[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]
Thursday, March 13, 1997
.1537 
[English]
The Chairman (Mr. Stan Dromisky (Thunder Bay - Atikokan, Lib.)): Please take your seats, members, and we'll begin our meeting.
We'll continue with our session investigating and studying Citizenship and Immigration Canada's foreign workers policy.
This afternoon we're very fortunate to have with us Mr. Paul Swinwood, President of the Software Human Resources Council.
Mr. Paul Swinwood (President, Software Human Resources Council): Mr. Chairman, may I make a request? I have a short presentation for use with an overhead projector that would set the scene.
The Chairman: Very good.
I also thank you, Robyn Gordon, for coming.
Ms Robyn Gordon (Project Manager, Communication, Software Human Resources Council): Thank you.
Mr. Swinwood: Let me try to set the scene so that I can cover what we're attempting to do here. There has been a presentation on a pilot project with regard to the software industry and something that we've been trying to do with facilitating immigration. There have been some questions from different people that I've received over the last couple of days, trying to ponder why. What I'm trying to do here is show the skill shortage and working on the solutions.
This is a presentation I have not created specifically for this group, but it's part of a presentation I have been doing from coast to coast with my industry partners.
What we're talking about is the software skill shortage in Canada and the different areas in which we're trying to impact this shortage. We have many areas of problems, one of which is the MIS group, and for those of you who I'm sure are familiar with it, the year 2000 problem.
.1540
In our younger days, we mature software workers created a small problem in some of the systems. We didn't include enough digits to click over the year 2000, so your banking systems, your air traffic control systems and a few others that some of us were involved in, have a small problem.
The moral of this is, don't fly on Friday night, December 31, 1999, until maybe noon the next day, just in case.
Embedded software systems is the big explosive growth area we have right now. It's averaging 26%. These are things like your microwave. I won't scare you about what's coming on your new refrigerator, your car, the telephone systems. You don't see it, but it's there and it's behind it, outsourcing our educational systems, the corporate training culture, the retraining needs and the global mobility of resources. The information technology business is a global business. It is not restricted to Ottawa. It is not restricted to Fredericton. It is not restricted to Vancouver Island or Victoria. We are part of a worldwide enterprise.
Just to set the scene on this, why is the Software Council worried about it? Well, we were put together four or five years ago with this vision: software workers it needs, and the workers have the skills the employers need to be successful globally.
Why am I talking about that? Let me not lose sight of this one. The employees in my industry have to be committed to lifelong learning and what I call the ``four-legged stool''. Don't forget this one, because if they're missing any of the legs, they fall off. We have unemployed software coders and programmers in Canada. I acknowledge that fact. With these four legs to the stool, we can go a long way toward employing them.
Why am I here talking to you? The Software Council is involved in these areas; labour market information, retraining. We are already working with industry and education and governments at the federal, provincial and municipal levels on the retraining of people. We're doing things around that. I have companies ranging from IBM, Corel and Microsoft on the same project. You might try that one some day, for those of you have seen the advertising, one against the other. I have universities and community colleges working together. We're working on information technology retraining from St. John's, Newfoundland, to Victoria, and every city in between.
Skills profile advocacy and mobility: the immigration partial solution to our problem is one part of the mix. You've seen the statistics - they were on the news last night - on the growth in the industry. I don't need to go through a whole bunch of those. Let me talk about some of the things we're trying to do.
We've identified industry's role in the resource evolution. One of those is to partner with education. ``Co-op or perish'' are the words I'm using these days. If industry doesn't get together with our educational community in the co-op issues around training - I'm saying education and training, two different things - we'll all have major problems.
Partner with the training. Most of the software products out there today have an 18-month half-life. What that means is that after 18 months they're going to be replaced and they'll be in maintenance mode with something newer.
For those of you who are familiar with my industry, Java is a hot topic these days - greatest, latest, newest, best. It didn't exist two years ago.
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The developer of this, by the way, is a Canadian out of Alberta and UBC, James Gosling. It's a wonderful product, state of the art. I don't know what we'll be doing two years from now, but right now it's hot.
We're asking industry to come up with a commitment of 3% of their salary line to retraining their people. Am I getting it? I'm way beyond it in some companies, I'm way under in others.
Partnering with employees: employees in our information technology industry are the asset. We don't have an asset number for them but it's part of what a company is all about.
On education's role, the education community has to ensure the core competencies of the people they are turning out. You'll notice I didn't say they have to be a Java programmer. The education community has to turn out the people that have the competencies for lifelong learning and training. Education has to forge new partnerships with industry. They have to open their doors and welcome industry in.
It was not six months ago that I had the statement made to a member of my organization, ``We don't allow industry into our classrooms; they pollute the minds of the youth.'' We've changed that. We have that partnership going. It has been a struggle. They have to be a catalyst and they have to forge new partnerships in the education continuum.
I was approached the other week by a university looking for a PhD graduate with a couple of years experience to become a full professor to teach Microsoft Access, one of the products in the Microsoft range. They wanted to pay this professor $45,000 to $50,000 per year to teach a tool. I introduced them to the local community college. I introduced them to the local private training sector hoping that we could get them together and work together on doing this. This is an example of the changes we're trying to make.
The employee's role: a commitment to lifelong learning, a commitment to taking the training. One of the problems I've run into is getting telephone calls on a daily basis basically starting off with, ``About your 20,000 open jobs forecast...'', which then deteriorates into language that I won't use here in this room at this time on tape. When I investigate their background, I find in a lot of cases these people come up with the statement, ``My company didn't tell me to take training on PCs''.
One of the people who wrote me the other week, in fact, had a handwritten resumé saying he'd been a software worker for 20 years. He had no PC skills, no knowledge of PCs, and was mad at me that I couldn't find him a job. Attitude, aptitude, communication skills and technical expertise; he didn't fit any more. Some people won't. Being responsible for their own lifelong learning.
