Assemblée législative de l'Ontario

MINISTRY OF SKILLS DEVELOPMENT

CONTENTS

Tuesday 29 October 1991

Ministry of Skills Development

STANDING COMMITTEE ON ESTIMATES

Chair: Jackson, Cameron (Burlington South PC)

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:

Hayes, Pat (Essex-Kent NDP) for Mr Farnan

Huget, Bob (Sarnia NDP) for Mr Johnson

Sutherland, Kimble (Oxford NDP) for Mr Lessard

Clerk: Carrozza, Franco

The committee met at 1538 in committee room 2.

MINISTRY OF SKILLS DEVELOPMENT

The Chair: I am pleased to welcome the minister, Dr Richard Allen. The standing orders provide you up to half an hour to make your opening statements. Then I will recognize the official opposition and the third party, each for up to half an hour, and then you will be afforded time to respond to those questions raised.

It has been the custom of our committee to have questions routinely tabled or presented during the course of the estimates, and we would hope that your staff, who are in attendance and observing, would be able to prepare the necessary responses that you are unable to communicate immediately. With that understanding, I would like to welcome you and ask you to introduce your ministry staff who are with you at the table.

Hon Mr Allen: It is a pleasure for me to be here as the Minister of Skills Development to examine with the committee the estimates of the ministry's various operations and expenditures and to answer any questions that members may have about any and all issues that pertain to the ministry.

I am happy to be here with my deputy minister, Thomas Sosa, and his assistant deputy, Les Horswill, and a number of other members of staff who are in the wings and available to lend their abilities and competence to us as we need them. We will certainly be happy to do our best to respond to every and any question that members of this committee have. We have no reason in this or any other ministry of the government to hold anything back, and in this ministry in particular. This is very much a high-priority ministry in the context of economic renewal in the province, and highly relevant to the difficulties of the times in which we live.

I think members will want to know in the first instance that there has been some significant ministry reorganization since the last estimates were examined in the committee for the Ministry of Skills Development. It has been three years since that last estimates exercise; in the interval, the ministry has been reorganized and its mandate significantly changed.

In April 1990, for example, responsibility for programs dealing with basic preparation for the workforce and employment access was divested to the ministries of Education, Labour, Environment, Northern Development and Mines, Industry, Trade and Technology and the Human Resources Secretariat. Those members who are coming at this estimates exercise with a long memory and a long history around this place should bear in mind that there are some things going on elsewhere that were once under this rubric but are here no longer.

With this divestment of programs, the ministry's mandate today focuses on providing support and promoting high-quality skills in training and upgrading programs to employed workers in order to contribute to the economic development and quality of working life in Ontario. As I indicated, this ministry is highly relevant to the top-priority exercises of this government around economic renewal. This is a ministry that addresses the need for a well-trained workforce, which is necessary to attract high value added jobs.

We all know that to compete with low-wage labour competitors simply is not an option for this province or this country. The only way we can compete is to go in the direction of the most highly trained, best educated workforce we can produce in order to produce the finest, most competitive products in the most efficient fashion possible. Translated into principles, training for economic renewal means that training programs must be based --

The Chair: I am sorry, Minister, I think the member would like to know what page you are on.

Mr Daigeler: No, Mr Chairman, I would not like to know what page the minister is on. I would like to know why the committee has started to proceed with its deliberations when the House is still in session, when question period is still on and when we have not moved to orders of the day.

The Chair: Because it was the opinion of the Chair that we should proceed with the opening statement of the minister, that we were under a very severe time restraint to handle these estimates and that I had notified the committee that our intention would be to start on time.

Mr Daigeler: Mr Chairman, first of all, it has been the procedure that committees do not start before orders of the day are called. Second, there were no representatives of the official opposition here, because we were of the understanding that these are the rules we are still following. I must say I do not think the ruling you put forward, with all due respect, is one I would support.

The Chair: Your comments are noted, and if there is objection to the ruling, I will entertain that. Failing that, I would like to return to the minister.

Hon Mr Allen: As I was saying, Mr Chair, translating economic renewal into principles for training means that training programs must be based, in the view of this government, on joint responsibility and co-operation between governments and labour market partners, and between employers and employees in the design, implementation and evaluation of training initiatives. You will see as we go through the outline of the ministry's activities just how important that is. A new, co-determined, co-operative way of dealing with the workplace in matters of training is very central to everything we are trying to do.

With this backdrop, the ministry's activities may be briefly described as follows:

First, developing policies to help ensure the province's training programs meet the needs of the labour market players; Second, administering Ontario's apprenticeship systems, which today involve over 53,000 active apprentices and the participation of over 30,000 employers;

Third, supporting upgrading courses for journeypersons, technicians and technologists;

Fourth, providing a training consulting service through 47 Ontario Skills Development offices located in 23 community colleges;

Fifth, providing financial incentives to support training activities undertaken by employee and employer associations, unions and individual firms. The incentive programs include Ontario skills, like the Ontario skills development offices, administered through the community college system; and training trust funds, and programs of that order.

Sixth, developing co-operative arrangements on a community and sectoral basis with business and labour to stimulate workplace training; for example, the initiative with the Canadian electrical and electronics manufacturing industry, which currently has 20 firms participating;

Seventh, negotiating and implementing training agreements with the federal government;

Eighth, supporting community industrial training committees in a network of community-based organizations across the province to identify training needs;

Ninth, overseeing the activities of the Ontario Training Corp.

The delivery system for these programs involves 27 apprenticeship field offices, 47 Ontario skills development offices and Ontario skills offices in 23 community colleges. The programs rely on formal advisory networks such as the provincial advisory committees for the skilled occupations of which there are currently 20, and 57 community industrial training committees, as well as ongoing input from training stakeholders which we solicit through all of our activities and which we get in a pretty generous measure.

I want to refer next briefly to the issue of government restraint. The Ontario training system today has a strong foundation on which we can build to achieve our goals of economic renewal, but the training system does not operate in isolation from the province's fiscal environment. As such, the ministry's programs have been subject to spending constraint as part of the government-wide effort to meet budget targets and foster economic recovery. Constraints were targeted in a careful way so that costs would not affect the direct delivery of training in Ontario.

Programs designed to alleviate the impact of the recession, such as assistance to laid-off apprentices, were not considered as potential constraint targets. Programs directed to equity groups were not considered for reductions. Cuts were not made to spending under the Canada-Ontario agreement on training as this would conflict with the government's efforts to maximize federal training expenditures in Ontario.

Adjustments were made, however, in a number of confined and specific areas. First of all, the duration of in-school training for some apprenticeships, a few, was reduced. The investment fund of the Ontario Training Corp was reduced. Ultimately, the budget for trades updating was reduced by $500,000, with the ministry currently reviewing the approach to funding the trades updating courses with a view to targeting program dollars to priority courses and to developing cost-sharing arrangements with the private sector to ensure that real demand for upgrading is being met.

I would like to review a few highlights of recent activities for the committee. Significant initiatives have been undertaken this year. In the first place, in the domain of federal-provincial relations, the government of Ontario has recently successfully concluded a new agreement on training with the federal government. This agreement goes far beyond previous agreements in a number of respects.

First, by recognizing the size and diversity of the province's labour market: Federal funding has been increased by 83% over the 1990-91 expenditures under the previous program, from $463 million to $846.1 million. The province and the federal government will provide $1.6 billion in funding during the fiscal year: Ontario, $751 million, and the federal government, $846.1 million.

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The second major feature of this agreement has to do with creating and maintaining a strong role for the college system. A large increase in the level of training dollars accessible to the colleges is built into this agreement. Other features include an important role for colleges in local planning and the promotion of college services to third parties purchasing training with federal funds.

Also in the agreement is an unprecedented emphasis on the importance of equity programs. The agreement not only recognizes the responsibility of the government to advance social justice by promoting equity in training, trades and employment, but also contains measures which extend beyond designated federal employment equity groups to include displaced and older workers, social assistance recipients and Francophones.

Strengthening co-operation and co-ordination of effort between the two levels of government is another hallmark of this agreement. It establishes a framework within which the two governments can co-operate to establish local training and adjustment boards, including agreement on joint development, funding and designation, thus getting rid of a lot of duplication and making the whole system much more efficient.

The agreement also removes what in recent years has been a historic cap on the apprenticeship dollars provided by the federal government. Not only is the base funding maintained for apprenticeship in general, but additional funding going beyond the cap of $40 million that the federal government has provided in the past, is available for programs which enhance participation by equity group members.

Further, the agreement takes another step forward with regard to committing Ontario to take steps to reduce the apprenticeship drop-out rate and to work with other provinces to expand the number of apprenticeship trades. Interprovincial standards are part and parcel of advances we are planning in the whole apprenticeship area in any case.

To help meet these commitments, Ontario has commissioned an interprovincial apprenticeship study to examine the issues of mobility of trades persons and withdrawal rates in apprenticeship. Other provisions of the agreement address literacy and basic education, co-operative education, language training, consultation and planning, information sharing, and financial arrangements.

Another highlight of our activities has had to do, quite understandably, with anti-recession measures and activities. Three specific initiatives were undertaken by the ministry to alleviate the impact of recession on training.

1. A $1-million access fund for underrepresented groups to support preparatory training to bring designated group members to entry level for apprenticeship: Many of the designated groups we frequently refer to in our discussions simply had not had the level of experience in the workplace or the skills necessary to make it possible for them to be hired into an apprenticeship in the first place.

