Legislative Assembly of Ontario

MINISTRY OF SKILLS DEVELOPMENT

CONTENTS

Wednesday 30 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:

Cunningham, Dianne (London North PC) Mr Carr

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

Clerk: Carrozza, Franco

The committee met at 1540 in committee room 2.

MINISTRY OF SKILLS DEVELOPMENT

The Vice-Chair: From yesterday, the rotation was back to the Conservative caucus, and since that critic is not here yet, I think the easiest thing is to revert to the Liberal caucus. Does that suit you Mr Daigeler?

Mr Daigeler: It suits me all right, but we are all going to be confused in the way we are going to be set up.

The Vice-Chair: I know.

Hon Mr Allen: Madam Chair, I suggested in the course of yesterday's meeting that the descriptions of the projects under the laid-off apprentices program might be something that would interest the members, so I have copies of all those for all members, if the clerk would like to distribute them.

I also have responses to some of the questions that were asked. I do not know whether you or members of the committee would like to have an oral presentation of them or whether you want to wait for the full package which will be available in about two days time for the critics.

The Vice-Chair: It would be helpful if we just distributed them and did not take up the time of the committee for the oral presentation.

Hon Mr Allen: Okay. We can get some copies made.

Mr Daigeler: Yesterday, Minister, we left off on page 8 of the estimates book, at least in my round of the debate or inquiry, and I would like to go back to that page, on main office operation. Since we are obviously under very tight budgetary control at the present time because of the recession, I am wondering why there is a 7% increase in transportation and communication costs for the main office and also a 6% increase under the supplies and equipment category when you are trying to limit transfer payments to 2%. I am wondering where that increase is coming from and how it is justified.

Hon Mr Allen: As you also know, Mr Daigeler, we are trying to maximize service as well, and those percentages are not in that respect out of line. But I would ask our deputy to facilitate a response to the question, in particular transportation and communication and the other question.

Mr Sosa: You will note that there is a negative figure of 12%. That was a movement of money from one category to another category.

Mr Daigeler: Is that your answer?

Mr Sosa: Yes.

Mr Daigeler: I would like you to be a little more specific. Are you saying you are moving into transportation things that are budgeted under services?

Mr Sosa: Yes.

Mr Daigeler: Can you give me an example as to how that works?

Mr Holder: There would be some inflationary costs related to transportation and communication.

The Vice-Chair: For the record, would you introduce yourself and your title, please?

Mr Holder: Doug Holder, chief financial officer. The transportation, communications, salaries and equipment amounts are roughly in line with inflation and cover such costs as increases in telephone charges and costs of operating the minister's car and other travel expenses, which we all know are going up. As was pointed out, we did not increase the overall expenditures there and have reallocated and cut back in services to fund those increases.

Mr Daigeler: So you are saying the minister's car is going up in cost.

Mr Holder: No. I am just saying that operating costs generally are going up about that amount.

Mr Daigeler: You just said the cost for the minister's car is going up. That is what you just said.

Mr Holder: There are inflationary costs associated with that.

Hon Mr Allen: With respect to the committee, Madam Chair, that is a pretty huge inference, to assume that it was the minister's car, as dinstinct from all of the transportation responsibilities.

Mr Daigeler: I am not making any --

The Vice-Chair: Excuse me, Mr Daigeler. I think we should try not to interject. There is a point when each of you has the floor and you may then comment on something that has been said before. I respectfully ask you, Minister, to wait until you have the floor, otherwise the whole process breaks down.

Mr Daigeler: I quite agree with you, Madam Chairman. If there are other reasons for the increase in the transportation budget under the main office I am quite prepared to accept them, and if you want to provide them later, that is fine. But I want to repeat that it was not I who said that it is the minister's car. It was the witness who said that.

Also, you indicated that inflation is the reason why some of these figures are up, but in the Treasurer's own forecast inflation is predicted at less than 4% over the next three years, so certainly the figures are higher. They are particularly higher on the next page, page 10. Under supplies and equipment we see a 110% increase from the 1990-91 estimates to this year's estimates. Could you explain that for me? Perhaps if the ministry official is here he might be able to answer the question.

Hon Mr Allen: I will ask the chief financial officer to deal with that question.

Mr Holder: Between the two years, the increase relates to some changes in accounting within the ministry. We have centralized the cost of some of those functions which were administered within the administration services unit, such as accommodations. So where we are making accommodation changes throughout the various offices, we have centralized those costs into one area so they can be managed more efficiently under this unit, rather than having those funds spread out through the other activities of the ministry. That is one reason for the increase there.

The other is that within the finance and administration services area we reallocated funds from within that vote to cover the costs of implementing a local area network within the division, and that is being implemented this year. We are expecting to see some efficiencies come out of that. We have electronic mail now throughout the ministry.

Mr Daigeler: I guess that gives some explanation of the matter. I mentioned yesterday that I thought the estimates book had some improvements over the previous years. In particular, what I welcome is the description of the planned initiatives that are in here. But perhaps for future meetings of the estimates committee, if there are what appear to be extraordinary changes from the previous estimates, it would be useful if there is some sort of explanation provided in the estimates book so that we know what this is all about, because we are obviously interested in these matters.

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On page 12 of the estimates it includes among the activities of the finance and administration division of the ministry: to "provide financial management and accountability frameworks" with regard to the various agencies of the ministry. Can you provide me with the accountability guidelines that your ministry has in place with regard to your transfer payment agencies and organizations?

Hon Mr Allen: I think the the chief financial officer will be in the best position to answer that, if not the deputy.

Mr Holder As you know, the ministry has a large portion of its estimates devoted to transfer payments, and that is certainly a very important area that we need to deal with. Within the Management Board guidelines there are requirements of each ministry to have in place these accountability frameworks. They relate to setting expectations of the agencies, monitoring those programs and getting reports in from those agencies as to how the funds are being used and managed.

In the last few months we have been undertaking a special review of the adequacy of our accountability framework and we have had an interministry team working on that. We have thoroughly reviewed those and have come up with some recommendations which we are now acting upon. It was certainly good to find, once we did that review, that we in fact do have very good accountability frameworks in place for all of our programs.

Mr Daigeler: Could we have a copy of those recommendations to see the results of that review? Also, if you have a sample framework for any of the agencies, it would be useful for us to see how you are in fact monitoring your transfers and how they are being spent. That would be useful for the members of the committee. Is that agreeable?

Hon Mr Allen: Yes, certainly.

Mr Daigeler: Again, Minister, I am addressing the questions to you, but you may pass them on. It is mentioned in the graph on page 11 that 8% of your costs under finance and administration are directed towards the executive director and legal service. It is my understanding though that legal services for your ministry are provided by the Attorney General, or that the Attorney General pays for that part. Do you have some explanation for this?

Mr Holder: Certainly the services are provided through the Attorney General and in fact a lawyer is based in the Ministry of Education. However, we do reimburse the Ministry of the Attorney General for salaries of legal services we use.

Mr Daigeler: So it comes out of your budget then.

Mr Holder That is right. It is a service. It is part of the services expenditures within this vote.

Mr Daigeler: On page 14 of the estimates it is mentioned that you continue to place special emphasis on achieving employment equity commitments and ensuring that programs are in place to train and develop staff to maximize their skills. The minister has often indicated that it is a priority for him to achieve employment equity and to make sure that representatives of all groups of society are present in the provincial civil service.

Could you indicate for me how your human resources branch is trying to ensure that your ministry employment competitions are circulated to the multicultural and disabled communities and other groups that you are trying to reach specifically and also how much money you have spent in that regard?

Hon Mr Allen: I am very happy to respond to that question because the ministry has an unusually good record in recruiting representatives designated groups to ministry staff, as indeed is the case with my own personal staff. I wonder if someone has the percentages close at hand.

Mr Hansen: I am Jim Hansen, executive director, finance and administration. I have numbers of some of the groups we have targeted for employment equity purposes, if you would like me to go through those, and I can talk in terms of what we do in recruiting our employment equity groups.

Mr Daigeler: I would like to hear that.

Mr Hansen: We identified certain sections of the ministry, in terms of certain classifications, as areas we should be targeting for employment equity purposes. One of the areas we targeted was the senior management positions, just below the executive group. This is an area, sort of senior middle management, that all ministries are trying to move more employment equity group members into. I will give the 1989 figures and then the 1991 figures on that group, and I will tell you what we are targeting for.

In terms of women in 1989, we had 32% in the group. As of this year, we have 31%. Between 1989 and 1991 is also when we went through our divestment exercise, so there were large hunks of the ministry that left. Our goal for 1993 is 32.7%, which is actually the goal for the Ontario public service as a whole. The figure for the service as a whole right now is 24% in that group.

In terms of racial minorities, in 1989 we had 4%. We are up to 11%, and our goal for 1993 is 13.2%. The service as a whole has 12% in the group right now.

Persons with disabilities: In 1989 we had 6%. In 1991, we have 9%, which is over our goal. Our goal for 1993 was to be 5.8%. The service as a whole is 3%.

Francophones: In 1989 we had 6%. This year we have 4%. Our goal for 1993 is 6.7%. For the service as a whole right now it is 6%.

One of the other groups that we targeted, and we targeted this on purpose because we are the only ministry in government that has this particular classification, is the industrial training consultants. In 1989, we had 17% women. This has moved up to 33% for this year. Our goal for 1993 is 33%, so we have made our 1993 goal right now. In terms of racial minorities, in 1989 we had 2%. We are up to 5%, and our goal is 7%. For persons with disabilities, in 1989 it was 8%. This year it is down to 4%, and our goal is 4%. Francophones: In 1989, we had 11%. This year we have 13%. We are 2% higher than our goal. Aboriginals: In 1989 we had 5%. We are down to 4% now. Our goal is 5%.