One of my programs that I'm lobbying on right now involves young students. I've been trying - and my staff won't let me do this - to put a little mirror on the first page of the manual with a statement under it that says, ``Look into this mirror and see who's responsible for your lifelong learning''. They won't let me put it in but I keep trying. We'll get it in one of these days.
Here's where we're getting to: the government's role in the resource evolution. Your job is to facilitate the solutions, not necessarily to do them, to invest in the partnerships that make these things work, to encourage global mobility. That's what we're talking about in the pilot that I'll get to in a little while. I would love for you to mandate national mobility, but with the devolution of responsibilities out to the provinces right now, that's becoming an interesting challenge on that one and I don't think we could get away with it. As well, help us communicate that a commitment to lifelong learning is what it's all about.
.1550
Let me reinforce what the skills shortage is all about: it's a shortage of quality resources. We have unemployed C++ coders. C++ is the latest object-oriented program. Notice that I didn't say developers and I didn't say designers. I said coders. Quality is in demand globally. We have the huge problem of losing people to the United States. Most of you have probably have seen the newspapers in which, upon opening them up, you see this: ``Come on down to the Westin Hotel and meet these companies!'' It is happening every day.
It's about the competency rather than just the technical skill. Java is here right now. It's really hot and it's really neat, but universities shouldn't be teaching Java. They should be teaching the competency that will allow the students to learn Java. It's a different thing.
Compensation is a national issue, one of the issues that we're running up against. I was at a meeting at one of my companies in Calgary a couple of weeks ago. They've lost 30 people since September 1. Most of them were offered a $20,000 signing bonus, stock options in the new company they were going to work for, and their Canadian salary in U.S. funds. Not all of them were even leaving Canada. Some of them were going to work for the American company at their homes in Calgary.
Somehow or other I have a problem with that as well. If you have a job offer from southern California in the middle of February when you're digging out of a snowstorm here, it's really difficult to balance that.
A voice: A chinook.
Mr. Swinwood: Right, a chinook.
Solutions? Education, employers, employees, federal government, industry associations, provincial governments and private trainers: partners.
These days, one of the big issues for me in one of our own pilots is this, ``You're taking business away from me. I'm the community college. I'm entitled to that marketplace.'' Or it's, ``I'm the university and I'm moving into that marketplace.''
If I get them working together, we all win. If I get them working independently, they're both going to go out of business.
There are some universities now forecasting that they will have minimum students in 2005, just by looking at the demographics in their area. It isn't Ottawa. It happens to be a province to the east of us on the coast. They're already worried about this. They have to partner with the rest of the educational system.
Now let's talk about what has us around this table in the first place. The immigration pilot project that we were talking about is only a partial solution to the shortages we have. It's the temporary worker process we're talking about. We're talking about an impact on the process. Industry has been asking for this. We have been working on it. We've been trying to do it quietly; and, yes, not so quietly sometimes.
The industry partnership with the Software Human Resources Council means that they are working on career awareness, on high school programs, on university and post-graduate programs, and on retraining of their employees while we're also working on the immigration pilot to try to solve some of the shortages. We're focusing on the technology demand in this pilot. We're trying to identify the specific technology shortages we have. A cross-section of the industry's companies have contributed to this pilot.
Why were we doing it? Monitoring of this as a pilot was to show us the impact of bringing in a foreign worker and what the leverage of jobs is that can result from employing one of these mid-level, technically competent, experienced people. I'm not attempting to take jobs away from the new university grads. We're not in that area at all. Out of the pilot would come our recommendations on where we go from here.
Who are we looking for? The experienced, competent, educated and trained, the kind of people my companies are telling me we don't have.
.1555
Why do we want to do this? We're talking about an 8:1 average leverage - and this is out of studies from the U.S. One of these technically competent development people will leverage eight other positions in the community and in the company. We're talking here about the shipping clerks, about the receiving clerks, about the accountants, about the - I hate to say it - lawyers, and the whole group needed to create a company and keep it viable. We're talking about the local butcher, baker, candlestick maker, and everybody else out in the community. Our belief is that each one of these people will leverage eight additional Canadian jobs.
In our industry, we have a global advantage. We have the lead in many areas of technology. Our success in the telecom sector is renowned worldwide. In the multimedia sector, we have been exporting more multimedia stuff. If you go to your local theatre, you'll see a lot of the results of what was developed and designed here in Canada. In fact, many of those companies responsible are in Montreal right now. So there's a great success story that has be told on that one.
This is what we're trying to do. We want to have a small impact on a small portion of it, and have a very positive impact on employment for Canadians.
That's the end of my speech. Are there any questions?
The Chairman: Thank you very much for the presentation.
We'll continue with questions. Each party will receive eight minutes, and you're first, Mr. Nunez.
[Translation]
Mr. Osvaldo Nunez (Bourassa, BQ): Thank you for your presentation, Mr. Swinwood. Do you have copies available for committee members?
[English]
Mr. Swinwood: I have a copy of the presentation, and I also have copies of what the council has been working on. The copies I have here are all in English, but I will make French copies available as soon as we can get them.
[Translation]
Mr. Osvaldo Nunez: Could you tell us a bit more about the Software Human Resources Council? How large is its membership and what are its goals?
[English]
Mr. Swinwood: The Software Human Resources Council was formed in 1992; I guess that was when we first got together. We represent many different organizations and associations, including the Canadian Advanced Technology Association and the Information Technology Association of Canada. They have provided their members and their membership to us as part of our representation. On top of those, we have the Canadian Council of Professional Engineers represented on our council. We have the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada, and the Association of Canadian Community Colleges.
Mr. Osvaldo Nunez: How many members do you have?