We have provided $1 million this past year to promote these undertakings. To date, over 10,000 training days have been purchased, with another 7,100 planned. An example of funded activities is an eight-week introduction to marine mechanics program targeted to the native community. It was delivered on the Curve Lake reserve and administered by Sir Sandford Fleming College.

2. A $2-million enhancement to the ministry's technicians and technologists program lays specific emphasis on training opportunities for unemployed technicians and technologists.

3. A $6-million program to assist laid-off apprentices to continue their training so that the training investment made in them is not lost with the layoff: This is perhaps the most important program of all. Forms of assistance being provided are: accelerated in-school training to coincide with the period of layoff, placement with new employers, alternative workplace training through community-based projects, and counselling.

To give you a sense of the success of this initiative, I should note that almost $3 million to date has been spent on accelerated in-school training, over 5,000 apprentices have been counselled in the course of the month it has been available, and 26 projects have been funded at the community level for a value of $2.5 million.

As an example, one Toronto-based project offered jointly by carpenters union Local 27, the local apprenticeship committee and the Toronto Construction Association is providing alternative workplace training for laid-off apprentice general carpenters. Under the auspices of the project 139 laid-off apprentices, including 14 women, are continuing their training in a two-week program. Another 130 are scheduled to participate in the next two-week session, and so on.

The laid-off apprentices initiative is a good example of the success of working together at the community level in developing and delivering effective training programs, because it requires quite an extensive amount of networking.

I now turn to equity and access initiatives of the ministry in the past year. In 1987, as part of a series of initiatives to enhance the apprenticeship program, the ministry identified a need to address issues relating to access to apprenticeship by women. This meant a greater emphasis on women's access in the delivery of ministry programs, and a research agenda which included an analysis of barriers to employment in these programs.

In 1989 the ministry funded pilot projects to encourage women to become apprentices and enter non-traditional trades. This year, women's access to apprenticeship projects were renewed in order to build on the work of the past two years and realigned to integrate the activities more fully with the Ministry of Skills Development field offices. There are now approximately 2,400 women apprentices in the province, up 20% from 2,000 in 1987. Most of this growth has been in the non-traditional trades. Close to 1,500 women apprentices are in non-traditional trades, an increase of 50% in that category over 1987.

The ministry recognizes that while these figures are encouraging they also reflect the extreme difficulty of overcoming deeply entrenched attitudes and barriers. These challenges are not unique to Canada or to Ontario. They exist around the world. In fact, unlike most jurisdictions, Ontario has attached priority to enhancing women's access and can point to some success. As a matter of fact, very few industrialized countries have such programs in place.

Some examples of success are the women's access to apprenticeship project, which has assisted in registering more than 50 female apprentices in Ottawa and 15 in London. In Nepean, a mother of three on social assistance has trained as an apprentice construction electrician. She averaged 91% in her class and is expected to earn in the range of $50,000 on graduation. In Thunder Bay, a woman apprentice in sheet metal production worked on the new Ontario government building which opened recently. A woman apprentice in horticulture was recently hired -- the first, not only for Thunder Bay, but for the whole area. The examples can be multiplied. But, as I say, there is much work to be done in this area, in a very culturally resistant climate.

Customized apprenticeship programs have been developed for aboriginal people, involving co-operation with the first nations, colleges of applied arts and technology and the federal government. Through La Cité Collégiale in Ottawa, training programs are being provided to French-speaking Ontarians.

A school-workplace apprenticeship program was developed in co-operation with the Ministry of Education and introduced in 1989. Secondary school students attend high school and train as registered apprentices at the same time. The program is currently being offered by 33 school boards, with over 700 students participating in programs covering 29 trades, and is widely praised across the province. It needs expansion and will be expanded.

Regarding new co-operative training agreements, in February, I announced an initiative with the plastics sector under the traineeship program. This will involve about 200 trainees in four different segments of the industry, with training expected to begin before the end of the year.

The traineeship program is a model of training, involving both labour and management. Traineeships are designed to provide entry level training to workers in selected sectors. A steering committee of labour and management representatives guides the design and implementation of the traineeship. The industry accredits the training upon completion. These traineeships, I must emphasize, are based upon bipartite approaches to training, and that is a condition upon which we advance the dollars for them. There have been programs developed in the past in the electronics and electrical industry, for example, under the aegis of the ministry.

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I hope to be in a position to announce new traineeships this year. Considerable work is being done with representatives of manufacturing and dynamic service sectors in the province.

Next I come to the question of improvements to the training infrastructure in Ontario and comment first on client service improvements in apprenticeship. With 53,000 apprenticeships in the field, the administration of apprenticeship is a considerable undertaking, as you can imagine. Each year, for example, some 12,000 to 15,000 new entrants have to be registered and accounted for and processed. Also, 30,000 apprentices are scheduled for the in-school service each year and that of course is a mammoth job. In addition, 12,000 to 15,000 new certificates of qualification have to be issued every year and 60,000 to 70,000 renewed.

To ensure that the administrative system is responsive to apprenticeship clients and to anticipate new growth in apprenticeship training, the ministry is putting in place an entirely new computer system to handle the workload. That new system should be operational by the beginning of 1992, and will speed up the manner in which we serve our clients in the apprenticeship program.

We are making modifications to the management of Ontario Skills Development offices and Ontario skills programs. There will be a new focus under these programs, first on clients in priority areas of the economy, second on training activities which support economic development and technology transfer, and third an emphasis on sectors and larger firms.

In terms of the structuring of the programs, there will be a greater separation of the two programs, which, as I have said, are administered by the community colleges and frequently out of the same offices. With this separation, there will be better access to incentive funds, more accountable management, recognition of the differing needs of clients, greater efficiencies in administration and faster turnaround time of applications.

Program changes to date have produced good results. In 1991-92, over 6,500 clients have been served by the training consulting service. Incentive fund clients exceed 4,500, with funds committed totalling $22 million. A greater proportion of clients came from the manufacturing sector and firms involved in exporting.

Finally I turn to the Ontario Training and Adjustment Board. This has consumed an immense amount of time and energy in the ministry in the course of this last year, as it has in a handful of other ministries in the government. Working from the strong base of ministry policies and programs I have outlined and also, of course, on the basis of programs offered by some other ministries in the training area, we are now focusing upon the government's strategy for economic renewal in the training agenda and attending to the need for greater involvement of labour market partners in the training system.

As members of the committee are aware, the Premier announced the appointment of Naomi Alboim as deputy minister of the Ontario training and adjustment project. This marks the beginning of the design and implementation stage of the board. Naomi will report to me, but will be independent of the Ministry of Skills Development.

The government views the Ontario Training and Adjustment Board as a very significant initiative. It brings together all the partners in the training network with the goal of improving the quality and accessibility of workplace and sectoral training, labour force adjustment and entry/re-entry programs in Ontario, and of expanding a private-sector commitment of resources to training in this province.

As we go into the next month, let me highlight ministry priorities for the benefit of the committee. The first, of course, is the implementation of the new training agreement that we just announced with the federal government. This will involve, first, ensuring that federal commitments are met; second, co-ordinating cross-government activities so that the province meets its obligations; third, assisting colleges to take advantage of the provisions of the agreement; and fourth, ensuring better registration of private trainers.

Among priorities will be the matter of revitalizing apprenticeship. The ministry has been active in making changes to the apprenticeship system to ensure its relevance, for example, by updating standards, introducing flexible training formats, administering improvements to client service, revitalizing the advisory network of industry and labour representatives, improving promotion and marketing, and improving access of underrepresented groups and students.

Employers involved in apprenticeship have told us that the benefits of training apprentices far outweigh the costs, but they also tell us that not enough employers participate in the system and that skilled workers are often hired away by other firms after they finish their training. Those are common complaints and we have all heard them. It is a high priority to expand apprenticeship and ensure that its participants -- employers, unions and trainees themselves -- view it as a relevant and rewarding system of training. However, targets set in 1987 for the reform and expansion of apprenticeship, including expanding participation by 50% and increasing the number of women in the program from 2,000 to 5,000, have not been met. Enhanced resources must be put against these targets to achieve significant growth. The ministry will continue to focus on initiatives to improve the apprenticeship infrastructure and client service.

Major restructuring of the apprenticeship system, including shifts in provincial funding of education and training to provide more support for apprenticeship, will take place under the new Ontario Training and Adjustment Board, but I want to indicate that the ministry is not waiting until the training board is in place to move ahead with significant reforms of the apprenticeship system.

As the Premier has indicated, one of the board's first tasks will be to advise on reforms to the apprenticeship system by connecting it directly to the school system and looking at new forms of co-op education. What is done by that board will build on whatever we have been able to do in the meantime. There will be more co-operative training arrangements as we move into the months ahead. The ministry has been successful in working with unions and sectors to develop innovative training solutions. I have referred to some of them already in the plastics and electronics sectors and there are others coming. We will continue to aggressively pursue bipartite training arrangements using the successful models of the traineeship, training trust fund and sectoral agreements.

I have covered a fair bit of ground and I look forward to hearing the comments of the critics from the opposition parties and their evaluation of training programs in Ontario. I hope we will then be able to go on to a fruitful exchange of questions and discussion of the issues that are outstanding.

Mr Daigeler: First of all, I consider this particular round of estimates a very important one, not just because I am the critic for the Ministry of Skills Development but because I think all three parties agree that the area of training is fundamental to the economic wellbeing of this province. I do not think there is much debate and discussion about the significance of the minister's responsibility among the three parties in the House.

There may be some discussion as to whether we have seen enough action, either by the previous government or by the current government, but I am sure we will be getting to that over the next two to three days.

