British Columbia Federation of Labour

Published today in the Victoria Times Colonist:

When Canadian premiers meet in Winnipeg this week, a hot prairie summer will greet them.

But these lazy days of summer are full of anxiety for the tens of thousands of Canadians who lost their jobs over the last two years. Many are still out of work, have been forced to work part-time or at jobs for which they are over-qualified.

Those workers might be off the unemployment rolls, but they are not better off, as they scramble for stop-gap solutions that will see increasing numbers of Canadians slipping into low-wage work and poverty.

This week, the presidents of provincial and territorial federations of labour are calling on the premiers to take action as the global economy remains unstable and Canada's economic recovery remains tenuous at best.

While there have been some optimistic reports about Canada's emergence from the recession, the recovery has not been uniform across the country and the job-creation numbers are not good enough.

If the rest of the world slides back into recession, Canada will also be dragged in.

Meanwhile, many of Canada's stimulus measures, such as the extended employment insurance training initiative, have ended.

Recessions are a time when workers need support if they have lost their jobs or are under-employed. An economic downturn should be a time when people can re-train or upgrade their skills to take better advantage of the recovery and to improve the overall economy's ability to recover in the first place.
Knowledge and skills are the keys to success for individuals, businesses and countries in the modern economy. Money spent on training and re-training makes unemployed workers part of the economic recovery.

Unfortunately, Canada lags far behind other industrialized countries in workplace training and adult education. Other countries spend far more than we do, and they spend smarter. Last year, the federal government spent about $4 billion on training initiatives. However, less than 30 per cent of Canadians had access to job training programs, whereas about 35 per cent of people in Britain and 45 per cent in the United States had access to these kinds of programs.

Much of the money spent to train or re-train laid-off workers in Canada has been spent at the federal level though the employment insurance program. But most of that money is being shifted to the provincial level through what are called labour market agreements. These agreements come with little co-ordination or accountability. The result is a patchwork quilt of programs, many of dubious quality.

The premiers should be spending some of their time in Winnipeg talking about how these billions of dollars can be put to better use.

In the short term, the federal government should continue providing the extended employment insurance training initiative. The premiers should be working with the federal government to examine these "labour market development agreements" to ensure that they are actually delivering real results.

There should also be a national approach to ensuring literacy is part of workplace training. In the longer term, the premiers should work together to form a country-wide forum for workplace training, bringing together employers, unions and various levels of government, so that programs can be better co-ordinated, targeted and made more relevant to today's job market.

Finally, the premiers and the federal government need to put an end to freeloading -- employers who expect someone else to pick up the tab for the highly skilled workforce they need. To do that, Canada's first ministers should take a bold step this week, by doing like many other countries, and indeed even Quebec has done, and requires employers to contribute to a training fund.

The Winnipeg meeting of the premiers needs to yield concrete results on training, literacy and job creation. These meetings often result in much talk and little action, but the presidents of the federations of labour are calling for a workable training plan that will be of use to tens of thousands of unemployed and underemployed Canadians.