Mr. Swinwood: In terms of individual members, I'm talking about very few. We have maybe a hundred. But through our associations and our associate members, we are in contact with 7,000 to 12,000 people during any two-month period.
[Translation]
Mr. Osvaldo Nunez: Your council seems to be doing a fine job. Why are we having such a huge problem? Why have you not been able to anticipate the shortage and the high level of unemployment we are having now? When did you start being involved in this area? You are responsible in part for the skill shortage because you did not anticipate this situation. You did not look for solutions beforehand. Why?
.1600
[English]
Mr. Swinwood: I think the response from the council is that since we have been formed in 1992 we have been working on the assumption that this problem was coming and have attempted to bring the players together. I think I'm very pleased with the progress we have made. However, the industry itself has grown at about a 26% average rate per year, and we have been unable to meet the demand. It has overwhelmed all of us.
[Translation]
Mr. Osvaldo Nunez: You are telling us that hiring foreign workers is only a short term solution, and not a long term one. I certainly hope so. What can you do to solve this problem and train people so that we have the resources we need in Canada without having to hire from outside? Give us concrete solutions. How many years is that going to take?
[English]
Mr. Swinwood: I do not have an answer as to how many years it will take to solve the problem totally, given the growth of the industry and the speed of change. What I know we have already done and are already working on are things such as what I believe Mr. Fillmore will be talking about here later, specifically in Ottawa. But we have been working with the educational institutions since this problem became identifiable and quantifiable. My expectations are that it will take a specific partnership between the federal government, the provincial governments and the ministries of education to address this problem on a national basis, because each of the individual provinces now being responsible for the education process and training process have their own priorities. As long as they have their own priorities we will not be able to address that on a national basis.
If I had a recommendation, it would be that we have the leadership from the federal government to bring together a strategy amongst its different departments in having Industry Canada, Citizenship and Immigration and Human Resources Development provide sort of a framework that would guide Canada over the next few years. I think we need a very high-level, top-down vision of how we're going to solve this.
Each company, each organization, each city is currently working on their own strategy. I have been in Calgary, in Fredericton, in Montreal, in St. John's, Newfoundland, in Victoria, in Edmonton, and everywhere else. Everybody is working on their own local solution.
[Translation]
Mr. Osvaldo Nunez: You have an optimistic vision. I hope it will prove successful. But in a tangible way, I cannot see how we will be able to address this problem. The only way out seems to be to hire foreign workers. Do you have a list of vacant jobs for which you are looking for skilled human resources?
[English]
Mr. Swinwood: I have nothing here that I can give you, because the list of the exact technical job skills evolves from day to day. What I meant to bring along was a sample of what the newspapers are publishing in the ads. I think if you take a look at a newspaper in almost every city, there is a multiplicity of pages of people that are being requested.
We are just starting to collect the specific labour market information you're asking for. The specifics of getting down to city by city, company by company, job by job is going to be a fairly involved process, but what we have is an overall description from our industry, broken down into five major areas of the different areas of software workers and the skills shortages that the companies are looking for and say they can't fill. That we are currently working on and hope to have published by the end of this month.
[Translation]
Mr. Osvaldo Nunez: What are the amendments you would like to see in the regulations on immigration so that you can bring in foreign workers quickly?
.1605
[English]
Mr. Swinwood: First of all, let me make it clear that what has been proposed on this deals only with one portion of the temporary worker application, and that is the validation process. Currently, that validation process can take anywhere from three to sixteen weeks, depending on who you're talking to and what the definition is. It has been described as significantly longer.
Mr. Mauril Bélanger (Ottawa - Vanier, Lib.): It's been described to us as, if it's not too difficult, between five and ten days.
Mr. Swinwood: Fine. What we are attempting to do is to have that process pre-validated for a small selection of jobs that my industry has identified. Those people would then not have to go through -
Mr. Osvaldo Nunez: Which jobs?
The Chairman: Mr. Hill, please.
Mr. Jay Hill (Prince George - Peace River, Ref.): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Swinwood, I thought your presentation was excellent in terms of laying out the problem and how the industry perceives it. I'd like to get to the specifics of why you don't think the present system works - in other words, the present immigration system in which you advertise these positions, because according to you, the C++ coders don't meet the qualifications needed to fill this sort of niche job market. Why doesn't the present system allow you enough flexibility to bring in foreign workers when there are no qualified people in Canada?
Mr. Swinwood: What we are working on now is a pilot to facilitate the process as it's currently identified. I want to make it clear that the pilot that my software council is working on is not asking for any major changes to the current system. It would just be a facilitation of the process that HRDC and Citizenship and Immigration have both identified as something they could work on together.
Mr. Jay Hill: I'd like to certainly go on the record as supporting the thrust of your presentation in connection with ``co-op or perish''. I'm very familiar with those types of programs. The University of Waterloo, for example, is world-renowned for its computer science programs and its co-op program. That's certainly a step towards the future, and I think that's the way all of the universities are going to have to go. Anything that the industry does to work in that regard, to work with the education ministries and the educational institutions, is certainly going to be positive for future employment.
To cap up what you said, the industry and the educational institutions didn't react quickly enough when they saw this problem coming. As you said, it's a global problem. It's not something that's unique to Canada.
You can correct me if I'm wrong, but I see us losing probably our brightest, the cream of the crop who are coming out of those institutions, and we're losing them primarily to the United States. I would be interested in your observations on why that is the case, Mr. Swinwood - and I mean other than your earlier quip about how it's an obvious choice for the worker if some company phones up from southern California in the middle of the winter.
Mr. Swinwood: One of the issues is the perception that leading-edge technology development is not being done in Canada, but is being done in the U.S. That is an incorrect perception.
Part of the issue is also centred around communications. You don't have to be a techie nerd to work in our industry. It's a very broad industry in which you can do a lot of things.
