Assemblée législative de l'Ontario

MINISTRY OF SKILLS DEVELOPMENT

CONTENTS

Tuesday 5 November 1991

Ministry of Skills Development

STANDING COMMITTEE ON ESTIMATES

Chair: Jackson, Cameron (Burlington South PC)

Acting Chair: Johnson, Paul R. (Prince Edward-Lennox-South Hastings NDP)

Vice-Chair: Marland, Margaret (Mississauga South PC)

Carr, Gary (Oakville South PC)

Daigeler, Hans (Nepean L)

Farnan, Mike (Cambridge NDP)

Johnson, Paul R. (Prince Edward-Lennox-South Hastings NDP)

Lessard, Wayne (Windsor-Walkerville NDP)

McGuinty, Dalton (Ottawa South L)

McLeod, Lyn (Fort William L)

O'Connor, Larry (Durham-York NDP)

Perruzza, Anthony (Downsview NDP)

Wilson, Gary (Kingston and The Islands NDP)

Substitutions:

Cunningham, Dianne (London North PC) Mrs Marland

Ward, Brad (Brandford NDP) for Mr Perruzza

Also taking part: Brown, Michael A. (Algoma-Manitoulin L)

Clerk: Carrozza, Franco

The committee met at 1536 in committee room 2.

MINISTRY OF SKILLS DEVELOPMENT

The Chair: I call to order the standing committee on estimates. We have reconvened today to complete the estimates for the Ministry of Skills Development. First, I would like to thank the ministry staff, who have diligently responded to and tabled for committee members answers to the questions raised by Mrs Cunningham, the Progressive Conservative critic.

Minister, do you want to comment on these responses, and does staff want to indicate whether these are all of them or whether there are still a couple yet to come?

Hon Mr Allen: These are all questions requested. We are happy to provide the answers to the committee and to the critics for any further questioning based on them, as they see fit.

The Chair: Thank you very much. As Chair, I have consulted each of the caucuses and I wish to advise you that we can anticipate a vote at 5:45. By prior agreement, we will adjust our schedule slightly for the balance of this afternoon's committee hearing so that we are in a position to have our final votes at 5:45. If there is no objection to that, I would like to proceed, with the committee's permission, to recognize Mrs Cunningham for a 20-minute session, and then we will go in sequence.

Mrs Cunningham: I am somewhat overwhelmed, and probably the ministry staff was somewhat overwhelmed, with the number of questions. That shows we did look carefully at the estimates. I would like to thank the staff very much. The responses are not only helpful to me, but as one of my colleagues, Mr O'Connor, has advised me, they are helpful to all of us as we try to explain the intricate workings not only of this ministry but of the government.

I had planned to ask the questions today, but since we have some of the responses, I think it would be probably more useful for me in the few minutes I have to ask them to expand on the answers, even though I have to admit I have not had a chance to really look at them. Perhaps whoever is responsible could help me out a little bit.

One of the issues I was most interested in was the number of clients. My question has to do with page 35 of the estimates. I cannot figure out what numbers these are, so perhaps someone can help me.

The Chair: We have someone to rescue if you would identify yourself.

Mrs Cunningham: Never mind. I have actually figured it out, which is very unusual. Regarding question 1 or 2, I am interested in the graph, which shows that the number of clients served by the training consulting service continues to exceed the annual target of 10,000 clients set for the program when it was first established. I wonder whether this is a message that the government is getting wise as to the real need, or is it going to change programs around? Is this useful or are we going to stay with that target? Just how is the government going to respond with regard to that number?

Mr Tuohy: I am Walter Tuohy from the skills development consulting services. In retaining that particular number in terms of targeting, the intention was really to achieve a holding pattern. Given the changes in our program under priority management this year, we were not quite sure whether there would be some significant reduction in the number of clients as we adjusted focus towards associations and sectors which would be, in absolute terms, a reduced number of clients but in real terms a larger catchment area for people to be trained. We did not want to arbitrarily reduce that number because we just did not know.

Hon Mr Allen: I may be wrong there, Mr Tuohy, but is it not true that under some of the new sectoral arrangements we have, some of our clients represent larger numbers of employees and therefore there are a greater number of people served, even though the numbers of clients remain roughly the same?

Mr Tuohy: That is quite right.

Mrs Cunningham: If you are doing more work with the same amount of dollars --

Hon Mr Allen: What could be better?

Mrs Cunningham: Well, as long as it is quality and we are not stretching ourselves too thin like social workers have to do.

Mr Tuohy: We are conscious of the quality issue. We are willing to accept that reduction in number because additionally, with the new focuses on our programs, we are trying to give more time to the individual client to give him or her a higher-quality service in terms of overall human resource development issues.

Hon Mr Allen: Certainly the sectoral approach has rationalized the delivery of service quite remarkably in terms of our ability to serve large numbers of employees through the individual industrial sectors by striking major agreements with groups of employers who work together in a bipartite way with their employee organizations to deliver on a joint basis to the whole industrial sector. That is a great multiplier device for us that we are exploiting as rapidly as we can.

Mrs Cunningham: I am moving, not for any reason except my own interest, to question 7, which has been one of ongoing concern to me, and this is the women's access to apprenticeship programs. I see that we do have more female apprentices. The number I was looking at was 1,030, and now we are saying 2,370. Can you speak to how you would try to improve this or what plans the government has to make more apprenticeship programs available to women?

Mr Fields: I am Bill Fields from the apprenticeship branch. Increasing the number of women in apprenticeship goes right to the core of a lot of attitudes our society has and the kind of roles and jobs which are appropriate for men and women. That is really what we have been addressing over the last several years and what we will continue to address. We have our own apprenticeship field staff working at this issue, and as I believe you are aware, we have a number of projects across the province that are specifically dedicated to identifying more women to enter apprenticeship and more unions and employers to train women in apprenticeship. They initially had a two-year life on the projects, and 25 of the projects have now been extended for an additional two years. Additionally, we have increased our staffing in the field by five industrial training consultants, one in each district, who will provide better co-ordination within their district around these projects.

I think what we have been seeing over the last short period of time are some fundamental changes in a lot of attitudes. Employers and unions that previously were very restrictive in terms of hiring practices are coming around now. Of course, our timing in terms of the recession is not helpful; things are down. But the feeling right across the province is that as the economy picks up, we should see a real jump in the number of women apprentices. I think we have been pretty good during this period of time in retaining women who are in apprenticeship. I cannot give you hard numbers on that, but from talking with our coordinators across the province and our industrial training consultants, they are not seeing a lot of dropouts right now.

Mrs Cunningham: Okay. Perhaps I could explore with you one of the observations you made which I think is key, and obviously you are out there, so you know. This whole question of attitudes -- and I guess I could ask it in a couple of ways, and perhaps the minister will jump in as well -- attitudes begin at a very early age with children. They are often influenced very significantly by the attitudes of their own parents. When we talk about what influences young people to choose their careers, people say that their first influences are their peers but very closely thereafter are their parents.

I am just thinking that perhaps some of the training dollars should go into solving our greatest problem, that of the way people feel about having their children go into apprenticeship programs. You have mentioned the attitudes of unions and employers, and I know you are Skills Development, but since the Ministry of Skills Development seems to be making some gains in those two areas, perhaps the next gain ought to be in the school systems that can relate to families themselves. I am just wondering if your ministry has influence on that, either with your own dollars or by influencing other ministries, and whether the minister thinks this is a priority area for some of the money that has come from the federal government with regard to the new dollars for skills training.

Mr Fields: Again, our own staff are out in the schools throughout the province talking with teachers, guidance counsellors, home and school associations and with students on career days. As well, the women's access co-ordinators are very aggressive around this, trying to influence attitudes both at the elementary school level and at the secondary school level. In addition, through the community industrial training committees and the Skills OK marketing campaign, they are going out and trying to influence the students, parents and teachers around skilled occupations, that they are good occupations and should be considered.

Hon Mr Allen: It is perhaps worth noting that, as in the colleges and universities sector and around non-traditional programs in the universities like engineering, yes, doing sort of broad-brush public relations things around that does have some effect, but unless you are prepared to get into some of the early-year attitudinal formations in the school system, you are still going to be in difficulty, and more of our attention is certainly being devoted in that direction. I know the Ministry of Education has paid some attention, but whether it has paid enough to introductions to technology and so on in kindergarten and the primary years to familiarize children with the kinds of activities, relationships, handling of materials and so on that are necessary to develop just a feel for the subject, whether enough has been done in that quarter might well be asked. It might be something we might well explore further.

Perhaps Mr Fields also knows the statistics on the numbers of women in pre-apprenticeship programs which we have in place across the province to provide women with initial skills so that they are then employable and then in turn can be employed in an apprenticeship. That is often one of the big hurdles women have to get over in order to get into an apprenticeship in a non-traditional trade.

Mr Fields: I cannot give you an exact number, but what I can tell you is that the women's access co-ordinators have identified that about nine out of 10 women who are coming to them interested in apprenticeship do not have the necessary prerequisites, especially in math and science, familiarity with tools and a general feel for the trade areas. Through the enhanced access fund we are making available preparatory training for about 400 women this year, in addition to which we are working closely with local Canada Employment centres of the federal government through their adult training programs and arranging preparatory training programs, and also through the community industrial training committees. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of women in these preparatory programs right now. As I say, I cannot give you a precise number, but again that is where we see this should take off as the economy turns, because we will have many more apprenticeship-ready women at that time.

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Mrs Cunningham: I thank you for the question. In my role sometimes I do not ask the bright questions. That is the biggest problem we have as politicians, so thanks for that one.

Although I am asking specific questions about women, I am interested in the whole picture of apprenticeship training. Perhaps this question would be more appropriately put to the minister. When we start talking about prerequisites such as math and science and hands-on experiences with tools, we are talking about 12- and 13- and 14-year-olds who ought to be having these goals in mind. Are you having success in talking to the Minister of Education about a major restructuring of our delivery system in our schools?

