observed, first and foremost from talking to young people in focus groups and young people who are coming in to offices looking for assistance, services, and programs, that there is a considerable barrier posed by not having working experience when you're looking for the first job. Employers are asking people for work experience when offering them employment. Young people are faced with quite a vicious circle. Without work experience they're not acquiring employment, and yet without employers ready to give them a first job they're not gaining any work experience.

This vicious circle is happening at the same time that Statistics Canada is reporting that the number of young people between the ages of 15 and 24 without work experience has essentially doubled in the last period of time since 1989. They found that in 1989 10% of young people in that age cohort had no work experience. That has now doubled. It's very close to 20%.

Finally, looking at skills and skills requirements and at the conditions for successful school-to-work transition, the third key challenge, which is clearly a sub-part of the first comment I made, is the requirement for post-secondary education or training or credentials at a time when access to PSE...there are certain challenges being posed there with the rising cost of education.

• 0945

University tuition fees are rising at a much faster rate than the consumer price index. We know that at present about 60% of students in colleges and universities are having to borrow to finance their education. That's a figure that has been slowly increasing over time. We know that, on average, students are incurring larger debts. In fact, we have estimates that 1998 graduates will have debts of, on average, $25,000.

Moving on, then, understanding that those are what we would define as probably the three major problems or challenges, the next part of our analysis is based on a fairly substantial assessment of programs and services the federal government has now in place and has had in place in the past, and a fairly extensive look at international experience with how to deal with these problems.

I have itemized very quickly for you, on page 3, what we have learned from that research. One, when you look at the population of youth at risk, those who are poorly educated and without skill, to do something to help them really requires a variety of interventions. It's not as simple as encouraging them to go back to school. Many of them will also have social problems. You will find that what they need is a bit of literacy training; they need a bit of work experience; they need to develop some skills in the job, because in fact there has been a reason why the school system has failed them in the past. They need some counselling.

So the bringing together of a variety of interventions and a variety of services is really required to assist that group of young people.

The second lesson really underscores what we've heard and what we've been told, that the school-to-work transition is really assisted when people do have work experience. It does make a difference to employers. It does make a difference to young people being able to have the appropriate attitude and the appropriate communication skills, and the ability to work on a team, etc.

The third lesson, just to underscore something I've already said, is that credentials and skills in education are key to labour market success.

My fourth point would be to say that successful interventions with young people frequently come with sustained adult contact. In particular, when you're dealing with a young person at risk, sustained adult contact is often what really makes the difference between them being able to succeed and not succeed.

Finally, both formal evaluation and the feedback you receive from young people would underscore the importance to them of having up-to-date, useful, and usable information about trends in the labour market, about emerging skill requirements, so that they're making wise choices about fields of study and about potential professions and occupations and job choices.

Where this takes us, then—I'm on page 4 of my presentation—is to underscore that this really provides you with the background and the analysis to the commitments you will find in the Speech from the Throne in dealing with helping young people prepare themselves for the labour market of the future.

The first point to underscore—and this is what is underscoring the whole social union theme here—is the importance of partnership, that with the recognition of the provincial governments responsible for education and training; with the recognition that it's private sector employers, by and large, who are going to be hiring these young people, or non-governmental organizations, not the not-for-profit sector, this is indeed not a challenge, not a problem the federal government is going to be able to address on its own. It's going to require the partnership of all these players.

• 0950

This takes me, then, to underscoring the priority areas covered in the Speech from the Throne commitments. The first was to offer in partnership a second chance to those young people who find themselves ill-equipped, who find themselves poorly educated, who find themselves without skills, through a community-based approach. It says again that the solution isn't to take them down the street and say “here's the school, now get yourself enrolled”. It's a variety of services that are going to help these people get ahead in the labour market.

The second priority area of the Speech from the Throne is to extend and expand on internships and summer student job opportunities to allow young people to acquire the work experience that really seems to be key to getting a leg up into that first permanent job.

The third point is through special opportunity grants to students with dependants, through further fine-tuning and refinement of the Canada student loans program, and through introduction of scholarships, to ensure broad access to post-secondary university and college can be maintained for Canadian young people.

Finally is to underscore the importance and the contributions the federal system can make to ensure timely and relevant labour market information is made available.

Page 5 is really just a snapshot for you of the current activities and current programs the federal government is involved in in this area. When the Speech from the Throne talks about expanding or extending summer jobs, that is something on which the federal government already spends close to $130 million a year, allowing close to 64,000 young people summer jobs during school breaks.

As a rule internships are a six-month stint, where the federal government offers a wage subsidy to an employer to allow a new graduate to get on-the-job experience that will complement the completion of their high school or the completion of college credentials.

Youth Service Canada is community-based projects. This is particularly the program that is trying currently to respond to the needs of that cohort of young people who are particularly at risk. This is something we would want to build upon, to improve, to expand, in partnership with communities and provinces.

I will leave it at that. I would be happy to answer any questions you have.

The Chairman: Thank you for three well-structured presentations.

Mr. Anders.

Mr. Rob Anders (Calgary West, Ref.): I would like to address a few things here. I'll start off with this. On page 3 of the presentation on “Building a Better Future for Canada's Children” there is talk of increasing the federal contribution by at least another $850 million for the national child benefit. When I look over at page 9, it speaks of the full or partial child tax benefit and the national child benefit being received by 80% of Canadian families.

I'm just wondering what type of targeting is going on with that. If not much targeting is going on, I wonder whether or not an increase of $850 million is going to be doing much. You're just collecting the money and redistributing it.

Ms. Margaret Biggs: I'll respond to that part.

• 0955

The national child benefit is targeted towards low-income families. So the increase that was announced in the February 1997 budget of $850 million, which will go into the child tax benefit, would then be reformulated to be called the Canada child tax benefit. That $850 million was to be targeted towards low-income families, which in this case is below $25,921. So it is targeted towards low-income families. The second $850 million would be part of this initiative around focusing on low-income families and would similarly be targeted towards low-income families. It wouldn't be spread out across the entire income band that goes up much higher for the child benefit.