I would also like to say I appreciate the information put forward in the estimates book. I remember when I was first elected I was sitting on the estimates committee, on the other side of the room, mind you, listening to Mr Johnston, who was the critic at the time. He blasted the then minister, Mr Curling, for what he thought was an inadequate estimates book. He requested --

The Chair: I was on that committee.

Mr Daigeler: You were on that committee too, that is right. I reviewed some of the Hansards. You were not overly friendly either, but that is the role of the opposition.

I note that the estimates now give a good breakdown of the various programs being offered by the ministry and I appreciate that. At the same time -- and perhaps this could be noted by the ministry officials here -- I will be intermingling my comments with some questions to which I would like some answers either in writing or orally over the next little while. It would have been helpful to have in the estimates book, when there is a budget description for the various programs, the expenditures over the last three or five years so we have some idea as to how your projected expenditures relate to what was done before. Obviously it will take a bit of time, but I would like that in writing.

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Second, the various staff complements: Quite frankly, the other estimates have not provided that either, and I think that should be done as a matter of ordinary procedure in each estimates book, that the staff complements for the various offices and programs be indicated. Perhaps it is asking too much, but I am also interested, in particular for the main office, in what the salary ranges are for the people who fulfil the various responsibilities. I guess for the other programs it is probably too far-reaching, but if it can be provided I would be interested in that as well.

With regard to the details of the estimates book, I will be coming back to that. In my questions I will be following pretty well the order of the estimates book because I think it gives us a good opportunity to discuss each major responsibility of your ministry.

In my opening comments I would like to point out that while I appreciate the book and the minister's comments so far, I really was looking for quite a bit more. Perhaps he is hesitant to do that here at committee. I hope he will do it soon in the House. I was really looking for some major indications of the direction in which he wants to take training and the whole area of skills development in this province.

When we started this session the Premier came in with what I guess could be called a semithrone speech, and we have not heard anything about that semithrone speech since then. In that speech he indicated how depressed our economic situation is, and I think many of us can agree with that analysis. He went on to say he was going to bring in major initiatives to turn the situation around and do something about the recession we are facing.

Quite frankly I have been very disappointed. I have not heard anything, or very little. One of the areas we have not heard anything about is training. As I said last week in the House -- and quite frankly I am on a very different wavelength than Mrs Cunningham, who spoke for the third party -- I do not see anything new in the announcement last week about the new training agreement. With regard to the province, the moneys being announced are already in the estimates; and with regard to the federal government, in a way it is not new money because it is diverted from unemployment insurance payments to the training side. I will be asking the minister to be a little more specific on what, under the previous legislation, Ontario would have been entitled to in terms of unemployment payments, what we are receiving on the training side and how much we are gaining or losing in that equation.

Perhaps the minister can take this as notice, I will also be asking how he arrives at this $735 million that --

Hon Mr Allen: It is $751 million.

Mr Daigeler: -- this $751 million he has been putting forward in terms of expenditures on training in this province. I would like to know in detail how he arrived at that particular figure.

I am also disappointed that the minister did not address the whole question of international competitiveness. We have had this famous study by Porter, but well before that we heard the minister's party complain bitterly in the House about free trade and how it was going to fight free trade. Now we are facing a situation where we could be in a trilateral agreement with Mexico, the US and Canada as well. What are the minister's plans to help our workers adjust to the free trade situation with the US and the possibility of the trilateral agreement with Mexico?

When the Minister of Industry, Trade and Technology was here during his estimates on October 1 he said his ministry has to work very closely with Skills Development to become internationally competitive. I would like to hear from the minister. Has he been working with Mr Philip? Is there a study group under way? Is he meeting on a regular basis to address precisely how we are adjusting to the free trade agreement and to the new agreements that most likely will be coming very shortly and that industry and obviously the workers will have to face in this province?

I was looking, in other words, for some indication -- obviously I do not expect the minister to show me all his cards, but to at least give a little peek into his labour-market strategy -- where he is going to take this province to bring it back to economic recovery and prosperity. I am sure the minister is as convinced as I am that training and skills development play a fundamental role in that recovery. What is the minister doing in terms of developing an economic strategy and, as part of that, a labour-market strategy?

The minister knows very well that the former Premier had some excellent work done by various groups of people. The Premier's Council on technology -- and I think the minister's own party was generally supportive of the work that was being done -- did some excellent background work on the whole question of international competitiveness and skills development. They produced some excellent reports which seem to be sitting on the shelves and nothing seems to be happening. I find this very regrettable.

The development of a science and technology culture: What are the minister's plans in that regard? I appreciate what the minister said in his opening statement, but really he is making reference to somebody in Nepean. Of course, I appreciate that, since it is my own riding, but it is obviously very important what is happening to this particular individual. This is really anecdotal. I do not think we are going to turn around the whole province and the economy of this province by zeroing in on individual cases. I am looking, at least at the beginning of these estimates, for an overview, for some of the minister's philosophy, his intentions, his ideas, his main objectives during his term of office. If the minister in his response can address that in some way, I certainly would appreciate it.

I have some questions and I am not sure, Mr Chairman, to what extent they are in order. The ministry has undergone quite a significant change, a reorganization, and several programs that I think really are quite important, like Futures and youth employment initiatives and summer employment initiatives, have all been moved off to other ministries. In fact, this was done under our government. If it is in order, I would like to get some sense from the minister or the ministry officials how that shift has worked. I am a little concerned that in the shift some of these programs may have been shunted aside and are now in big ministries like the Ministry of Labour, the Ministry of Education, and some of these programs are getting lost. I personally regret that.

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If it is proper to ask about some of these programs that used to be part of the minister's responsibility but unfortunately are no longer, then I would appreciate hearing from the minister what his view is and whether perhaps he would rather have those programs back under his own wing, because he might be able to do more about them. He may wish to address that, if it is in order.

I would also like to leave some very specific questions with the minister on the public accounts document, because we will not be coming back to that and therefore I would like to leave them on the record. Again, I would like to have a detailed explanation from his officials. I am sure they will be able to provide that. I am looking at the public accounts document for this year. First of all, it says that over $900,000 was spent on temporary help services. I would like to know how that compares with previous years and whether we are in the same ballpark.

Then, under employee benefits, it lists under "other benefits" attendance gratuities of $44,000. Quite frankly, I do not know what attendance gratuities are. Perhaps there are some very good reasons for them, but if it means what it seems to say on the face of it, I am not sure why there should be a gratuity for attendance. But there may be a good reason.

I also note under travelling expense -- I do not know any of these gentlemen, so I do not want to be offensive in any way, but I would like to know why this is the case -- a Mr A. Cupido is listed here as having travel expenses of $17,836, which is quite a bit more than any of the other gentlemen. I would like to know what these travelling expenses were used for and what it was that he was doing on behalf of the ministry.

Then, under other payments, again in the public accounts -- this is an expenditure that seems quite high -- under Reff Inc is an expenditure of $446,988. I would like to know what this was for.

Then, three related questions where the public accounts document speaks about the expenditures under the Ontario training agreement, apprenticeship training and training incentives. The figures for each college are listed. I note that the figures for la Cité collégiale are very low in each. I am just wondering, does that relate to the fact that it just opened up, or has the takeup been so low -- does it relate to the francophone offerings? I note, for example, on apprenticeship training there is only an expenditure of $2,370. Again, it may be because la Cité collégiale was just starting out, or are there any other reasons? I am very interested to know why these figures for la Cité collégiale are so low.

I am leaving these specific questions with the minister because I will not come back to this particular document, and I look forward to an answer. That can be provided in writing. I look forward to receiving that in due time.

I will leave it at this point. I have indicated the general direction which I am coming from. I have all kinds of questions with regard to the detailed programs and I would like to leave time for these detailed questions as we move through the estimates book.

The Chair: Attendance seems to be a recurring theme in these estimates.

Pauses never show up in Hansard unless I comment on them.

I would like to invite Mrs Marland now to comment.

Mrs Marland: Dianne Cunningham, the Progressive Conservative critic for Skills Development, is unable to join us today and has asked that I read her remarks into the record on her behalf. She will, however, attend the remaining hearings.

"Minister, you are well aware from our discussions and my questions to you in the Legislature that I strongly believe that Ontario must renew its commitment to basic education and skills training or risk losing ground in an increasingly competitive global marketplace.

"Global competition, recessionary pressures and rapid technological change force us to constantly ask ourselves what we should be doing differently. As a nation, we have to pay more attention to increasing our skill levels. We must unify business, union, governments, educators and interest groups to provide an effective training program in Ontario.

"The Premier's Council released a report titled, People and Skills in the New Global Economy. It examined ways in which industry, educators, labour and government can work together to ensure that tomorrow's workforce is equipped with the skills they need to compete, to adapt and to enjoy meaningful working lives.

"Many companies who were interviewed for the survey by the Premier's Council found access to training opportunities limited and not well-suited to their needs. There are so many different programs, so many different entrance requirements and so few support systems that many applicants become discouraged. To put it bluntly, business and industry are disgusted that our education system and the colleges are not able to respond to the specific training needs that have been clearly articulated through industrial training advisory boards throughout our province.

"Ontario needs more technical teachers. School boards should establish community linkage committees with a mandate to review school programs for their relevance to the economic and social life of their communities. The apprenticeship system must be overhauled to encourage young people to pursue careers in the industrial trades, and women must be encouraged to participate in training programs.

"These are but a few of the recommendations that appeared in the Premier's Council's report and are also questions I have been asking the various ministers of Skills Development since being elected to Queen's Park in 1988. I will discuss these issues in greater detail once the question and answer period begins.