Second, Canada is on the leading edge of many portions of technology, and employees don't have to leave Canada to be challenged. We do a very poor job or advertising our successes, though.
Mr. Jay Hill: In the final analysis, I would suggest that it really comes down to dollars and cents, and I think you pointed to this briefly in your presentation. You may have just given some reasons, but if a worker can get the same salary in American dollars, as opposed to a 65¢-dollar, that's a huge incentive for the qualified people to head south of the border, wouldn't you suggest?
.1610
Mr. Swinwood: I would suggest that it's a huge incentive. But what we have to look at is, as I described in my last slide, the compensation plan. Just last week I had a friend come to me and tell me he had just turned down a job in Boston, and he was offered all of those things. He happens to be in his early thirties, his third child is on the way, and when he checked out, (a) the quality of life, (b) the medical system, and (c) several other options he had with regard to moving to Boston, he made the decision that Ottawa was much preferable. This, by the way, was in the middle of March in the snowstorm last week.
The Chairman: You have time for a short question.
Mr. Jay Hill: I recall that when Hibernia was going ahead in Newfoundland, they needed skilled foreign workers, and one of the requirements for these foreign workers was that they had to have an apprentice before the companies were allowed to bring these people in to work, in other words, a Canadian worker, a Newfoundland worker, to work with the skilled foreign worker that was coming in to work on Hibernia.
Has your organization looked at that possibility for this pilot project? In other words, perhaps there's a need to bring in this skilled person, but for the C++ coder that we have currently unemployed in Canada, what about a requirement that the company has to have someone like that work with them so that when the three-year period passes - and my understanding is that it's only a temporary project for three years - we will have a Canadian worker up to speed and experienced to fill that position?
Mr. Swinwood: My belief is that industry would have a problem signing up for something as tight as that.
What I'm approaching my partners on is the fact that their participation in our youth programs, our high school programs, and three or four other projects we have ongoing, which are aimed at the long-term solution, is a prerequisite for being part of the pilot. Now, we talked to the companies that were tightly involved in this in the beginning. With the visibility we've gotten in the newspapers in the last couple of days, we have to figure some way of handling the significantly increased requests for assistance. If I have your encouragement, I'll work on that one. But it was already a given that their participation in solving the future was part of it.
The Chairman: Mr. Bélanger.
Mr. Mauril Bélanger: Mr. Chairman, I want to get a couple of things on the record, if you'll indulge me.
One, I don't think there's any disagreement around this table or with anyone I've talked to about this that looking at the immigration angle is exclusively for the near term, short term, that long term we have to go to home-grown solutions, if I can call them that, such as the educational system, partnering between industry and training and whatnot.
You referred in particular to the SIS. I suspect you're talking about the fact that we're not sure how the computer is going to handle the double zeros at the end of the century. That's pretty short term. It's a couple of years away. Can you elaborate briefly?
I have another thing I want to ask you on the need. I've heard numbers ranging from 10,000 to 30,000 jobs that are potentially out there. I'd like you to elaborate on that, if you would.
Mr. Swinwood: What we have been drawing from is about five different studies that have been done over the last four years, two of which were done by the software council with a control group of companies numbering just less than 1,000. What we have found amongst those companies is a 4% to 7% vacancy rate of jobs that they would fill if they had the right people. On top of that we worked in partnership with the Ottawa-Carleton Research Institute here, and they did a study just in the Ottawa region that showed that 2,000 jobs here were already a shortfall. In fact, it was 2,000 jobs a year that were not being met by the local educational and training communities. You can extrapolate that one over a number of years.
.1615
As I move from coast to coast, I find that Operation On-Line in Newfoundland has done its own study of their local community and has come up with a 7% number, and the people in the Vancouver Island Advanced Technology Association in Victoria have done their own study, and each of them has come up with 1,000 to 2,000 jobs that need to be filled in their local community. So that is where we're building the numbers from for the 20,000 as a forecast for 1999.
Mr. Mauril Bélanger: Are those studies available if we ask for them?
Mr. Swinwood: They've all been published and are all out there in the different milieu.
Mr. Mauril Bélanger: I have another question, but before I ask it I'll ask for some information that perhaps you could table with us or send to us. Can you send us the job descriptions that have been worked out or worked on - I don't know if they're worked out yet - for the pilot we've learned about? If that could be circulated, it might be useful.
The other question is a criticism directed towards ourselves as a country towards our industry. You've alluded to one of the commitments you're looking for from your membership - training dollars - and you have a figure of 3% of salaries. You said some were way higher and some were way lower. I'd like to know how we as a country compare to our competitors in that field. What could be done to improve? Is there anything we might want to point to here?
Mr. Swinwood: What I'm very familiar with, of course, is the fact that France, I believe, has a national law with regard to a training fund. A certain percentage, and I believe it is 3%, is set aside out of each company's salary line and reimbursed to the companies if they show they have taken the training.
As well, I am aware that Quebec has already implemented a 1% fee.
It is not something that I can document, but we are aware that Germany's position on this is a certain amount of money to be spent on training and retraining.
What I'm asking for here is not national legislation or the passing of a law. What I'm asking for here is a communications plan that I want my council to take on, because I'm working on this one on behalf of my council. I'm asking that a good Canadian company spend a minimum of 3%, and that one of the questions a potential employee should ask of a potential employer is this one: ``What do you spend on retraining so that I know where I'm going in the future?'' I don't think we could legislate it. It's not the time nor the -
Mr. Mauril Bélanger: Mr. Chairman, I would also ask our witness if he would pass along to us any suggestions put to him from among his membership - very technical and very specific in nature - that would help simplify the administrative process of the foreign recruitment. I would appreciate it.
Thank you.
The Chairman: Ms Minna.