Mr. Rob Anders: I can understand targeting to low-income families, but I have a tough time believing that 80% of Canadian families are low-income families.

Ms. Margaret Biggs: No, they're not. But the child tax benefit, as we currently call it, which will be changed into the Canada child tax benefit, goes to 85% of Canadian families. It goes to families that, if they have one child, can have up to $62,000 or whatever, and more if they have more children. It does spread up into the middle-income levels.

The increment that was announced in the budget is just going to be targeted at the low end, not to the whole set of beneficiaries for the child benefit.

Mr. Rob Anders: I think for me it raises questions in terms of whether or not those things should even be more targeted than they are, because it seems a bit broad to me.

On page 4 there's talk of special opportunity grants for equipping Canada's youth, and this is with regard to, I assume, the Canada student loans program. It mentions special opportunity grants just after that. It's about the third point down. I'm wondering if you can define what exactly are the special opportunity grants, what are the opportunities or the conditions that trigger those.

Ms. Karen Jackson: Currently there is a range of grants in place within the Canada student loans program. This is a particular reference to a commitment to introduce a new grant. It would be a grant that's provided to students with dependents; needy students with dependents. As you will understand, the Canada student loans program is a program that has a needs assessment within it, so it is needy students with dependents who would be eligible for an annual grant.

[Translation]

The Chairman: Mr. Crête.

Mr. Paul Crête (Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup—Témiscouata—Les Basques, BQ): Mr. Knubley, in your document on the social union, you tell us that all the councils of provincial, federal and territorial ministers have adopted a collaborative approach. Do you not find it surprising that there is no indication of the fact that Quebec said it would not participate in any way? Does the federal government have an alternative solution that is being developed to enable the Quebec government to exercise its opting-out rights for social programs, or has that option been put aside?

Mr. John Knubley: I think I said twice in my presentation that Quebec was not participating in the ministerial council.

Mr. Paul Crête: You mentioned it on page 6, but not in your initial presentation and not in the document that has been tabled.

Mr. John Knubley: You are right, but twice I indicated the position of the Quebec government.

Regarding the compensation option, we feel that partnership gives us more advantages, and we need to find pragmatic means to enable the governments to work together to resolve social problems.

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[English]

The fact of the matter is, as Karen was saying, in the area of youth these problems are so significant that there is no one level of government that can solve them alone. It drives you—it's in so many places, whether in children, persons with disabilities, or youth—to really look at how you work with others.

[Translation]

Mr. Paul Crête: I tend to think that if the government responsible were given the means to act, it would be a better solution then sharing the responsibility between two governments.

A large document has been presented on youth and youth unemployment. Do you think it logical to transfer labour force programs to the provinces, as is being done at present, without integrating the whole issue of youth, which is the basis for sound labour force management? Does this question seen relevant to you? Why not transfer the youth file at the same time as the labour force file? Is that logical?

[English]

Ms. Karen Jackson: I think my presentation does highlight the importance of education in training to young people. We understand that within the Canadian federal system those are responsibilities of provincial governments. At the same time, some of the other things I wanted to underscore with you are the importance of the changing dynamics of the labour market and the changing requirements of the economy, and those are concerns to a federal government responsible for overall management of the economy.

The other point I would come back to is the importance of understanding a role here in ensuring fairness, equity, and opportunity for young people in work experience or whatever, regardless of where they live.

[Translation]

Mr. Paul Crête: Do you think there is a logical connection between the requirement of 910 hours for employment insurance for someone entering the labour force and your observation that most young people spend a maximum of six months in their first job? In practice, the new 910-hour requirement excludes young people almost automatically from employment insurance benefits. Is that not one of the reasons that they drop out of the system and are no longer in the decision-making arena?

[English]

Ms. Karen Jackson: I would simply note that the introduction of this requirement within the employment insurance program is something that will be tracked as part of the monitoring and assessment work of the government, and that it, among many of the other rule changes, is something we want to look at very carefully to see what the impacts on individuals have been.

[Translation]

Mr. Paul Crête: In 1984, the federal government spent $6.7 billion on the child tax benefit and equivalent programs. In 1996, spending in this area amounted to $5.1 billion. How is it possible to say that the $850 million that will be added constitutes a solution to the crisis, when spending decreased by $1.6 billion over 12 years? Is this additional $850 million not too little, too late? Do we not need a much more substantial investment?

[English]

Ms. Margaret Biggs: I'm not sure, sir, about the first number. I'd have to check on it. I'm not sure that there has been a reduction of that order. I believe that when the child tax benefit was increased, which integrated the child tax credit in the family allowance to create the child tax benefit, there was an infusion of new resources at that time.

[Translation]

Mr. Paul Crête: The figures I am giving you come from Ken Battle of the Caledon Institute. That study was carried out just for your research.

[English]

Ms. Margaret Biggs: I'll follow up on that source, sir. I think the government recognized in the budget of 1997, and so indicated, that the $850 million that was to be targeted towards low-income families was a first step. It was a downpayment. You saw a second commitment in the Speech from the Throne, so I believe the government realizes that this is something that, as all major social programs, we have to build over time.

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[Translation]

Mr. Paul Crête: On page 8, you talk about measuring learning readiness, something called for in the Throne Speech. What action does the federal government intend to take in this area? If there is one thing that is a provincial responsibility, it is surely the assessment of preschool children. Does the federal government intend to continue with the thrust given in the Throne Speech? Are there concrete measures planned?

[English]

Ms. Margaret Biggs: The indicator around readiness to learn is not meant to be an indicator of education performance or education achievement as we would relate these to the school system. It is an indicator that child development experts have decided is a good predictor and indicator of how children have developed up to the point of age five, and also, similarly, a good predictor of how they will do later in life. It's not just one indicator around their vocabulary or any kind of cognitive skill; it has to do with their health and their well-being, social and behavioural. It's not appropriate to see it as an educational measure at all; it's meant to be an indicator of child development, and that's something that's beyond just the domain of education and is something that I think all Canadians share in.