Hon Mr Allen: Our principal dialogue with the Ministry of Education to date has been around the schools-to-work apprenticeship program and getting that up and running. Therefore, the bulk of the dialogue has been with the secondary school level and not with the latter years of the earlier school system or the transition years. I think you have put your finger on something we need to expand dramatically in the coming years in order to influence those attitudes at an earlier level.

The member would be interested in an anecdote, however, from my visit to Fanshawe College, where I was in the auto mechanics apprenticeship program with a group of women. I was asking them why they were there, and it was surprising. Two or three of them out of the group said, "My father was a service station manager," or "My father did this or did that" that was of a mechanical or a trades nature. In terms of their bonding, they obviously had bonded more with their father's occupation than with their mother's role and had followed through quite naturally into the invitation to look at apprenticeship trades on that basis.

It may well be that some encouragement at the family level to sort of look at what Dad is doing and get some hands-on experience at home with tools and so on on the part of the young women in our community would be a very helpful lead-in to apprenticeship later on. It might be another area of influence we could tap in some significant measure.

Mrs Cunningham: I wonder if we are having more or fewer dads do things like that around the house these days. Maybe some of the moms could be setting an example there. That is interesting.

Hon Mr Allen: Let mom do the household renovations.

Mrs Cunningham: I have one more thing to say. What are the agreements that are struck between school boards and the colleges called? It is a very big word.

Hon Mr Allen: The articulation agreements?

Mrs Cunningham: Do we in education not like to muck everybody up?

Hon Mr Allen: I know. It gets so confusing.

Mrs Cunningham: I mean, why say something that people would understand? Give me a break. That is the worst terminology; you have to think of a new one very quickly. Anyway, on that one I am told at Fanshawe that these take hours to negotiate, and by the time you get the agreement on paper, all the people who were excited about doing it are no longer teaching in that school, or maybe that school system. We have a problem with that and I wanted to put it on the record.

I am also aware that the school workplace apprenticeship program is a very difficult one, and I wish us all luck in getting that going. I will be as helpful as I can in speaking about it in a positive way.

But I am talking about major changes in curriculum. I am talking about grades 7 and 8 -- grades 7, 8 and 9 would be fairer -- and I am talking about kids having a chance to go to school and get credit for their work in the community and the hands-on experiences. I hope, because I think you understand this, Minister, that you have some influence on that.

I think my time is up. I will say this: I very much appreciate the response to questions. I am on my way to London to the John P. Robarts Research Institute annual function, which I have never been able to go to since I have been elected, where the three speakers will be female scientists. I just want you to know I am appreciative and I think those things have come about because of people like ourselves who speak on behalf of parents. Thank you very much.

Mr Daigeler: Is that a PC fund-raiser?

Mrs Cunningham: No, it is not, actually. It is an award given to a scientist. The institute happens to be named after the former Premier, John Robarts, and it is in the middle of my riding, but, Mr Daigeler, if you do very good work, maybe somebody in your riding will name an institute after you some day too.

Mr Daigeler: I am working on it.

Mr Lessard: Say hello for us.

The Acting Chair (Mr Johnson): Mr Daigeler, you have 20 minutes.

Mr Daigeler: I was just wondering a little bit about why the Tory party was not going to grill the minister much further. They have been so appreciative of the federal contribution and the arrangement with the minister that I guess they are going to be a bit soft on the minister. I can assure you Minister, that I will try to do my best to be soft, but it is my responsibility to be critical at the same time. You have some experience in that.

Hon Mr Allen: I am not expecting Mr Daigeler to be soft, or any of those adjectives that undermines his normal performance.

Mr Daigeler: That is good. At least you know what my responsibility is.

I think we left off on the training aspects last week. I am wondering whether you could provide me with a list of the training trust funds that have been established over the last three years and the amounts of the provincial contribution spelled out with regard to each.

Hon Mr Allen: Does somebody have that complete list at hand? I can certainly give you some now, but the essence --

Mr Daigeler: I do not need it right now, but if you could provide that to me.

Hon Mr Allen: We can give it to you right now. It is quite accessible; no problem.

Mr Daigeler: I would like that in writing for future reference obviously.

Hon Mr Allen: It will be in the record right now if you want. It will be in writing for everybody to access.

Mr Daigeler: No, I do not need the precise details. I want to take a look at that and make sure we have the information and that the committee members have the information.

Hon Mr Allen: Sure.

Mr Daigeler: Also, we spoke briefly last week about the train-the-trainer program. Where is that at now? Does that still exist? There is no reference here in the book. Is it still in existence? What is your assessment of it? How is it working? Do you have any plans to change it? Where is that at?

Hon Mr Allen: The train-the-trainer program is a responsibility of the Ontario Training Corp, one of the three responsibilities that are the focus of that corporation's work. They recently completed a major study that they initiated a few months ago, not long after being formed, to try to evaluate the scope and scale of the problem and to get as much advice as they could around how one would go about tackling the issue of how you best train the trainer in order to get the best results for training as a consequence. Within the last two or three months they tabled a document which reported on that exercise. It had a number of very interesting proposals and suggestions in it. It is a matter of examination in the ministry at this point in time.

However, it is one of those undertakings that will in all likelihood become the responsibility of the Ontario Training and Adjustment Board, so that any creation of new institutions around the train-the-trainer issue will take place in the context of the Ontario Training and Adjustment Board. The model that is going out for discussion includes a proposed learning network that will be the focal point of training activities in the sense of how you go about training the trainer, what standards you establish and how, how you enforce them and what is best practice in various fields of training, etc; research around all those issues and so on.

We are rather loathe to take the advice from OTC and turn it into anything highly institutionalized at this point in time with OTAB coming under active consideration.

A note you might be interested in is that since launching the program in May 1989, OTC has also undertaken four joint professional development training investment projects, three forums on professional standards with major professional associations, a working symposium on implementing technological change from a trainer's point of view and a major research paper on the professional development needs of the trainers, which is the document I just referred to.

Mr Daigeler: Is this particular document a report to you on the overall issue of train-the-trainer and how the specific provincial program has worked? In other words, what I am getting at is, is it a document that could be shared at least with the critics? I do not know how thick it is. If it is a volume or whatever of 500 pages, then perhaps that is not what I am interested in, but if there is an executive summary of the 500 pages, then I would be interested in that. In other words, can you at least give to the critics -- and if it is not too big, to the committee -- a copy of that report, or at least of the executive summary?

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Hon Mr Allen: We can certainly provide an executive summary of that for you. That will not be any problem.

Mr Daigeler: I appreciate that, because I think this is an important initiative. From what you are describing, you seem to be saying it has achieved good results, so I hope we can continue. If there are certain changes that can be initiated in light of the review that has been done, so much the better.

In your agreement with the federal government, there is a section that spells out that the two governments agree to share with each other a copy of their annual training plan. Do you already have such a plan established for this year and, again, can you share that with us?

Hon Mr Allen: There is certainly an overall prospectus of the ministry itself. There is not in the same sense, however, a document that develops all the training initiatives that take place under the rubric of government as such and collects them all into a single place for reporting purposes or for strategic purposes. It might well be possible for us to undertake to do that.

Mr Daigeler: I am referring to annex 8, number 2.2.

Hon Mr Allen: I do not have the document here with me.

Mr Daigeler: In that particular provision it was agreed that the two governments will now and in future share with each other an annual training plan. Certainly I would be interested, if it has been prepared already for this year, a copy of this year's, and then whatever you are submitting in the future, but I guess I will have to ask next year.

Hon Mr Allen: Yes. In the course of drawing up the province's total dollar contributions to training as part of the agreement, the $751 million, we went through an exercise of pulling together all those training projects across the front of government, so it should be possible to develop something for you from that. Bruce, can you give us some further detail around that and how that figures in the context of the agreement?

The Acting Chair: Would the presenter please identify himself for Hansard.

Mr Baldwin: Yes, Bruce Baldwin from the federal-provincial relations branch.

The commitments to share and develop training plans together and to go through a joint training planning process really refers to the future years into the agreement. As you know, this agreement was signed into the fiscal year after the planning process had been completed. What we wanted to look at was a process by which we could work together and I guess not surprise each other in terms of what our plans and our programs were going to look like and what kind of money we were going to spend, based on the assumption that, once ministries and government have completed that planning and budgeting process, it is a difficult time at that point to start to talk about co-ordinating because people get attached to their plans and to their budgets, but to really start to identify the problems a little bit earlier in the process and work out a more co-ordinated approach.

We do not have that process. We have not gone through that process with the federal government for this year, but we will be starting to gear up shortly into the new year for that planning cycle.

Mr Daigeler: That is quite frankly what I kind of expected. Certainly I think the idea is a good one. I was pleased in fact to read that in the document. Of course it will help the opposition to hold the government accountable to its own plan, and in that regard it is very useful to have copies of those. I will make myself a nice little note -- if I am still the critic for that particular area, that is -- and come back to the ministry at the appropriate time next year to ask for a copy of that plan.

In the highlights package that was distributed at the press conference last week, Minister -- by the way, I noticed that there was a lot of reference to the private sector by the Tories in the federal document. But, understandably so I guess, you were less inclined to put that right at the front of your press release. Perhaps you might want to comment on that, how you see the difference and perhaps the unity of approach in terms of the private sector involvement, because the federal government certainly seemed to push that very much in its communications package and you did not seem to push that much. You may want to comment on that.

Second, in the highlights, you are spelling out equity initiatives, community college apprenticeships, local board sectoral agreements, income support, literacy, and co-operative management, and I am wondering whether it is possible in all these categories to spell out a year-by-year accounting of the amounts that were spent under the previous co-op agreement, separating the federal and the provincial contributions, and what you are anticipating to spend, both again by the province and by the federal government, on each of these categories. I guess that relates already to an earlier question I asked as to how you are arriving at the figures you announced in your press release.