In the ministry we review every position at the AM-17 level, which is sort of middle management, and identify whether it is a suitable position for any of the designated groups or if there is any reason why it is not a suitable position. An example of that would be that you would not target a position that had a lot of heavy lifting for a person with a disability.

We target the positions, we identify where we should do outreach, how we should do outreach, and we go through these on a position-by-position basis.

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The Vice-Chair: Excuse me. I wonder if you could continue in the next rotation, because you are actually four and a half minutes over.

Mr Daigeler: I will just make one final comment, which is to say I am glad I asked the question, because you were so well prepared for this. I must say this is quite impressive, not only in terms of what you are doing, but also the targets you are setting. In that regard, I do wish to compliment the minister as well. I think that is obviously an area that you are paying attention to, and I am quite pleased with what I am hearing.

The Vice-Chair: Thank you, Mr Daigeler. Now if we could move to Mrs Cunningham. We are going to move to you, we are going to go through on a normal rotation, and then if the committee agrees, we will come back to you and give you your turn that you have already missed. Then we will start the rotation again with Mr Daigeler, if that is agreeable to the committee. Everybody is in agreement.

Mr Perruzza: Madam Chair, you have full control.

Mrs Cunningham: Thank you, Madam Chair. Good to see you, Minister. I have not had a chance, and I do not think any of us will, to take a look at the Hansards, but I did have a look at the remarks that were made at the meeting, and I apologize for not being here yesterday. I think the first questions I have are probably in response to the questions I already had have answered. I was just handed an outline here with regards to some responses, so I may as well deal with that first.

With regards to the London industrial training committee, the discussion on the very first page of the responses, any particular way you would like to handle this is fine by me, Minister. Later on, there is another that sort of states the problem. Then I think on the "Notes for Response" -- bear with me here -- the "Role of the CITCs regarding OTAB," at the very end, the last two pages were prepared by Mr Landry.

I wonder if we can explore this just a little bit with regards to the concerns, because I would like to take this opportunity to take a look at the future. You know of the concerns of the community industrial training committees with regards to reducing the numbers and not being able to reach into the smaller communities, and therefore, perhaps, not taking advantage of the specific advice we can get from individual businesses to the extent that we do now. I know it is going to be a public consultation, but I am just wondering if there is any response to that question right now, or just what you might expect to happen, what we can tell these groups who are really wanting to know that we have appreciated the work they have done.

Hon Mr Allen: I am very happy to respond to that question. I think the first public event that I went to was the annual conference of the CITCs, to Fern Resort, a little over a year ago. It was certainly evident to me that there were substantial concerns in those organizations around what might be coming by way of an Ontario Training and Adjustment Board structure, how the local boards would be organized, and what would be the fate and role of the CITCs and the various constituent groups that made them up.

I assured them then, and I have assured them at every meeting with them since, that the point of this entire exercise of reorganizing training in Ontario is to maximize everybody's role and to build on all the strength that is there, rather than to let people and skills and talents and experience fall by the wayside. That has been the guiding rule of thumb that has certainly led me through the subsequent months as we have gone through the OTAB design experience and so on.

I have had the opportunity to sit down at some length with CITCs or their equivalents in communities like Hamilton, Barrie and your own community, for example, where I had a very extensive discussion with the representatives of the LITC, who then brought in some related representatives to discuss the whole question of the Ontario Training and Adjustment Board, and what advice they would have for me and the ministry, as we went into the preliminary discussion framing up that option.

It was an extremely useful meeting in London, I must say. You would have been proud. The people who came to it were outstanding in the kind of advice they gave, their commentary, their articulation of their concerns, and they were very helpful.

The future of the CITCs, of course, does await the conclusion of the formal consultation process that will begin in a very few weeks' time. It would be wrong to prejudge exactly what that future is. Other than that, it is clear that both the federal and the provincial governments want to reorganize local training boards on the basis of some 20 -- an indefinite number, but somewhere in that order of magnitude -- local boards.

I hasten to say that the structures developed in all the discussions I have with all the parties who will be involved in that, the formation of the local board structures, will be very much a dialogic thing, very much interactive with local groups and interests, so that we will build in the best way possible upon those local strengths.

Likewise, it is clear that the nature and structure of boards in certain geographic regions might differ somewhat, given the fact that it is a very different proposition creating a local training board in a portion of Metropolitan Toronto, for example, as against northwestern Ontario. Clearly, there has to be a different, decentralized operation that would keep active and live committees in place in widespread communities such as you would find in Kenora, Fort Frances, Atikokan, Thunder Bay, Nipigon, Terrace Bay, and so on. There will be a significant flexibility in the way in which that design is carried out, and we certainly intend to respect the groups that are there in terms of what we come up with at the end of the day.

Mrs Cunningham: Okay, thank you for that. We are looking at 57 CITCs right now. I think the recommendation is that we move towards 22 training boards, and it is my understanding that there are financial commitments right now that the CITCs have within their own communities. I guess the appropriate question is, what would the provincial government's estimates be for this conversion?

Hon Mr Allen: There has not been an estimate of the cost of conversion to date, precisely because we still, for example, have not got a completed consultation paper with the federal government that details the nature of the creature, and until we have that in place it will be difficult to talk about cost of conversion.

I would imagine that, as distinct from the question of ongoing operations, the cost of conversion in that sense is probably a relatively small budget figure, but I do not know whether anyone has any estimate or calculation.

Is my judgement right that the ongoing question of operational costs will be the issue that principally will be addressed, I should think, in the --

Mr Horswill: If I could elaborate, the principal expenditures of the CITCs, of course, are the assistance they provide to the federal government and to some extent us, in training purchases and needs surveys. The needs surveys and the executive assistant budgets are very small. Those are resources the ministry values highly and, whatever the status of the individual CITCs would be, I would assume the local training boards would value those resources. But we certainly could not speak on their behalf at this moment.

Mrs Cunningham: It seems to me that the training purchases would be the commitments, then. Is that correct?

Mr Horswill: The training purchases, of course, are under the annual training plans of the Canada-Ontario training agreement. They make those training purchases on behalf of the federal government at the moment. The deliverer of training is either a private trainer or a college, of course, and the role of the CITCs and the role of the board is that of a marketplace or a decision-maker, not as an administrator or a bureaucracy. So those expenditures are small. What is valued is their ability to make decisions on behalf of the community, not to deliver training per se.

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Mrs Cunningham: My point was that if you have been involved in making the recommendation, and even though you are a volunteer and not truly reponsible, there is an obligation on your part, if you are a keen person and committed to advising us and giving us suggestions, to see it is carried through. I just want to make sure there is going to be some continuum here. That is what I am looking for.

Hon Mr Allen: I do not think there is any question about that. One will not suddenly have different dramatis personae in the local community just because you call it a local training board as distinct from a CITC. The people who are active in the training world are the same people we will have been involved in the local training board, structured a little more consistently across the province perhaps and somewhat more representative, but certainly involving all the active players. There will be as much continuity as we can possibly build into it.

Mrs Cunningham: The other aspect is that of paying people to sit on these boards, whereas now people sit as volunteers. I am wondering what prompted that and whether there is any estimate of what the cost would be.

Hon Mr Allen: The question is obviously a detail that awaits the outcome of the consultation, but I would say the government is committed to paying such costs for representatives of groups that otherwise would not be able to have representation.

One of the critical problems in putting a principally bipartite training structure in place in Ontario is finding sufficient trained and available working people, straight out of plants and factories and workplaces, who can actually afford the time to sit on those bodies. It will be necessary for us to provide compensation for a certain range of representation to enable that to happen, otherwise it will not happen and we will not have the bipartite, co-determined operation I talked about yesterday as the guiding philosophy in the OTAB structure.

Mrs Cunningham: But given what you receive in input on your discussion paper, you may change your mind on that?

Hon Mr Allen: I am saying that no question is fixed, simply because the consultation is not over. That is all that should be read into it.

Mrs Cunningham: By the way, that was the Premier's Council recommendation. That does not mean you are going to fly with it. I saw the deputy frown at that one. Did you want to add something?

Hon Mr Allen: No, just that the compensation does have to do with loss of wages that individuals would sustain in terms of their participation.

Mrs Cunningham: You make an interesting point, because if indeed we are looking to the private sector -- managers, union members, whatever -- to help us in this tremendous task and challenge, perhaps that is one of the ways they can help us, by allowing their people to come and give us good advice and still pay their salaries. I think that is a given expectation. I speak as a person who sat on the old advisory training committees under the old Education Act, where progressive business people and industry people encouraged their workers to come and give us good advice. They did not lose money if they had to come in the daytime. Rather than feeding into that one, we should be saying it is one of the things the community can do to help us. We know that government cannot do it by itself any more.

Hon Mr Allen: We would certainly look at an offer by the private sector to provide all the wage supports for all the representatives on the board.

Mrs Cunningham: Those are the front-line workers we need to help us make these decisions. I just think it is part of their responsibility. You and I could both quote some statistics. I am not blaming anybody, I just think we are looking for some improvement in spite of tough times, especially in Ontario, given the resources of our community.

Hon Mr Allen: That would be a good investment.

Mrs Cunningham: Is there information in the Ministry of Skills Development, any numbers, on whether school boards or young people 15, 16, 17 years old may be beneficiaries of Skills Development funding? Would it show up anywhere at all in this document? I did not see it and would ask if your people could tell me. Is there any program here where Skills Development has had the involvement of that age group in some training education program? Minister, I would like your observations on this one. You know it is one of my great concerns.

Hon Mr Allen: That type of activity is lodged with the Ministry of Education and is largely its responsibility: for example, the school-workplace apprenticeship programs. But there is no reason to think the labour-market analysis that might be done in the context of the ministry might not touch that question. Is there such?

Mr Sosa: Right now, there is mainly the school-workplace apprenticeship program, with spending of $2.2 million over a three-year period from 1990-91 to 1992-93.

Mrs Cunningham: Does it show up on any page here?