"Last week, the new Canada-Ontario labour force development agreement was signed. A consultation process will begin examining job training, research and development spending, foreign investment, the strength of the domestic economy and international trade.

"As I stated in the Legislature on Thursday, we are very encouraged by this joint agreement with the federal government. We will carefully monitor the progress of this consultation process to ensure all parties are involved and that dollars are being spent effectively so we can deliver our training programs efficiently.

"On October 24, the minister stated in response to my question that he will be releasing his consultation document on the Ontario Training and Adjustment Board in mid-November. I am curious about a number of issues surrounding this initiative. Were all community industrial training advisory committees, CITCs, involved in the consultation process? If the training boards are to oversee training, will there be a need for a Ministry of Skills Development to exist?

"I am in contact with the London Industrial Training Adjustment Board on a regular basis. They have a number of concerns which I hope to discuss in more detail tomorrow. In conclusion, I welcome this opportunity to further discuss the mission of the Ministry of Skills Development. This was stated in the estimates summary.

"I think we all agree that our goal is to produce a skilled labour force that will allow our citizens to work and Ontario to compete in the global economy. To achieve this goal, Minister, it is imperative that businesses, industry, unions, schools and governments work closely together."

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Mr Chairman, since I have only used five minutes and I know we are entitled to half an hour, I would like to place on the record, on behalf of the critic, the member for London North, some questions. Hopefully, as the previous ministers have been doing in our estimates this year, we would have the written answers to these questions for the critic tomorrow. I am going to read them, because obviously they are not my questions and I cannot ad lib them.

"In general, the Agenda for People states, `We propose that large employers either offer on-the-job training and upgrading opportunities or pay a training levy with joint employer-worker control of training programs.' The question is, will you be introducing a training payroll tax?"

Let me interject there: I would be happy to give you these rather than have your staff try to copy them down, because you will not get Hansard today, I know. So I will save you the trouble and just give you the sheet as soon as I have finished.

Hon Mr Allen: We appreciate that, Margaret.

Mrs Marland: "Statistics Canada reports that the private sector spends only half as much on training as United States firms. What new initiative will you be introducing to encourage the private sector to spend more on the training and retraining of their employees?

"The Quebec budget introduced a plan designed to maintain 90% of the disposable income the worker had before starting training. When fully operational, $100 million will be available annually under this program. Last year, Quebec brought in a refundable tax credit aimed at businesses which invest in staff training." I will give you a news clipping that is attached referring to that. The question is, "Has Ontario studied these training options, and if so would the minister table any cost-benefit analysis that his ministry has conducted on refundable tax credits and income maintenance schemes?"

Under vote 3602-02, Ontario Training Corp: "The Ontario Training Corp was established in April 1988 as a provincial crown corporation. Its mandate is to stimulate workplace training in Ontario through co-venture investment in new training products and technologies and to provide a database of training programs and professional development for trainers. The SkillsLink database provides information about training programs offered in Ontario. Subscribers can access the database via a modem.

"The Ontario Training Corp's Strategic Plan for 1990-93, approved in November 1988" -- when you and I were sitting on the same side of the House, Minister -- "indicated the OTC would generate sufficient revenue to at least cover all of its operational and administrative costs by the end of fiscal 1992-93. The annual report dated March 1990 indicates that OTC had revenues of $207,000 and operating expenses of $4,226,000, for a shortfall of $4,019,000. Given the size of this deficit, will the OTC meet its 1992-93 revenue goal? If not, has a new strategic plan been drafted?

"What were the revenue and operating expense figures for 1990-91? What are the projected figures for 1991-92?

"The SkillsLink database had a total operating cost of $1.9 million and revenue of $106,000 in 1990-91. Given the shortfall is $1.8 million, is the government satisfied with this program?

"What are the projected operating cost and revenue figures for the SkillsLink database for 1991-92?"

On vote 3606-02, apprenticeship training: "In-school training for apprentices, $21.9 million; laid-off apprentice initiative, $5,712,000.

"Canada graduates 24,000 apprentices a year, compared to Germany, which graduates 600,000. The German labour force is about twice the size of Canada's, which means a proportional figure would be 300,000.

"The Premier's Council in People and Skills in the New Global Economy labelled our apprenticeship system antiquated and ineffective. The report called on the government to revamp the system by updating the Apprenticeship and Tradesmen's Qualification Act to decrease the length of apprenticeship training periods and increase remuneration, by removing institutional and cultural barriers that discourage women, disabled persons and racial minorities from entering apprenticeships and by making the curriculum compatible with state-of-the-art changes in technology."

These are the questions:

"Why is the administrative portion of the $52.6 million apprenticeship budget $16.1 million or 30.6%?

"The federal government put an additional $383 million into training under the Canada-Ontario labour force agreement. How much of this additional money will be allocated to apprenticeship programs? How many more apprentices will be trained?

"The October 19, 1991, the Toronto Star quoted Premier Rae as stating, `Once the Ontario Training and Adjustment Board is established, one of its first tasks will be to advise on reforms to the apprenticeship system.' How long will it take for OTAB to revamp apprenticeship training?"

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On vote 3602-02, employer and community support: "The employer and community support program includes: Ontario skills development offices, $18,800,000; community industrial training committees, $3,249,600; women's access to apprenticeship, $1,062,000.

"The community colleges operate 49 Ontario skills development offices under contract with the Ministry of Skills Development. The offices provide consulting services to employers, unions and sectoral associations to help them identify training needs and implement training strategies.

"Community industrial training committees (CITCs) are voluntary, community-based organizations that provide a forum for employers and labour unions to identify and address local training needs. There are 57 CITCs across the province.

"The women's access to apprenticeship program is designed to increase the number of women entering apprenticeships in non-traditional, skilled occupations. The 30 projects are being realigned: 25 will be delivered by community sponsors and five will be delivered directly by the ministry."

The questions, Minister, are as follows:

"The Ontario skills development offices (OSDO) have been allocated $18.8 million for 1991-92, an increase of $1.2 million or 6.8%. The explanatory notes indicate that the increase is due to the cost escalation. Would the minister please provide a fuller explanation of this increase?

"The graph on page 35 indicates that the OSDO will serve 11,500 employers in 1991-92, compared to 11,611 in 1990-91. Why will 111 fewer employers be served by the OSDO when the budget has been increased by $1.2 million?

"In 1990-91 the OSDO fee structure was modified for first-time clients: All firms with one to 10 employees are exempt, firms with 11 to 49 employees may pay the fee at the discretion of the colleges, and firms with 50 employees or more pay the $250 consulting fee. How much revenue was generated from firms with 11 to 49 employees and firms with 50 or more employees?

"Your October 24, 1991 statement on the new Canada-Ontario labour force development agreement indicated that new local training and adjustment boards will be created. Will the LTABs replace the CITCs? Will existing CITC members be invited to sit on the new boards?

"The community industrial training committees (CITCs) budget increased by $189,600, while the number of committees remains the same. Would the minister explain the increase?

"The initiatives notation on page 37 states that the ministry will introduce new budget and audit guidelines to provide greater accountability for the CITCs. Would the minister comment on any action he has undertaken to implement this proposal?

"In response to a June 27, 1991 order paper question that I submitted, you indicated that there were 28,012 male students participating in apprenticeship programs delivered by community colleges in 1988-89, compared to only 1,030 female students. In the interim, the women's access to apprenticeship program has been launched to redress this imbalance. In order to assess the effectiveness of this program, could the minister please give us his most recent data on the number of male and female apprentices in the province?

"The Liberals stated that they intended to raise the number of female apprentices from 2,000 to 5,000. Does your government support this goal or have you developed a revised number? If so, what is a reasonable target for the number of female apprentices and when will we reach the new target?

"Would the minister provide a breakdown of the specific trades in which female apprentices are engaged?

"How much was spent on advertisement designed to encourage women to enter apprenticeships in 1990-91? What is the projected advertising budget for 1991-92?"

Do I still have some time?

On vote 3601, administration: "The Ministry of Skills Development was created in 1985 by Premier Frank Miller to consolidate skills training from 12 ministries and agencies and to respond more effectively to labour market adjustment.

"Effective April 1, 1990, the ministry was relieved of a number of its programs. These programs were divided among six different ministries: Labour -- Transitions, help centres, labour market research; Education -- Futures, youth employment counselling centres/services, literacy, high school apprenticeships; Industry, Trade and Technology -- startup loan programs for young entrepreneurs; Northern Development -- Ontario summer employment program; Environment -- Environmental Youth Corps; and Human Resources Secretariat -- summer experience.

"The ministry is now only responsible for workplace training, such as apprenticeships, trades updating, skills upgrading for technicians and technologists and training consultation services.

"In 1991-92 the ministry has a budget of $263.7 million, up from $243.2 million last year."

"Questions:" The footnote on page 8 indicates that $55,000 has been added to the minister's staffing envelope because of the dual portfolio. Would the minister explain why he needed additional staff and indicate how many new positions were created?

"The estimates book does not detail the staffing complements for any of its programs. Could the minister provide a staff breakdown for each program and administrative division for 1990-91 and 1991-92?

"The footnote on page 10 indicates that $215,400 will be spent in 1991-92 on the ministry reorganization which divested a number of programs to other ministries. What was the total cost of the reorganization?

"The supplies and equipment budget of the finance and administrative services section (vote 3601-02) has increased by $244,900 or 110%. Could the minister explain the increase?

"How much has the ministry spent on the implementation of pay equity to date?

"Public accounts lists the names and amounts spent on consultants and suppliers for 1990-91. Would the minister specify what each consultant was hired to do?"