Hon Mr Allen: I do not see any difficulty in providing you with those figures. They are in the budgets of the two governments and, therefore, are quite readily accessible.

With regard to the preamble to your question, it is, I think, no secret that it is a neo-conservative government in Ottawa and a social democratic government in Ontario and they do not always, of course, see eye to eye on all questions. It is, however, quite clear that both governments do have a very basic commitment to increasing what everybody sees as a major lack in our broad competitiveness capacity, and that is the area of training. However you look at that, whether you want to come at it from a private sector point of view or a public sector delivery point of view, it is critically important that everybody agrees that there has to be much more and much better training. It is on that ground that the two governments have come together.

You will know that we have laboured very hard in the agreement and negotiations to protect all of the public sector delivery structures in Ontario, and the federal government has gone a significant distance in facilitating that. At the same time, they do want to see a greater measure of private sector competitiveness for training dollars, and in the third year of this agreement 28% of their dollars will move from the public sector to the private sector category, amounting to $29 million.

We have insisted that those dollars not be flowed through their own agency, namely the CEIC or the Canada Employment and Immigration Commission, but that they be flowed through the local boards under the structure for delivering training community by community. The public sector deliverers, the boards of education and the colleges, will be on those boards and will have full knowledge and access to those dollars on a competitive basis.

Under those circumstances I do not have any great fear for our agenda, which is public sector training, because the colleges have been able to bid successfully on 90% of the contracts to date in the private sector dollars that are available through the federal government.

Mr Daigeler: How much time do we have in this particular round still?

The Acting Chair: Six minutes.

Mr Daigeler: Six minutes, okay. I am interested to know how supportive you are going to be of the private sector in new training initiatives, especially for women. One of the difficulties of upgrading their training is to find child care. I am sure you are familiar with that. I know there has been some consideration given to providing child care initiative support to the private sector employers. Perhaps the employers could put in place child care at the workplace so that women in particular could be trained. Consideration at least was given to putting in place a loan program in that regard. Is this something you have looked at yourself? Has that been brought to your attention? Do you think that would be a worthwhile initiative? How do you feel about that?

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Hon Mr Allen: As the member knows, under the Ministry of Community and Social Services program known as STEP there is special provision made for accessing day care by parents who are on social assistance and who are engaging in training programs with a view to employment. Certainly this ministry has been very supportive of that and would support an expansion of that kind of program.

We have not ourselves been formally involved in discussions with employers around child care provision in the workplace as part of any of our agreements. However, I submit to the member that it is indeed something that needs to be looked at much more carefully. Certainly the concept of workplace child care is supported by the Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care as an approach to the child care issue, and I think we all know that in order to facilitate training and employment by single spouses in particular, child care is just inordinately important.

Mr Daigeler: I would just like to encourage the minister to look at that as a support for the employers -- it would not just be for the employers, but to encourage the employers to set up such programs. I do know that some thought was given to this matter under the previous regime in terms of a loan program, for example. I think that is an exciting idea and I hope it does not get lost in the shuffle.

Hon Mr Allen: It certainly has already arisen in the context of initial consultations around OTAB, in particular with regard to the entry/re-entry component of the Ontario Training and Adjustment Board structure. There will have to be new institutions created to facilitate the work of that particular part of the OTAB structure that deals with people, not in the labour market now but those who need to get there, so I have no doubt that it will be a major agenda item when OTAB is up and running.

Mr Daigeler: Talking about another initiative that also was under consideration for some time and relates to supporting the private sector in its training efforts, are you willing to consider support for employers in their apprentice training costs? In other words, are you willing to consider compensating employers for their payroll costs for apprentices?

Hon Mr Allen: The current regulation, as you know, provides for certain levels of compensation for apprentices. It is certainly true that employers securing the services of apprentices get thereby a service out of the apprentice and that those wage levels are geared to recognizing the changing degree of that contribution to the workplace by the apprentice as he or she becomes more fully trained and more effective in the workplace. I would certainly be interested in looking at that, but only in the context of the training partners bringing forward a comprehensive proposal for accessing further resources from the private sector to make that possible. For employers who were not involved in training, you would secure income that would go to those who were prepared to field apprenticeships on a more ambitious basis and therefore to get some transfer of funds within the private sector to do that.

The Acting Chair: We are going to move on now to Mr O'Connor, who I believe has a question. Mr Daigeler, if we run out of time we will come back to you for further questions.

Mr O'Connor: I do not know whether it is in order or not, but I would like to wish my wife, who has joined us here today, a happy birthday.

The Acting Chair: Mr O'Connor, that is not a point of order, but it is a point of information. I would like to wish Mrs O'Connor a happy birthday.

Mr Lessard: Hansard would like to know her first name.

Mr O'Connor: My wife Christine O'Connor, yes, her birthday is today. Thank you, Mr Chair. It is indeed a point of privilege, I suppose.

My question is around the skills development program and delivering training dollars for small businesses, particularly small businesses that are not necessarily manufacturing-driven. What kind of moneys are available for the smaller businesses?

Hon Mr Allen: I will ask the deputy to speak to that. That is a very interesting question.

Mr Sosa: For the whole area of the small business, the purpose of the Ontario skills development office is that it offers the consulting service. They are delivered through the community college system. In 1990-91 you will find that of the 12,200 clients, 36% had between 10 and 100 employees and 55% had fewer than 10 employees. They provide the opportunity to allow the small businesses to get the consulting service to draw up their training plans, draw up a strategic plan, and out of that they can access, when these things have been put in place, the Ontario skills money, which is the incentive program. The government has approximately $18 million in consulting services delivered through the community colleges and $34 million in Ontario skills incentive funds.

In addition to that, the first-time small business is not charged a fee. It is a further incentive for them to really utilize the service which is provided through the Ontario skills development office.

I will ask the ADM, who is also familiar with that, to see whether he can add anything to that particular question.

Mr Horswill: I would just add about the money. On subsidy programs for training expenditures by firms, I would add that for firms with fewer than 200 employees, as you probably know, the subsidization is richer. That is, we will subsidize up to 80% of a firm's training expenditures. Some 80% of those funds are presently going to firms with fewer than 50 employees. That is 80% of about $35 million and it is not limited to the manufacturing sector, although we have identified manufacturing because the rate of adjustment is obviously an area of great priority in terms of worker needs.

Mr O'Connor: Does the ministry have a way of delivering that message out there to employers that do not reside in a community that has ready access to a community college?

Mr Horswill: I do not know if Malcolm could elaborate.

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Mr Campbell: Thank you. I am Malcolm Campbell, manager of the service development unit. I look after the training incentive programs for the ministry.

The question you are asking is with respect to ready access to the community colleges. Probably the best case to talk about is the Ontario Skills program, which is the broadest program and it is the largest financial incentive we run. The $35 million is available to all businesses and we have a very extensive communications process where firms all across the province have access to the information and can apply for financial assistance through the program.

In terms of the training, it is up to the client who provides the training and, unlike the federal purchase with the Ontario Skills program, we see almost the opposite situation, with about 93% of the training being provided by what we will call either in-house to the firm itself or through third-party trainers. Access to training is more localized in terms of this program, so small business are not disadvantaged by the fact that they may not have a community college right in their community, although there are over 100 campuses and access is very pervasive, and there is considerable outreach from the community colleges to go into individual firms. The Ontario Skills program is designed to do training on the job. It is key to get the training to the work sites so that no one is disadvantaged from the distance to the community college.

Mr G. Wilson: I would like to return to the Ontario Training and Adjustment Board that you mentioned in your opening comment, to flesh that out. There are a couple of questions I have about it. You say it will involve the labour market partners and I am wondering whether you can sketch out who the main partners are and how they will come together in meeting the goals you are going to set out for them.

Hon Mr Allen: First of all, by the labour market partners we of course mean the business community -- the employers on the one hand and the employees, labour partners, on the other. We refer also to the various community organizations involved working with those who are not in the labour market actively but wish to be and therefore need training. We refer also to the trainers in the public and private sectors, as a constellation of groups, all of whom have a major investment in the question of training.

Second, as you will recall from the statistics around the recently framed Canada-Ontario agreement on training, we devote currently in excess of $751 million to training enterprises through the government. That is a large and very scattered series of undertakings and we have two concerns in government in trying to reorganize the whole training front. One is to bring all that constellation of activities into a much better focus. The second is to put it much more directly in the hands of the labour market partners, who have the biggest investment in seeing that the training is well done.

In other words, we will shorten the distance between those who deliver and those who receive, because the very people who would be involved in the delivery will in effect also be the people who receive and benefit. In that context, we believe a great deal more vigour and close attention to training and training needs will result. We also believe, given the historic failure through various devices under a series of governments to bring the private sector more fully into adequate investment levels for training, that only by engaging them in this fashion, in the very enterprise, will they be led to commit more resources to it.

One of the major purposes of the Ontario Training and Adjustment Board is quite simply to attempt to access more private sector resources to enhance across the board the training undertakings in the province as a whole. We will of course relate to that institution in a policy fashion through major memoranda of understanding and through legislation that will spell out the place, role and status of that board. Does that answer your question?

Mr G. Wilson: In part, yes. This seems to be based on a faith in these partners agreeing on the goals of training and reaching some agreement on how those goals should be achieved. What leads you to that faith? Why do you think the labour partners are going to reach this agreement?

Hon Mr Allen: I guess a couple of years or more of recent, fairly intensive consultation around these issues has led us to that belief. Under the previous Premier's Council and its launching of an inquiry into this, it published Competing in the New Global Economy. The receipt of that document and the discussion of any number of other documents that have issued from provincial and federal governments in recent years have created a significant consensus out there among the partners as to the critical importance of enhancing the whole training agenda.

There are details of difference, certainly, nuances of emphasis that each partner wants to make or see happen, or slightly different goals they want to achieve through it, but they all believe those goals can and must be achieved through better and more widespread training.