The Chairman: Mr. Wilfert.

Mr. Bryon Wilfert (Oak Ridges, Lib.): In your presentation on youth you indicate the need for community-based programming, and obviously varied interventions work best with youth. What kinds of strategic work, if any, are going on with organizations such as the Canadian Parks and Recreation Association that have a great deal of expertise in dealing with youth at the community level and have both the practitioners and the volunteers?

Ms. Karen Jackson: I'm probably not the best person to delve into detail with you on that question, but I would note that, in the delivery of youth programming in communities right now through our department, a sizeable proportion of it is done through voluntary organizations, not-for-profit associations, what we call the youth-serving agencies of the communities. It obviously depends, from community to community, on what kind of base and what kind of capacity and what kinds of organizations are there.

The YMCA, the YWCA, for instance, is one that would be involved in very many places across the country.

The parks and recreation commission is not one that I am familiar with, but local managers in our offices are really dealing day to day in looking for project sponsors and co-ordinators to provide these kinds of services to young people.

Mr. Bryon Wilfert: There are organizations such as that that I don't think we're doing enough with. They have the expertise; they deal with these people, youth, on a daily basis.

We talk about youth at risk, and major programs have been developed, through CPRA as an example. Whether it's pick-up basketball at twelve o'clock at night in downtown Toronto or something else, obviously the interaction between young people and adults is very critical.

You talk about physical well-being, which doesn't necessarily mean sweating it out on a track, but the fact that you have some kind of physical activity is critical. Certainly, when we are developing programs or looking for, particularly, implementation, which is always better at the community-based level, we should try not only to develop those alliances but also to see how we can interact much more effectively. Often I see organizations working in parallel but they do not in fact have the integrated approach that is required.

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Thank you.

The Chairman: Mr. Dubé.

Mr. Jean Dubé (Madawaska—Restigouche, PC): I'd first like to congratulate you on your presentations. I'm going to start with the brief “Building a Better Future for Canada's Children” and will move on to “Equipping Canada's Youth'. I'm just going to cite one intervention from the first one:

In many cases, families are better off on welfare than in the labour force. Moving from welfare to work can lose child benefits; medical and dental benefits.

That's a reality. I see that quite often. We're talking about low-income Canadians here.

If I go to Karen's presentation next, she talks about guaranteed accessibility to post-secondary education. I am very worried about the rising costs of it and the debt loads. We see student bankruptcies in Canada are on the rise. We also see the cost of tuition on the rise.

In 1990, the cost of post-secondary education was $8,000 and today it's $25,000. The average debt load today for students at the end of their courses is $38,000. What are we doing? Are we studying a mechanism right now to guarantee accessibility to all Canadians?

You also mentioned maybe increasing scholarships. Are we concentrating on the wrong places? Should we, as a country, be concentrating on keeping the tuition ceiling low in universities and guaranteeing accessibility to all Canadians?

You mentioned 16% youth unemployment. I'd like to know where you got that. My books show 20%. If it is 16%, when did you get that figure and where are the statistics on that?

Also, factors contributing to youth unemployment include a weak economic recovery. Do you think another factor may be high payroll taxes? We've mentioned it since June 2 and since Parliament started sitting. I would like to hear your comments on whether you believe high payroll taxes also affect youth unemployment.

Ms. Karen Jackson: On your last point about the impact of payroll taxes on jobs and opportunities for employment, I would simply point out that the employment insurance premium amounts to about 4% of payroll costs to an employer. In place at the moment is something called the new hires program, which actually gives premium relief to small businesses. Admittedly it doesn't apply to all businesses in the country. It's small business relief for hiring.

We have seen mixed results or mixed analysis of that point. We know that dramatic increases in payroll taxes have a far more important and detrimental impact on jobs. Declining payroll taxes do not have an equal impact in reverse.

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On your second point, I'm talking about the national monthly labour force survey average. You may indeed have an annual average. I think in August it was at 16.7% and in September it had come down to 16.4%. I think we're seeing it down now at 16.2% or 16.1%, so that's why I'm mentioning it's around 16%.

To your first question on the alternative to grants, loans, and scholarships being a freeze on tuition, I would simply note that tuition fees do vary across the country and are a responsibility of provinces. When you look province to province, probably Quebec has about the lowest tuition costs in the country. At the other end of the country, you have British Columbia, which has been struggling to keep a freeze in place for a period now.

I'm not aware of any analysis or research that would give you the pros and cons as to whether you want to try to deal with this issue through loans and grants or whether it would make more sense to try to freeze tuition.

My final point, though, would simply be to note that the lifetime returns of good education and good training continue to be significant. People who study in the appropriate fields find that over a lifetime their earnings, the returns to themselves, are indeed still considerable.

The Chairman: Madame Bradshaw.

Mrs. Claudette Bradshaw (Moncton, Lib.): First of all, I need to say congratulations that it's children you are concentrating on. I'm a firm believer that the next four years are crucial. We need to do it right this time or we are going to be in deep trouble in this country. I'm not surprised at your statistic about youth without grade 12 and youth with grade 12.

Here are my questions for you. What I'm hearing happening a lot is that we go by the income of parents for children to go to university or not and 90% of students who do graduate from university usually can find employment. In my region anyway, I find that a lot of students can't go to university because parents don't have the money and they can't get a loan. My best friend's husband passed away four years ago. She's a single mom who teaches at a community college and she now has three children in university. She can only send one at a time, because they can't get a loan. I didn't hear anyone speak about that, but it's a real issue for me in New Brunswick.

You might want to look at using the net income and not the gross income of the parents. You might also want to say “We know the lifetime return of somebody going to university is good, so we're just going to take that out, and any child who wants to go to university and take a loan will have access to a loan”. But for us and for me, I do hear that a lot.

