Brad Duguid, Ontario’s Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities, said his province receives around $1-billion from the federal government for training.
“We have had some pretty good success here. Our Second Careers program has helped turn around 64,000 workers and given them the skills they need in other sectors where there are more opportunities. This is a diverse country with diverse labour markets and to look at centralizing things again makes no sense to me whatsoever,” he said.
As the National Post reported Tuesday, Ottawa is looking to take a more interventionist role in training by administering the $2.5-billion budget directly in the hope it can match the demand and supply for skills more efficiently.
In the House of Commons Tuesday, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said it would be inappropriate to discuss the government’s economic plan in advance of the budget.
The lack of a denial is as clear an indicator as we are likely to get before Mr. Flaherty buys new shoes that the government intends to act.
No one has any doubt Canada has a problem. As report after report has highlighted, there is a growing divide between have and have-not occupations.
Benjamin Tal at CIBC World Markets noted that on one hand skilled jobs are going unfilled, while at the other end of the labour market spectrum there is a surplus pool of workers who can’t find jobs.
This two-speed labour market is driving up wages in sectors like oil and gas extraction, where salaries have risen 36% in the past five years, and in the utilities industry, which has seen pay go up 21% in the same period. The government has responded by overhauling the federal skilled worker program to admit more immigrants who can help fill the skills gap.
Yet for workers in areas like the clerical sector, food services and sales, real wage growth has been frozen and people thrown out of work.
But if the problem is apparent, it’s far from clear that the federal government assuming control of skills training is part of the solution.
In its 2007 budget, the Conservatives devolved training to the provinces. As one economist noted, with a degree of understatement: “This would be a fairly large about-face.”
If the Harper government proceeds with the plan to re-centralize skills the onus will be on Mr. Flaherty to make the case that the status quo is not working and that the creation of a seamless national labour market will help fix things.
Yet as Hays, the recruiting consultancy, noted in its 2012 global skills index, a bigger contributor to the talent mismatch than skills training is Canada’s education system, which is not producing graduates with the relevant degrees that employers require. If the same logic holds that Ottawa knows best, what’s the point of a decentralized federation? The feds should just cut education transfers and guide policy for the country’s schools, colleges and universities from Parliament Hill.
Mr. Duguid is likely correct when he says the country is simply too big to dictate training policy from Ottawa. “It depends on where you are in Canada, and even where you are in Ontario,” he said.
The Finance Minister is going to have to produce a watertight case based on some solid data if the Conservatives are going to get away with this one.
The topic dominated Question Period Tuesday, with the NDP’s Quebec MPs sniffing an opportunity to bash the government for failing to respect a provincial jurisdiction the Conservatives themselves previously identified in the 2007 budget.
That will be but a flesh wound compared to the lacerations the Parti Québecois will try to inflict if Mr. Flaherty’s plan lives up to its advanced billing.
Original Article
Source: fullcomment.nationalpost.com
Author: John Ivison
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