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SOME FURTHER CONSIDERATIONS CONCERNING
HUMAN RESOURCES DEVELOPMENT
AND CANADA' S ECONOMIC RECOVERY.
Date: July 28tb, 1995.
Prepared by: Robert T. Chisholm
B.Sc.Hons.(Eng.), C.Eng.(U.K.), M.I.Mech.E.(U.K.), Jr.Eng.(Quebec), for Mr. Bob
Chiarelli, Member of Provincial Parliament for Ottawa West.
48
Anna Avenue,
Ottawa,
ONTARIO KlZ 7T4.
Tel.(613)798-1937
CONTENTS.
1. Introduction.
2. A New Statement of the Overall
Problem.
3. New Export-Related Jobs.
4 .Job Creation, Re-Training and Coordination
of Federal and Provincial Social Programmes for the Unemployed.
5. Some Current Problems with Coordination of
Federal and Provincial Social Programmes in Ontario.
6. Public Awareness and Mis-Diagnosis /
Mis-Understanding of the Problems.
7. The Form of Solution Required, with
Special Reference to Coordination of Federal and Provincial Social Programmes
for the Unemployed in Ontario.
8. The Necessity for Coordination between
Other Federal and Provincial Government Programmes.
9. Immigration.
10..All the Facts and All the
Parameters of the Problems must be Addressed; Logical Thinking is Required at
All Times.
1. Introduction.
My interest in the subject matter dealt with
in this paper, and related topics, began in 1983, shortly after I immigrated to
Canada from the U.K. At about this time, I began collecting media reports and
analysing them in order to fully understand Canada 's problems and what was
responsible for my own difficulties.
Since early 1993, I began to take action to
solve Canada' s problems. These actions have included, among other things, two
personal appearances before The Honourable Lloyd Axworthy 's Standing Committee
on Human Resources Development, several written submissions to this same
Committee and appearances in two television programmes. The Standing Committee
released its final report in February 1995, following a year's work which
included (among other things) two phases of public consultations.
The present paper constitutes a sequel to
this earlier work. It deals with some additional and important problem areas -
which have so far received insufficient attention, and in some cases no
attention - from the policy-makers, media and the general public. The present
paper does not pretend, in itself, to present the whole of the solution to tie
problems with Canada's social programmes, hence it refers to the earlier work
where necessary.
2. A New Statement of the Overall Problem.
Currently, there are roughly 1.5 million
people across Canada receiving U.I. benefits. In Ontario alone, there also
about 1.3 million people receiving provincial social assistance, out of a
population of about 10 million; the total number of social assistance
recipients in Canada, with a population of about 27 million, could then be
roughly estimated as 3.5 million.
. . (2)
Hence, in order to eliminate unemployment and
hence eliminate expenditure on both federal and provincial programmes for the
unemployed, about 5 million new full-time jobs are needed across Canada of
which nearly 2 million would need to be in Ontario.
At the same time, about 1 in every 5 Canadian
jobs depends directly on Canadian exports. Hence, in order to create 5 million
new jobs, we need to create 1 million new export-related jobs across Canada in
order to stimulate the domestic economy into creating the other 4 million new
jobs needed. Furthermore, in all cases, the 5 million people involved must
collectively have all the skills needed to match the 5 million new jobs, and
where necessary they must all have proper access to appropriate re-training to
acquire any necessary new skills (in addition to what they already have).
The figures given above, based on the current
situation, require refinement but will give some idea of the size of the
challenge to be met. They will also change with respect to time, partly on
account of demographic factors such as the aging of the "baby boom"
generation, and partly on account of immigration.
3. New Export-Related Jobs.
It was pointed out above that we currently
need about 1 million new export-related jobs in Canada.
Nobody, to my knowledge, has ever stated the
challenge in these terms - not even the Standing Committee on Human Resources
Development, even though it well addresses the challenge in qualitative
terms. See reference 1.
Consequently, there is still a lack of focus
in directing job creation initiatives and re-training efforts. Job-creation
efforts
. . .
(3)
of all types, and re-training efforts, need
to be directed initially at prospective exporters of new products and services;
this set of problems and actions are addressed in references 2 and 3.
The media have, for the past several years,
been constantly talking about Canada's "good" export performance.
This, in a sense, is fine - in terms of tending to reassure the general public
and the money markets. But it fails to deal with the question of whether this
is sufficiently good, in terms of creating new jobs, relative to the
size of Canada/s unemployment problem and the consequential cost of Canada's
social programmes. Based on the foregoing, it quite clearly is not.
4. Job Creation, Re-Training and
Coordination. of Federal and Provincial
Social Programmes for the Unemployed.
The issues of job creation and re-training,
in terms of how Canada must set about creating new jobs, the professions
involved, and the types of retraining programmes needed, are dealt with in
references 2 and 3. These are arguably more important than anything else, but
at the same time are insufficient if proper arrangements are not made for
ensuring access to appropriate re-training for all unemployed people who need
it.
