Job sharing
Ottawa needs to show more flexibility on work training initiative
It’s widely accepted that the Harper government is on the right track in retooling job training to better mesh with actual labour needs, but it is important to give the misgivings being expressed by the provinces more than lip service. Thankfully, that appears to increasingly be the case.
“Canada has one of the besteducated workforces in the world,” noted Gov. Gen. David Johnston in the throne speech Wednesday. “But there are too many people without jobs and too many jobs without people.” The government announced the Canada Jobs Grant in the 2013 budget and is proposing to make $15,000 available for each training participant, to be funded equally by Ottawa, the province where the worker lives and the employer. The strength of the initiative is that all three partners — and the worker, of course — have to recognize value in the training, otherwise they’d simply decline to participate.
Canada’s provinces recently rejected the program unanimously, however, because it involves the gradual loss of $300 million of the $500-million Labour Market Agreement established in 2007. That funding has been used to help older workers, youth, aboriginals and the disabled get back into the workforce through such measures as literacy training. Such recipients are not eligible for EI, and Employment Minister Jason Kenney has characterized the support as “training for training’s sake.”
For Alberta, the Canada Jobs Grant would mean the diversion of $33 million in federal funds, and the addition of $33 million in provincial money, according to Human Services Minister Dave Hancock, who says “that will do serious dam- age to our programs to get underemployed Albertans into the workforce.”
Kenney’s frank evaluation of the provinces’ job programs may not be wholly inaccurate, but it’s dismissive to suggest that such a broad swath of the public should be denied resources and that the money should instead be put toward training electricians and other in-demand tradespeople.
Kenney recently showed some flexibility on the issue, saying provinces could tap a $2-billion-a-year training fund targeted for Canadians eligible for EI benefits for their share of the funds, and in this week’s throne speech, the government promised to “take further steps to see that those traditionally under-represented in the workforce, including people with disabilities, youth, and aboriginal Canadians, find the job-training they need.”
“Our first preference is very strongly to have an agreement with the provinces,” Kenney said recently. “If, however, the provinces choose not to participate, even with the more flexible jobs grant we’re proposing, then we are prepared to deliver it directly, because we believe so strongly that employers know better than government bureaucracies how to train people for jobs.”
Kenney speaks from a position of strength when he touts the advantages of the government’s reforms, but his my-way-or-the-highway rhetoric isn’t productive.
The Harper government must continue to acknowledge provincial concerns about leaving behind Canadians who struggle to find a place in the workforce, while at the same time, implementing training for those needed to fill gaps in critical sectors of the economy, especially in the fast-growing West.