On that basis, I think we look ahead with a great deal of comfort to the consultation that is going to be launched very shortly around the Ontario Training and Adjustment Board, that we will find a remarkable coherence of views and a willingness to work together to make it a great success.

Mr G. Wilson: I think, as one of the elements, you referred to the agencies and organizations already in the field. How are you going to co-ordinate their activity in the future?

Hon Mr Allen: The question as to how they will all be co-ordinated in detail will in some measure be explored in the context of the consultation. Some work has been done on that and we certainly have a proposed structure for the Ontario training board itself and for local board structures which, I hasten to say, is fairly flexible, open and awaiting whatever additional inputs the community wishes to provide us with.

The detailed question as to how the delivery of a given program will mesh with others and in turn come under the direction of the Ontario Training and Adjustment Board in some fashion is going to be a subject matter in particular for the internal consultation in government that will take place over the next three or four months, alongside the external consultation, to try to devise the best ways of pulling all that together. Certainly there has been enough discussion in the ministries to date so that all of them that field those programs have a considerable comfort with the model, the general direction and the possibility of doing that, but the detail still has to be worked out. That will preoccupy us pretty heavily over the next few months.

Mr G. Wilson: I guess you are comfortable that there is enough responsiveness in the board's structure that community initiatives will be considered. For a community that relies heavily on a particular industry, will it have access to the kinds of training programs it feels will aid that industry? Will it be able to get the funds through the training board, through some kind of negotiations or approach to the board? Is that part of the model?

Hon Mr Allen: Yes. I think people should disabuse themselves of the notion that the Ontario Training and Adjustment Board will somehow be the great director in heaven that will sit up there and tell everybody what to do. That is not at all the model. In fact, the initiative will lie rather more heavily at the local board level with many sectors, industries and community groups that want to access training. They will propose an initiative they want to see funded and they will be looking for dollars for it. In order to field those kinds of operations and develop and flesh out in an active way the local training plans local boards will develop, they in turn will want to access dollars that will be available through OTAB and through government. As a result, the initiative will be very heavily community-driven. It will not be a matter of the provincial board laying down a game plan which everybody else will then have to dance to; far from that.

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Mr Sosa: When we deal with the local boards and we see what is now the picture, we have the federal government involved in allocating money for training; we have 57 community industrial training committees throughout the entire province; we have 24 community colleges as deliverers of training, and we have the various ministries that will deliver some aspect of training, whether it comes through adjustment from the Ministry of Labour or from the Ministry of Skills Development with the Ontario skills development programs, and we also have the apprenticeship program.

In fact, the consultation process on local training and adjustment boards is going to be an integrated one. For the first time in the agreement we had with the federal government, it was agreed to avoid the duplication and bring about some kind of sanity to what is taking place in training at that level.The process will be animated jointly by the federal government and the provincial government. In addition, the federal government has established what it calls the Canadian Labour Force Development Board, which is private-sector driven as an arm's length agency. They have a very significant role in determining standards for local boards across the country. They are also working extremely closely with us.

The chair of the Canadian Labour Force Development Board is the president or chief executive officer of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, and the other co-chair, dealing with that specific area of local boards, is Buzz Hargrove from the Canadian Auto Workers.

The paper that will go out for consultation on local training and adjustment boards will involve the Canadian Labour Force Development Board, the federal government and the province of Ontario. It is an unprecedented step in which we are attempting to rationalize this, as I said earlier on, to give some kind of coherence to the very issue you are raising. We will have the large employers, the small employers, the community action groups, the community colleges and educators and the local deliverers of training.

We hope that out of this, and through the consultation process, will come some rationalization to what we are doing. There is a great amount of hope. We are working together on this for the first time; it was one of our objectives in negotiating the agreement. The Premier made it very clear he did not want a duplication or triplication of the kinds of services offered in training, so that we could present to our clients and customers some measure of coherence.

Mr G. Wilson: It sounds like a really well-thought-out and promising approach, almost that if this does not work, where are you going to turn? I really wish you luck on that.

Hon Mr Allen: The ministry is very excited about it, as is of course the implementation team under Naomi Alboim. They are working literally around the clock trying to get it all put together and to get the consultation under way.

The Acting Chair: We will move on to Mr Daigeler and Mr Brown, if they have any questions they would like to raise at this time.

Mr Daigeler: Mr Chair, what is your plan now? Do we have the rest of the proceedings here?

The Acting Chair: Would you like the rest of the proceedings?

Mr Daigeler: The Chairman earlier indicated that was the arrangement. Are you aware of that?

The Acting Chair: There are no Conservatives here, so --

Mr Daigeler: I am just wondering with the government party -- anyway, we will wait till Mr Jackson comes in. I think he perhaps knows about it.

The Acting Chair: Sure, if you want to continue in the meantime.

Mr Daigeler: I think Mr Brown had a question.

Mr Brown: As a northern MPP, I think we face in the north some unique challenges in skills training. At least right now we are experiencing some of the worst economic times imaginable and that creates a setting where training is required. I speak from my own experience representing the community of Elliot Lake, where we have had massive layoffs. We have had 2,400 people laid off within the last 18 months. We are looking at another 1,000 next spring and finally, in 1996, we are looking at the rest of the mining sector being closed down in Elliot Lake.

I do not have any particular expertise in this field, but I am wondering, particularly in the situation where we know we have 1,000 people who will be laid off at an employer on a particular date, has the ministry given any consideration to working with employers before that date to attempt to get skills to those workers that will be useful in today's marketplace in other settings, instead of waiting until the layoff occurs and then attempting to retrain these people? When you know the deadline is approaching, do you have a program where you work with employers and the workers to kind of get them ready for the inevitable? It seems to be standard practice to wait until the unemployment insurance occurs and then to take advantage of the federal statutory programs. I guess I am looking at a proactive way of dealing with these unfortunate events.

Hon Mr Allen: As you know of course in your own community, where the workers are largely organized by the steel union and in turn organized within the Canadian Steel Trades Employment Congress, there is a very interesting vehicle we work with very closely in terms of responding to issues like this. In the Algoma circumstance, for example, we worked out a very closely negotiated arrangement to provide for a jointly funded program at Sioux College for several hundred employees of Algoma who wanted to get into further training to enhance their own future prospects. That certainly worked very well.

The Canadian Steel Trades Employment Congress has found to its pleasure that the employers who are part of that bipartite structure, in the few years it has been in existence, have grown more and more comfortable with giving greater and greater notice of closure, layoff, downsizing and so on, precisely so that the training and adjustment process can begin earlier and be more effective. Because that is so, we are in that industry getting much earlier notice and we are able therefore to put training programs into place at a much earlier date and more effectively for the prospective layoffs.

I would have to say that, across the board, the ministry is not geared to sort of searching out every instance of this, but there are statutory notices that are required for participation, for example, in the industrial adjustment service of the federal government, which of course we are also always up to date on and familiar with through the employment adjustment branch of the provincial Labour ministry. As a result, we are normally able to move quite quickly on any evidence we get of a plant closure or a major layoff.

One of the main problems -- and this might not be as significant in Elliot Lake as in some other places -- has been that there are no statutory requirements about reporting for plants if the layoff is less than 50. As a result, we often do not learn as early as we might about small employers who are going out of business. It is our hope to be able to remedy that legislation at an early date to be able to gather the statistics around early closures in the small business area in order to respond more effectively to them. It is a very good question and a very important one for us to be addressing.

Mr Brown: I realize we have long lead times in this particular instance, which is not particularly common, but it seems to me there would be opportunities for a program of even job-sharing to create more employment in the short term, because we have also seen at the very same mine a layoff of 400 or 500 other people. We could continue a higher level of income for those workers while the operation was ongoing, and at the same time they could spend a day or two a week, or one month on and one month off or whatever, doing training. It would create more full-time employment at a higher income and at the same time give them an opportunity to upgrade their skills so that once they are laid off, they have more opportunity to find another position. That is what is particularly my concern. With Rio Algom, we are looking at a mine that we know -- the government has told us -- will close in 1996. That is when the contracts are up, so we know exactly when the layoffs are over a long period of time. It is not as if it is going to be a surprise to anyone. I just thought it would be an interesting concept for someone to explore.

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Interjections.

The Chair: Perhaps you two could share this with the questioner.

Hon Mr Allen: I just wanted to say that, to the best of my knowledge, there has not been a formal inquiry from Elliot Lake for our services. But there certainly has been from Kapuskasing, for example, and we are sort of in a responsive mode to that at this point in time. We are certainly open to those initiatives and to helping wherever we can up in communities like yours where there is a major problem facing people.

Mr Brown: Of course the second problem, and it is not particular to the north but I think it may be more prevalent in the north, is that you train for what? Our communities are long distances apart. A diversified economy is always the goal but not necessarily the reality.

I know in our office we have a large number of people coming to us and saying, "Gee, I'd like to be a heavy-equipment operator." That seems particularly attractive to people who have operated mining equipment all their lives, but there is really no market for the skill, at least in our area, and probably not a great market today in Ontario for that skill. What kind of counselling are you doing or what kind of outlook are you getting so that you can advise people about what direction they should be going in so that there will be a job after they have finished the training, or at least they optimize their opportunity of finding a job they would enjoy and be fulfilled at?

Hon Mr Allen: As you know, and I will ask the deputy or one of the staff to fill in some further response to you, when one gets into an adjustment situation, one does counsel fairly carefully to discover what additional skills the employees might happen to have, what particular orientation they may have that might lead them to another skill they do not have and how all that can be put together in terms of realistic employment opportunities. I am not as familiar as I might be with northern communities, with single-industry focuses and so on, where the options clearly are somewhat more constricted. But I do know that in major adjustment undertakings in an industrial community like Hamilton, one can be remarkably successful in placing workers of all ages and backgrounds in at least equivalent work and income levels if one does it right. It may well be that someone has some more information -- Les, have you? -- around some of the options in the northern context.

