The downside is that the provinces will howl because the amount in question is not chump change. Ottawa writes cheques worth nearly $2-billion to provinces to train those who qualify for Employment Insurance. It transfers a further $500-million under labour market agreements to train those not eligible for EI. From Ottawa’s vantage point, there are few strings attached and the provinces have carte blanche to spend the money as they see fit.
Mr. Flaherty’s argument is said to be that the provinces are producing uneven results that do not address the skills shortages identified by the Canadian Chamber of Commerce as the number one barrier to competitiveness in this country. He has already lined up supporters for his new initiative from all sides of the political spectrum.
Chris Smillie, head of government relations at Canada’s Building Trades Unions, said that the country faces being left behind unless it can upgrade its skills. “This issue is non-partisan and has broad-based support from employers, purchasers of construction and the skilled unions,” he said.
Fair enough. But the approach that Mr. Flaherty is set to unveil in his budget later this month is a complete reversal from his position in the 2007 budget, when he completed the transfer of responsibility for the delivery of all EI employment benefits and support measures to the provinces. Budget 2007 also added the $500-million for those unable to access training under EI programs. “This approach respects the primary role and responsibility that provinces and territories have in the design and delivery of training programs.”
That was then, apparently. Sources suggest Mr. Flaherty will return to a more interventionist role and administer the $2-billion through the federally operated Service Canada. The theory is that a worker on EI will take his or her record of employment to a Service Canada centre, where they will be given a list of available training at community colleges or building trades unions and handed a voucher that may or may not end up being called “Action Plan dollars” to go shopping for the skills they think suit them best.
The only justification for such a blatant U-turn is the argument that the experiment didn’t work and the provinces have not been giving Canadians value for money. That point may be hard to make if Ontario, the chief recipient of federal training dollars, is any measure. It simply doesn’t seem to have the information necessary to make a judgment on whether it is doing a good job.
In his comprehensive report on reforming Ontario’s public services, former TD bank chief economist Don Drummond said the province had to improve the way it tracked outcomes. While it measured the number of clients served and how satisfied they were, there were few statistics about subsequent employment duration or wage levels. But the one program for which the ministry of training did provide numbers suggests the province is doing a reasonable job. Of its “second career” program clients that were tracked, 81% had found employment after a year, 50% in areas related to their skills training.
Mr. Drummond’s recommendation for improving the “fragmented and distorted” training regime was to hand more flexibility to the province so that it could create an integrated system. In a province that received just 31% of EI training in 2010, despite having 42% of Canada’s unemployed population, he advocated training be decoupled from EI eligibility.
“I don’t care who does it but it’s a mess at the moment,” he said in an interview Monday. ‘‘Both the feds and provinces are involved and it’s completely un-coordinated,” he said.
He said there is a lack of realism if the federal government intends to reverse a process of devolution that took years to negotiate in one budget.
“You don’t do anything in the constitutional area by surprise,” he said.
The Harper government has already upset provinces like Quebec with its reforms to the Employment Insurance system. It doesn’t require a wild imagination to forsee how this will go down with provinces that have set up training delivery networks based on federal funding — like a hole in a lifeboat.
Original Article
Source: fullcomment.nationalpost.com
Author: John Ivison
No comments:
Post a Comment