Mr Sosa: No.

Mrs Cunningham: There are probably times when Skills Development is assisting at least in some way, giving good advice. I cannot remember the program in which you and I were involved in northern Ontario, where Skills Development was involved with the school board. Was it Timiskaming?

Hon Mr Allen: Yes, it has become a pilot project at Timiskaming. Because the college there could not provide an apprenticeship program, the local school board entered into an agreement with the federal government, which was prepared to provide money for the launching of the program. It ran into some difficulty in terms of the regulations and guidelines that affected the progress of the program through into the second and third years. We then had a meeting with the representatives of the board and worked out the details whereby that program could continue, although it was somewhat anomalous in the system. That does bear somewhat upon the issue of the relationship of boards and colleges and the way they each participate in the fielding of apprenticeship across Ontario. There is a measure of rivalry or turf protection there that one has to work with.

Mr Lessard: I have some questions that follow Mrs Cunningham's line of questioning to some extent. In Windsor we have CITC. It is known as WESTAC and has four full-time employees, and there is a local board made up of individuals from the community. One of them is Rob Bullock, who is with Border Press. He is wondering how and whether CITC would turn into a different body under the OTAB program and if so what steps might be expected to go through this conversion. I wonder if you could address that.

Hon Mr Allen: I certainly appreciate the nervousness in the CITC at the present time, as we are in the middle of a process which does hold some question marks over its future. However, it is really quite premature for me to advise any one of them how they should now go into the process of reorganizing themselves in order to ultimately qualify as a local board, which, in effect, is what is being asked. All I can say is that the consultation is coming up.

We will value WESTAC's contribution to the consultation and its best advice, in particular as to how the local board's structure might be generated and evolved out of existing structures and groups in local communities, and how they would best find their place within the larger structure of the OTAB operation.

At the end of that exercise we will come to a consensus as to how best to proceed. At that point we will have a very active region-by-region discussion to work out the details of how it best can happen place by place. There will not be a simple, rigid format applied across the province and laid down from Queen's Park as a kind of magic formula that somehow should be expected to fit every single community.

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Mr Lessard: So is it expected that there would be a phase-out of the CITCs eventually?

Hon Mr Allen: One would assume that would take place if the consultation proposal is broadly accepted and if the federal and provincial governments equally maintain their intention to deliver training through a reduced number of regional structures, whatever you call them.

Mr Lessard: We also received today a listing. It says, "Help for laid-off apprentices," and it refers to projects that have been approved as of October 22. I noticed there were none for the city of Windsor or St Clair College. I wonder whether there is still an opportunity to become involved in the laid-off apprentice program.

Hon Mr Allen: Can I ask for a response to that? This program has been widely publicized across the province and if there is not a response in Windsor, I am also curious about why that is the case.

Mr Sosa: The answer is yes, it has been publicized very widely in the Windsor area. There is still some scope for the community to make submissions regarding projects.

Mr Lessard: Thank you.

Mr G. Wilson: I would like to turn to something that was raised about funding for skills development, and that is the sectoral approach. I understand there are some successes there in the plastics and electronics sectors. First, I would like to know why they were chosen as areas for consideration, and then to know whether other sectors are being looked at, and perhaps obtain the rationale for the sectoral approach.

Hon Mr Allen: The sectoral approach makes a great deal of sense. What it is, in essence, is a whole industry such as steel trades or plastics or electrical and electronics or tourism or what have you, where the employers in question all have very similar training needs. In that context, it is possible also to more easily facilitate bipartite labour-management structures to promote training within those sectors because they all have similar interests at the labour level and the management level.

In essence, it has been a most rational undertaking and fits the circumstances and nature of Canadian industry and the organization of the labour force. The ministry decided two to three years ago that since this made so much sense, it would begin offering training trust funds and traineeships on a sectoral level and facilitate the development of bipartite training structures, curricula and industry strategies. As a result, we initially embarked on a venture with the electrical and electronics industry and have a very good, solid working agreement there, with 20 participating companies.

We also followed that up with an undertaking with the plastics industry, where they discovered that their principal problem was entry skills. They were having tremendous turnover in staff because the people in the labour market niche they were drawing from clearly did not have the appropriate entry skills and kept fouling up. The frustration level and the stress levels were difficult, so people would leave. We have worked with them and set up a sectoral agreement to tackle those problems, again on a bipartite level involving labour and management. We have done research on the curriculum and some pilot projects are just now in place.

We are also very deep in a major undertaking with regard to the automotive parts sector, which will be a big project. That is almost completed. The budgets are in place, running to somewhere in the order of $25 million to $30 million split three ways between the two governments and the industry. That will be a major undertaking. We are at the initial stages in some other fields as well. As a governing structure for training, the sectoral approach is just extremely efficient.

Mr Sosa: I can add to that. There is a lot of activity at the exploratory stage. The principle of co-determination and the workplace is integral to everything that is done. We have needs surveys being conducted in the north through Confederation College in the forestry and mining sector to explore the feasibility in those areas; we have them in the agricultural sector and in the food processing sector. There is an extensive discussion taking place right now looking at the curriculum with the tourism and hospitality centre. In that area we find that in the entry-level jobs, the generic jobs of basic skills which would be developmental, as restructuring takes place these individuals can build on that base.

We have tourism, plastics, auto parts, food processing, agriculture; it is one area in which we have found that the sectors are really very receptive because it is a good way of doing business. When you have poaching, one of the main criticisms we have had is, "I do the training and then you steal the individual from me." But when it is done on a sectoral basis the skills remain within that particular sector. It is a very significant approach, and I think we are very happy with the way we have been progressing. But it is a lot of work and we do it in partnership.

Mr G. Wilson: So it is not the individual business or company, there is a pooling of the resources?

Mr Sosa: Yes. There is another element, so therefore there normally are four partners: the Ministry of Skills Development for the government of Ontario, the workers, the employers, and for purposes of income support we have to work with the federal government. We have found that the federal government has been very receptive in supporting it. The Canadian electrical and electronics manufacturing industry, CEEMI, project is a massive one, because we are dealing over a five-year period with the possibility of $12 million from each partner, so when we think of training in the electrical and electronic sector, we are dealing with a $50-million project. We have found in dealing with things by sector that the federal government is very willing to assist in that area and has worked very well with us.

Mr G. Wilson: So I guess the decision is made that these are fruitful or rewarding sectors, that there is a future for them, in effect, before these decisions are made, which as you pointed out are significant and involve huge sums of money. Is that by this ministry or is this interministerial, say, with the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Technology to target the sectors that will give a return on this kind of investment?

Mr Sosa: We work very closely with MITT on all projects.

Mr G. Wilson: Have you identified some other sectors that will also be coming under --

Mr Sosa: I spoke of some on which we are working and I identified, first, that it is a very logical process of doing a needs survey and an evaluation, because it is a significant commitment. I identified the minister's discussions which had taken place in the auto parts sector, with the CAW and with the Automotive Parts Manufacturers' Association. I identified discussions which have taken place in tourism; I identified initial discussions which have taken place in the agricultural sector, in food processing, bringing them together at that initial stage, and also exploratory work which is being done with needs surveys in the resource sectors of the north. That is, we are working very closely with Confederation College.

We made a commitment as the Ministry of Skills Development to give a little nudge by assisting with finances to conduct the needs survey. That is with the mining and the forestry sectors. I have given you at least five or six of the sectors in which you get a flavour of the discussions which are taking place.

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Hon Mr Allen: I think I want to underline the importance that we attach to the bipartite nature of the agreements that we come to.

In the case of the auto parts sector, for example, the auto parts manufacturers had come to some understanding themselves around the need for training and had begun some discussions with the ministry. We immediately put the discussions on hold until we were able to bring the Canadian Auto Workers, who were the organizers for the whole workforce in that sector, together around the table and to get some common understandings going so we could get everybody on the same level playing field before we moved ahead with the project. We insist that all of the training projects in the sectors be done on a bipartite basis in order to facilitate a more co-determined, co-operative approach in the workplace.

Mr Horswill: Could I just add one point to that? The minister and you alluded to priorities at the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Technology. Unlike programs that we develop with public sector partners, neither MITT nor ourselves have a top-down list of priorities, except that it is highly desirable to support sectors within the trade economy, sectors within dynamic services, sectors where individuals will secure ultimately high incomes and secure employment.

We are driven principally in the first stages of the development of sectors by the characteristics of the sector in terms of its interest in training and the ability of workers and employers to work together. That means that people in the plastic sector, people in electronics and auto, of course, are running with our concern to develop sectoral infrastructure. It requires the private sector to develop competence as well as the public sector being there to support it.

I can only add that this is an important element probably over the life of the training agreement with Canada, that the two governments have agreed to offer a joint look in the negotiation with sectors. It has been the case from time to time in the past that the two governments have negotiated separately with the private sector, which is not necessarily in the interests of the public taxpayer or the private sector. Now the two governments are partners in both sharing and in the principles of co-determination.

Mr G. Wilson: It seems like a huge undertaking to get all the parts to work together. I guess some of them are not that used to working together either, but it would seem crucial to the success of our economy.

Mrs Cunningham: I am going to go back to my original questions, if I can, at least for today, because I have to admit that I have not had a chance to really look into some of the numbers as much as I would like to have done. So I am going to stay with some of the philosophical stuff that may or may not match with some of the pages here.

We did have some questions that we did not get tabled. There were four. I am not sure whether you were given a copy or whether you passed these on. Did you pass on the whole sheet, Mrs Marland?

The Vice-Chair: Andrea has a list of the questions that I forwarded and we got almost to the last page.

Mrs Cunningham: There are four left.

The Vice-Chair: That is right. No, I did not pass those on.

Mrs Cunningham: If the minister does not mind, I would like to ask them because they are questions that we spent a lot of time on.

The estimates indicate that you will hold a fall conference for the school-workplace apprenticeship program, SWAP, and I am wondering when that is going to be held.