The other thing I wonder if you considered in work with your literacy people in Ottawa is that a child between the age of prenatal to six very often is not identified in the system, but we do identify them once they enter school.

My question has two parts. Are we doing any work with our literacy programs, federally, to look at children in grades 1, 2, and 3 who have been identified as not having homework done and having parents who aren't there for them—parents who can't read and write, and therefore homework is not done?

Are we identifying our children in grades 7, 8, and 9 who are going to school hungry, who don't have anything to eat? We're seeing those children more and more and more. We're getting more calls from high school principals saying to us, look, this kid has nothing to eat.

• 1020

Did you ever look at a program on parenting where the children in grades 7, 8, and 9 could get maybe $50 a week but would adopt a child in grades 1, 2, or 3? We look at adult literacy, but it seems to me we would have an opportunity here, with our literacy programs, so a child who lives in poverty in grades 7, 8, or 9 could certainly adopt a child in grades 1, 2, or 3. It would probably cost us less for a literacy program for that child and support for that child than it would once they are in adult literacy.

The other thing I'm concerned about and I wonder if you are looking at is if we look at our youth unemployment, especially youth who haven't finished high school, are we doing any studies at all on fetal alcohol effect? I found in my work with poverty and abused families that a big percentage of the parents were fetal alcohol syndrome, and still are. Since we don't identify this at all in early childhood and certainly in our school system, a lot of these children are the children who fail. I wonder if we are doing anything specific with our youth on FAS and if we are really studying that.

I didn't hear you talk about housing, and I wonder if anything is being done on it. Maslow says the basic needs are food and housing. If you look again at the youth who are unemployed, there are absolutely no programs for these youths in our country. They can't get subsidized housing, they can't get anything. Very often when you come out with your programs, if they don't have an address, your staff can't register them, because they don't have an address and phone number. When you had youth programs in our province and we would phone for a youth who was on the street and was coming to the food bank, what we heard from the staff was “We can't work with this youth until he gets an address”. If we are coming out with programs, I wonder if we shouldn't add a housing component to that while the youth is in training with us or while the youth is....

I could spend all day on them, Reg, but I have just one other one if you would let me, please.

Your summer employment program: when we speak about student loans...when we give money to the provinces—it's too bad Paul has gone—I know it's hard for you to put standards to the provinces or ask the provinces to be accountable these days, but I wonder with your summer employment program if we couldn't insist when we give money to the provinces that they have to hire the youth for a period of 15 weeks, with an amount of money. We found your challenge program was probably one of the best programs we've ever had, but we hired the youths for eight weeks, six weeks, so we can hire more youths, and it just doesn't work. We are talking about university. We're talking about these kids not being able to pay their loans.

If we had a good structure in our summer program, you would be killing two birds with one stone. One is you would be giving them an apprenticeship program in the field they are in at university, so when they apply for a job they would get a reference letter from the community agency. Then you would hire them for the summer at $5,000 a summer or something like that.

My last question is when you say you are negotiating with the provinces but you want communities involved, I would like to know what structure you have in place at the minister's meetings where community is represented. What guarantee do you have, as a federal government, that when you give money to the provinces...? What percentage of that money actually goes to private non-profit agencies across this country?

Thank you, Reg. I have more, but I will stop.

The Chairman: I have absolutely no doubt you have more.

Ms. Karen Jackson: I'll try to respond to the ones I can and then maybe Margaret can pick up on some of the others.

Yes, it is true that within the Canada student loans program, in what I described as the needs assessment process, parents' income is taken into account as part of the calculation of whether somebody is going to be eligible for a loan or not. I think your point is one that has been increasingly drawn to our attention. It's not just the income of a parent that necessarily means that parent can afford to help support someone's education or training. There may be many other factors and variables and circumstances there, such that while a parent may have income they may not be able to make much of a contribution towards a young person's education.

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So, yes, we are beginning to hear that as a concern as well. Our program people, the people responsible for the Canada student loans program, have begun to review in its entirety that whole process of determining need and what factors are considered in doing that and does it need to be modernized, does it need to be updated, are there circumstances when we've got things in that calculation that shouldn't be there?

So it will take a period of time, and it is a rather complicated issue to sort through, but, yes, I can tell you that work has begun on it.

Certainly, if you have program people here from the Canada student loans program I would encourage you to talk to them further about that point.

On literacy, it was the last federal budget that actually made a very modest additional commitment on the part of the federal government to literacy. The two priorities that have been established in that area for that additional spending are actually support to family literacy and support to workplace literacy.

Having said that, what you need to know as well, however, is that the federal government is not involved directly in the providing of literacy training. The nature of the federal support in that area is the development of materials, the development of tools and equipment that trainers themselves use in turn in training people. So it's a facilitative role, it's supporting others who are on the front line actually providing and delivering the literacy training.

In that case too it's very much something that has to proceed in partnership. There are memorandums of understanding signed with all provincial governments to see that the federal government is in a way in a role supportive of providing that literacy training.

Margaret may know more about what the actual ideas are around plans and programs and incentives and encouragements to try to encourage parents to be reading more to young children, to be stressing the importance of literacy within the home and within the family.

On your idea of trying to link up and perhaps have mentors and older children actually engaged in helping younger children learn to read, I'm not familiar with that as an idea, with whether anything of that sort is going on anywhere.

Ms. Claudette Bradshaw: The reason I was asking that is that we do literacy with parents, but they're the parents that want to. The children that are costing us a lot of money are the ones that have parents who don't want to because of alcohol or drugs or for whatever other reason. So that's why I was asking.

The other one is, do I understand well—and maybe Margaret can answer this—that if a community-based program has a good idea for literacy, it can't apply for any funding federally? It has to come through the province—right?