Ms Maria Minna (Beaches - Woodbine, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I wanted to get back to some of the things that you were saying earlier and also to something that Mr. Bélanger was just saying.
In the last nearly four years in this job, one thing I was involved in was the social security review. We went across this country. One of the things that came up over and over is the fact that we don't have a national strategy when it comes to any kind of apprenticeship, regardless of the sector. The one theme that kept coming up was the fact that companies in Canada generally do not train, that they're very bad at training or at maintaining current employee training so that employees are up to date with whatever is happening with the company.
For some of the member companies in your organization, you're suggesting a 3% charge, I guess, or what have you - some more, some less, some nothing. Would you agree that for those companies that don't provide ongoing training and don't start getting into that kind of mode, maybe we don't cooperate with getting offshore...you get to a point where you have to either implement a program as well as getting assistance of this kind or you say, ``If you refuse to train your own labour force so that they continuously become defunct then maybe we should at some point charge or what have you.''
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I mean, I've never had a problem with national...but I'm not looking at punitive, I'm looking at the difficulty and at the comments that we hear quite often from people who criticize, such as the educators, who say that companies are looking for training that is too specific. They say they aren't prepared to do the training themselves and they would rather take the easy route of just bringing somebody in, which of course isn't easy because I know you have to pay for travel, transportation for the family, and all of this. It really isn't easier.
But how do you answer what some of the educators I have talked to are saying? They are saying the companies are being too picky and aren't prepared to help the young people or whomever is coming out of training to train in the specifics of that company. They are saying that there isn't this kind of collaboration or willingness on the part of the companies, that there are people there.
Mr. Swinwood: I think my response would have to be yes. We have companies taking the attitude that retraining is not part of what they want to do. It's very short-sighted. It's a very killing opportunity for the company, and the marketplace will eventually deal with them.
As to the Software Human Resources Council's position, we want to encourage. We want to show the companies they can win by doing this. I can probably say I am opposed to having it legislated. But there is your idea and the process of what we could do. There are many of those options out there.
We also have some other companies I would like to hold up as global examples of the best in training. So let's not tar all of them with the same brush. We have some global examples people would love to emulate.
Ms Maria Minna: No. I agree with you entirely. There are obviously some very good companies. Unfortunately, there are far too many of the other kind as well.
I have one other question. You mentioned earlier in your slide the youth internship projects. Can you tell us a little about this? Is your council and your membership involved with youth internship, and to what extent? How is this working?
Mr. Swinwood: The council has three focuses with youth internship. One is a post-graduate program for non-computer science, non-computer engineering graduates of other disciplines such as the arts and math. We're taking people into what is effectively a one-year program, including a three month co-op, to train them on information technology management. These are the project leaders and the project managers of tomorrow. It's an area of tremendous weakness in our industry. The program is currently about five months old. We've just started into it and we have 260 students in five provinces enrolled in this program at different universities, community colleges, CEGEPs and private training companies that have taken a common curriculum and are delivering it.
If you want to have fun, bring those partners to the same table to develop a common curriculum. We did this last year.
The Chairman: Thank you very much for appearing, Mr. Swinwood and Ms Gordon. You gave us a tremendous amount of information to deal with.
We'll now go on with our next witness, Mr. Peter Fillmore from the Ottawa-Carleton Research Institute.
Mr. Nunez and other members of the committee, we only have an English copy here, but we will certainly get one translated and have it prepared for you in the immediate future. Is this okay? Thank you.
Mr. Fillmore.
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Mr. Peter Fillmore (Project Director, Ottawa-Carleton Research Institute): I'd like to thank you very much for giving me the privilege of speaking with you today.
To summarize, the Ottawa-Carleton Research Institute was founded in Ottawa about twelve years ago and is devoted to organizing partnerships among different parts of our technology industry, starting with some work done in the early 1980s in the area of telecommunications research involving companies, universities and government organizations locally.
Over the years OCRI has built up a track record of getting involved in these kinds of things, bringing parties together to solve problems that can't be solved by any one organization alone. I have given the clerk a couple of pages. One is just a brief background on this project we call the ``software resource initiative''.
I don't think there's any point in going over some of the same issues Mr. Swinwood has covered. I've just prepared one additional page of notes to keep my discussion to a minimum and leave as much time as possible for questions, if that's okay with you.
The Chairman: Go right ahead.
Mr. Fillmore: I have four major points I'd like to make.
[Translation]
I will be pleased to answer your questions in French after my presentation.
[English]
The first point is that senior software skills are especially hard to find. We have about twelve companies involved in our committee. We see it as an employer steering group. We have most of the leaders in the community, including companies like Cognos, Newbridge, Mitel, Northern Telecom. We have a couple of smaller companies, such as ObjecTime, MOSAID and Metropolitan Life, who has a large software organization in the deployment and application area. All of these companies have said that software skills are particularly difficult to find at the senior level. We need experienced people to get systems up and running and to design products.
In the short term, any delay we have in hiring people to fill positions causes a delay in delivery of the project, or a delay in the delivery of the product that we're trying to market internationally. So the main thing we need is to speed up the process of hiring. As Mr. Swinwood has indicated, the tremendous ongoing international growth of the industry creates a demand to look offshore for skills.
We have a working group within our steering committee that focuses on a skills model. At the request of Mr. Swinwood we provided some information on what we think are the important skills, which I understand has gone through to Immigration Canada. Basically, we'd like to see the approval process speeded up where an immigration was going to be approved anyway.
In the longer term - and this is a very important issue I'd like to share with you - if projects in the software area are not delivered on time, the missions will inevitably move elsewhere. There's a very strong tendency for projects that involve knowledge workers to go wherever in the world they can be done most quickly.
