Job Grant program offers dismal vision for Canada’s unemployed

Politics of getting work: Upper levels of government need to band together to help with employment training

The federal government threatened in last week’s budget to unilaterally implement its controversial Canada Job Grant program despite the objections of provinces. If this happens, Canada’s unemployed and underemployed, whether young or old, face a dismal future.

For the past two decades, responsibility for labour market matters has swung to the provinces, with Ottawa’s consent. The Job Grant program — first announced in the 2013 budget to strengthen on- the- job training and raise the role of employers in training — is Ottawa’s attempt to reassert its role.

Starting in 1996, the Chrétien Liberals devolved responsibility — along with more than 3,600 federal staff and $ 1.9 billion annually from Employment Insurance premiums — to provincial and territorial governments. When people need help with getting a job or training, they now go, for example, to WorkBC Centres, Employment Ontario, or Alberta Works — not Service Canada.

In 2007, the Harper Conservatives reinforced provincial responsibility by providing an additional $ 500 million through tax money, rather than Employment Insurance premiums, so that provinces could expand employment services to vulnerable groups.

As a result, 80 per cent of labour market programming is now designed and delivered by provincial and territorial governments, not Ottawa. The federal government no longer has the tools to both decide and implement. The balance of power has shifted to the provinces.

But the provinces argue that Ottawa is ignoring their knowledge of local labour market conditions and experience in designing programs that work. Ottawa counters that it can dictate federal expenditures.

Rather than fight about jurisdiction and the design of a specific labour market measure, our focus should be on whether we have the right array of programs to meet the needs of employers, the unemployed, and the underemployed.

The OECD has consistently identified Canada’s expenditures on job training as one of the lowest in the industrialized world. In 2011, these were 0.26 per cent of GDP ( compared to the OECD average of 0.58 per cent), down from 0.35 per cent in 2004. In contrast, Denmark allocates 2.26 per cent.

In 1993- 94, total federal spending on labour market adjustment was more than $ 4 billion. Twenty years later, it is remarkable that there has been virtually no increase to the $ 1.9 billion in Employment Insurance funding made available to provinces for job training, despite a capacity through the EI legislation to allocate up to $ 4.4 billion annually. This is not federal money, but money paid by Canadian employers and workers. In our view, we have an investment deficit.

Agreeing on how much money to spend is only the first step in a stronger workplace policy. Just as important is for the federal and provincial governments to establish a means for employers, workers, and training providers such as NGOs, colleges and aboriginal organizations to provide input into programs.

While each province has set up its own mechanism to receive input — including, for example, the Commission des partenaires du marché du travail in Québec and the Manitoba Minister’s Council on Workforce Development — there is no mechanism to hold a pan- Canadian conversation on labour market adjustment. Nor is there a structured way for provinces to share their experiences in spending several billion dollars a year, and to learn from each other.

There is limited research, and very little information is collected and analyzed. Governments make decisions blind and are often blinkered by ideology, rather than evidence.

Canadians deserve, and need, job training that prepares them to compete in a global economy. Federal- provincial bickering, brinksmanship and unilateral action is counterproductive for workers and employers.