Critics worry about what final training program will look like, who it will benefit
When the 2013 federal budget was announced on March 21, there was a lot of interest from employers in Ottawa’s new focus on training.
During budget week, the $300 million training program was touted as a collaborative program between the federal government, the provinces and employers.
It’s too early to tell whether the program will be effective. The devil is in the details and those details haven’t been laid out yet, said Corinne Pohlmann, vice-president of national affairs at the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) in Ottawa.
“We like the intent of what they’re trying to do with the Canada Jobs Grant, which is the idea of bringing training down to the level of the employer and sort of individual business. And we believe that is one of the most effective ways to get people trained into the positions that are actually out there and in demand in the workforce.”
There are some who aren’t as optimistic about the grant program. It’s concerning that the program gives employers veto power over what kind of training can be done, said James Turk, executive director of the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT).
“Now what we know about training is you want to train people not so they can work on a specific machine for a specific employer, but so they’re employable,” said Turk. “So you train machinists so they understand machining so they can operate machines, whether they are machines at General Motors or Toyota or at Joe’s Machine Shop.”
He fears the program won’t create this sort of training, but will instead be too employer focused to the detriment of the employee.
“Employers often want people more narrowly trained, so instead of doing a three-year machinist apprentice(ship), they’d rather have somebody trained for eight months so they can run a particular machine in their particular company and when they go, ‘Oh I don’t need that person, I’m going to lay them off,’ then that person can’t get another job... because they’ve only learned how to operate a specific machine as it exists in a specific company.”
This kind of short-term, employer-focused training won’t serve employees or the Canadian economy very well in the long run, Turk said.
But others disagree, and think employer-focused training is what the program should be about.
Spending the money this way will help students better reach employers and link to employers more easily and will ensure employers are part of the process, said Serge Buy, executive director of the National Association of Career Colleges, a non-profit organization representing 500 member career colleges across Canada.
Employers are not going to put money into training programs that are not relevant to them and where they can’t hire people, he added.
“I also see that the training will be better adapted to the needs of the employers because they’re going to fund things that are relevant to them, which is great and helpful for the unemployed people that will actually be going through those programs.”
Unemployed or underemployed Canadians who go through these programs that are geared to them will have jobs at the end, said Buy.
“And it’s not a bad thing because today you have students that are spending years in trying to get a degree in something and when they come out of university or they come out of the specific program, they go and wash dishes because there are no jobs.”
There are regions in the country where there is high unemployment, but there are jobs available — employers just can’t find the people with the right skills to fill them, he said.
Having employers be part of the process would mean training money allocation won’t just be the at the sole discretion of government.
“You have governments trying to decide what is good for the labour markets and it’s not working at this point,” he said. “We need unions, we need the companies, we need to have a better system to link up everything that is happening in the workforce in order to make sure that, when we train people, we train them for real jobs that exist and it’s not happening at this point.”
The training won’t be too focused, said Buy. Employers will provide the finalized training in their shops, directly in their businesses to make it further specific to their needs.
The final details of the program will really make or break its relevance to employers, but especially to small businesses, Pohlmann emphasized.
“We really only have the big parameters of it right now and we’re really not sure how this all will work in practice and were hoping to be able to contribute to the development of how this all might work.”
The CFIB believes any new program should recognize and incorporate informal training, such as on-the-job peer-to-peer training because it is the most important way small businesses train their employees, said Pohlmann.
The federation has done research on training in small businesses and its study found such firms spend a combined $18 billion on training employees.
“We think it’s important that any kind of program that moves forward in this direction recognizes that as well,” she said, adding that in order for a program to be accessible to smaller firms it needs to be simpler.
Small businesses already invest in training, so they should be able to benefit from any kind of program funded by the government, she said.
“Sometimes government training programs have a tendency to be red tape heavy and difficult for small firms to access very easily.”