The second point I want to make just reiterates something Mr. Swinwood covered. The senior and, to a large extent, intermediate software people tend to drag the whole mission team, so their influence on employment is quite critical. I believe a mission team would typically involve two to twenty people and that the support jobs outside of a given software company, as has been studied repeatedly, would involve another two to five people. So filling a critical position for a skilled software worker can have a leverage of four to twenty-five jobs that can be created and supported in the region where those jobs are nurtured and in a region where those jobs are supplied.
It's very easy for a software company, if you understand how the industry goes, to make a decision to exploit a certain opportunity by buying technology elsewhere or by acquiring or merging with a company in another country. Once these international liaisons are formed, it's very easy for jobs to migrate along the paths that are established.
The third point I want to make is that in the working group we have organized with employers, we want to promote Ottawa software careers as a team of employers. There's a specific activity right now, with three of our local companies leading the charge, to come up with a work plan to go out and run a few career days in other parts of the country and perhaps other parts of the world, to make the point, first of all, that Ottawa has a tremendous software industry and is a great place to work.
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We don't want to talk just about the tulips along the Rideau Canal and the bike paths and all that. That's part of the story. But what we have to build up is our story about professional development, a multitude of companies to work for - we feel we have at least 20,000 software jobs in the region - and a multitude of opportunities for collaborations, joint projects and so on.
I can't stress too much the amount of work it has taken to get to this point, because employers have tended to be very insular in meeting their own needs. I believe it's important that you understand that when one employer tries to hire their own people, they can't see the bigger picture that you talked about earlier. They can't really be in any position to warn us that something is going wrong here, that we have a skills shortage. They act as individuals - or they have mostly in the past - but what we try to do now is to say we have a common interest in growing the supply of software workers and we're getting them working on that.
The fourth and last point I want to make is that I do recognize that hiring from the immigration area can only really be a short-term solution. We have our employers working on a longer-term liaison with the school system, with young people, with educators, trainers and retrainers because in the long run, although we need to nurture these software missions here in Ottawa, we know we need to have a greater supply of all levels of skill.
We wish to do that, and through that support of the concept of keeping software missions here in our region make the point that Ottawa is a world class place for software missions to grow.
The Chairman: Thank you very much.
We'll start with questioning now. Each team has nine minutes.
Mr. Nunez.
[Translation]
Mr. Osvaldo Nunez: Thank you for your presentation. How many skilled foreign workers does the industry need right now?
Mr. Fillmore: I cannot quote exact figures. In this area, some 20,000 people are pursuing a career in the software industry, and I anticipate an annual growth of 10%. Our workforce would then need to increase by 2000 workers each year. I cannot say how many of those will be brought in from outside Canada. We would like to fill the 2000 jobs that are currently vacant with Canadians, but, if need be, we will hire foreign workers, and they will represent between 10 and 30% of those 2000 new workers.
Mr. Osvaldo Nunez: This is not many.
Mr. Fillmore: Not really, but it is crucial.
Mr. Osvaldo Nunez: How many skilled Canadian workers leave Canada to work abroad?
Mr. Fillmore: I should know that, because this is another story. We keep hearing about people who have left Canada. But I do not know how important that problem is.
Mr. Osvaldo Nunez: Why do they leave Canada? Is it because of the salary they get or their working conditions? Do they get a better pay and better working conditions in the U.S.?
Mr. Fillmore: There are many reasons, and I could not explain all of them. Mr. Swinwood's comments on this are relevant. It may not be just a matter of the salary being paid by American companies. It may also be because this industry is much bigger and much more developed in the U.S. Our software industry here has 20,000 employees, whereas in Boston, in the Silicon Valley, in Santa Clara and south of San Francisco, they probably have ten times more. They have a reputation of being at the leading edge. This reputation, the sheer size of their industry, the very aggressive behaviour of their employers and tactics like signing bonuses are all factors.
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Mr. Osvaldo Nunez: Are they as aggressive as they are here?
Mr. Fillmore: When they want to hire people, some Americans always come here. I took part in a seminar on career perspectives that took place here in Ottawa, and some 40 to 45% of companies were American companies.
Mr. Osvaldo Nunez: Do you agree that salaries are higher in the U.S. and that working conditions are better too?
Mr. Fillmore: Of course, but a more comprehensive analysis will show that salaries are not the only factor. The cost of living and social programs should also be considered. I am not a specialist, but I know they are many other factors. The very lucrative salary offered in certain contracts certainly has an influence on younger people.
Mr. Osvaldo Nunez: Does your institute have concrete suggestions to make to Immigration Canada or to the Department of Human Resources Development?
Mr. Fillmore: Yes.
Mr. Osvaldo Nunez: What are they?
Mr. Fillmore: In our context, I have to say we do not have the resources we would need to make precise measurements and identify tactics to address the problem.
At first, I made surveys and interviews in software companies. I noticed with a great deal of interest that 95% of them recognized there was a problem, that they wanted to work with us and help us establish a steering committee, and cooperate with other groups who will examine several facets of the workforce problem.
Mr. Osvaldo Nunez: What do you expect from the federal government, since, as mentioned by Mr. Swinwood, education is under provincial jurisdiction?
Mr. Fillmore: We would like to have immigration and administrative policies that will help us get more quickly the people our companies need to hire.
Mr. Osvaldo Nunez: What do you expect in the area of education?
Mr. Fillmore: I could not tell right now. I do not ask the federal government any support in the area of education.
Mr. Osvaldo Nunez: Are you aware of this pilot project?
Mr. Fillmore: I am.
Mr. Osvaldo Nunez: Would it not be better to wait for the results of this project which will start in April and last six months before concrete suggestions are made?
Mr. Fillmore: I cannot give you a direct answer, because I am not very familiar with this project. We are working at the local level in consultation with companies to help them meet their goals this year. Ottawa teams are working together in order to get the individuals with the skills they need, whether these individuals come from other regions in Canada or from other countries. This is a goal they want to reach right away.