There is a list of consultants: "ARA Consultants Ltd., $59,668; Amtra, $67,193; Avant Litho Graphics, $75,770; Beinhaker, Irwin and Associates, $60,250; Ekos Research Associates, $121,838; Granx Inc, $71,839; Image Studio, $82,952." That is not your image, Minister, is it?

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Mr Daigeler: Let's hope so.

Mrs Marland: I do not think they need to spend $82,000 on your image. "Moore Lithographics Inc, $66,823; Levy-Coughlin Partnership, $52,595; Lowe-Martin Co Inc, $53,590; Noble Scott Co, $50,781; Polaris Consulting Services, $146,897; Reff Inc, $446,988; Synon Inc, $85,791; W. S. Kubiski and Associates, $69,815." How much time do I have left?

The Chair: About two and a half minutes.

Mrs Marland: This comes under training incentives:

"How many companies applied for financial assistance under the Ontario skills program in 1990-91?

"Why has the trades updating budget decreased from $4.15 million in 1990-91 to $3.15 million in 1991-92?

"Why will 3,500 fewer employees receive training under the trades updating program in 1991-92?

"If the international marketing interns program was a good idea in 1981, one would expect that with increasing global competition it would be a better idea in 1991. What was the rationale for the termination of this program?

"The training trust fund budget has not increased from the 1990-91 level. Given the fact that 25 funds were established last year, why do the estimates only project the creation of 20 trust funds in 1991-92?

"How many of the trust funds that have reached their full provincial contribution have stopped initiating training programs?

"In response to an order paper question you indicated that the number of newly registered apprentices is down due to the recession. For this reason, the estimates project that 1,407 fewer apprentices will be assisted by this apprentice tool fund program. Could the minister explain why the budget has remained at the 1990-91 level, when fewer clients will be served? "Why has the technicians and technologists updating budget increased from $3 million in 1990-91 to $5 million in 1991-92?

"How many technicians and technologists enrolled in courses in 1990-91? How many are projected to enrol in 1991-92?

"The minister announced traineeships in the plastic sector in February 1991. Have you negotiated any additional sectoral agreements?

"How much will the federal government be contributing to this program?"

The Chair: That is a heck of a note to finish on, Mrs Marland. Perhaps you might table the balance of those, which will be deemed to have been read into Hansard and will form part of the responses the ministry has agreed to prepare for you.

Mrs Marland: Okay. Thank you, Minister, for your indulgence of my sight reading along with the typos.

Mr Perruzza: I do not understand you. Will they show up in Hansard as if they had been read into Hansard?

The Chair: No.

Mr Perruzza: Okay, fine.

Mrs Marland: Just to be clear, in fairness, I am giving copies of only the questions I have read today.

The Chair: Fine. What I take from that is that you will have opportunities to read in other questions before our seven and a half hours have expired. Minister, I now ask you for your summary response.

Hon Mr Allen: I appreciate the comments and questions of both of the critics of the opposition parties. It is quite evident that all of us in this House, not least of all themselves, are deeply concerned as individuals about the question of the state of our economy, the issues of global competitiveness that challenge us and the role and place of training in Ontario in that context. So I am delighted to hear their comments and also to have their questions.

The ones that are more detailed and have been read into the record will of course be responded to by staff in written form. There is a lot of detail in some of those requests that we will want to get back to you on. Mrs Cunningham has been very assiduous in plying me with questions on the Orders and Notices paper in the course of the year and the recital of a series of questions this afternoon by Mrs Marland was not unexpected. I look forward to the more detailed questions Mr Daigeler will be submitting to us.

Let me respond, however, to some of the more global and a few of the detailed comments, remarks and questions they have made. The critic for the official opposition indicated that he was looking for some global direction from this government with respect to training for the future. I am happy to oblige him. In the first instance, making a global statement means recognizing a problem. I think all of us recognize a major problem at two levels. One is in terms of the training that exists in the private sector. Roughly speaking -- the figures are sometimes contested by one industry sector or another -- an average of about eight hours per year per worker is the record of the private sector in training commitment. That is not a record this country can be proud of. More, it is not a record that we can live with and still be a globally competitive economy or satisfy the needs of our working people for jobs and for satisfying and productive work in the other.

On the government side, training in Canada and Ontario has in fact been very much a piecemeal response to a series of selected and piecemeal problems. Until very recently there has not been at any government level any major undertaking to respond in an integrated way with fully fleshed-out, integrated and broadly conceived training strategies. I do not mind giving some credit to the previous government, the Premier's Council in particular, and the creative work it did in trying to remedy that fact; but that was, certainly in terms of the history of this issue, a belated undertaking. Those observations about the piecemeal nature of training in this country as fostered by the public sector were certainly made many times in the previous decade and not fully responded to.

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One remembers studies like Living and Learning, on paid educational leave programs and strategies, the Dodge report and others which tackled the issue but found no substantial response from any level of government. I am quite happy to say that this government is certainly moving in a comprehensive way in tackling the problem.

I think that should be quite evident in two respects. One is in terms of the scale of the initiative we are carrying forward with respect to the Ontario Training and Adjustment Board. That is a major and massive reorganization of training and training responsibilities in Ontario. When this project is done we are going into consultation. There will be lots of feedback from all the stakeholders as we go through that consultation, but there is a preferred model and the government is interested in getting on with some variant, at least, of the preferred model.

At the end of the day what will exist in this province will be unparalleled certainly in Canada, probably I think in North America, and will be a training structure which will be the equivalent, in terms of its comprehensiveness and force, of anything that exists anywhere. We have researched this proposal very carefully. We have drawn on the best wisdom of countries like Sweden, Great Britain, Holland, Germany and others and looked at the models that exist there. We are trying to put together the best features of what we find there and to adapt them to our own peculiar economy and to our own particular circumstances and culture. I think the result, which I am looking forward to, is going to be very exciting for this country. There is a direction, there is a comprehensiveness to the strategy and it is certainly fundamental.

There was a question about how one proposes to involve the private sector in this undertaking. The whole undertaking is a way of involving the private sector in the form of business itself, working people, community organizations and trainers in this structure. That signals another major strategy of this government and that is moving towards a more co-determined economy. If I can use the words of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, what we are looking for in Ontario is an active society, a people that is well trained and educated in every respect so that everyone's capacities are available to the social, economic and cultural life of this province. The only way we can do that is to pull everybody's shoulders together and get them pushing on the wheel of training.

We have seen in the health and safety sector, for example, that we have moved in the direction of co-determined health and safety structures in the province. We are moving into co-determined structures in training. We have begun that work already in the ministry with the training trusteeships and traineeships we have established, which draw together labour and management around the training agenda. The whole thrust in training is in that context of moving towards a more co-determined economy in Ontario.

In another sense, the initiatives we are undertaking are very global. They reflect, for example, the initiatives we have taken, which were in the original report of the Premier's Council, around fostering workers' ownership as another way of drawing on resources of working people so that they may more creatively participate in the economy and assume their own role in its overall direction, impetus and motivation.

With respect to the recent Canada-Ontario labour force development agreement, I want to underline for Mr Daigeler what this agreement is and what it is not. This was an agreement with respect to how federal dollars that would be expended in the training arena would be expended in Ontario; under what terms, in what ways, for what groups, in what structures and so on. It was not an agreement to lay out a whole series of specific program initiatives.

When we were asked by the federal government, for the first time in this kind of an agreement, to signal how much money we were going to be putting into the training agreement in this year, 1991-92, the only amount that was available to us in any realistic, clear and honest budgetary terms was what is being spent and targeted for expenditure for this current budget year. It was not intended to be a list of new initiatives for a coming budget or a future scenario for training initiatives. It was purely and simply a request to put in a figure that realistically represented what Ontario would be doing in training this year, as budgeted.

Let us put aside any sense that this was an opportunity to field a whole series of new initiative projects in the training world. It was not. Those will come. Some of the expanding programs have been noted in the document that sits before us and they are fairly evident. But there will be new initiatives, and not the least of course, the whole Ontario Training and Adjustment Board that I have referred to.

I note that you suggest you do not expect me to lay all my cards on the table. I want to remind you that I did invite you to come and visit with me and talk in a little more detail than we have been able to do in the House about what is going on. The critic for the Conservative Party did take up my invitation. It is a standing one, and I would be happy to talk with you at any time and open that up, but I am quite equally prepared to be very frank with you here in the course of these next meetings.

The question as to this shift of responsibilities to other ministries is an intriguing question. I do not know whether there is an opportunity to call members of other ministries, ministers, deputies or staff from other ministries to respond to that. It is not entirely our responsibility, but perhaps some of my staff have a sense of how that transfer has worked out and they might be willing to talk to you about it. I have not had responsibility for them, and while I have had some contact with them in the context of the Ontario Training and Adjustment Board project, which will draw some of those programs under the OTAB umbrella, I have not got a thorough read personally as to how they have worked out.

Do I want them back? Of course what is happening is that the Ontario Training and Adjustment Board project is going to be the comprehensive umbrella which will pull them all together and knit them into a much more satisfactory training initiative in Ontario. So that question really is not a useful one to answer.

With regard to la Cité collégiale apprenticeship question, part of the answer to what seemed to be the small dollar allocations is indeed that la Cité collégiale is new, but it is also that there has not historically been a lot of work done on apprenticeships for the French community. We have been engaged in the translation and development of new training modules and regulations for apprenticeship in French and we are moving ahead with that initiative. I think there are, under la Cité collégiale and the two satellite campuses, something like eight or nine apprenticeship offerings, but the number that are fully available in the French language for francophones is quite limited. That is an undertaking that has to advance under the apprenticeship reforms.