Mr Horswill: There are two points I think would be helpful in terms of "training for what?," be it in the north or elsewhere; there are two responses the government obviously is working on. One is the institutional response, which is part of the basic rationale for the Ontario Training and Adjustment Board, with the employer and the employee -- in that case the employee is threatened by unemployment -- working on the same objective. Workers want to take training that is credible in terms of securing a job, so the active participation of an employer and an employer community is very much in the interests of workers, and they are very concerned that this be the case.

Mr Brown: Just for a second, though, the difficulty I am talking about is that any employer would be a couple of hundred miles away. It is not an easy thing to interface.

Hon Mr Allen: I guess there, obviously, you are into counselling around mobility and the problems that may entail, and what industry in what community under what circumstances?

Mr Horswill: On that basis, we complement the federal government, which of course provides mobility grants and, with us, provides counselling. In addition, at least for older workers -- that is, now over 45 years of age -- we provide for two years of $5,000 of training for the individual who can pick up that training while unemployed, while on notice of layoff, and indeed with a new employer when he has found a new employer. That program is now in the Ministry of Labour. I cannot speak to the details, although obviously the budget of the program has been increased, as has demand of course, during the recession.

Hon Mr Allen: It can now be accessed alongside unemployment insurance as well, under the new agreement.

Mr Horswill: Yes, and it is as absolutely assured as you can be that income support would be there from the federal government while the individual is on full-time training with that money.

Mr Brown: Again, I am speaking from a particular community because that is what I am familiar with. Perhaps someone from the ministry -- it does not need to be now -- could give me the numbers on how much money the ministry is spending in Elliot Lake and area to provide skills upgrading and skills training. It has been remarkably successful, I will tell you, with the federal government through its programs, and academic upgrading through the boards of education has been remarkably successful, at least in terms of uptake rate. I do not know if it is successful yet in terms of jobs. We do not know that. But it has been working relatively well and I think both the federal and provincial governments should take some credit for that. I think that is important. What we need now is a few jobs for these people.

The other question, and I am not sure that it relates directly to you, concerns the adjustment program for older workers. I think it is Ministry of Labour, but I am not sure. In this particular instance, we have 260 people at Denison Mines that I think are qualified for that this month. The Minister of Labour for Canada said in response to the Liberal MP for the area that the federal government has signed that agreement and that their pensions, from its point of view, are ready to go but that the Ontario government has yet to move. If that is not your responsibility, would you talk to your colleague and get him to sign the agreement so we can get going? These people need their money at the end of the month.

Hon Mr Allen: We will certainly follow that up for you and get you all the details on that. We are not aware of the problem of a holdup that is being referred to, but we will certainly give you all the information so that you will get a good handle on it, okay?

Mr Brown: Good. Thanks.

Mr Daigeler: If I can go back to the estimates book and in particular zero in on the apprenticeship program, Minister, you are familiar with the Premier's Council report on skills in an international economy. They talk in that report about the apprenticeship system in Ontario and how in their opinion our system is quite antiquated. In particular, they refer to the fact that there are inadequacies in the Apprenticeship and Tradesmen's Qualification Act. They talk about the problem that the average age of apprentices in Ontario is 26 years. They talk about the problem that the dropout rate for apprentices in Ontario is 50%. They talk about an excessive administrative workload that is associated with the apprenticeship system. In other words, they call for a major overhaul of the system.

I have in front of me the Siemens document they have produced comparing our apprenticeship system with the one in Germany. I am sure you have had a chance to look at that.

Minister, I have not really heard you make any clear statement on your goals for the apprenticeship system, other than some vague references that all this will be handled by the new OTAB, but reforms to the act fall under your prerogative. Are you looking at that?

Also, the relationship of journeymen with regard to apprentices, the number of apprentices per journeyman, I think is a sore point. What is your view on that whole question? Are you looking at any concrete initiatives to make those structural changes to our apprenticeship system that have been called for by many people and that I think are needed?

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Hon Mr Allen: I am very glad you asked that question, Mr Daigeler. There has been rather generalized talk about reforming apprenticeship for an awfully long time around this place, both under previous Tory governments and previous Liberal governments; yet at the end of the day not a lot seems to have changed, and that has been very frustrating, I think, for a whole lot of people, myself included.

At one level, of course, it is not entirely fair perhaps to undertake a comparison straight off with the German system, but it is the comparison that everybody makes because historically it is the one that is most successful. It is interesting that only a few months ago Quebec sent a delegation to Ontario to examine the apprenticeship system in Ontario because it was so impressed with it. I guess it depends on where you are coming from as to how you evaluate what we have.

Obviously there are some very good things about it out there and there are some very problematic things out there. Among the problematic things, if one does the big comparison, is that we have some 60 apprenticeable trades whereas Germany has in the mid-200s; 240, 250, 260, something like that. I think the obvious question is, why have we not expanded apprenticeship into more areas and used it as a training device more successfully? That is certainly something I have recently charged the ministry with attacking and it is gearing itself up to do that.

We are not waiting for the Ontario Training and Adjustment Board. What is roughly contemplated with OTAB is that there will be a phase-in of certain responsibilities over time, because one cannot anticipate that the whole board would take on the whole mammoth job of administering training in Ontario from day one. The first transfers of responsibility would be around workplace training. Only later would the apprenticeship form of workplace training be devolved. That could be 18 months to two years down the road. I am not interested in waiting two years for apprenticeship reform to take place.

Mr Daigeler: Neither am I.

Hon Mr Allen: I have charged the ministry with putting together a major initiative for me which embraces all the major elements of apprenticeship reform that need to be undertaken, which include the number and range of apprenticeable trades, updating some very badly outdated regulations around trades and looking at the question of ratios and the duration of apprenticeship -- is the way those matters are defined in legislation now appropriate for our time and our kind of training and our needs or is it not? -- and doing something about that.

We all know there have been transitions in some apprenticeship fields, for example, into multiskilling, in which new skills have been brought together in new forms in order to suit the new demands of the new workplace. We want to examine trades from the point of view of their practical applicability in the contemporary world and in the contemporary workplace.

We need to ask ourselves the question that you asked earlier: What kind of funding system should be built around apprenticeship in order to reward those who train and, if you like, get levy from those who do not, so that they have to make their contribution in one way or another? That is something we hope the OTAB will resolve for us. If it does not, then we will have to find another way of making certain those resources happen and in that particular fashion.

We have one thing the ministry has done a lot of work on in order to renew apprenticeship and provide a basis for it. This was done under the past director, Peter Landry, who is with us this afternoon, and it is being continued under Helmut Zisser, the new head of the apprenticeship branch. It puts in place a whole new series of provincial advisory committees to advise us on the trades and the current state of the trades so that we get the best local regulation we can around each trade in the field.

We are about halfway through, roughly speaking, reviving a much-neglected resource in the apprenticeship system which has just been left to sort of wither on the vine in recent years, the whole series of initiatives we are trying to pull together in order to attack the apprenticeship reform issue. I just want to note that we have been very busy in updating standards in the regulated trades.

We have also been trying to identify more consistently the common core of training that resides in a number of different trades and to ask ourselves how that relates to the way in which trades are being and can be fielded. This is being piloted currently in the motor power section in particular in two colleges.

We are also trying to develop more flexible training formats on a modular-based approach to the apprenticeship system, so that one can more readily identify the skills that are needed and train for them, and then certify the training and be satisfied with what comes out at the other end.

Mr Daigeler: Really what I appreciated hearing most is that you said you are not waiting for the work of the OTAB to work on and possibly bring in major changes to the apprenticeship system. I presume then that it is the apprenticeship branch in your ministry that has been charged with this responsibility.

Hon Mr Allen: That is right.

Mr Daigeler: I certainly wish you well with that and I am glad I am hearing this, because I was afraid that OTAB was going to do everything. Quite frankly, the more you talked about it, the more I was getting concerned that it was sounding very much like a bureaucratic structure looking after the administration and everything else, and co-ordinating. I was very much losing hope in something very concrete and practical that will be put into place that the previous report was talking about: the changes to the legislation, relationship of apprentices to journeymen, length of apprenticeship and so on. I do not think it needs that much administration. It requires a decision by the minister.

I think my colleague has a supplementary on this.

Mr Brown: Thank you, yes. I wonder, as you are reviewing these items, Minister, are you including in this a review of how apprenticeships could be worked into the secondary school curriculum, at least in terms of having the students being prepared in an appropriate manner at the secondary school level, or maybe even earlier if that is appropriate, so that the journeyman or the masters have the people coming out with a knowledge or base that is appropriate? I see that we are.

Mr Daigeler: No, it says here that 80% of high school students did not know what a journeyman is; that is in this council on technology.

Mr Brown: In particular, one of our problems -- and I see it with our school system, and all this is integrated -- in my situation in rural northern Ontario, is that we have a secondary school with I think 700 or 800 students where many of the shops are not operating. The school board has closed some of them over a period of time, because with the number of students it has, it is just not viable to operate a full spectrum as it might be in an urban centre.

I just want to encourage you to look at the secondary schooling our children are getting so that they might work into an apprenticeship program in an appropriate way. Is this part of the plan?

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Hon Mr Allen: As you know, in 1989 the school-to-work apprenticeship program was instituted, and I think there were initially five boards that implemented that program in that year -- Wellington, Timiskaming, Durham, Windsor and Hastings. Since then there have been additional boards, to a total of 33, that now participate in that program, so there has been a very significant growth in a very short period of time. It is very popular. Boards are inquiring about it all the time and we hope to see a really major expansion in that.

As you know, the OSIS reforms in the secondary school system created some havoc in terms of technology programs in the high schools a few years ago by reducing the options available to students and, as a result, the capacity of getting technology programs and following them through to a senior level as an optional part of your curriculum was simply almost wiped out. That of course undermined one of the major foundations upon which one could have assumed one would build apprenticeship, so this new initiative -- I hasten to say it was begun under the previous government -- has made it possible to move back, in a substantial way, into the school system with apprenticeship programming and technology-related instruction.