Mr Sosa: The school-workplace apprenticeship program: the conference which was proposed. Has it been held, when was it held?

Mr Horswill: The conference was held this spring.

Mrs Cunningham: I cannot find the page where it said there will be one in the fall.

Mr Sosa: Page 55.

Mrs Cunningham: Page 55. While you are doing this, can I move on? Mr Lessard may be interested in this, In an October 9, 1991, Windsor Star article, a technical co-operative education teacher -- this is from one of the clippings about which we were going to ask a question in the House and we can ask now -- Mr Ron Brunet said he could not place his SWAP students, even though mould shops are experiencing a shortage of skilled workers. This is a practical question again. We are wondering if the other boards have had problems placing students, because obviously that one has. What do you do when something like that happens? You know there is a need, you know there is a shortage of skilled workers, and you know the school system is trying to match the need, which is great, and yet they could not get placed. You may need some time on that one, because it is very specific.

Hon Mr Allen: I cannot personally give you a full answer on that as to what the structure of response is. I do not know if our director of apprenticeship branch would have something to say about that.

Mr Zisser: I am Helmut Zisser, director of apprenticeship. I cannot speak to the particular case that you cited, but we can certainly look into it. I am not aware that we are having difficulties as a system right now. We are aware that the recession has slowed down a lot of things to do with apprenticeship, and that is certainly something that also affects the ability of employers to take on additional people in something like SWAP; but we will look into this circumstance to find out just what happened.

Mrs Cunningham: Do you have an answer on the fall conference? Is it now a spring conference, or what was it?

Mr Zisser: It is my understanding that a one-day conference did take place earlier this year. It was not a major conference, and there are plans to get the group together again this fiscal year.

Mrs Cunningham: If one of the objectives of the ministry is to measure and evaluate programs, sometimes when we even have a day session -- depending on who is there -- we probably get some good advice on how we can improve the quality of what we are doing, so I would not mind knowing about that. Even though it is just one day, it may be something that we can work on for the future.

Certainly in my involvement in politics, both at the school board and here, we definitely think a lot about the programs, and sometimes when we are really lucky, we get them in place, but the weak link has always been the evaluation, and the moving on for the purpose of evaluation to improve the quality. So if we have done it, let's see what we get out of it.

Hon Mr Allen: We would be happy to have both critics at the conference and to keep you informed about developments around that.

Mrs Cunningham: I get your point, Minister.

On October 24, 1991, the training announcement indicated that the federal-provincial program will increase access to training for women, aboriginal peoples, racial minorities, persons with disabilities, social assistance recipients, francophones, the unemployed and older workers. Will the enhanced access program, another specific question, have the same designated groups?

Hon Mr Allen: How will we access?

Mrs Cunningham: No. Will they have the same designated groups? I am assuming that if it is an enhanced access program, there ought to be some targets there. Will these be the same groups, or maybe it is not part of it. I do not know.

Hon Mr Allen: The designated groups in the context of the recent agreement are eight; four, which derive from the federal designated list, and four from ours. Under the access programs for apprenticeship, however, there has been a great deal of activity to date around, in particular, women, visible minorities, aboriginal candidates and disabled. The additional four that we have that are built into the agreement are, if I remember correctly, francophones, unemployed, displaced workers, and there is one other, social assistance recipients, the SARs.

The new money under apprenticeship is dedicated totally to that end. That was the reason we were able to persuade the federal government to lift the cap, which, as you know, it has been resisting for the last three years. We have broken through the $40-million barrier at the federal level, but it is designated specifically for the equity groups and skill shortages.

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Mrs Cunningham: To carry on from that, you will remember that the Premier introduced private member's legislation, Bill 172, that included specific targets for designated groups and the time lines. If he felt it to be necessary to have these specific targets and time lines, do we have targets and time lines for the enhanced access program? If we do, it would be important to know what they are so that we can again measure what we are trying to do, what our goals are.

Hon Mr Allen: I stand to be corrected, but I do not think we have. My deputy says we do not have time lines or targets. We do have a very active program. It is pursued through a very active networking project that reaches into those communities in order to access people who are prepared to move into non-traditional trades or pre-employment skills training so that they can access apprenticeship positions. I think it is more important that the activity be vigorous and well funded in that regard than that we have targets and time lines, but I certainly am not averse to thinking in terms of targets and seeing what we can do by way of moving on specific objectives. We are trying to realize them.

Mrs Cunningham: Do not get me wrong, Minister. I was not saying that ought to be the case; I was just saying that was the consistency here. I am more inclined to agree with the statement you just made.

However, can I move back to the CITC model? I have a couple of questions. One of the great criticisms we have -- I must say from time to time I feel this way, but I do not have the kind of information I need to be particularly critical. I just raise the question and leave the work to you, because you are in the government and I am the critic and you have the resources and I do not.

Hon Mr Allen: I have all these marvellous people helping to do the work for me.

Mrs Cunningham: If we are restructuring our advisory boards in a significant way, I hope we will take the time to do it right. There are models some of us are aware of throughout North America, Europe and the United Kingdom that we may or may not like and some that are working better than others. I hope we will use the reports we have had from the travels of our staff over the years -- some of them are outside this fine institution or your ministry -- and take a look at the good advice we have had. One of the great criticisms is that the government itself probably has as many as seven ministries that have some responsibility for training. What are we doing about duplication or is that something we want? Has anybody really taken a look at the structure of the provincial government itself when it comes to delivering training programs?

Hon Mr Allen: It is, at least in part, because of the dispersed nature of training under more than just seven ministries that the whole conception of consolidating training under a single major training structure at arm's length from government was thought about in the first place, as I think you know. While the reflection and consultation on the OTAB structure is under way, there has not been a major focus upon redressing that question inside government, since the structure of OTAB will inherit a major range of training programs that are currently delivered within government in some form or fashion. They will find a new coherence, a new integrity under the direction of a board of whatever proportion is endorsed by the consultation process. That is the context in which the question has been addressed over the last year, if I can put it that way. I do not know whether you wanted to be more precise or particular about given programs. That was one of the major motives.

Mrs Cunningham: No, I am talking about the magnitude or the size. My people are particularly interested, by the way, in this ministry for a lot of reasons. We want to see a lot of results. Someone mentioned to me that there are some 48 different programs currently operating within seven ministries. Those numbers may not be correct.

Hon Mr Allen: They are broadly correct.

Mrs Cunningham: But they are, in the broad sense I think, pretty responsible. If you are saying that there will be some -- I have to be careful with my choice of words because I do not think you did say this.

Hon Mr Allen: So do I.

Mrs Cunningham: I know; you have to be more careful than I do, do you not?

Hon Mr Allen: You are right.

Mrs Cunningham: There probably is not a good word. I was going to say that probably the whole issue of restructuring of government will in fact take place by virtue of the exercise one has to go through in looking at the role and mandate of OTAB. Would you agree?

Hon Mr Allen: As a broad statement, that is fair enough. Let me go on to say that one of the features of the Ontario Training and Adjustment Board project distinct from what was present in the Premier's Council report People and Skills in the New Global Economy is that we have brought into play another range of training with respect to the board in terms of the discussions and consultation it will focus on, and that is the entry and re-entry skills of people who are not currently in the workforce.

The principal focal point of People and Skills in the New Global Economy was workplace training of those who are presently employed and therefore a labour-management bipartite structure. Our concern was that we would end up with a kind of OTAB with a very rich workplace-based training program which would not be matched by any equivalently rich entry and re-entry skills training that would be integrally linked to, for example, all the research on best practice for training that OTAB would undertake.

We were concerned to bring that whole area of training into full focus within an OTAB structure. That will be one of the central features of the consultation proposal as it goes forward. Whereas it would be very easy for social assistance recipients, those who are not in the workforce, to have less and lower access to training by virtue of a simple bipartite workplace-based training model for the board, we have tried to remedy that by putting them together in a single framework in terms of the proposal that will be discussed.

The Vice-Chair: Thank you, Minister.

Mrs Cunningham: Time up already?

The Vice-Chair: Yes.

Mr Daigeler: Back to me. Before I go back to the estimates book, I would like to pursue this question about employment equity, which is, I think, very dear to the heart of the minister. The issue I am raising here may actually fall under his other hat as Minister of Colleges and Universities, but then again it ties in with skills development, especially for the underprivileged. I am informed by Ottawa-Carleton Lifeskills Inc that apparently -- I have tried to find out some more information from Algonquin College; I have not received it yet and I wonder whether the minister could look into this for me -- there is a plan to withdraw bursary support for persons who are developmentally handicapped. At present they are receiving support to the tune of $912 per semester. There are five students involved who would no longer be able to benefit from a program entitled PAFA. I do not know what that stands for.

I am not sure whether that is an Algonquin College program or whether this is money that is coming from the province, but it certainly looks to me as though this is something the minister should be concerned about in terms of his interest to provide education and training to designated groups. I am going to leave this communication with the minister and perhaps he can take a look at it. Perhaps he can get a quicker response from Algonquin on this matter, specifically whether this is something that the college decides or whether it relates to reductions in funding from your ministry. If I can leave that with you, I would appreciate it.

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Hon Mr Allen: There were some special bursary concerns around Algonquin College with regard to another program. I am not sure it is exactly this one.

Mr Daigeler: I am aware of the other one.

Hon Mr Allen: We did manage to substantially top up the other program to provide the additional access for all those who were registered and hoping to get into it. I think this is a different program. We will look into it and dig out the information for you.

Mr Daigeler: Also, quite frankly I am not fully satisfied with an answer that you provided to me today to a question I asked yesterday. I would like some further clarification. I asked how this alleged increase from the federal government that my colleague from the third party was so proud of last week in her response --

Mrs Cunningham: You have to be proud of something with the federal government.