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With respect to the questions raised and the comments made on behalf of the critic for the third party by Mrs Marland, again, you and the critic clearly recognize the issue around the problem of training structures in Ontario as they have been, and the critical need to advance the agenda with as much speed as we possibly can.

It is true that the business and industrial community, in the words of Ms Cunningham, is unhappy with what they see as the inability of our education system to respond to the economic challenge. I note in passing that we educate a higher percentage of our population to the post-secondary level in Ontario than possibly any other administration anywhere. Certainly our figures are comparable with American averages, and Canadian and American averages through to the end of post-secondary are well in advance of any other country.

There is, in fact, a major contribution that the education system makes to the skills bank that is necessary for launching a highly competitive economy, and there are some very competitive elements of economic structure even as it is. The problem that is noted by, for example, OECD with regard to Canada's ranking among industrialized countries is specifically in the area of training. In that respect the great failure has been the failure of the private sector. What is needed is a major reassertion of private and public sector initiatives in order to respond to our ranking, which is really, frankly, about 22nd out of 22, if I remember the figures, in terms of our training initiatives and our competitive factor.

We badly need to pull both sides together and both of us need to pull up our socks. Certainly as far as this government is concerned it is working very hard at doing that.

The question of pulling in private sector dollars is an important one. The Agenda for People does make some reference to questions of training, payroll taxes and so on. In the first place, we are certainly engendering more private sector contribution every time we get into a new traineeship or a trust fund arrangement. We are bringing private sector industries into arrangements which will entail further down-the-road dollar commitments by them. That will mean there will be greater dollars dispensed in training.

However, with respect to the Ontario Training and Adjustment Board project we have left the question of payroll taxes and so on to one side. We signalled very strongly to the private sector that we expect a greater contribution to training, a very substantial contribution. What we want them to do is take the responsibility, in the first instance, for telling us how they propose to do that through the OTAB and the programs that will flow out of OTAB.

If the day comes when they have not taken up that challenge, then we will have to look at other measures and take initiatives of our own of a kind that is in the Agenda for People. But we feel that as they engage themselves in the Ontario Training and Adjustment Board and in the local board projects, they will want to devote more and more dollars to the training agenda. As I say, if they do not, then the government certainly stands ready to introduce measures to make that happen.

I will leave most of your individual questions that follow to the staff to reply to. For example, the Quebec proposal on the refundable credit and income maintenance scheme is an interesting scheme and I too would like to see some recent update on how that is functioning. As for the Ontario Training Corp and SkillsLink, let's remember that this SkillsLink database is only about 18 months old. The number of clients has multiplied rapidly over last year's number and is growing quickly. It is something that certainly the whole nation has got its eye on. SkillsLink, through the Ontario Training Corp, has been involved with the interprovincial and federal initiatives that are looking at the possibility of creating a national database of a similar kind, so however much it does or does not return on its original projections of cost recovery, it is making a major contribution to the database information techniques available for accessing training programs that exist across the face of the public and private sectors.

With regard to apprenticeship and Canadian-German comparisons, I will only say that, yes, we pale by comparison. But at the same time one has to recognize that while we have something in the upper 50s or lower 60s in terms of regulated trades in the country, the Germans I believe have something in the order of five or six times that. So you are naturally going to get more apprenticeships in a training system that devotes more of its training investment to the apprenticeship mode.

I certainly intend, as we develop more powerful apprenticeship reform initiatives, to move in a whole series of new trades in Ontario that are apprenticeable so that we can expand our numbers too. But with a smaller number of apprenticeships in the first instance, it is difficult to make a proper comparison in terms of a broad population base and have it be realistic.

Why does 36% of the apprenticeship budget go to administration? We do not deliver apprenticeships in the sense that we cover all the costs of a whole program delivery which takes place in the private sector largely. Much of our activity around apprenticeship is very much administrative activity. It has to do with all the certification, registration, fielding and so on of the program. It is inevitable that the administration proportions are going to be fairly high.

How much of the Canada-Ontario labour force development project agreement will go to apprenticeship? In the first instance, it will be the $40 million in the agreement plus whatever amount we are able to deploy on access programs for those who are not in apprenticeship, the equity groups, plus the provincial figure, which takes you up to $50-some million.

As I have indicated on two or three occasions, we are working very hard on an apprenticeship reform package right now to move the whole front of apprenticeship forward, and that will inevitably involve further resources.

Ontario skills development offices, community industrial training committees, women's demonstration projects: Why is there an OSDO increase when at the same time there are fewer employers? What we are doing in the OSDO program is attempting to enrich the consultancy so that we spend somewhat more time than we have in the past with our clients. They will get a richer fare from us. We concluded that the consulting arrangement in the past was somewhat on the lean side. By enriching the consultancy, the number of employers is somewhat depressed even with a slightly expanded budget.

Those figures are of course somewhat related to the economy where there are fewer employers active at the present time, and that would have a depressing effect on the numbers.

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Why is there an increase in the CITC budget? Quite simply because there has been more activity in the CITC front and their administrative needs have expanded. Some of them have, in the past, been almost flimsy structures, although there are some very impressive ones out there, like in Hamilton, my own community. There is a very impressive skills network there under their equivalent of the CITC, but many in the past have been just developing and growing, and as they have grown, of course, there has been a need to expand the budget to facilitate their activities.

Female apprentices: Do we expect to revise the target of reaching 5,000 by 1993? This is one of those very difficult ones. Three years of history --

Mrs Marland: I should explain why I am smiling. In fairness, Minister, I am not smiling because of the subject matter which you are on now; I am sitting here thinking that you are the first minister I have ever seen at estimates who had all the answers. It is impressive.

Mr Daigeler: Some of them.

The Chair: And he has not even finished yet.

Mrs Marland: It is impressive. Normally the staff are passing the answers over. I am wondering at this point if you are reading from your notes. Oh, you are reading straight from the questions.

The Chair: The notes. He took notes.

Mrs Marland: I am impressed, I must say.

Hon Mr Allen: The women's apprenticeship issue is a very difficult one, and it has not been for want of trying, either under the Liberal government or ourselves, that it has been very difficult to move in a very rapid fashion. The fact that it has moved as much as it has is significant. To say now whether one could accomplish more than 5,000 as of a given date is not an easy projection to make. We have obviously thrown new resources into the battle. We have added a whole $1 million to the search for equity group apprenticeship options to facilitate their moving into the preliminary skills capacity that would enable them to get into the employment capacity where they could be in apprenticeship.

We have had to do an immense amount of networking out in the communities, talking to all sorts of community groups on a proactive basis, trying to get them to find people who will come into the program. It has been an extremely active program, and yet it still has not generated that rolling response that you would like. I do not know whether there is a qualitative takeoff point at some point along the way where suddenly this will grow on itself, but at the moment there is not quite enough of a base or a momentum there to carry it on its own. A lot of spadework has to be done in moving this one forward.

The cost of a budget increase for my staff for two portfolios: When a minister has two portfolios he is allotted more staff and related costs, thus the $55,000 you are talking about. Otherwise, the total cost of reorganization I do not have and I think we will go and do a bit of work on that. If the deputy can handle that one, that probably brings us pretty close to the end of your questions, and we can get into some more free-for-all if you like after that.

Mr Sosa: I guess the only questions the minister cannot answer are those which took place before he became minister.

The divestment did not cost us anything except time. The budget of the Ministry of Skills Development was approximately $450 million, and the staffing at that point was about 620 as a complement. It was a matter of negotiating and reallocating positions and budgets to the various ministries.

We have reduced the budget in the Ministry of Skills Development from $450 million to what you now see in the estimates of $263 million, and the staffing complement from 620 to 465. The branch-by-branch details of the staffing complement as requested by the first speaker, we will provide you with the details of that.

The actual divestment cost time, negotiation and some effort to do it well, but it did not cost money.

The Chair: If that concludes the minister's responses and the deputy's response, then I am in the hands of the committee and I am guided by your direction. Do you wish to do time allocation and rotation, or do you wish to not literally take the minister at his word for a free-for-all with questions? I sense that most of the ministers who are coming before us would like a more open dialogue, but if you wish to have a time allocation, I am in your hands.

Mr Daigeler: I think we will follow the previous procedure. It does work well.

Mrs Marland: The minister has had half an hour for opening and half an hour for responding, right?

The Chair: He did not quite use his full half hour in his opening.

Mrs Marland: Since the critic is not here from our caucus, I was going to suggest that we skip this caucus and come back to it first tomorrow. Start with Mr Daigeler and then go to the government members, or Mr Daigeler go for half an hour, whatever.

The Chair: The suggestion is, given that the critic for the third party will be here tomorrow, if Mr Daigeler wished to take a full half hour as his first allocation or if he wanted to divide with the government party, then we will recognize --

Mr Daigeler: If the government party wants to take the 15 minutes today, that is fine. I can go for half an hour as well; I am flexible on that.

Mr Johnson: Why do we not do 15 minutes?

Mr Daigeler: Okay, I will go first for 15 minutes, and then it will be the Tories' turn first thing tomorrow.

Mr Johnson: The Chair will keep a record.

The Chair: That is what I want to put on the record clearly, because I have just been advised that I have to be, for family reasons, at the hospital all day tomorrow. I will not be chairing tomorrow, so I would like to suggest that we will start with the Liberals, a 15-minute allocation. We will then move to the government. Then the first item of business will be to recognize the third party. Then we will revert back to the normal rotation and begin with the Liberal Party, Conservative Party, then the governing party. That sequencing is understood, and I will rest assured that there will be no problems in my absence.