Ms. Margaret Biggs: I believe that's the case. I think there are some pilot programs that are done, but generally speaking I think that it's not in the federal domain and that the federal government supports in terms of materials—

Ms. Claudette Bradshaw: So I'm right on that.

Ms. Margaret Biggs: Yes.

Just to follow up, I'm not aware of the kind of idea you have, which sounds very interesting and we can certainly take it back to the people who work on literacy. Certainly the family literacy area, as Karen said, is one of the areas of priority right now, and it is really for the parents who themselves don't have literacy skills. They can't do the 15 minutes of reading every night if they themselves can't read. So that has been a focus, but I think it's interesting to talk well about older siblings or older children being part of that equation.

So we can certainly take that back.

Ms. Claudette Bradshaw: But again, if we're saying and we're stating that—

The Chairman:

[Editor's Note—Inaudible]

Ms. Claudette Bradshaw: Oh, I know. I'm just talking community.

The Chairman: Thank you.

• 1030

Mrs. Claudette Bradshaw: All right.

Mrs. Brenda Chamberlain (Guelph—Wellington, Lib.): Mr. Chairman, could I just add a point to that?

In the province of Ontario—and I don't know about across Canada—with respect to the program you're speaking of in literacy, we do have it in our school systems with the high schools, where a grade 12 student mentors a grade 9 student.

A voice: Just if the province wants it.

Mrs. Brenda Chamberlain: Yes.

The Chairman: Thank you.

Ms. Jackson.

Ms. Karen Jackson: I was actually going to provide an anecdote as well. My young daughter in kindergarten is being helped to learn to read by a grade 4 student in the same school. I think you do find it in schools, but I am not aware of a concerted government effort to support it.

With respect to the homeless and housing, I simply note that there are places...and I know Ottawa is one place where HRD does have a project for working with the homeless. Here in the city there is a project for helping homeless young people to develop entrepreneurial skills and to establish a recycling business.

This is the first time I have heard of this problem, where not having a fixed address was serving as an impediment to joining a program or a project. I think that too probably varies from place to place across the country. I'll be sure to take your comment back about the difficulty in New Brunswick on that front.

In regard to summer employment, I think it is a good point to remind us that earnings from summer jobs can actually help young people cover the cost of education and training, and that's another reason—as well as work experience—to make sure they have those opportunities. This is one area in particular where there is a fair amount of provincial as well as federal support to ensure that there are summer jobs and to ensure the creation of summer jobs.

I'm probably not going to address your point very specifically, but I am going to say that I think it is one that we know and understand has to be a priority. We know we have to try to work better, to collaborate and co-operate and share the responsibility with provinces so that maybe...in certain provinces we already do have an understanding where we focus on trying to give college and university students longer stretches of employment and the provinces themselves focus their attention and their money on high school students, for instance. A little of that is beginning to happen.

The Chairman: Thank you.

Mr. McCormick.

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

I want to thank the witnesses for sharing their knowledge with us today.

I want to make a comment on the payroll taxes. I come from a small business background. Payroll taxes are there and they are definitely a liability to a small business, but they're part of the responsibility to the community.

The new EI system, which will be reviewed automatically, I believe, in another year, or very soon, does give some of the young people an opportunity to avail themselves of the UI-EI system, because of the hours-based system. I think some of the small businesses and some of the fast food chains, for example, owe something back to the community, and this gives them an opportunity to work with the youth.

Mr. Chair, my question is for Ms. Jackson. I'm glad to hear that the ministers are meeting, because up until now I think probably 50% or just over 50% of post-secondary education is paid for by the federal government, and yet some provinces—and it may be surprising what provinces—up to now have not allowed all of this money to flow back to the students, which has created higher tuition fees in some parts of this country than there perhaps should be.

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Maybe I'll throw out the question now to Ms. Biggs, too, and Karen can do a hand-off there. We've all sat around here for the very short four years I've been here, and before that, all the parties agreeing that the child poverty is such a disgrace in the country. I wonder if you would give us your personal opinion on whether we're making any meaningful progress on this attack, and I sure look forward to reviewing your book some. People like you can help us in how we can better focus our efforts.

I'll leave that open-ended. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. McCormick.

Ms. Karen Jackson: I would simply underscore the point you're making about the growing priority that all orders of government seem to be placing upon the cost of education. It is something that the premiers underscored in the annual premiers' conference report of the summer. It is an area where colleagues of ours involved in financial aid to students and in support to education and training are really actively involved at a working level in almost monthly meetings to try to sort out what can be done in that area.

The Chairman: Thank you.

I have two small questions, if I may.

Mr. Larry McCormick: Mr. Chair, I think Ms. Biggs was going to share her thoughts.

The Chairman: Oh, I'm sorry, Mr. McCormick.

Mr. Larry McCormick: I know you could share another book with me, but....

Ms. Margaret Biggs: You asked me for my personal opinion. Of course, I don't have any personal opinions, but I personally do think as a country we focused on poverty and incomes of our senior population some time ago and we have made a significant dent there. We have significantly improved the issue of low income for our elderly population over a period of two or three decades. I think, similarly, we can make a dent as a country in the issue of child poverty, but it does take time. To a certain extent there has been a fair amount of profile around this issue, but I think we have made progress, and I'll say in two specific ways.

First, there is the federal government's commitment to continue to build in this area, but I think provinces themselves have also shown a commitment to the area, some in particular. British Columbia has its B.C. family bonus. Alberta has an employment tax credit. Saskatchewan is going to be introducing, in conjunction with the national child benefit, a Saskatchewan child benefit, putting significant amounts of its own resources there. Quebec has identified it as an area for major investment. New Brunswick had a major child benefit and working income supplement announced last year.

So it's not across the board, but I think building over time this has gotten to the point where all governments have put it at the top.

The second issue for progress is that I think there's a broader understanding that the issue is not just one of income; that the issue is broader. It's a key component, but it's also broader than that in terms of addressing a range of issues that affect a family that has low income and other risk factors associated with it.