In at least one of the northern communities not far from you -- I think it was in Timiskaming -- a board did get itself quite heavily involved in an apprenticeship program with the federal government and then began to run into some heavy weather in clearing regulation hurdles in the second and third years, and it was finding it difficult to field the rest of the program. We managed to pull them in and have a consultation with them and help them get back on course so that they could complete the whole of this -- I think it was a small motors apprenticeship -- by using community resources, the board resources and matching them all together for a program in that community. It was quite innovative. We established it as a pilot project because it does not fit into the other guidelines. It was a full apprenticeship program that they fielded; it was not just a school-to-work project.

It is normally considered the domain of the colleges to be the sort of apprenticeship sponsor on the education side of the apprenticeship program, and not a school board, but in this instance, as in some other parts of the north, there are communities where the colleges do not have an active program or presence around apprenticeship, and therefore it is legitimate to think in terms of alternative institutions fielding that part of the program. They are doing it quite nicely.

Mr Brown: I find it encouraging that we are looking at innovative programming to communities not only in the north, but particularly given the distance problem we have and the small population in many centres.

I was also concerned with the aboriginal opportunities that might be available through apprenticeship. I represent, I think, eight first nations. I wonder if there is any direct programming pointed that way. One of the things the people in the first nations have been telling me is that they are looking for opportunities to upgrade their skills and to participate more fully in our economic wellbeing.

Hon Mr Allen: I think Mr Fields can give us an update, particularly, for example, on the Manitoulin experiment that we have been into with an apprenticeship there in house-building trades.

Mr Brown: I was at that meeting.

Hon Mr Allen: You were at that meeting and you know about it. He may provide the rest of us with information about how that is going, and also perhaps some of the apprenticeship work related to some of the public construction projects in the north, around Ontario Hydro and so on.

Mr Fields: I think we are on the verge of doing an awful lot with first nations throughout northern Ontario, and probably in the south also. We have been out, not on a big campaign, but a quiet campaign, which is appropriate to first nations I believe, consulting with them, with specific first nations, treaty organizations and native organizations.

One of the successes we have had is with the United Chiefs and Councils of Manitoulin Island. There are five bands there and, at their request, we customized a native residential construction program which goes from site planning and excavation, laying blocks, right up, excluding the compulsory aspects of plumbing and electrical, but also with an emphasis on estimating, ordering of supplies, supervision and management.

I had the opportunity of doing a tour there, in fact, about a month and a half ago. We started with 20 native apprentices. There are still 19 in training, which is quite phenomenal. They are building 10 houses, two on each of the reserves. The apprentices feel very proud about what they are doing. I talked with four of the five chiefs there and the technical adviser for UCCM and they are very sincere and committed to what is going on. They are wrestling with some of the issues around who completes the training first, and obviously in their culture, that is going to be quite an issue for them. In all probability they will not all complete this year. Some of them will require further training next year.

Those standards now have been released across the province, and a number of other first nations are very interested. Other provinces, in fact, are interested; I got a call from Alberta yesterday. We anticipate there will be much more of this type of training going on in the province in the near future. We require the ongoing commitment of the federal government. This is a costly venture.

In northern Ontario we are also looking at infrastructures built by the Ministry of the Environment and Environment Canada up the James Bay and Hudson Bay coast. I think they are putting in 25 water treatment plants over the next five years, so we are looking at water treatment operators, sewage treatment operators. They will have to draw the lines into the houses, so there is potential there for plumbers. Obviously it is a very short construction season, which creates a lot of problems, so we will have to make some major adjustments in the way we normally deliver training.

Also, with Ontario Hydro and now also the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, there is a strong expression to continue native training. Ontario Hydro actually is very good, and it is looking for more. What we are endeavouring to do is continue to cultivate the relationships we have now started with native groups. In many instances, as I am sure you are aware, they require some upgrading in order to be able to succeed at apprenticeship, especially around literacy and numeracy. We have to build those pieces in also, and build whatever apprenticeships we are going to do for them in a very flexible manner.

We still have problems with distances, as you indicated earlier. We cannot ask, especially native apprentices in the north, to travel distances far from their home communities, so we are looking at a number of other ways we can bring school training right into their communities. We were able to do it on Manitoulin. I think we will be able to do it elsewhere.

Mr Brown: One of the difficulties, and you have expressed that well, is the distances. It is often very difficult for people to move from one reserve to the next. It is remarkable, really, to maintain 19 people in this program, because it is very tough just to show up for work every day, just because you have trouble getting there.

The other problem I see that you are resolving is the classification question. What are they apprenticing to do? In the particular case you were talking about, there was quite a discussion about what they are actually apprenticing to do, and I am encouraged that we are finding some innovative ways of solving those problems.

Mr Daigeler: If I can continue the questioning on the apprenticeship program, the minister will remember that in 1988-89 a target was set over five years for some 60,000 apprentices. How are we doing with that target? In other words, how many apprentices do we have now, and also, are you maintaining that target?

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Hon Mr Allen: The figures now are some 50,000, almost 54,000 apprentices in total, comprising 51,325 males and 2,372 females, for a total of 53,697.

Mr Daigeler: So we are very close, actually, to target then?

Hon Mr Allen: The target was 60,000 for what date, 1993?

Mr Daigeler: I think so, yes.

Hon Mr Allen: A five-year target? Certainly we are moving. We have of course run into a major problem in the form of a recession, which makes it exceedingly difficult. The member will recall that during the last recession in the early 1980s there were a lot of losses in apprenticeship. It took a big dip after that, and that is why we have instituted the laid-off apprentice program to try to target 6,000 apprentices who are at risk and keep them in the field and keep their training moving so that our investment in them would not be lost and so that their investment in themselves and in their futures would not be lost. In that respect you might be interested in the fact that we have counselled a total of 5,675 apprentices whom we had to actively seek out and determine what risk they were at and then try to counsel them into one or another of a variety of options such as advanced college instruction programming. As you know, each apprentice every year goes to a college or an institution in order to undertake the education portion of his apprenticeship. We have arranged for them to be able to do any or all of them in advance so they can keep on the learning process even though they might not be at work at that point in time in an actual factory, or we have sought out alternative employers who will carry on their apprenticeship, or we have sought out co-operative employment arrangements whereby they would do that with more than one employer and maintain themselves in the workplace. We have also looked for substitute or alternative simulated workplace situations where they can continue their hands-on training.

Our total activity under that program has been that through advanced seat purchases, we have accommodated 1,319 laid-off apprentices through project activities to keep their training going. We have counselled a total of 5,675, for a total of 8,391 people we have been working with actively around the laid-off apprenticeship program.

Mr Daigeler: So really the previous government, in its objective of 60,000 apprentices over five years, has achieved its target, even though I agree with your earlier comment that both my government and the previous Tory government perhaps did not bring in the needed structural changes to the apprenticeship system. Nevertheless, I think we have moved forward at least in the number of apprentices, and I am pleased to hear that.

What about your own targets? Since we are close to the 60,000, are you setting yourself any particular targets? Do you have any number that you are trying to reach?

Hon Mr Allen: No, I do not have a specific target, unless I sort of put the German model of 240,000 apprenticeable trades as my target or something like that. No, I am not as interested in targets as I am in putting in place the actual reforms that will expand the number of apprenticeable trades, that will deal with the racialist question, deal with the support mechanisms, deal with the question of translations into French to accommodate the French community, which has a major apprenticeship problem on its doorstep as well, and so on. I am going to push that as fast as I can and we will get as many people through the system as we can.

Mr Daigeler: I do not have the figure in front of me what the target was and whether there was a target, but the number of women apprentices of course is still very low. We discussed that earlier when there was still a representative of the third party here, but since they are all gone now perhaps we could come back to that.

The Chair: The Chair would like to correct that. I am a member of the third party.

Mr Daigeler: You are here as Chairman, Mr Jackson. I do not think you are a representative of the third party.

The Chair: In your absence, I will remind the committee of your absence.

Mr Daigeler: I had hoped the third party would have put more emphasis on this very important question of skills development. In any case, this number of less than 3,000 female apprentices still is very low. Can you enlighten me? Did we have a target to reach in a particular time frame?

Hon Mr Allen: It would be useful for us to have some discussion on that point, because there are people here who are more experienced with the way in which targets function or do not function in a certain context. Les?

Mr Horswill: It is quite straightforward certainly on that one. The target ambition of five years ago was to move from 2,000 to 5,000 women apprentices and the target has demonstrably not been met. That is a good symptom. We have to look more rigorously at barriers. Certainly speaking for staff and management of the apprenticeship branch, we are not suggesting the target be abandoned, but the difference between what we have done and what we wanted to accomplish is useful evidence that we have to find ways to do better.

I would like to add that we have a partnership now with the federal government on some improvements in apprenticeship, which is quite different than was the case over the last five years. There are no numbers, but we are both committed, as the minister indicated, to working together to reduce dropout rates, to find ways to reduce the age of apprenticeship, to find ways to increase representation of under-represented groups and to make apprenticeship a more accessible and useful tool in new trades and new industries.

Mr Sosa: May I add something to that, because with the projects we have for women's access in apprenticeship, although the number would be 2,372, there is a fair amount of work done in pre-apprenticeship training. So these projects have just been kind of an orientation, exposing the females in the high schools, to apprenticeship, and there are some pre-apprenticeship programs which have been done. If you added the number of those who have been oriented to the trades, this is massive throughout the province. Really, the attitudinal barriers and the educational process and the counselling -- I think we will gain the benefits of that kind of preliminary and prep work probably in about two or three years. We have not met the targets, but I think there is a lot of work other than the figures you see here identified as the number of females in apprenticeship.