Mr Daigeler: Before we can be too proud about this, I want to know what in fact I can be proud of. The point I was trying to get at yesterday is that the announcement from the federal government, while it sounds good on the training side, is really nothing else but money that is owed to Ontario under the previous unemployment insurance setup. I do not see that in your written answer. You are referring here to Ontario's share of the new federal funds redirected from unemployment insurance for training, which will be 37% in 1991-92. What is the 100% here? What does that 37% relate to? Specifically, if there had not been the change by the federal government to the unemployment insurance system, how much money would we have gotten? The information I have is that we would have gotten more money than we are actually getting now under this new training agreement. When the Tories say, "Oh, we're so generous. We're giving all this money to Ontario," it is really money we were entitled to anyway. In fact, it is less than we used to receive from the federal government. Can you answer that question for me?

Mrs Cunningham: I can hardly wait for this answer.

Hon Mr Allen: The money itself does come from the federal exercise around Bill C-21, which did restructure the unemployment insurance program in a way that would release substantial dollars from it in terms of direct benefits and redeploy them as training dollars that would be available to working people across the country. That is point 1.

Point 2 is that what is actually owed Ontario out of the unemployment insurance fund is always strictly related to the level of unemployment in Ontario. That is, we contribute -- I think these figures are about a year old, but in a normal year, not in the middle of a recession -- about $5 billion and some to the unemployment insurance fund. When employment is more or less even, roughly what it is across the rest of the country or fairly average for Ontario, we get back about $3.5 billion.

That is just in the nature of an insurance scheme. Therefore, people pay in and get out in relation to the severity of the economic climate. In present unemployment circumstances where we have lost 240,000 jobs, March to March -- 75% of the unemployment losses have been in Ontario in that period of time -- as a result, our unemployment insurance contributions have gone up significantly and dramatically, so that I understand they are almost even with what we put in at this point in time. Am I correct? We will check that figure out for you. It is much more comparable than it was.

That is another part of the answer. We do not simply get in and out of that system in terms of what we deserve in some moral sense, but only in terms of our levels of unemployment. It is true there were some downsides to Bill C-21. The downside was that there were adjustments in the eligibility periods and benefits, which has had the impact in Ontario of putting more people on social assistance who might not otherwise have had to go there. You are right in surmising there are some losses for us. That is quite true.

At the end of the day when the federal government has completed such an exercise, over which we have no control -- it does that; that is its business -- there is a substantial sum of money then made available for training. How do we access that, and do we benefit more or less, and did we get more or less than our share out of all that exercise in our negotiations?

When we looked at the existing training agreements we had over the previous years with the federal government, negotiated originally I guess in 1986 between your Liberal government and the federal government, we discovered that with 38% of the labour force in Ontario, we were only getting 24% of the training dollars.

Mr Daigeler: I have heard those figures before, yes.

Hon Mr Allen: We simply said: "That is unacceptable. We contribute to national balancing by our equalization payments and a lot of other ways in this country and we should not have to keep giving up in the context of other social programs and lose out as Ontario in terms of the training dollars, in this case, that we need." We went into negotiations --

Mr Daigeler: Are you coming soon to the end of your answer?

Hon Mr Allen: Let me complete the answer. I am soon coming to the end of my answer.

We set up, with the federal government, a set of criteria by which fair shares could be negotiated. We came to an understanding with them. As a result of that negotiation, on all the new dollars we could access under Bill C-21, we got 38%. We got the same percentage as our labour market share. They were prepared to do that. I think they were a little bit shocked that we went after it as hard as we did, but at the end of the day they talked turkey and agreed to give us our fair share. Under the previous program, some dollars were still locked in and it was impossible to move all those percentages. So at the end of the day we got 30% in the new agreement of the total training dollars as distinct from 24%. We also got an 83% increase, whereas the average for the other provinces was 42%.

Mr Daigeler: Again, I am obviously conscious of the fact that you are trying to get as much credit as you can for your particular effort on the deal.

Hon Mr Allen: I am trying to get as many training dollars as I can.

Mr Daigeler: I am not so sure whether you should give the federal government so much credit. Certainly the message that was given to the press -- and I must say your spin doctors are pretty good at that -- sounded very impressive when you were talking about Ontario spending $700 million this year and the federal government spending even more and increasing its contribution by 83%. But really -- I have to watch my language here so I am not unparliamentary -- I think it leaves a misleading impression with the public, as though a lot of new money is being received when in fact it is just a redirection and, as you said yourself, a redeployment of moneys that otherwise would have been owed to Ontario.

Leaving this aside, I will now go back to the estimates book.

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The Vice-Chair: Excuse me, Mr Daigeler. I hate to do this, but do you think you could choose another word?

Mr Daigeler: I said "a misleading impression." Do you not think that is good enough?

The Vice-Chair: It is so marginal.

Mr Daigeler: Okay. If it is marginal, let me think of another marginal word.

The Vice-Chair: Could you say "a different impression"?

Mr Daigeler: A questionable impression?

Mrs Cunningham: It does not really matter because nobody is going to read what Mr Daigeler says today.

Mr Daigeler: A questionable impression. I may have an opportunity to repeat the same kind of point in different places, because I think it is an important one.

The Vice-Chair: Trying to keep the committee under the same rules as the House, I am simply requesting parliamentary language.

Mr Daigeler: Quite correct, Madam Chairman. If "questionable impression" is better, I will use those words.

On page 15 of the estimates, the communications services of the ministry, again as with an earlier column, I note that the actuals of the ministry's communications services last year were $1.6 million, whereas the estimates had been $2 million. Why are this year's estimates, 1991-92, not based on the actuals?

Hon Mr Allen: The increase, as I understand it, is principally in the area of the information technology we have been deploying in order to improve services.

Mr Daigeler: The point is I guess you underspent last year by $400,000, but now this year you want to spend again what you were supposed to have spent or would have liked to have spent the year before.

Hon Mr Allen: I suspect it has to do with a project that was planned but did not get completed in that year and therefore is being completed in another year. Mr Hansen can help us with that one.

Mrs Cunningham: Here is your opportunity.

Mr Hansen: Mr Hansen will be of limited help on this one, thank you. You want to hear about employment equity.

The Vice-Chair: Mr Hansen, I would point out that we are down to the last minute of this portion of --

Mr Daigeler: Oh, really?

The Vice-Chair: Yes, so before you get into a long answer --

Mr Hansen: The major reason is that last year, because of an election, there were periods of time that moneys were not being spent on communication activities.

Mr Daigeler: Is that good or bad?

Mr Hansen: It depends on your point of view, sir.

Mr Daigeler: You mean the election saved you $400,000?

Mrs Cunningham: You should have them more often.

The Vice-Chair: Okay, that is absolutely perfect timing. We are now back to you, Mrs Cunningham.

Mrs Cunningham: I am not going to waste 30 seconds on Mr Daigeler's interpretation of what that announcement was last week. I really am not. I do not care what the interpretation is. I think if we got money for training -- it could easily have gone elsewhere. I have to also compliment the government on finally getting a signed agreement, because there were many discussions when I was critic of the Liberals and they could not even get the agreement signed. So I just have to tell you that the 30 seconds are up and I will not go on, but it could be a lot of fun if I did.

I said in the House -- and I mean it -- that I really hope we are going to spend the money wisely, and I want to see it in numbers of people trained. It is as simple as that. On that point, with regard to a philosophical statement, because I think it fits in here in the question, one of the great concerns I have had as I have travelled around the community colleges -- and, Mr Minister, I have not been to all of them. I wish I could say I had, because I have been doing this job for three years and I just have not been able to do that. But I will say there has been great criticism from the advisory training bodies themselves with regard to the colleges. In many instances, they feel they are not meeting the training needs and perhaps protecting their own turf, for want of a better word, with the people who are trained there now.

I look at that as being a delivery system. I am used to it because the universities could be looked upon in the same fashion -- any institution would be. I think what we are looking for, now we have new training dollars, is a brand-new delivery system, certainly an advisory board to a delivery system. They have already made these statements, but it is a very political statement for a volunteer organization to make.

I am just wondering, in view of the observations we have had from some 11 of these training advisory boards that they are very concerned about the colleges and where they are spending their money on training, is this something that is going to be looked at with regards to this whole process of renewal?

Hon Mr Allen: Can I first of all give you my experience? It is, like yours, based on a range of contacts within the college system and with business people who are involved in seeking contracts with the colleges for training dollars or training programs; and sometimes we sit on the advisory bodies to the colleges themselves. I have been quite surprised at the enthusiasm many of them have with respect to what the colleges do deliver.

I have said to them from time to time that we all know the federal government is going to turn more of its dollars into private contracting around training. That would seem to suggest there is some unhappiness among the business community with regard to the colleges and what they are delivering by way of training on a day-to-day basis. The answer I most often get is that they have made a contract with the colleges to do that, and because they obviously have the experience, they have good training resources. The people they send there can get credentialed, the credential can be carried in the labour market and it is a good credential to have.

This tends to be the general answer, but I must say, like you, I have found from place to place and from time to time some serious criticism of a college which has failed to deliver. A contract has been arranged and then the workers in question got a training which basically repeated everything they already knew. When I hear that I report that back.

If you and Mr Daigeler pick up in your surveys of the college system a failure to perform, it would be very useful for us to get that information from you, to be able to track that down and find out why it is happening. Certainly, from my point of view, I agree totally with you that if we have the dollars that we have, let alone the dollars we are getting, we want to get the best productive result out of those. We simply have to do that.

I do not know whether there are any comments. Perhaps Les Horswill, assistant deputy minister, would comment on that. It would be helpful.

Mr Horswill: Setting aside that we want to have competitive public institutions, the concern about colleges' quality, relevance and training certainly is an ongoing concern, and was a very important question before the previous training agreement when all the federal government's purchases were directly in our public institutions. They had an effective monopoly. In that case, concerns of quality could not be tested against alternative sources for federal training purchases.