Mrs Marland: Not with the excellent person who will be in the chair.

The Chair: That is a confirmation that Mrs Marland will be able to chair tomorrow, and I thank her. Mr Daigeler, please proceed.

Mr Daigeler: I must say, Mr Chairman, I am a little more sceptical. I am getting all kinds of promises and intentions for the future, including some from Mrs Marland, but I am prepared to be surprised. I am also prepared to be surprised and receive some good news from the minister.

I was surprised last week when I heard the official critic for the third party being highly congratulatory of the minister, and again Mrs Marland today, with some reason, certainly. I think the knowledge the minister had of his ministry was impressive. I was surprised, though, to see the Tories and the socialists in some sort of love-in. I did not know what was going on here.

Mrs Marland: It is only this minister.

Mr Daigeler: Mrs Cunningham was very congratulatory last week, but of course it was the federal government that was making an announcement, and I see some affinity there. But I guess it helps having been the Skills Development critic before you become the minister, so you are a little bit familiar with what the ministry is actually about.

Minister, I must say I liked your ad lib comments quite a bit more than your prepared text, because you did respond to some of my questions about your overall approach to your ministry. All I can say is, I will be getting myself a copy of the Hansard. There were some very nice words in there and some very demanding words. You were talking about unparalleled initiatives that would -- and I did not quite write that down, but I think the sense was that -- in an international comparison stand up very well, and maybe even be tops.

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I am prepared to be surprised, because certainly there is a need for it. If you can pull that off, so much the better for you. Quite frankly, on the basis of your record so far you will forgive me if I am a little bit sceptical, because I started asking questions about skills training as early as last year around this time and at that time you said: "Gee, give me a break. I've been in this office only for some six weeks and you're already hammering me for action." While there may have been some justification about a year ago, I still have not heard very much from you other than to say, "Oh, yes, we're going to come forward with these grand initiatives and unparalleled, comprehensive global strategies." So far I have not seen them, but I will wait. Mind you, I am getting more impatient as time goes on. You will appreciate that it is my role to be impatient as the opposition critic. I will certainly push you on that.

What I have heard in terms of your overall direction I think is a good one. I certainly agree with you and I have pushed the Minister of Labour towards that. I think you were even more direct than the Minister of Labour on that whole question of co-determination. Actually in English I think it does not sound as good.

Hon Mr Allen: In German it is mitbestimmung.

Mr Daigeler: Mitbestimmung, yes. It is kind of a harsh thing. In fact I had asked the Minister of Labour during the estimates what is happening here, because I mentioned it for the Minister of Labour and for your benefit I will mention it again: I was studying in the early 1970s at Carleton University with Angus Reid. He was doing his PhD there. Of course I had no idea what was going to become of him in those days. I asked him, because I had just come over from Europe, what was happening on this question of mitbestimmung or co-determination, because in those days it was the issue. Certainly in Germany and Europe in the late 1960s and the early 1970s, that was the central labour market industrial strategy question. There were big fights on between the unions and the employers. The solution was that there were very major shifts towards co-determination. I think that was definitely for the benefit of industry.

Some 20 years later I certainly like you using these words, because I think it is very important. I think it is acknowledged by our party and by the federal Conservatives that a new arrangement between labour and business is very much needed in this province. I certainly will encourage you to move forward on that front. Whatever you can do in that area I think will be very helpful. I think you have touched on the right words. I will be looking for the action.

So much for further statements. I think we want to get back now to the detailed questions. You mentioned la Cité collégiale, that there has not been very much in terms of apprenticeship training in French. That is true still. I am really struck -- and perhaps you can, through your officials, provide some information on that -- when I look at, for example, George Brown College, the figures are just so disparate. George Brown College has $4 million of spending on apprenticeship training, Humber College $1 million and then la Cité collégiale $2,300. The relationship is just so open.

It is the same thing on the Canada-Ontario agreement on training. For most of the other colleges it is in the millions of dollars and here we have la Cité collégiale, $588,000. It is the same thing on training incentives. I look at Humber College, just the one that is listed before la Cité collégiale, and it spells out $1,633,000 and la Cité collégiale $50,000.

I am just wondering, why is there such a tremendous difference in terms of your stated priority of increased support for underserviced groups and underprivileged groups? I think you are always including the francophones in that area. I would like to have perhaps a more detailed explanation. I do not know whether your officials can do that right now.

Hon Mr Allen: I think we can. I will start off and then pass over to the deputy and any other staff who have relevant figures here. I think you have to recall that in comparing the institutions, you are in the first instance comparing what is a relatively small college of about 2,300 students with George Brown or Humber with many thousands more students. They are much bigger enterprises, they are long-established and they are very big on apprenticeship. So the comparisons are going to be dramatic in the first instance.

Second, you have an institution that has just completed its first year as an institution and did not begin the year with a full set of apprenticeship programs in hand and under way. They had to be implemented in the course of that year in so far as they were able. So all those are problems.

Mr Daigeler: I appreciate that explanation. Do we see a change there now? For example, is la Cité collégiale now coming with requests? Is it moving towards a level playing field?

Hon Mr Allen: Let me hand you over to the staff to give you an idea of just what the growth has been in terms of initiatives and what it is in an ongoing way.

Mr Sosa: I will speak about the apprenticeship to give you an idea and then I will hand over to the assistant deputy minister. Its business was originally with undergraduate students, so it was after a period of time that it got into apprenticeship. We seconded from the apprenticeship office of the Ministry of Skills Development on a full-time basis one of our individuals who specialized in apprenticeship to enable them to start the development and the building of the apprenticeship program. So what you will find after one year of having had that resource is a significant development in the apprenticeship program itself.

I will ask the ADM to speak about the development in some of the other areas associated with Skills Development, like the consultant service of the Ontario skills.

Mr Horswill: I think maybe during the estimates Helmut Zisser, director of apprenticeship, could assist with some details on that question. With regard to la Cité, I want to emphasize that 1990-91 would have captured just the early entrance into the college. What I emphasize on behalf of Skills Development, in developing budgets for la Cité from our programs, that is, for the Ontario skills development offices' consulting service, the Ontario skills' incentives and apprenticeship seat purchases, we looked at the very modest program outcomes of the francophone client base of the ministry in eastern Ontario and contributed more. We see la Cité as a developmental exercise and we are looking to provide resources for them obviously to do a better job with that community than programs the college has had in the past.

Mr Daigeler: That is precisely what I was hoping to hear, because I think it is acknowledged, probably by the francophones themselves, that this is an area they need to be more active in. I think if your ministry can be of assistance in that, that is great.

Mr Sosa: The other colleges have been going since 1966, so therefore we had to give an extra infusion of help in order to assist them to grow.

Mr Daigeler: Okay. I think I am now ready to move into the actual estimates book. As I have indicated earlier, I think in the way it is arranged it is helpful in terms of asking the questions, although I forgot what other question I wanted to ask about ministry reorganization. My question about how it has worked I guess is a touchy question to ask a ministry bureaucrat, whether the various programs are being looked at as efficiently and with equal fervour by the other ministries, but I will venture it anyway.

I am asking this question not out of interest that your ministry should have kept them; I think that is secondary. I am concerned that some very important programs like Futures, Transitions, the help centres, youth employment summer programs -- again, on youth employment we heard nothing over the summer. I am afraid that perhaps by shifting them out of Skills Development they have become lost in the shuffle. I guess it is a bit of a political question, so I will let the minister decide how he wishes to answer that.

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Hon Mr Allen: I think it is very difficult for us as a ministry to make a judgement on how another ministry is performing its duties. I would only say that I do know that in those ministries, these transfers were not simply accepted in a casual way: Here they are, and let's keep on with with our regular business. I do know that, for example, those that were transferred to Education were matters very much of deep interest to the immediate past minister, Marion Boyd, who was keenly interested in seeing them thrive. Similarly, the help centres in Labour -- a very appropriate place for them to be lodged. As a minister, one always likes to sort of gather all the chickens together and have them in the same chicken coop, but you can only be so territorial about these things. Some of them are now in fact in appropriate places, and my sense is that they are being pursued vigorously and the agendas are developing.

I repeat the previous comment that I made, which is that, globally, the objective is that these will be brought together in a much more integrated fashion under the Ontario Training and Adjustment Board than they have ever been in the past, under past governments.

Mr Daigeler: I guess that is probably as far as we can go on this, so I will leave it there.

With regard to page 8 in the estimates, the main office, ministry administration, when we look at salary and wages there, the 1989 actuals were $557,000 but the estimates were $892,000. In 1990-91 the actuals were again only $578,000, but again the estimates for the next year are $929,000. You are indicating a percentage change of only 4%, which is correct when you look at the estimates of 1990, but when you look at the actuals they were significantly lower. Why did the estimates in both years not follow the actuals much more closely?

Hon Mr Allen: You will have to recall that there was not a ministry office in the previous year. Minister Conway held three portfolios and they were all budgeted in another ministry, so Skills Development did not have a ministry that it was budgeting for. Therefore, this year's figures are dramatically different from last year's.

Mr Daigeler: I am not 100% certain that answers my question, because you are a double minister as well. Are there more people that you now have? Perhaps you can provide that breakdown. I mean, you have two portfolios. The previous minister had three portfolios.

Hon Mr Allen: That is not the main point, the two or the three. The point is where the money was expended previously and where it is expended now for the minister's staff, the minister's office.

The previous minister had his staff budgeted through the Ministry of Education, so if you want to look for the comparable dollars --

Mr Daigeler: Skills?