So the broadening of the agenda and also the building of the agenda at least give me some hope.

The Chairman: Thank you.

I would like to ask Ms. Jackson to clarify something for me. I believe you indicated in your submission that in 1998 average student debt will be $25,000. Is that correct?

Ms. Karen Jackson: It's graduates in 1998. It's estimated that the average debt load by that time will be $25,000. That's covering the whole population.

The Chairman: Can you tell me the source of that information?

Let me explain why I'm a little confused by that.

We had a presentation here earlier about student debt, and subsequent to that I had a meeting with people from the student aid program back home. They indicated to me that 47% of students last year—1996 figures—graduated with no debt. Of the remaining ones who graduated with debt, only 15% had debt in excess of $10,000 and only 5% had debt in excess of $20,000. Now, that's 5% of 53%, so that's 2.5% of the total population up in the $20,000 range.

• 1040

How do we get from those figures—2.5%, maybe 3%, of total students graduating in two years—to where the average is $25,000? It strikes me as a huge change.

Ms. Karen Jackson: I know there has been a fair amount of confusion on this. In fact, this is a piece of analysis we recently went back to and checked again to be sure this was in fact the case.

Some of the factors here are that this will vary from province to province, as does the cost of education vary from province to province. The second thing is being sure you're talking about total debt. There is a system of assistance to students in Canada, the Canada student loans program. Built on that base are additional provincial loans. So there's often confusion caused by that.

Having made both of those points, I would be pleased to have the experts put on paper for you—and we could send this back as a note for information, if you'd like—further clarification on this.

The Chairman: I would like that very much, as quickly as it could possibly be done, please.

Ms. Biggs, one quick question to you. You made a comment in your remarks that one of the single greatest factors for placing children at risk was lack of income, or low income, I believe. In part, the discussion about the creation of the national child benefit was that it was a move to get more income into the hands of low-income families. Right? Yet at the same time, you allow the provinces to withdraw any gains they get on the federal side.

All we seem to be doing is transferring the responsibility for who writes the cheque from the provincial government to the federal government, but from the perspective of the family receiving social assistance—and I know low-income working Canadians receive a substantial benefit from this—they seem to be, net, no better off. How do you protect them? They say they can't withdraw more money than they're getting.

On page 10 it says, “As the federal benefit increases, provinces and territories will decrease benefits for social assistance recipients.” Well, how does that meet the test of dealing with the problem of low...? I don't understand the rationale for our agreeing to that.

Ms. Margaret Biggs: I think the first objective for the national child benefit is to level the playing field between families who are on social assistance and low-income families in the workforce.

The analysis there leads all governments to agree that, very often, low-income working families have less disposable income and are less able to provide for the needs of their children both in terms of the income they have to bring to the family's needs and some of the other benefits families on social assistance can get.

So I don't think it's necessarily saying that social assistance rates are great across the country but that in most jurisdictions, if not all jurisdictions, families who are in low-wage jobs and who have children are very often, in terms of what they can bring to their families and their children, worse off than families on social assistance.

That's not saying that either situation is great; it's just saying that the first goal is to level the playing field.

In the past, if the federal government increased the federal benefit, although we asked them to pass it on it was not necessarily clear that this did happen or that they didn't somehow make arrangements. So in the case of the national child benefit, what we're trying to do is to make sure that we know where that money is going to end up, that, yes, we're going to try to level the playing field, but we're going to put guidelines and parameters around it so that we know very well that these dollars will end up helping low-income families.

The programs and benefits that arise at the provincial level can also benefit families on social assistance. I think in the pamphlet it indicates, in the guidelines around reinvestment, that provinces can also reinvest or keep some of those funds for families with social assistance. I think in some jurisdictions with very low social assistance rates they will be looking to do that to a certain extent.

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At the end of the day, I think there is this overriding objective to level the playing field. Families on social assistance will not be disadvantaged in any way, will benefit in the short run, and will know that when they go off assistance they will be able to take those benefits with them.

The Chairman: Thank you very much.

Mr. Dubé, you requested one small intervention.

[Translation]

Mr. Jean Dubé: I would like to clarify my earlier question. When I spoke about putting ceiling on tuition fees, I was saying it from the point of view of providing financial assistance to post-secondary institutions. That is what I meant by this statement.

You also said that it was a provincial responsibility, but I must tell you that it is also a national priority.

[English]

The Chairman: Ms. Bennett.

Ms. Carolyn Bennett (St. Paul's, Lib.): Going back to the national children's agenda, I guess I just need guidance in terms of the big picture stuff. We know that poverty is bad for kids and for their long-term success. Food security seems to be something the WHO is talking about, and I'm not sure whether we're discussing that. I'm also confused about how we, as a federal government, can discuss food security without discussing housing. We're talking about poverty. Lots of families, as we know, whether they've lost their jobs, run out of UIC or whatever, are now in housing that costs 75% of their incomes. How can we address this problem without having some program about housing? I don't see any of these people at the table when I look at the organization chart.

After reading this morning's Ottawa Citizen I just want to know how we ended up with a health minister who doesn't even know there should be an inquiry when there's clearly a case of fetal alcohol syndrome. The mother has had serious problems with her children. How do we get that health minister at the table?

The Chairman: Inquiring minds want to know the answer to that.

Ms. Carolyn Bennett: How do we pick which health minister we get at the table?

The Chairman: I'll excuse you if you don't feel qualified to answer that question. Go ahead.

Ms. Margaret Biggs: I think your point around housing is well taken, and I'll just make a couple of comments.

First of all, in terms of the work that's going on with the provinces on the development of a framework around a national children's agenda, it is trying to draw on the broad determinants that we know impact upon child development, such as the conditions in the environments within which children live that affect their outcomes. Housing is clearly important in that regard. It is a very strong determinant.