Over the last five years, as you know, the community industrial training committees have had a developmental budget. It is a substantial budget now approaching $60 million. They choose who the trainer is, and up to now they have been choosing public institutions. In this agreement colleges will have fair access to a bidding process for at least $90 million in the third year of the agreement. While the ministries of Skills Development and Colleges and Universities take concerns from business and everyone else about quality seriously, we and the colleges have agreed to a model where they will bid fairly and demonstrate their quality in pursuing a very substantial pool of moneys fairly available to private trainers as well as public trainers.

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Mrs Cunningham: That is interesting. Therefore, if we are now in the business of bidding, which I suppose is something we should be trying, we have to look for better ways of delivering and ways of comparing and measuring. I think this will give us that opportunity. We are looking at college systems that are going to have to use staff who are presently there doing something, to get into the business of bidding. With your background, Minister, you know what that means when it comes to applying for research grants and otherwise. We would probably spend a third of our professors' time looking for money and another third spending it and another third maybe teaching and doing research.

One of the criticisms has been that if the courses at the colleges are not relevant -- and this may be off topic, but you are still the Minister of Colleges and Universities -- is there some way we can take a look at that as well during this whole process? Surely we are going to be talking about what is working very well. Do not get me wrong. I think I am a great supporter of the college system and of training programs, but I have probably seen in the last five or six years a tremendous change: There seem to be a lot less courses that provide direct training than there were maybe in the 1970s when the colleges were just beginning and that is basically what they did.

Hon Mr Allen: I think you are probably right. As you know, there have been major problems in attracting enrolments in technology programs, for what can only be described I think as cultural reasons. There seems to be some return in that respect at the moment with new growth and new expansion in those programs in the colleges, but it would probably be safe to say that the numbers of programs, at least as compared with a few years ago, are probably somewhat down as some colleges have reluctantly closed out some programs that were otherwise necessary. That certainly has been a factor. I am not sure that was the main point of your question, however.

Mrs Cunningham: I think you have agreed with me basically.

Hon Mr Allen: Yes.

Mrs Cunningham: I would just make an editorial comment that when it comes to attracting enrolments, I think we would do much better if we started much sooner and started doing some of these training programs in our secondary schools. I am now talking about 14- and 15-year-olds, not even 16 and 17. I used to believe that. Now I believe 14- and 15-year-olds, which is a separate issue.

Some of the training dollars, it seems to me, are going into all kinds of language training in our community colleges. I am not certain if that has been targeted otherwise in the agreement. Has some of it been targeted for training and some of it for remedial language training? Is there a certain amount of money that has been divided out in the federal agreement?

Hon Mr Allen: There is a language component to the agreement. One of our principal objectives in going into the negotiations was to try to expand those dollars substantially, because the language component often is a very critical issue in terms of being able to access other kinds of training and certainly work and job placement itself.

What we discovered was that the federal government was not prepared to talk in the context of this agreement about new dollars for language training. We pressed the issue time and time again in the course of the negotiations, and the answer was always the same, "We have no mandate to talk about dollars for language training in the context of this agreement in terms of the new dollars." They did, however, signal that for their own reasons they would be happy to sit down and talk with us about that issue in a separate context, so we did manage to write into the agreement a commitment on the part of the federal government to sit down with us in each year of the agreement and talk about an agreement around language dollars. Another clause in the agreement also said that they would be quite happy to do that in the context of an overarching agreement around immigration. So there are in effect two possible options for us to pursue in the course of the next years, as the three years of the agreement proceed, to get into the dollar question around enhanced training for language programs.

Mrs Cunningham: Basically you are saying that the new dollars are for skills training and there really are not any new ones for the language component.

Hon Mr Allen: But there are existing and continuing dollars.

Mrs Cunningham: Yes, and again I would ask you to take a look at that particular budget, because certainly in my experience as I have travelled the province, and been involved, by the way, in teaching it myself through secondary schools and in the workplace as a volunteer -- there is a tremendous volunteer program, as you know, in London -- I think the colleges have been criticized because of the expense of that particular delivery system and the numbers they have been able to at least tell us about with regard to how successful they have been. I am not denying the fact that it has to be done, but I think it can be done in a more efficient, better way, and I think we need Education to help us there.

I think we are missing a tremendous resource, and those are the volunteers in our communities, who would be so ready. If that same professor would train 15 volunteers, you could imagine the kind of ongoing work that would be done in any college system, and it could be one-to-one stuff as well as large classes. I think there is a tremendous model in one of the secondary schools in London, G. A. Wheable Centre for Adult Education, and I know other school boards do the same thing. It is something that has been going on in our communities for some numbers of years and it is a good model. Yes, it is true that people do not get paid, but there are a lot of people out there who want to volunteer their time in a meaningful way, and this is one where there is a growing need in Ontario, and especially in this particular greater Toronto area. We are just not tapping into the many people who sit home in the evenings who would long to help us in that regard. I personally am glad that there are no new dollars there yet, because I do not think we have evaluated what we have been spending so far on that particular one.

One of the great criticisms around the apprenticeship programs -- maybe it is not a criticism, maybe it is just an observation and maybe it is a good thing, but as a mother I do not think it is a good thing. Our apprenticeship graduates appear to be very much older, by three or four years, than apprenticeship graduates in Europe, and even in the United States, I was reading the other day. Certainly I cannot be specific with the US, but I could be more so with France, Germany and the UK. There are many studies that tell us this.

We are told that we have the most expensive education system in North America. Whether that is true I do not know, I would like to see what the numbers are like, but it is expensive. Maybe our young people are allowed to stay in school too long. I am the mother of a couple that in my view will be there for ever, but the point is that it is expensive, and will they ever make a contribution and is this all attitudinal stuff? I do not know, but perhaps you could respond to that, because that is another way of allowing more training dollars for people if others are not taking up so many of them.

Hon Mr Allen: I am not sure what all the factors are, and perhaps some of my staff would have a better answer than I with regard to the older age of apprentices coming into the apprenticeship system, but one observation is certainly relevant: Because the youth cohort is a smaller and smaller proportion of the overall labour force by virtue of the way in which the baby-boom numbers have moved through the labour market, one is having to access older workers for retraining, and apprenticeship therefore comes, in a sense, under that rubric as well.

We all are aware of the high numbers of youth unemployed, for example, which tells us that, for whatever reason, and reasons we have not tackled well, I think, in the past, that younger age group from 16 to 24, which is the lower group in the labour market, has somehow had great difficulties over the past decade in general in accessing employment to get launched into the options for apprenticeship. In that sense, it is perhaps not surprising that the apprenticeship figures are older, but there may be some other reasons that I have not been quite so conversant with.

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Mr Horswill American states are different, but we believe that the age for American apprentices versus Canadian apprentices is remarkably the same. It is unacceptably high -- it is in the mid-20s -- and that is probably the single biggest problem for expanding apprenticeship in terms of the cost it is to the system and to employers.

The general point about the age being so much higher than Europe, simply stated, is that, since we do not invest as a society as extensively as, for instance, Germany does in the infrastructure of counselling and transition programs from the high school to the workplace, employers principally drive, appropriately, our apprenticeship system, since they pay for most of it, and they rely on labour market experience and high school graduation in the recruitment of an apprentice. That requires an individual to have a track record in the labour force, and usually a high school graduation. It in fact means that apprenticeship is a system of creaming. Before an employer takes on an apprentice in the traditional trades, he wants to know a lot about the individual, which makes it very difficult to be an easy program for transition from school to work. The age is a dramatic symptom of how narrow that program is for young people in our high schools.

Hon Mr Allen: We need to add some new dimensions to our program to get them in earlier and better --

The Vice-Chair: We are actually about four minutes over.

Mrs Cunningham: Mr Daigeler had 30 seconds, so I am going to take another question.

Mr Daigeler: The average age of the apprentice in Germany is 17 years; in Canada it is 26 years.

Mrs Cunningham: I read that too. On this point --

The Vice-Chair: No, excuse me.

Mrs Cunningham: Just to follow up on this one so we do not lose it?

The Vice-Chair: What happens, Dianne, if we do that, is that the whole system breaks down. You are quite welcome to follow up in the next rotation, in fairness. The committee has agreed to do this.

Mrs Cunningham: I would not want the system to break down. I mean, this is such an important system, is it not?

The Vice-Chair: There is only one way it works, and that is that we keep to the routine the way we have been doing estimates for the last month. Mr O'Connor is next in the rotation.

Mr O'Connor: If I can continue along the same line as Mrs Cunningham has been proceeding, the apprenticeship programs and some changes to it; they seem to be needed. One thing I noticed going through the estimates book was that towards the back there is a provincial advisory committee that provides information and updates on 68 trades that currently service Ontario. I am just wondering how that all works in regard to -- we have 27 field offices. Do they work jointly or separately in sharing the information?

Hon Mr Allen: You mean the provincial advisory committees and the regional offices?

Mr O'Connor: Right.

Hon Mr Allen: Let me say first of all, by way of prefacing, and then we can perhaps call somebody forward to respond in more detail, that on the actual mechanics of how they work the whole provincial advisory committee system had, I would say, almost broken down in the course of the early and middle 1980s. As a governing structure for the apprenticeship system it badly needed renewal. It has only been in the last couple of years, under the previous director, Mr Landry, who is with us today, and continuing under Mr Zisser, who is the current director of the apprenticeship branch, that the whole process of recreating the provincial advisory committees so that we have real, living, active tradespeople who know the trades giving us advice region by region across the province, would be in place to help us launch the major apprenticeship reforms that we have to have, that have to be built on knowledge and experience and people who are genuine tradespeople.

Mr Zisser would probably be happy to tell us more about the ways in which the structure works and the way the committees interact with the local regional offices and how they go about their business.