Hon Mr Allen: Yes. You have to look for those dollars in the Education budget. The dollars for Skills Development now are not in Education; they are now under Skills Development itself. I would also say that the Ministry of Skills Development carries the Ministry of Colleges and Universities as far as the minister's staff is concerned, so all that is now in the Skills budget. It is a straight matter of transfer from one ministry's budget to another. It is not a matter of growth or decline. Those questions are not relevant to that particular item in the estimates.

Mr Daigeler: I still would like to know precisely which positions on your staff are working for Skills Development and which ones are working for Colleges and Universities. Who is assigned to Skills Development and who is assigned to Colleges and Universities, if you can provide that breakdown?

Hon Mr Allen: I have, like other ministers, depending upon whether it is a high-priority ministry, low-priority ministry, middle priority, got somewhere between 12 and 13 staff. In my case I happen to have extra staff because I have the two ministries. But the way they are divided, of course, is in terms of their particular responsibilities. One of those people is a policy adviser for Skills Development, so that position is totally focused on this ministry.

Mr Daigeler: So there is only one person?

Hon Mr Allen: But the rest of my staff all do both Skills Development and Ministry of Colleges and Universities activities depending on who needs support in what way at what time.

The Chair: Mr Daigeler, to be helpful, given that your time in this segment has expired, perhaps you could clarify the nature of your request. It is not uncommon to ask for the specific names and job descriptions of the individuals the minister has requested.

Mr Daigeler: The minister has just indicated he has only one person who is specifically assigned to Skills Development. Is that correct?

Hon Mr Allen: If I could just complete the answer, Mr Chair, just so it is clear. I also have only one policy adviser, as far as advisers go, with respect to the Ministry of Colleges and Universities. But I have a communications person who serves both of them, and so on.

Mr Daigeler: I think the chairman is probably right. If you can provide that in writing, that would probably be most helpful.

Hon Mr Allen: Yes.

Mrs Marland: On a matter of procedure: I reconfirm my request from the beginning to have any written questions that the minister did not answer ready for the critic tomorrow, if possible.

Hon Mr Allen: We will do our best.

The Chair: In fairness, the staff will do their best. There is an extensive list of questions.

Mrs Marland: I do not expect them all.

The Chair: And we will be reconvening not only tomorrow, but again next Tuesday, so there will be ample opportunity to get all the questions answered. Mr Johnson.

Mr Daigeler: It is also the practice that written submissions can be made after the sessions of the --

Mr Johnson: Do I have the floor?

The Chair: I appreciate your adding clarification, but I would still like to recognize Mr Johnson.

Mr Johnson: I would like to focus on apprenticeship reform. Often the focus of programs is with regard to the apprentice, and certainly that is important and it is something we want to do correctly, but the other party to the apprenticeship reform is most certainly the employer and in many instances this would be the business community. I was wondering if the promotion and marketing of apprenticeship is geared towards employers. Is this promotion as complete as it is for students? We promote students to become apprentices and we encourage them and there are changes forthcoming, but is the same offered towards business and is it as complete? I am curious to know. Can you elaborate on that for me, Mr Minister?

Hon Mr Allen: I would like to ask the staff to elaborate on all the promotion activity that takes place around apprenticeship, both at the student level and at the employer level, because I think that is a very important question. In general, in most communities apprenticeship is an extremely well-known training option, probably better known than any other, and the major employers in most communities who offer apprenticeships are also well known. Therefore, young people and others seeking employment and wishing training, more frequently than not, know where the best places in their community are to secure that option. But I would like to ask Helmut Zisser, who is the head of the apprenticeship branch in the ministry, to talk to the promotional question in general and possibly any further plans that he and the branch may be developing in order to enhance that activity.

Mr Johnson: I was just wondering what types of messages we are putting out presently to encourage employers to participate.

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Mr Zisser: Apprenticeship historically has been a very market-responsive type of program. The branch would register apprentices when an employer and an apprentice expressed a willingness and desire to enter into this form of arrangement. Certainly our industrial training consultants do, as part of their responsibilities, call on employers to determine whether they are interested in this. This is an area, however, that has been identified as being in need of more effort because it has not been at the heart of the work we have been doing. It is an area we have now recognized that needs enhancement and we are now in the process of reviewing what our training consultants are doing as part of their duties to free them to spend more time promoting the program to the employer community.

Another means by which we promote the apprenticeship program to the employer community is through the advisory committees to the trades. Those advisory committees had basically become non-functioning during the early part of the 1980s, and we are just now in a process of reconstituting them. We have over the past 18 months reconstituted 20 of those committees. The committees consist of equal representation of workers and employers, and they are the forum in which we seek advice about the content of the trade and the standards, but we also challenge them to increase the participation of their member organizations in apprenticeship training. Increasingly we are also looking to involve community groups, employer associations and others in the area of apprenticeship training. Those are all things that we are now undertaking but where we still have a lot of work to do.

Mr Johnson: This may be a question you can answer; I am not sure. During this economic downturn businesses are going out of business and apprentices who are in the business of apprenticing are losing some opportunities. I was just wondering if the ministry is keeping track of these apprentices, if there is a way or a means to do that, because some of them are kind of caught in limbo, as I am sure you understand.

Hon Mr Allen: We have been very innovative, I think, in that respect. In one of my earliest meetings with the ministry staff I took up with them the question of how we dealt with laid-off apprentices, for example, because it was obvious in the past recession that we lost all kinds of skills and training investment by simply doing nothing about the layoff factor and what that did to sideline apprentices who were partway through their programs. Very quickly the ministry invested resources in putting together the laid-off apprenticeship program, which I have mentioned earlier today, with $6 million attached and with a very activist networking program to get out to apprentices to find the ones who were laid off.

That was not an easy job. It is often very difficult to find them, but we did that, and we have been in touch with -- what was it? -- 5,000 in total. The most up-to-date figures are 5,675 apprentices whom we have counselled in the last few months in this program. We have really been remarkably successful. Twenty-six proposals have come to us, which we funded to the tune of $2.5 million, whereby their training can be continued despite the fact that they are in a layoff situation. I do not want to read off examples, but we have them all here. If you want us to duplicate them and make copies available for the committee, that would probably be a useful thing to do, just to see how it can be done. That was a very new kind of initiative that had never been undertaken in Ontario before.

On the other side, in order to retain apprentices you have the job of retaining industries. That is a little bit more difficult, in point of fact, and that is one reason why the registration, of course, of new apprentices has gone down. You will notice later in the book that there is a chart that shows you that apprenticeship registration has gone down. That is an inevitable consequence of industries going out of business or not being in an expanding mode and not being able to take on more apprentices under the circumstances. That part of the challenge is the much more difficult part and has to do with the whole economic renewal agenda and bringing industries back, establishing new industries, and also expanding the whole concept of apprenticeship into new industries.

There is perhaps one item that Mr Zisser did not touch, and that is, how we promote the SWAP program, the school-workplace apprenticeship program. You might say a word about that perhaps, Helmut, because that is part of the promotion of the apprenticeship concept in Ontario now that we are very active in.

Mr Zisser: Starting about two years ago the province introduced a measure to allow young people to both complete their high school training and earn credit towards an apprenticeship program, which is the school-to-work apprenticeship program. In that sense it follows quite closely the experience of the West German dual system to achieve that. In that project we are working with school boards as well as employers to actively find placements for young people in industry in a wide number of trades whereby they can go to work a few days a week and then during the balance of the week they are back in the classroom. This is, at this point, a small initiative. As the minister stated earlier, there are 700 individuals signed up in the SWAP program right now, but it is an initiative that has enormous potential for growth, given the size of the secondary school population.

Mr Sosa: I can add something to that. We started in the first year with five and now we have 33 school boards. It is community-based, initiated in the community, and therefore it has to be promoted by the employers. This is another very good marketing way in which the employers have generated it. But the beauty of that program is that the students stay in school, get their diploma, and also have the opportunity to be trained as an apprentice while going through school. So after getting your diploma it takes you a much shorter period of time to get that skills formation. But the door has not been closed to you because you have your diploma. It means that if you are a late bloomer and you wish to change your career -- as we will change our careers many times in our lifetime -- the opportunity is still there for you to pursue post-secondary education.

Our studies on the labour market for the 1990s indicated that almost 66% of the students who enter high school go into the labour force without ever having any formal skills formation or any post-secondary education. They were finding themselves, for want of money, in what you may determine to be bad jobs. The whole youth skills of the traineeships and school-to-work apprenticeship program were really programs introduced in response to some of those statistics in that research. But being community-based, it means that the employers play a very significant role in its development. Our judgement is that having increased from five in the first year to 33, we will get many more school boards. That is another example of a program which was divested in which we continued to work very closely with the Ministry of Education. It is a success. That one we can deem a success as one of the programs which have been divested, but we work jointly.

Mr Johnson: How has the business community received this program? Are they optimistic? Given the circumstances under which they are operating right now, the economic situation they find themselves in, how are they receiving this program -- positively?

Hon Mr Allen: They are very supportive. It is particularly actively promoted in communities where you have support mechanisms like industry education councils or a group like that which already brings education and industry together as an automatic takeoff point for a program like that. It is very popular and word of it has spread rapidly across the system. As the deputy said, we really do expect there will be significant growth that will continue in the next few years. It should be a really major source of apprenticeship training.

Mr Johnson: And this will be valuable for us as we compete globally.

Hon Mr Allen: Yes.

The Chair: With it being 6 of the clock, I would like to call for adjournment of the meeting, to reconvene at 3:30 or immediately following routine proceedings tomorrow.

The committee adjourned at 1800.