Currently, there are obvious and massive
flaws in the systems of social programmes which are not being addressed. The
flaws concern the current lack of coordination between federal and provincial
social programmes; these will be the main focus of sections 5, 6 and 7 of this
paper, with special reference to Ontario.
. . .
(4)
5. Some Current Problems with Coordination
of Federal and Provincial Social
Programmes in Ontario.
5.1. The current federal Unemployment
Insurance system declares most unemployed people to be "ineligible"
for benefits on account of the following :-
(a) U.I. benefits for some claimants have run
out as a result of them being unemployed for longer than they were entitled to
collect benefits.
(b) Some claimants have
"insufficient" insurable weeks and hence cannot qualify.
(c) Some claimants who have had long-term
problems with respect to obtaining insurable employment are classified either
as having "weak labour force attachment" or as being "new
entrants or re-entrants to the labour force", which may raise the minimum
number of weeks required to more than the actual weeks of employment
accumulated prior to being laid off ( in law, this is "dismissal without
cause" ). Alternatively, they may never qualify on account of never being
able to obtain insurable employment - which, at the same time, means that they
never have access to Section 25 Employment Development-funded training.
(d) A common current problem is non-payment
of wages by the employer, forcing the employees affected to quit and possibly
before accumulating sufficient weeks to qualify. The Unemployment Insurance Act
1971 and subsequent amendments do not address this scenario. At the same time,
the current waiting period to get a case heard before the Ontario Ministry of
Labour exceeds 6 months.
(e) Self-employed people are ineligible for
U.I. benefits because this form of employment is classed as
"non-insurable". In
. . .
(5)
addition, it may be unstable and insufficient
in the long term to yield a living wage.
In all these cases, the people affected are
forced to claim provincial social assistance benefits - and even then, are not
always eligible ( this usually applies to people who are self-employed).
5.2. All federally-funded re-training
programmes are accessible to U.I. recipients, but not to provincial assistance
recipients, for example :-
"User-Pay" - Community college
courses (but excluding university courses which are funded by OSAP in
Ontario)
"ON-SITE" / Energy Pathways Inc.
"ENGINEERS IN CANADA" /
Ottawa-Carleton Learning Foundation (recently cancelled)
These are all funded out of U.I. funds under
Section 25 (Employment Development) of the Unemployment Insurance Act. The
types of programme available under Section 25, in terms of subject matter and
amount of financial backing are also not adequate - but for the purposes of the
present paper , this is a separate subject.
5.3. Provincially-funded retraining
programmes are generally only available to provincial social assistance
recipients and not to federal U.I. recipients, for example
"TRANSITIONS"
"JOBS ONTARIO"
The former is only available to people aged
45 or more who apply within 6 months of being permanently laid off from
permanent
...
(6)
employment (and hence is obviously restricted
to those who were sufficiently lucky to get such employment in the
first place, whilst excluding those who were not sufficiently lucky to
ever get such employment in the first place )
The latter has just been cancelled; a major
reason appears to have been its use by employers as a wage-subsidy programme
rather than as a means to conduct serious re-training for jobs which can be
said to have really existed. The author, from his own experience, has also
noticed that few, if any, of the jobs involved were based on export-related
business: the proportion appears to have been much less than 1% and certainly
nowhere near the 20% needed, which is indicative of lack of interest on the
part of the right kinds of employers and other factors.
5.4. The artificial ineligibility of people
for retraining programmes means that, in these cases :-
(a) The circumstances described in 5.1, 5.2
and 5.3 above mean that most unemployed people cannot get any access to
re-training to expand their range of skills, so that non-access to re-training
and jobs then cause the circumstances described in 5.1 to be self-perpetuating.
(b) Thus they are forced on to provincial
social assistance programmes, through which certain other re-training
programmes are accessible but which are not adequate.
(c) Non-access to re-training caused in the
manner described means non-access to jobs and hence "getting stuck"
on social assistance. Thus a condition occurs which, apart from social
concerns, has two important and fundamental economic consequences:-
…(7)
(i) The person is prevented from working (by
means of regulatory barriers) and hence is prevented from contributing to
federal or provincial tax revenues (by these same regulatory barriers).
(ii) Both the federal and provincial
governments end up condemning themselves ( through the application of the said
regulatory barriers ) to paying out money to social recipients "for
life", in amounts less than required to meet basic needs, instead of
investing in these people in the appropriate manner in order to put them back
to work.
Federal money as well as provincial money is
involved here, on account of the Canada Assistance Plan (to be modified and
re-named the Canada Social Transfer).
Hence the current system, consisting of
federal and provincial social programmes together, is dysfunctional from the
standpoint of solving the unemployment problem and related social problems. It
also makes no sense whatsoever from a cost-accounting and economic standpoint.
These considerations are fundamental to solving, or failing to solve, Canada's
problems concerning both the current account deficit and the accumulated
deficit.
6. Public Awareness and Mis-Diagnosis /
Mis-Understanding of the Problems.