Mr Zisser Provincial advisory committees, of which we now have 20 for the trades, are established under the act and they are required to have no fewer than five members, made up of an equal number of representatives of employers and employees, and in general they have a group larger than that. It is their responsibility basically to advise on all aspects of the trade and they provide advice to the minister on those matters. The nomination of individuals on committees is solicited from a wide variety of stakeholders, including industry associations, employer-employee associations, unions, CITCs, community groups, equity groups, training delivery agencies and apprenticeship and client service field offices. That is how the names of individuals are then put forward.

In selecting individuals, the candidates are selected on their ability to provide quality advice and/or technical expertise on training issues, the representation of a constituency group or of a geographic, urban or rural area, the size and type of company or service they represent and the target groups they represent, so we do try to achieve, within that mix, some representativeness.

Mr O'Connor: How does that information flow back through to the ministry and to the field offices?

Mr Zisser: The provincial advisory committees are charged on an annual basis with considering some key questions about their trade and then providing that as advice to the minister. At their meetings they make formal recommendations, and those recommendations are relayed to the minister and formally responded to.

In addition to the provincial advisory committees that are essentially charged with the wellbeing of the entire trade -- that is, say, the trade of motor vehicle mechanic -- their function in that area has a lot to do with the setting of standards, to make sure that those standards are up-to-date and are being modified in light of technological change or other circumstances, but at a local level we also have local apprenticeship committees.

These committees operate in a manner that is much closer to the actual delivery of the program, and the client. These are the committees that, for example, would carry out functions such as apprenticeship appreciation dinners, where the graduating class of apprentices is honoured and recognized for achievement. They are also actively involved in ensuring that apprentices continue and complete their training. For example, an apprentice -- as has happened under the laid-off apprenticeship initiative -- may be able to be indentured to such a committee for continuity of training. They also take an active role, particularly in the metal machining area, of moving an apprentice from employer to employer to ensure that he or she is exposed to all facets of the trade. They are the people at the front.

This system, again, while it is envisaged in the legislation, is one that has not been aggressively promoted over the past 10 years. We are now in the process of going back to those groups and determining what we can do to strengthen those arrangements, because it would and does in fact encourage that kind of direct community ownership and involvement of the employer and employee with the apprenticeship program.

Mr O'Connor: In light of the changes, then, from the CITCs, there seems to be an evolution now going to the local boards under the OTAB. Can we then see some sort of evolution where the boards, almost having stalled and now being returned, are going to fit into the OTAB? Will that happen? Will that gel so that we can get the best out of the information out there that we can access?

Hon Mr Allen: Without presuming or prejudicing the outcome of the consultation around the OTAB structure, I think it is broadly assumed by most people who were involved in the discussion that the OTAB structure will have, under the board, a series of specialized concerns that will deal with things like workplace training, adjustment procedures, apprenticeship, entry/re-entry training, and eventually, if that thinking prevails in the course of the consultation, apprenticeship will become the responsibility of the Ontario Training and Adjustment Board.

By the same token, the local boards will be very actively related to the local governments and promotion of all apprenticeship training.

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Mr O'Connor: As we see the trend as a result of whatever -- I suppose we could say free trade -- the de-industrialization that has taken place, the ways of smokestacks and the bending of steel seem to be rapidly disappearing. I suppose some of the trend to older apprentices could be as a result of some of that, because we are using some of the expertise there. As we take a look at the lifelong learning aspect of training, is there any way your ministry is tied there so that we make sure the skills that are necessary for the future are going to be there, such as literacy in mathematics; is there some way that it all ties together?

Hon Mr Allen: Yes. What we try to do in the context of the in-school portion of the training, for example, is increasingly to build in generic skills components and make them available as part of the training packages so that the skill dimension is enhanced as well as the job-specific skill and the trade-specific skill.

The college system, where much if not virtually all the in-school work takes place, is admirably suited to providing that kind of generic skills training as well, so in that sense, yes.

The question of lifelong learning is perhaps a larger question, in terms of capacity to access a whole range of learning options in the broad training education sector. It is for that reason that we are trying to tighten up all our credentialing and our standards in the whole college system, for example, so that people will have readier movement and access through and into each of the major education sectors in the province. That really is a major challenge among the things we are doing in that regard.

For example, there will be the creation of prior learning assessment institutions that will enable people who come from one background and want to access the training program in a college or university, to have any prior learning they had done in another mode of training somewhere, somehow, credentialed and credited towards their programs. The whole concept of lifelong learning is to make the whole learning process and the institutions more fluid and accessible for people to be able to move laterally, vertically, through them.

Mr O'Connor: As a way of tying that together with my questions around apprenticeship, then, coming from an automotive sector, I have seen layoffs take place in apprenticeship programs where, upon completion of their training, people leave without a proper certificate that it is applicable in other jurisdictions. Maybe it is going to happen through OTAB that a certification program is going to include apprentices from all different sectors. An electrician trained through an automobile assembly plant in Oshawa should be just about as qualified as any other electrician to service some other manufacturing sector. It is not an approved certificate.

Hon Mr Allen: That is a very live question, and I will ask someone else to answer it fully. Part of the answer is making certain there are core curricular requirements that are central to all apprentices, for example, so that there is a base in each of them that it is possible to build on, in terms of the specific trades.

Second, there is the development of the multiskilling apprenticeship programs, which look at putting together the variety of skills that are often necessary on the shop floor so that one does not have to pull in another trade and another person and the dump time and downtime and all the losses and inefficiencies that result from that.

There are a number of questions that still have to be resolved across a number of trades, in terms of how portable you can make the skills packages that people acquire in the context of one apprenticeship training, to carry into another to get credit, and then build on that to have another skill, which is credited to them as a result of further training, and get the efficiencies they need out of that in the training system. That is all a very active agenda with us right now, and it is critically important to move ahead with it.

Mr Horswill: Just to add to that, ideally we want to establish the same regard for an employer-established multiskill base as the normal regulated trades do. That would be an ideal objective where the skills, formal training and experience with certain bona fide employers would be equivalent in the marketplace, as credible as the regulated trades.

Just to add to your earlier question about the relevance of apprenticeship to laid-off workers, in particular older workers, the first priority of the involvement of both governments obviously is to help them find employment. That, with the displaced worker, is a priority of the new training agreement. A whole range of programs will help that individual in Ontario. The lead on that is the Ministry of Labour and a program we are quite proud of, the $5,000 voucher program for workers over 45.

At present, without pre-credentials and so forth, apprenticeship obviously is not an ideal program for a 55-year-old worker who is looking for employment. It is three to five years of training. While the agreement provides full income support during that period of training, more efficient models will more likely be used to establish the employability of that worker, who is a very high priority of the training agreement.

The Acting Chair (Mr G. Wilson): There is still time for a short question.

Mr O'Connor: Could you talk about the program and making it more accessible to minority groups? I noticed in here the natives, women, etc.

Hon Mr Allen: I think I commented on this earlier in terms of the way in which the agreement itself focuses on that question, and also in terms of the dollars we put aside, $1 million, for pre-apprenticeship work to enhance access among visible minorities, women and equity groups. If there is some detail about how that works, how that actually plays out in terms of a search for candidates and trying to find candidates to take up those options, there may be something more that can be said than I have said.

The Acting Chair: I am sorry, minister, but it was a short question. We had time for a short answer. At least you have given us the direction in which we are heading. We can follow that up.

Mr Sosa: When we come around in the next cycle, I will probably respond to that.

Mrs Cunningham: We do not want the system to break down.

Mr Daigeler: I want to get back to the communications section in here. In the initiatives there is a rather good description of how a government should prepare the public for its programs. It is pronounced in a very bureaucratic, objective fashion. I could think of some different ways of expressing it, but again, it probably would be unparliamentary so I will not do it. On page 16 at the bottom, it says one of the initiatives the communications service is involved in is to participate "in the development of labour market initiatives to be proactive in creating productive dialogues" -- listen to this now -- "and receptive environments for the ministry's programs."

As I say, I could think of using different words for what that really entails. In any case, I would like to know what the consultations are that you are presently involved with, who the client groups are and what the projected costs of these consultations are in the upcoming year. You could give me a preliminary answer and provide me with --

Hon Mr Allen: There is a broad range. I will ask the staff to respond to that, because there is a huge range of consultation that goes on all the time out of regional offices in the context of the apprenticeship programs and all the training agreements, which are indeed productive dialogues and do attempt to create receptive environments.

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Mr Daigeler: I am looking for those that you have budgeted. I wonder if these will be ongoing initiatives that you do not normally budget for. Are there any that you have budgeted for? Which are they and what are the costs?

Hon Mr Allen: Let me ask our director of communications to respond to you directly on that question.

Ms Fraser: I am Susan Fraser, director of communications and marketing. The most important point to make is that what we are attempting to do with all our communications is to work much more in collaboration with all of our stakeholders. That kind of discussion does not have a cost; it has a cost in time and it has a cost in effort.

One of the things we now do, for example, working with the provincial advisory committees, is that we in the communications branch actually go out; we are part of those meetings. We ask for their advice and counsel as to how we can be much more effective as a partner in communicating both to their members, the people they are working with, and to the people who they see as what I call "influencers." There is not a cost against that. If I can reiterate, the cost is in effort, in our being accessible, in our going out to be very proactive in asking for their advice and counsel.

Mr Daigeler: I appreciate that and I regret that I have to push on a little bit, because obviously we get a limited amount of time to ask the minister questions and I have all kinds of questions still to put forward.

Again, while I appreciate the general direction in which you are trying to stay in touch with the public, I am interested to know specifically whether you have budgeted for specific consultations, what these consultations are, with whom, and what the budgeted amounts are for that, if any.

Hon Mr Allen: We will get back to you with some estimates on that if it is possible to cost some of it out.

Mr Daigeler: To move on to a general question, I understand the Treasurer has indicated that in addition to the 5% overall reduction that each ministry has been asked to look into --

Hon Mr Allen: It is 0.5%.