Mr Daigeler: I appreciate that. If you can provide me with a breakdown of the specific trades that the current women apprentices are involved in, again, that would be useful. You can leave that with the committee in writing. Then afterwards if you want to read it into the record, that is fine too.

Hon Mr Allen: We can broadly give you the numbers. For example, there are 879 female apprentices in a traditional trade like hairdressing and hairstylist; other service occupations such as cooks, horticulturalists, 538; in the motive power occupations, which are non-traditional, such as motor vehicle mechanic, auto body repair and so on, 193; construction occupations like plumber, electrician, carpenter, etc, 367; industrial occupations such as machining, tool and die making, industrial woodworker, 162; and employer-established occupations, 233. Staff can explain that in detail if you want an understanding of what that category entails. The total is 2,372. It is also included in the package of answers to Dianne Cunningham's questions which you will be receiving.

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Mr Daigeler: I have not had a chance yet to go through that package.

Hon Mr Allen: But the chart is there for you.

Mr Daigeler: Okay. If I can move to the Ministry of Skills Development offices, on page 34 under Initiatives, you say that new guidelines will be prepared for these offices to reflect new directions and priorities. Have these guidelines been prepared, and may I have a copy of them?

Hon Mr Allen: Yes. If we could have Walter Tuohy come forward, he can tell us a bit more about that, but the guidelines have been prepared. Do you want to give us just a bit of a rundown on what that entailed, Walter?

Mr Tuohy: I am Walter Tuohy, consulting services with the ministry. We have been through a fairly lengthy process working with the managers of the Skills Development office system and the consultants associated with those managers, as well as the colleges, to design guidelines that are updated and appropriate for some of the new directions we have put into place. We have met collectively probably three or four times with representatives from the colleges in other meetings. That has resulted in documentation we are quite pleased with and that we can work together on with the colleges. That has now been finalized and is actually in the process of being printed. It will be out in the field shortly.

Mr Daigeler: May I have a copy of that too?

Hon Mr Allen: Sure.

Mr Tuohy: Yes, indeed.

Mr Daigeler: Thank you. Even though it is not very dramatic, there has nevertheless been a drop in Ontario skills development office, OSDO, clients planned in the estimates book. Could you explain why there would be a drop?

Mr Tuohy: As I mentioned earlier to Mrs Cunningham, we have taken a conservative approach both to our projections for this year and in recognition of last year's achievements. The basic reason is that we have requirements in front of the consulting service to give more extensive effort to reaching new clients, clients who are at a lower level of achievement and awareness in overall human resource development, training and composition of training plans. We will reach out to a collection of firms and organizations, working through sectoral associations, working through unions, working through some mode whereby we can reach a wider audience and get more bang for our buck in terms of the consulting effort.

In numerical terms, that has meant we have been able to touch a lower number of actual clients coming in the door. But as the minister indicated earlier this afternoon, hopefully the clients who do come in the door represent both a larger number of firms and organizations and also firms of slightly larger size, so that our efforts are going to have widespread ability to contact a much broader percentage of the labour force members in Ontario.

Mr Daigeler: Okay. I appreciate that explanation. I think that is quite reasonable. If I can move on to the trades updating program, we have not really touched on that at all. Here too I see quite a dramatic drop in the planned number of participants.

Mr Tuohy: What page are you on, Mr Daigeler?

Mr Daigeler: Pages 44 and 45. My specific question relates to page 45. You see in the graph a drop from 12,000 to 8,500 in the number of participants regarding the trades updating. Can I have some explanation of that?

Hon Mr Allen: Could I ask Helmut Zisser to come forward and give you more detail than I can on that subject.

Mr Zisser: I am Helmut Zisser of the apprenticeship branch. The trades updating program was reduced in funding for the current fiscal year, which is why there has been reduction in both budget and effort in that program.

Mr Daigeler: What was the reduction there?

Mr Zisser: About $1 million in 1991-92.

Mr Daigeler: Could I ask the minister what the reason was to save there?

Hon Mr Allen: I will ask Mr Zisser to respond to that, or the deputy. It was at one level a consideration with regard to the cost recovery program inside government and, second, a matter of transferring moneys so that they might be better deployed in other more effective programming that we have. Mr Zisser.

Mr Zisser: The choice of the trades updating program was made largely on the basis that there is a sense that we have a capacity within this program to achieve some savings, which is a priority of the government, as well as to maintain client service in so far as there is the ability for the program to start to be fund-generating to the extent that clients of the program can pay some kind of a tuition fee. That is something we are exploring with the colleges involved in the delivery of the training with us. In fact, it has been their recommendation that we look towards some kind of tuition fee in this program because of the demand for the program. The demand far outstrips the available dollars in any event. Clients who wish to be in the program are prepared to pay for participation, or pay some fee towards participation.

Hon Mr Allen: I believe the program is not as constrained as the graph would indicate. Are the actual figures not 9,700 and not 8,500?

Mr Zisser: Yes. I think at the time the graph was prepared we anticipated a much greater effect in the total reduction than what we now think will be the case.

Mr Daigeler: So you are also saying, though, that the clients are very interested to have their skills updated. Perhaps it is a lack of resources that --

Mr Zisser: In general, the client group are employed journeypersons who are looking for an opportunity to upgrade their skills and, if given the opportunity, are quite prepared to foot some of the bill themselves. Our key investment as a ministry generally is first to put in place the curriculum and then to put in place the arrangement whereby the clients can get that training. We are now looking to ways to have clients more fully participate in the training. In other words, we would not want to limit the availability of the program, particularly if people are prepared to pay, simply because of the fact that there is a set budget.

Hon Mr Allen: I think the clients in this case are all fully employed journeypersons.

Mr Zisser: Yes.

Mr Daigeler: Do you see that updating of training of employed workers as part of the projected work of the Ontario Training and Adjustment Board?

Hon Mr Allen: Oh yes, very much. That will be the first responsibility devolved to OTAB, the workplace training, and therefore the enhancement of the skills of employed workers, and then we go on from there.

Mr Daigeler: This is where I am a bit confused. On the one hand you give emphasis to updating as a prime target for OTAB, and on the other hand it is an area where you have started to cut and make a reduction. How do you explain that conflict?

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Hon Mr Allen: If I can refer you to page 53, the technicians and technologists upgrading program, I want here to tell you that in my answer to you yesterday I slipped in the words "trades updating" and then at the same time I referred to the technicians and technologists upgrading program, so it sounds as though they are one in the same thing. They are different.

The trades updating program indeed has had some reduction, but it is more than made up for by the amount of dollars we have put into the technicians and technologists upgrading program, which had an infusion of an additional $2 million over the course of the last year. On balance, we are actually moving further ahead on that front, but we are doing it in another form with technicians and technologists who are out there, notwithstanding the fact that fully employed journeypersons certainly need opportunities to enhance their skills as well because they are training apprentices.

Mr Daigeler: If I am not mistaken, the provincial advisory committees were associated with this particular program. What is happening to those provincial advisory committees? I think they are somewhat in limbo.

Hon Mr Allen: In fact, no. That has been a very onerous and extremely active pursuit of both past directors. I referred earlier to Peter Landry, who is here, and to Helmut Zisser, the current director of the apprenticeship branch. Mr Zisser, perhaps you could sort of get us up to date on that one.

Mr Zisser: A provincial advisory committee is established for a regulated trade. There are currently some 21 committees that we have put back into operation within the last 18 months. We are planning to do more and to have more committees up and running, so that is the effort we have made. As those committees are brought back into operation their first assignment is generally to look at the training standard in place for the trade to determine whether that is still current, and if not, to initiate a process for updating it. We have updated some 50 standards in the past two years.

The committees are also being asked to review the regulations that govern the trade, particularly in relation to the appropriateness of the apprentice-to-journeyman ratios, as well as the wage ratios. A number of committees have recommended changes to the regulations. We have so far enacted five of those regulatory changes and quite a number of others are planned in the next while. Those are some of the activities the committees are now undertaking.

We are also being much more rigorous in so far as we expect the committees to start to provide the minister with an annual report on the state of the trade and the kinds of changes that are required. We are asking them to meet more frequently so that they can become a more involved party and take greater ownership for the trade. Those are the kinds of steps we have taken to try to reanimate and revitalize those organizations.

Mr Daigeler: That is good to hear. The minister also will be familiar with the study that was done on access to professions and trades. I am just wondering if you have any position with regard to the work that was done. Where is that at? Are you working with the Ministry of Citizenship? It has some responsibility for that, or at least it used to have. I do not know who has responsibility in your government for this. Has there been any discussion on that? What is the position of yourself and of your ministry with regard to that document and with regard to the work that was done there? Are you planning any initiatives there?

Hon Mr Allen: I will ask Leah Myers to respond to that, but as you will know, under the agreement that we struck with the federal government, very notable access questions were dealt with there. We managed to expand the provision for special priority under training from the four federal designated groups to a total of eight, which would include, in addition to the normal designated groups, francophones, displaced workers, the unemployed and social assistance recipients.

Mr Daigeler: I am not sure whether I made myself fully clear. What I am talking about is of course the study that was done to compare training in other provinces or other countries and how that training would allow access to Ontario professions and trades.

Hon Mr Allen: There is an initiative under the Ministry of Citizenship which is focused around the whole issue of prior learning. That initiative is under way, although I am not entirely up to date on it. Leah may have that information for us. As you also know, we have initiated under the Vision 2000 reforms a prior learning assessment project for the college system as distinct from access to work, but it will entail some of the same considerations about how you measure prior learning and how, through it, people can gain better access to the college system.

As for the work-related issue, Leah, is there something you can help us with on the citizenship front?

Ms Myers: I am Leah Myers, manager of corporate policy. I can add a couple of things to that around some of the recommendations of that report and how we have responded to them, one of them around being able to evaluate a person coming into the system as to his prior learning as you raised it.