I think the framework will lead us, as governments, to identify those issues as being important. It is true that right now the work is being spearheaded by health and social services ministers, with help from justice and education at the provincial level. With four it's bigger than we've ever had, but the connections should be made to the issues around housing.

Certainly the work in support of this national children's agenda at the federal level is a good thing, although a bit unwieldy. It is drawing in a number of departments, including CMHC, so I think that is an indication there is an understanding that these are important issues.

I'm not going to talk about health ministers and fetal alcohol syndrome, but one of the health issues, if you're looking at the national children's agenda, that could emerge might be around early screening for a range of factors. Fetal alcohol syndrome is something we're only now beginning to figure out how to identify. The major role is around prevention in the first instance. That is clearly one of the issues of importance in the prenatal period. The Canada prenatal nutrition program, which is modelled after the diet dispensary in Montreal, looks at nutrition and also preventive health practices. So I think there is work going on in that area.

The Chairman: Thank you, Ms. Biggs.

Mr. Crête, one very short question.

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[Translation]

Mr. Paul Crête: You say that the increase in Canada Pension Plan deductions will have a major impact. Do you not think that something else should be decreased to compensate for that? Would a drop in employment insurance deductions not be one way of compensating for the impact of that increase?

You also said that a slight drop did not necessary have a major impact, but that a significant increase like the one planned for the Canada Pension Plan will have some effect. Therefore, would decreasing employment insurance deductions not be the way to compensate?

[English]

The Chairman: Is anyone prepared to answer that? You don't have to stray into the policy areas. If you have any analysis on that, you are free to share it with us. If not, I thank you.

Some of these questions are best left to the minister to deal with when there is a debate. I think the minister will be before us on the policy side. It's not fair—

[Translation]

Mr. Paul Crête: Since there will be an increase, how can...

[English]

The Chairman: I understand the question.

[Translation]

Mr. Paul Crête: All right.

[English]

The Chairman: It's a good question and one we should perhaps have the minister deal with.

Ms. Karen Jackson: I would simply note that there is analysis. I will not address the question of decreases or increases, but there is analysis that ultimately, after a time, payroll taxes do work through the wage bill. The numbers don't come to my head quickly, but the estimates are that three to four years thereafter in fact the cost of the payroll tax is really reflected in the wages or the earnings of individuals.

The Chairman: Thank you, and thank you for your presentations.

Members of the committee, we have one more piece of business to deal with.

I excuse our witnesses.

The clerk is distributing to members of the committee the text of the motion that was presented pursuant to our new committee rules on motions. It was presented last week to myself and the clerk. It was discussed at the steering committee this morning. Now is the appointed time for dealing with this motion.

The process we will use is reasonably straightforward. Mr. Crête will introduce his motion. I will allow some discussion and debate on the motion. Then we will allow Mr. Crête to summarize his feelings after what I'm sure will be an insightful debate that will convince him of the wisdom of other ways. Then we'll call the question.

Mr. Crête.

[Translation]

Mr. Paul Crête: I am very pleased that the Steering Committee agreed to have a debate on this motion, because it was presented using the mechanism we agreed on through consensus. The motion seeks simply to follow up on the Auditor General's request to have the report on employment insurance be presented as a separate report, in order for full and relevant information to be available on the main employment insurance activities.

If you remember, the Auditor General tabled a report a few weeks ago asking for that. He reemphasized this request when he appeared before the committee last time. It was then that I presented the motion that is before us.

When I talk about a separate report, it will obviously not be up to us to decide whether it will be a very large report or not. It will be up to the department to provide the report. I think it should have information on an account that contains so much money. Detailed information can be obtained very quickly when it is useful to the government; it should also be possible to do so when the information is useful to Canadians as a whole. I was floored when a senior official three weeks or a month ago told us that he could not give us a month-by-month accounting of the surplus.

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A debate is currently going on, and it is probable that the Minister of Finance will announce this week or next that employment insurance deductions will rise, fall or remain unchanged. The Auditor General confirmed that, at present, these decisions were made in a very ad hoc way, without necessarily having any figures to rely on.

We probably will not be able to have a report for when the Minister will table that part, but we could still prepare for another year, especially sine the government must reassess each year how it sets the deduction rate. The Minister has often told us in the House that he was monitoring the progress of the reform almost daily and that we would be kept up-to-date on suggested changes. As parliamentarians, we would benefit from having that information.

The Auditor General's request comes in response to requests I have heard numerous times in Chamber of Commerce meetings, at demonstrations on employment insurance and over coffee. The Auditor General has given credibility to those requests. I would like the committee to have adequate information as soon as possible on one of the most important files under its purview, in terms of its size and level of activity and its impact on the Canadian public.

In closing, I would like to say that we do not need a document with 1,000, 1,500 or 2,000 pages. I know that the officials in the Department of Human Resources Development are very competent. I think that when they receive the request, they will be able to produce a useful report within a reasonable time. We would then be able to ensure both fairness and the appearance of fairness and see that the present management system for the fund is working effectively.

[English]

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Crête. Very efficiently presented, I might say.

I have only one other indication. I believe that was you, Ms. Brown.

Ms. Bonnie Brown (Oakville, Lib.): Yes. I'm going to speak against the motion, Mr. Chair. It is not that I am not in some measure of sympathy with the mover's intention, but it's more from a practical point of view. I refer back to the steering committee, when you heard Mr. Johnson suggest that the broad nature of the report raised some questions in his mind, as it did in mine, about the cost, the amount of time the departmental staff would spend trying to pull together these figures for us, and what that would mean for their other workload.

I know the mover and the Auditor General both had in mind an analogy with the CPP annual report, but the CPP annual report is actually...there are two reports. The first report is done by the chief actuary, which essentially turns up all the numbers. Then the Department of Finance, I believe, builds a report around those numbers, which is then tabled in the House by the Minister of Finance.

It would not be a role for the chief actuary to pull together the figures in this particular situation. Our HRD officials would have to do it on their own. In actual fact, to require it, as a matter of law, we would have to have an amendment to the Employment Insurance Act. It would be a major undertaking to get an amendment through. Therefore, the analogy with the CPP is not really valid.