Mr Daigeler: The information I have here is that the Treasurer has indicated that each ministry will be required in the next year to reduce its budget by 10%.

Hon Mr Allen: You are speaking of the next budget year.

Mr Daigeler: Right. Right now, I understand, in 1991-92 it is 5% -- I think it is more than 0.5% -- and that next year it would be 10%. Each ministry is asked to reduce its overall costs by 10%.

Hon Mr Allen: Yes. I thought you were talking about the recent adjustment process which, for example in the Ministry of Colleges and Universities was 0.5%.

Mr Daigeler: If you are in fact looking at an overall reduction of 10%, which areas are you thinking of at the present time?

Hon Mr Allen: It will be difficult to intelligently discuss that question without speaking in terms of the developments around the Ontario Training and Adjustment Board, what happens by way of the movement of programs out of ministries, for example, towards that board. All that would impact severely on the budgets of ministries that are engaged in training. So that is an unknown and not predictable factor at this point in terms of our projections for our next year's budgets.

The best response is simply to say that globally I do not anticipate any reduction in the investment in training in Ontario through any of the current training programs. That can well be borne out by the simple fact that we have just got the agreement with the federal government which will enhance the whole training agenda in Ontario. I certainly cannot see this government investing less in training when it is such a central part of the whole economic renewal process.

Mr Daigeler: I agree with you there. It is good to hear that and I will certainly support you on that and we will see whether the Treasurer feels the same way. Sometimes the critics can be be helpful in your battle at Management Board. I am sure Mrs Cunningham will agree on that. We can push you and if you can push the Treasurer for that particular dossier, so much the better.

Hon Mr Allen: No question, by all means.

Mr Daigeler: To move on to policy and programs now, we have not received very much information either in the estimates book or in your opening speech on the Ontario Training Corp. Although I realize there is some reduction in the investment funds, nevertheless there is over $6 million being spent there. I would like to know in some detail how that money is being spent, because there is not really any description in the estimates book.

Hon Mr Allen: We can certainly give you that in some detail, but as you know, the activities of the OTC have been focused on three major projects.

The first has to do with the development of training technologies. The major aspects of the training corporation's activities are focused around investments in new training technologies which then can be saleable and publicized for trainers in Ontario.

The second has to do with training the trainers. How do you enhance the skills of those who are engaged in the training process so that at the end of the day those who are trained are better trained? Are the skills that are most appropriate to the sector those for which the training is taking place?

The third has to do with the whole area of developing databases for accessing the training that is available at large in the province, and that of course is the whole SkillsLink undertaking. So in terms of the global dollars you referred to, those are the three major enterprises that are being pursued, and each of them I would have to say, pretty vigorously.

Mr Daigeler: I presume the minister is aware that the standing committee on public accounts did an examination of this particular initiative by the Liberal government actually, and there were some questions raised about the existence of this institution. I am wondering, seeing that he is in a new government, what the minister's own view is of the Ontario Training Corp and whether he sees a future for it.

Hon Mr Allen: I must say on the lighter side that when I came into this office and discovered I was the only shareholder of a major corporation, it gave my democratic socialist identity a bit of a jolt. I do not think there is any question that the OTC has done some very valuable work in each of the three areas it has pursued.

It has recently, for example, produced a major study on training the trainer which is now in significant demand as a document because there has not been a lot of work done around training trainers. Likewise, the SkillsLink database on accessing training has 76,000 entries at this point in time. It is being used very widely and increasingly widely across the province and is, in fact, the subject of some imitation across the country.

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I do not have a major problem with what OTC has undertaken, but at the same time there are two or three things that need to be recognized. One is that it has had some difficulty generating the confidence of the labour movement, which has not maintained its representation on the board. Second, in itself it is not the comprehensive umbrella training institution that we want to see in place, which in other words is the Ontario Training and Adjustment Board.

If you assume that we are going to complete the development of that training board, then you have to ask the question: Do the activities of the Ontario Training Corp make sense apart from the board? One would have to say there is at least reason to think the activities might be better pursued under that other heading. But that is a subject of the consultation and that is a subject for subsequent decision and not a decision that anybody has made at this point in time. I want to reinforce that I value very highly the work that has been done in those three major areas that were given to the Ontario Training Corp.

Mr Daigeler: I am pleased to hear that. You did not mention one area which we had hoped for, and that was that it would be self-financing after a while.

Hon Mr Allen: The SkillsLink project?

Mr Daigeler: Yes. They have been kind of low, but I am glad you are saying that generally the initiative was worth while and it has your support. I have to move on. How much more time do we have?

The Vice-Chair: About a minute and a half.

Mr Daigeler: Since we are not coming back this week, I will leave with the minister a copy of the letter I received through my colleague Greg Sorbara from a service called Times Change Women's Employment Service. Again, this relates to your interest in strengthening the training and workplace preparation for previously underserviced groups.

They are asking why they are not able to receive any base funding. They have received some funding, but they are looking for permanent funding, especially in view of the new government's interest in providing -- and this is precisely what they are doing -- comprehensive employment and educational counselling for all women. Could the minister take a look at this and tell me whether he is looking at base funding for this organization or organizations of this nature, and if he is not, why he would not? I leave that with the minister.

Hon Mr Allen: Thank you very much. We will follow that up and have something for you next time.

Mrs Cunningham: My colleague from the Liberal Party will, I am sure, by the end of these estimates agree with me that he has had ample time to ask questions with regard to the provincial-federal agreement. I know we have jokes back and forth from time to time, but when I said this was a landmark agreement, I really meant it. The only way we are going to improve and start acting upon, in a more efficient and effective way, the training in our province and our country is to work together, no matter what political party -- I mean that -- and no matter at what level of government.

I was very pleased to see the objectives with regard to -- in your words, Minister -- the need for people to be able to move across not only the interprovincial stuff, but within the trades themselves and get credit for courses.

That is the same with regard to colleges where we have young people moving from province to province right now and we make them go to school for a year longer. It is absolutely ridiculous, but I have been saying that for a long time. Maybe we will get something done. I do not know. With your background and your professional role previous to coming to this tremendously responsible position as minister, perhaps you are bringing a lot to the job that maybe others have not. I am hoping you do and that we will get something done.

I was just looking at the estimates for 1988-89. I could give you some wonderful quotes from those days too, and some of them were yours as a matter of fact, so I will hold you to them. I have to say that I am so tired of asking the questions. I just want to see results. This agreement talks about interprovincial standards. It talks about reducing the dropout rate in the apprenticeship programs. It talks about improving access. It talks about the removal of barriers. It is more language and more rhetoric, but it is a signed agreement. From my point of view, in representing the public, I am going to make certain that we are accountable.

I can do that here in Ontario, as you can, and I hope I can be helpful if you need me with regard to our federal colleagues for the next decade, Mr Daigeler.

Mr Daigeler: I know there is a lot of hope here, but that is going too far.

Mrs Cunningham: Maybe so, but you have to take a look at what you are going to get instead in life some days. That is what I look at, and I continue in my role as the member for London North with that objective.

With regard to the labour movement, which was the last discussion, as a person who employed a number of people in an agency in London, where I worked very closely with both the college and the school boards in work placement programs and actually a couple of apprenticeship programs when it came to maintenance and work with food services and what not in this institution, one of the great concerns I had was actually at the negotiating table.

The employees would tell us how unhappy they were that we had these individuals working, because they thought they would take away jobs. You know about those things, and that probably only happened in the 1960s and 1970s, but reassure me that this is the kind of discussion we are going to have with regard to accessibility for young people in training programs during the discussions around this advisory board, because surely that is what is going to come out. Will we be free to talk about those kinds of things, in your view?

Hon Mr Allen: You are talking about an unwillingness to accept young people in workplaces on co-op programs?

Mrs Cunningham: It was, in fairness, co-operative education programs. In today's world, I believe in that same institution there are a couple of people in apprenticeship training programs. It may not be the correct word, but they are definitely getting credits towards an apprenticeship in food services.

Now, it is not so in that institution, but it is in others. As I have travelled about, school boards have said they are having difficulty in finding placements for a lot of reasons, and no one would know better than your own staff. That is a real challenge. I can tell you, as a supervisor of those people, that they were coming in to help and we were grateful for their support. But on the other hand, it was an equal bargain and it was my responsibility to give them supervisor training. It was a reciprocal kind of thing, and nobody could possibly take anybody's work because it took a lot of time to supervise the extra person who was within your realm of responsibility when you took on that tremendous responsibility with young people.

I am saying that was an item on the negotiating agenda. Anybody here who has been involved in those kinds of programs knows that is not unusual. I am hoping it is less usual today than it was when I was involved, up until 1981, in that.

Hon Mr Allen: It is a changing world and we all have to bend. Workplaces, collective agreements are going to have to take into account the growing presence of placements in the whole world of school-to-work arrangements that are out there and will be out there in greater numbers as the years go by.

From my point of view, one of the ways in which we can tackle the whole dropout question, for example, is quite simply to link those last years of school to work for many students in a much more dynamic and effective and accepted way. That is going to mean more placements of young people in more workplaces, and the regular workers in those places are going to have to be prepared to accept it as part of their social responsibility, really, to help facilitate the movement of young people out of their school experience and programming and into the workplace, to learn those new skills that are necessary to help them be productive employees.

I have not seen a survey which tells me how big a problem that is. It would be interesting to know whether that is a major problem in workplaces where such placements take place, and if so, to discuss with the unions involved in the negotiations, for example, to get them, broadly speaking in terms of their policies, to accept those kinds of placements as part and parcel of their responsibilities too. I am not sure how far that may or may not have taken place to date, but I again would be interested in knowing that to get a bit of a read on the problem you are telling me about, because it is important.

Mrs Cunningham: As always, I appreciate your straightforward answers.

The committee adjourned at 1801.