Based on the media reports which I have
collected to date :-
(a) The media have failed to analyse the
problems correctly. In particular :-
(i) They have failed to emphasise the number
of new export-related jobs (about 1 million) in Canada which are needed in
order to solve Canada's economic problems, as a means to stimulating the
. . .
(8)
political leadership to direct its efforts
appropriately.
(ii) They have failed to examine the manner
of operation of Canada's social programmes for the unemployed properly. As a
result, the public- most of whom are employed and not particularly interested
in other people's problems based on lack of time and impatience - do not
understand what is wrong, and wrongly blame the cost of Canada' s social
programmes on the unemployed and in particular social assistance recipients. In
particular, some Statistics Canada classifications and figures relating to
unemployment, combined with the traditional manner of reporting them in the
media, have been contributing to public disinformation and misunderstanding of
the problem.
In particular, media reports concerning those
who have exhausted their U.I. benefits have suggested that they:-
(a) "have dropped out of the labour
force"
(b) are "discouraged workers"
(c) "have given up looking for
work"
The author believes that such reports are
responsible for the widespread and mistaken belief that U.I. beneficiaries, and
more particularly social assistance recipients, are "lazy" or
"unwilling to work" etc. This, in turn, is believed by the author to
motivate the electorate to support public policy to reduce benefits (such as
has just happened in Ontario), whilst simultaneously making the electorate fail
to recognise the true causes of the "excessive'' cost of social programmes
which it is so concerned about.
. . .
(9)
7. The Form of Solution Required, with
Special Reference to Coordination of Federal and Provincial Social Programmes
for the Unemployed in Ontario.
The definition of "unemployed" is
to include all federal U.I. beneficiaries and provincial social assistance
recipients, and all those who are in any way under-employed.
It goes without saying that in order to deal
with this properly, much additional research and analysis is required.
However, it is obvious that the presence of
regulatory barriers which exclude any unemployed person from re-training
programmes are inappropriate. All current re-training programmes, both federal
and provincial, must be made available to all unemployed people as defined
in the first paragraph of this section. Some completely new re-training
programmes are also required to meet the current and future needs of the
economy. In all cases, adequate financial support must be available to meet the
needs of people in such programmes - to cover tuition fees, purchase of books
and computer software, borrowing of books, photocopying and all other items
related to the re-training being undertaken. This must be provided in addition
to catering to basic needs such as food, shelter and transportation. All other
trade and profession-related expenses, and job search-related expenses, must be
covered such as professional corporation membership, learned society
membership, telephone, postage, FAX, resume preparation, transportation to and
from job interviews.
8. The Necessity for Coordination Between
Other Federal and Provincial Government Programmes.
As has already been shown, the effort
required to solve Canada 's unemployment problem is not confined to correcting
the cur-
. . .
(10)
- 10 -
rent coordination problems with the federal Unemployment
Insurance system and provincial social assistance systems.
Job-creation initiatives, with all that these
entail by way of help to prospective exporters and other things, must also be
implemented in a manner which includes proper coordination between federal and
provincial programmes.
9. Immigration.
Immigrants are often seen as representing
un-wanted "competition" to Canadians who are looking for work.
Immigration policy currently results in about
200,000 people settling in Canada each year; roughly half (100,000) require
jobs with the other half being accounted for by "non-working" family
members such as children.
At the same time, based on media reports,
Canadians mostly seem to conveniently forget that they themselves are either
former immigrants or descendants of earlier generations of immigrants, except
for members of the "First Nations". They also seem to forget or
ignore the effects of federal and provincial social programmes and human
resources development policies, and management attitudes in private-sector
enterprises.
It should be realised that an immigration
policy which does not lead to social unrest will only be possible in the
presence of a functional set of human resources development policies and full
employment.
10. All the Facts and All the Parameters
of the Problems Must Be Addressed;
Logical Thinking is Required at All Times.
The current problems, as has been shown, have
resulted from
... (11)
- 11 -
failure to address all the facts and
parameters of the problems in a logical manner, augmented by public
disinformation and misunderstanding.
In defining and solving any set of problems,
it should be remembered that overlooking any one fact or any one parameter, or
any one flaw in logic, or any deficiency in any area, will result either in
complete failure to produce the desired results or serious deficiencies in the
results obtained. This also applies to solving the human resources problems in
Canada, with the additional challenges represented by human emotions, international
politics and economics, behaviour of money markets and foreign investors etc.
thrown in.
References.
1. Final Report of the Standing Committee on
Human Resources Development, "Security, Opportunity and Fairness",
February 6th 1995.
2. R.T. Chisholm submission to The Hon. Lloyd
Axworthy dated March 21st 1994, "A Strategy for Human Resources
Development, with Special Reference to Producers of Technologically-Innovative
Goods and Services for Export."
3. R.T. Chisholm submission to the Standing
Committee on Human Resources Development dated October 21st 1994, "A
Low-Cost Training Scheme for Unemployed Professionals such as Engineers,
Accountants, Sales and Marketing Personnel".
END OF DOCUMENT
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