[English]
The Chairman: Thank you very much.
Mr. Hill.
Mr. Jay Hill: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I'd first like to bring up the point as to how we are to know whether or not the industry is exaggerating the problem. We hear from other people who are working in the industry that the industry is looking to have this pool of foreign workers to draw upon in order to have a better selection, if you will, of labour. You seem to be very evasive, Mr. Fillmore, in getting to some numbers that show how big the problem is.
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Mr. Fillmore: The thing that drives my comments is that what we're looking at is an international industry that is growing topsy-turvy, and so if we have 20,000 software workers in Ottawa right now, there is a demand worldwide in a multi-trillion dollar marketplace that we could meet if we had 100,000 software workers.
How do you get from here to there? You look at all the barriers. That's the way we're approaching it. You look at all the different barriers and say let's get people working on each one of these.
Mr. Jay Hill: I think what makes me a bit nervous, Mr. Fillmore, is that this is a temporary program for three years. How do we know that the industry isn't going to come back to us after three years and say that they're experiencing this tremendous growth - I think Mr. Swinwood said there was a 26% growth per annum in the software industry - and that they simply can't keep up, that the educational institutions can't keep up with providing the necessary labour pool for those positions? How do we know that this pilot project won't turn into an ongoing thing if there isn't a commitment such as we discussed earlier?
I believe you were in the room when I referred to the Hibernia project and how bringing in foreign workers for that project was tied to the apprenticeship-type employment of an unemployed Canadian. In other words, you could see that in the short term there was a commitment from that industry that they needed the foreign worker but it was going to indeed be a temporary solution, as you said.
Mr. Fillmore: First of all, let me say that I share your concern about industry changes in posture. It's a reality of life.
The way I look at that is that industry will inevitably go with what their order backlog is this year. It's just part of the territory. The fact that we're in a growing industry is what has created what I think is a great opportunity, because the order backlogs are there, the industry is growing and all the indications are that it will continue to grow for decades.
Mr. Jay Hill: I think what I'm trying to ask, and maybe I'm not saying it very well, is, in your position wouldn't you be more comfortable if you had a commitment from industry that for every one of these foreign workers they bring in, there will be a Canadian working side by side with them learning the trade so that after the three years that foreign worker will obviously go back because it is temporary but that Canadian will then be up to speed, experienced and be able to fill that job?
Mr. Fillmore: There are a couple of comments I'd make. First of all, it's going to happen anyway. Every software project team has a lot of interaction among all the different players, and if you had 10% or 20% of a team composed of immigrants, all the Canadians are learning. There is a skill transfer process that goes on constantly.
What I did find intriguing, which I personally support but don't fully understand, is deciding on a 1% or 2% program to ensure a certain allocation of the payroll dollar is put into training. But I think that's an issue you could deal with more or less separately from the immigration policies.
Mr. Jay Hill: Do I have time for one more?
The Chairman: Yes, go ahead.
Mr. Jay Hill: My colleague from the Bloc referred to the brain drain that's going on. We're all well aware of it. Mr. Swinwood as well as yourself referred to it. Surely in your position with the Ottawa-Carlton Research Institute you must have some idea of what percentage of your graduating class in computer science, for example, finds employment outside of the country.
Mr. Fillmore: I actually have no statistics on that. Somebody probably has some records, but the universities don't as a rule follow up on where all their graduates go.
The Chairman: Thank you. Ms Minna.
Ms Maria Minna: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I'd like to go back to what you and Mr. Swinwood mentioned earlier with regard to the fact that one senior position spins off or levers other jobs for other people. In essence, every time one of our own people goes to the U.S., we lose the opportunity of levering some other jobs. We're losing jobs, we're not creating jobs, so it's a negative-negative, and not just a loss of the individual.
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In addition to that, on the request on the pilot and on dealing with it through immigration, is the industry working aggressively to look at how it can market to the young people in this country so that they don't leave? In all the universities, colleges, or wherever they are, are you marketing the fact that there is an industry here, that there are jobs, that there is a future, that these are the benefits? Are you somehow trying to grab them before they go? What we're doing is losing jobs, and we're not just losing the individuals through a brain drain, we're also losing the spin-off jobs.
Mr. Fillmore: And the market share.
Ms Maria Minna: Of course.
Mr. Fillmore: Yes, the industry is working on that.
Ms Maria Minna: Should we be helping? Should the government be doing something in this field, perhaps through HRDC?
Mr. Jay Hill: Lower taxes.
Ms Maria Minna: Give me a break with your taxes. Come on.
Mr. Fillmore: If we're talking about taxes, there are issues associated with investment capital. This subject is written up frequently, and Denny Doyle is always commenting on it. Our treatment of investors in start-up companies basically discourages the industry from growing. Because of the tax rules about capital formation, you have to be very lucky to have a company like Cognos come in from nowhere and pull itself up to the status that it has attained internationally. I won't get into that, though, because it's not on the agenda.
Ms Maria Minna: No, but there's still the issue of young people.
Mr. Fillmore: There are a couple of things there. First of all, let me say that I'm taking a very practical approach to this. I'm not trying to understand all the issues, I'm trying to go to the employers to ask them what they think the priorities are and to find out what they are willing to work on. In my job with OCRI, I will then facilitate collaboration between them on different things.
It has been amazing. I can share your frustration with this, because I spent a good four months last year just calling meetings and talking about this philosophically. With the obvious problems in front of all of us, I still could not get any agreement on actually doing anything. But we are getting somewhere now. If you are talking about the career issue, we have companies that have agreed to put together a package, and they will go on the road to try to stress the quality of the career opportunities, as a whole, for high-skilled people in the software sector in Ottawa. What we learn will be shared with the rest of the country. It's going be available so that all Canadian regions can use it.