One of the recommendations was around developing competency-based training so that you can look at particular areas of skill and judge an applicant's prior learning and experience against that. That is one of the areas in which we have done a lot of work in introducing competency-based standards.

We have also done some work, and I can provide you with more detail if you are interested, around reaching out to communities that may not have access to apprenticeship programs, for example, through our marketing and promotional efforts aimed at third-language communities. We have also been working with the Ministry of Citizenship quite closely in preparing its overall response to the access report.

Mr Daigeler: That is presently under consideration because I think, especially for immigrant Canadians, this is very much an issue that is very dear to their hearts. Are you receiving a lot of complaints? Perhaps that is the wrong word, but is it coming up frequently that you are receiving requests from trained individuals who are not allowed to enter certain trades because of the qualifications that are not accepted?

Mr Sosa: Could I respond to that? Yes, there were complaints received. As a ministry, we then co-ordinated through the ethnic press and through the immigrant press and convened a workshop. It was convened very recently, this fall, as part of the client and customer service relations between our ministry and outreach for our clients.

I was able to bring together all the community action and immigrant groups, invitations were sent out. Therefore we shared all the information concerning our apprenticeship programs so that now they have what they did not have in the past. First, they did not know where to go and how they could get information for assessing their standards, their degrees and also the training they have had.

Through this community network, the response was very good as a first meeting. It was started this fall and we intend to have many more meetings. What we now have established in the ministry is the outreach and the network with all our community and immigrant associations in particular, so that once the Ministry of Citizenship has completed the work it is doing, I think there will be easier access for these individuals to start proceeding with the recommendations which will come from government. I am saying, first, yes we have received complaints and, second, we are already proceeding with outreach programs.

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Hon Mr Allen: I could alert the member to something he probably should know. Under the recent agreement with the federal government, one area where we were not able to make the kind of advances that we wanted to make was with regard to further funding for language programs. Of course, as you know, they specifically focused on immigrant and recent arrivals, but not only them. The reason for that is that the federal department appears to be undergoing some internal reorganization, dividing all the training programs in one half of the department and the language support programs in the other half of the department. They were going through an exercise of separating these things out at the time we were trying to negotiate the comprehensive training agreement.

They simply told us, in response to our repeated insistence that we wanted to enhance that part of the agreement, that they had no mandate to discuss that and would not talk about it. However, they did assure us that they would be quite happy to talk about this under either a specialized agreement during the three years the current agreement runs or in the context of a comprehensive immigration agreement with the province of Ontario. They have been most encouraging about our going back to them on the subject. If you find the enhanced dollars are not there, that is why. They were not prepared to include them in this agreement. We will be actively taking up those options in the next year.

Mr Daigeler: I guess we are reaching the end of the process here. On page 41 you spell out the budgets for the various training incentive programs. Could you provide me with a breakdown of these budgets for the administration costs for each of these programs, what is going into administration and what is actually going into programs?

Hon Mr Allen: Sure. We can do that on a program-by-program basis if you wish; no problem. I note, however, that you should realize that the apprenticeship program, for example, is very heavily an administrative program and therefore you will find the administrative dollars will bulk large because the nature of the program is to administer. It is not a delivery of service in the training itself. That takes place in the workplace under the employer.

Mr Daigeler: Yes. I noted your response earlier because the question had been asked. At the same time though, and I quoted that a little bit earlier, there was reference in the Premier's Council report that there is too much administration around that whole question of apprenticeship. Whether they are blaming the ministry or in fact even the private sector, it is probably a combination of the two. I think it is always good to keep the administration costs low. I am sure the minister has the same interest at heart.

Hon Mr Allen: It depends on the program.

Mr Daigeler: Can you or someone enlighten me? What is the difference between the Ontario traineeship program effort and the apprenticeship?

Hon Mr Allen: It is distinguishable, quite clearly.

Mr Horswill: There are three significant distinctions. First, traineeship is a pilot program for three years that is to attempt something besides apprenticeship. It is up to two years in non-trade areas of skills. It is an attempt to develop new models outside the apprenticeship system that are more flexible, but it is not inconceivable that down the road they could be integrated into a more broadly based apprenticeship system.

The individuals in a traineeship are not indentured formally under the Apprenticeship and Tradesmen's Qualification Act as apprentices, but these pilots are being developed on a sectoral basis where there is concurrence with employee groups, unions and employer associations.

Hon Mr Allen: What we do is enter into a contract with the sector on a bipartite basis. The dollars are available for the development of a curriculum and then the development of a pilot project in which the curriculum will be worked out and applied to see how it functions and then modified and applied to the whole industry, hopefully with its investment of dollars in the subsequent program.

Mr Daigeler: I just could not quite see how different that is from what we are trying to do under the apprenticeship system, but really what you are saying is that you are just giving it a different name, more for perhaps budgetary reasons than for anything else, because you are saying that with what we are learning from this, we may reform the apprenticeship --

Hon Mr Allen: No, it is quite different.

Mr Sosa: When the pilot project started, it was part of the youth skills package, and as part of the youth skills package, it was linked to the school-to-work apprenticeship program, traineeships and then summer trades. Therefore, we are dealing with entry level jobs. It came back that 64% of all students who were entering high school then went into the workforce with neither skills training nor some kind of post-secondary education.

Our mandate deals with training in the workplace. Therefore, it was one of those pilot projects, as with the school-to-work apprenticeship program, to see whether we could deal, in a co-determination in the workplace for entry level jobs, with the training of those who were entering the workforce. There is a clear distinction between that and apprenticeship because it deals primarily with entry level training. You are dealing with generic skills, basic skills. That is the type of thing we are dealing with.

Mr Daigeler: By entry level, you really mean generic skills, basic skills.

Hon Mr Allen: The apprenticeship focuses on a much more rigorous, long-term skills training program.

Mr Daigeler: But that is one of the problems identified with the apprenticeship program, that perhaps it is too long.

Hon Mr Allen: Some indeed, others perhaps not, and that is part of the review process we are going through at the moment. This is different in that it deals with the cluster of entry level skills that are needed in a given industry, such as electrical or electronics or plastics, to get employees off to a good, running start in that industry. It does contain a component of generic skills as well so that they will have a package that makes some sense for them, both in the longer term and in the short-term needs of the industry.

In the plastics industry, we discovered that there was a high turnover rate, for example, in the employment in that industry. When it was analysed, it was discovered that the central problem was that there were not adequate entry level skills to cope with the demands of the jobs in the industry and that was why people were sort of peeling off, getting out, dropping out, being fired and so on, because they could not cope. So we put together a package of traineeships to cope with that.

Mr Daigeler: I see the Chairman waving his gavel there. It must mean something.

The Chair: No, no, I woke up in time to get all of it actually. As we are coming close to the time, I wonder if the committee would allow me to ask the minister one quick question.

Mr Lessard: I do not know. It depends on what the question is.

The Chair: That is an invitation to hear it.

Minister, today your government announced a discussion paper on employment equity. Can you share with the committee the degree to which you have influenced that discussion paper and are addressing or are concerned about the issue of a large number of employment situations where the trained workforce, starting at the apprenticeship level, must be committed so that the employers can follow through with the objectives of employment equity? Do you not see as hand-in-glove, and to what extent has your ministry been involved in developing the consultation process?

Interjections.

The Chair: I just wanted to raise employment equity. It is an important issue in my caucus and it had not been raised, and I was hopeful that the minister would discuss that briefly.

Hon Mr Allen: Obviously it is critically important to the government, because we brought forward the initiative, and certainly in my ministry we see the initiatives we take in the training front functioning hand-in-glove with the employment equity enterprise which is being sponsored by the government as a whole.

Those employment equity measures are in significant ways reflected in the recent training agreement with the federal government, because there is a major expansion in the equity proposals in that document which both governments endorse. I cannot see the initiatives of this ministry or the initiatives of employment equity doing anything other than marching forward in the most intimate fashion to the benefit of everybody in the Ontario marketplace.

The Chair: It being near 6 o'clock and in anticipation of a call to the House for a vote, I would like to proceed with the votes, if I have the agreement of the committee.

Votes 3601 and 3602 agreed to.

The Chair: Shall the estimates of the Ministry of Skills Development for the year 1991-92 be reported to the House without amendment?

Agreed to.

The Chair: Before I call for adjournment, I believe the minister wanted to express his appreciation to the staff who were here to assist the committee in its deliberations. Please proceed.

Hon Mr Allen: I do want to thank you, Mr Chair, for your chairing of the meetings we have had over the last three days of these estimates, and also the staff from the clerk's office who have facilitated it all, not least of all our scurry to attempt to make some rearrangements which then were not necessary. We apologize for putting you through all that, but it has worked out well for us as well.

I want to thank my own staff who have appeared and responded to questions from the committee. I want to thank you all. Unfortunately we could not call you all forward. I am sure you were all eagerly waiting. I saw you on the edges of your seats in anticipation. Leah relished the opportunity to star in response to a question.

Can I say finally I appreciate the questions that have come from all sides in the committee. It has been a helpful process to hear what your concerns were. I look forward to further dialogue with the critics in the House and on other occasions. I hope they will feel free to approach me about any and all aspects of the ministry as we go through these subsequent months until we meet again in estimates.

Mr Daigeler: I wish to thank the minister for being here and for what I thought was an enlightening process. As was indicated by the third party earlier, I think the minister has a very good grasp of his ministry. I think he has given us some indication of the cards he is holding. He has not given us a full picture, but I did not expect him to do that and I think he has given us enough to follow his work quite carefully and closely. I still look forward to some of the written responses that will make our work easier. For that, I thank the minister and his officials.

The Chair: I believe the staff are aware that they can provide those answers to the clerk, who will in turn circulate them to the committee. We will reconvene tomorrow immediately following routine procedings or 3:30 to commence estimates of the Ministry of Northern Development and Mines. There being no further business, the committee meeting is adjourned.

The committee adjourned at 1754.