I would prefer to do a little bit of research and find out, perhaps when the minister comes, or perhaps from a letter to the deputy minister, what his assessment would be as to the time and the cost, whether in fact the personnel is available to do such a study, and probably more importantly, would the result of such a study bring about important information that the department itself could use to improve its performance or its advice to the Minister of Finance around the the EI surplus?

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It seems to me the intent is interesting and I'm not necessarily sure we should drop the idea, but I think we have to do some more research on our own as to the value of such a report and the cost to the staff we have. As we know, government is shrinking and people are overworked as it is. We need to ascertain whether it would be in the interest of either the department or the country at large to put that kind of time and money into such a report. I'm therefore going to vote against it, Mr. Chairman.

The Chairman: Thank you.

A brief intervention from Mr. de Savoye.

Mr. Pierre de Savoye (Portneuf, BQ): I don't know if it will be brief, but it will be to the point, not longer than Bonnie's, certainly.

This is a request, or at least a recommendation, by the Auditor General and I believe it to be a non-partisan recommendation. What we have in front of us, a motion from Mr. Crête, is also a non-partisan motion. Of course, there is a cost of producing such a report and it is probably significant, but we are talking about $19 billion more or less and $12 billion or $13 billion of expenses or expenditures. There is also a cost of not having this information in front of us.

The responsibility does not lie in the hands of the civil servants; it lies here, around this table. We cannot discuss this subject without having at our disposal the necessary information. Now, how much information is that? Well, let's start with something. We have here only a motion saying that the report should present recommendations from the chief actuary, the results achieved by the program's various components, the opinions of some of the sectors. That can be as large as ten volumes or as simple as a few sheets. Let's have the civil servants present us with something.

If Larry thinks we're missing something, he'll say so. If Bonnie thinks we have too much, maybe she will want to get the thing more concise. But let us be in a position to assume the responsibility that lies within the committee.

It's a non-partisan motion; let's not make it a partisan defeat. Thank you.

The Chairman: Any further comment? Madam Chamberlain.

Mrs. Brenda Chamberlain: I was in on the steering committee a little bit, and I just feel the motion is so broad. As my colleague has said, if we get too much information we can say that.

Why can this not go back to the steering committee, if we're interested in this, to say what kind of information we want, to be specific? Is that not the purpose of the steering committee? From my point of view, I don't know why this doesn't go back to the steering committee. If we want some information, such as what is the surplus, what kind of budget goes into retraining out of EI, or whatever, why don't we ask for what we want, rather than simply saying we want it all? For that reason, I'm not going to support it. It is not because I'm not interested but because I feel it's too broad.

The Chairman: If I may make a comment before Mr. de Savoye does, the reason for taking it to the steering committee in the first place was to see whether there was a possibility for a consensus to do as you suggest. That not being apparent, it came forward to the committee for a vote.

Mrs. Brenda Chamberlain: Thank you.

The Chairman: Do I have any other comments?

Mr. de Savoye, I will allow you a very brief comment and then I'll go to Mr. Crête to close, if there's no other comment.

Mr. Pierre de Savoye: Actually, I was thinking that if Brenda had made an amendment to the motion to that effect, I would have supported that amendment. But as you've said, Mr. Chair, the steering committee was apparently not able to make up its mind.

Should we send it back to the steering committee and tell them to make up their mind? What do you think, Brenda?

Mrs. Brenda Chamberlain: Yes.

Mr. Pierre de Savoye: I would support your amendment if that is your wish.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. de Savoye.

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I'm going to allow Mr. McCormick, who has not spoken, a very brief comment.

Mr. Larry McCormick: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It would be hard to get a brief anything from this motion.

To my honourable colleague, it's an excellent motion, but it's a little too broad and open. I think we have to look at it. I don't think we can deal with it the way it is.

The Chairman: Mr. Dubé.

Mr. Jean Dubé: As Mr. de Savoye said, it is a non-partisan motion today. I sat on the committee as well and listened to the Auditor General's report. If I recall, what I see in front of me is the Auditor General's recommendation, word for word. I don't know how we can vote against this recommendation of the Auditor General, who is non-partisan. It's difficult for me to understand how we can vote against this.

I do recommend that we vote for this motion and have a separate analysis done.

The Chairman: Mr. Crête to close.

[Translation]

Mr. Paul Crête: Are there other members who would like to speak?

[English]

The Chairman: I think it has been a full and interesting debate thus far.

[Translation]

Mr. Paul Crête: In conclusion, I would like to say again that this motion is almost exactly modelled on the Auditor General's recommendation. If the Liberal majority feels that there is room for improvement in the motion, it certainly has the right to propose amendments to make it more focused, more precise and more accurate. The debate is not over. It continues. Therefore it is still possible.

We need to ensure, with respect to the employment insurance account, which has been severely criticized across Canada, that we as parliamentarians are able to assess the federal government's biggest financial investment, except for transfer payments to the provinces. It is the largest account for which the government has full and entire responsibility.

I would remind you that the senior officials that appeared three weeks ago were unable to tell us what the current surplus was, what the surplus would be on December 31 or what was forecast for March 31. We are continually given the figures from last February's budget. No one, anywhere in Canada, could run his own business that way.

If there is no amendment and the motion is defeated when the vote is held, I will draw the conclusion that the Liberal party of Canada prefers to work in ignorance rather than having sufficient knowledge of the principal file, the one involving the largest financial transactions at present in the federal government.

[English]

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Crête.

I call the question.

[Translation]

Mr. Paul Crête: Mr. Chairman, I call for a roll call vote, please.

[English]

(Motion negatived: nays, 7; yeas, 5)

The Chairman: I'd like to thank all members for being concise on this particular issue.

We will adjourn until Thursday morning, when we have the Minister of Labour.