Ms Maria Minna: The only reason I'm asking this is that you mentioned earlier, as did Mr. Swinwood, that when American companies come up here, they have a package, they market, and they aggressively go after people. Why don't our companies do that? They're fighting for talent here, so it would seem to me that they would do the absolute utmost to go after what brains there are in order to make sure that they stay here - and that's just as a start.
Mr. Fillmore: There are other things going on. We have a subcommittee working on what we call a skills model. In addition to feeding answers through to SHRC and Immigration Canada, that committee is trying to define things that we should be doing to communicate to the universities and colleges on curriculum and on sizing their faculties. It is also trying to be a sounding board for the private trainers and retrainers.
So, yes, I think the companies are going in that direction. They have more to do, and we are slowly getting started, but my personal goal is to see that things get started this year. We have to work on several fronts in order to do exactly what it is you are talking about.
The Chairman: Mr. Bélanger.
Mr. Mauril Bélanger: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I want to bring it back to the purpose of exploring ways and means by which the Government of Canada, through administrative measures, could help in the short term on the immigration front. I want to pick up on this notion that Mr. Hill brought up - and which his colleague, Mr. Chatters, brought up on Tuesday. I want to see if there is an interest in it in the industry.
We've talked about one pilot project that we heard about on Tuesday: expediting the validation part of the process, if you will.
At some point, Mr. Chairman, I would hope we'd get some more accurate information as to the time that this validation takes. It's not five to ten days, as we've heard. That's if it's perfect, but taking it to perfection takes a little longer than that. At any rate, that's another matter.
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How would the industry react to the notion of another pilot project, along the lines of what our colleague is describing here, where we bring in someone and attach a trainee or someone else to that person? I'd be interested in getting some feedback from the industry on that. Maybe we could develop another one. Who knows? I'm into an exploratory mode here as opposed to a partisan mode.
I'd like an answer on that, and then I have one more question.
Mr. Fillmore: I have to believe that employers would find some difficulties with putting too many strings on a program. As I said earlier, I think it is in the nature of things that you would find qualified people, whether they're Canadians or others, always involved in a skill transfer process to those around them, the Canadians around them. But it is an idea that has some merit. Perhaps it could be part of a brainstorming process, to say it's a good idea and ascertain exactly how to implement it, or how to get some leverage, and clarify exactly what goals we're going to accomplish with that.
Mr. Mauril Bélanger: Here's another idea I'd like you to react to. Would you argue, would you believe, there may be a role for the federal government to essentially participate in an exercise of recruiting, so we go beyond just the passive responding to requests, to go a little beyond that and market - I don't know how you'd do it - and go further than passively waiting for requests? Would there be a usefulness there? How would that sit with the industry, or our competition?
Mr. Fillmore: I think that's an excellent idea. We look at the professional life cycle of a software worker and recognize there is a mobility factor. It's natural that people do move from one company to another. People have to build experience and if a company is doing well, they're going to hire people from another company.
The recruiting process has to be supported. Any help you could provide would be very much welcomed by the industry. I think, for example, if you look at the business of career fair days coming up here and having such a large presence of American companies, we have to get into catch-up mode and government help would be appropriate. Let's get a Canada only recruiting effort that's so big, so visible, so noisy that it fills the calendars of all the hotels in the high-tech centres in Canada, so that the candidates who are thinking of changing jobs, or the young students graduating, will think of Canada first.
Mr. Mauril Bélanger: Would you suggest similar exercises abroad?
Mr. Fillmore: Absolutely. As a matter of fact, we're talking about going abroad as soon as we can, but we need to get some experience working together. There's a team-building process here and I personally think we should be doing some of these things here. In fact, if the competition is here raiding us, we may as well do it here and try to fight them off on our own territory and then go plant ourselves on their front doors.
Mr. Mauril Bélanger: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman: Very good.
Are there any other questions from the government side?
Thank you very much for attending and making the presentation. You've enlightened us even more so.
I hope some of the questions you've been asking, Mr. Bélanger, will be answered in the near future.
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Our next witness is Mr. Arvind Chhatbar.
Please proceed.
Mr. Arvind Chhatbar (Executive Secretary, Regional Innovative Forum and Coordinator, Regional Innovation Office, National Research Council): First, I would like to thank you and commend the committee for looking into this very important matter regarding the human resource issues facing the high-tech sector, not only this particular region but in Canada in general. I'm particularly pleased to see that our representatives are quick to deal with issues that face this particular region or that affect the growth of the national economy.
I'm representing the Regional Innovation Forum of the Ottawa-Carleton Region and the Regional Innovation Office of the National Research Council.
With your permission, Mr. Chairman, I wish to bring to your attention some of the initiatives and activities that may serve as some useful indications in your deliberations.
I've learned that earlier witnesses have presented information regarding the level of shortages of software professionals. It may interest you to know that the community is taking various actions to increase the pool of resources for the growing high-tech sector from local sources, and especially in this particular region, in the information and telecommunications sector. There are, of course, other high-tech needs as well in the pharmaceutical and biotech sectors.
We in the National Research Council are working with the Ottawa-Carleton Economic Development Corporation and the Ottawa-Carleton Research Institute to develop various plans that will help in resolving problems related to innovation in the region and in the country. As part of this initiative, the Regional Innovation Forum was created and the inaugural technology forecast round table was held last year, which brought together various leaders of the high-tech community in this region to discuss issues that face them that would enhance innovation.
The round table attracted about 230 leaders in the high-tech sector, including leaders from the community, such as Mauril Bélanger and others. It was very evident during those deliberations that one of the major issues being faced was human resources. Mr. Bélanger had committed to bring this forth to various forums, and I'm pleased to see this is happening.
The Regional Innovation Forum decided to act on some of the issues that face the region, to tap on the pool of resources that may exist in this region but which is not available for the high-tech sector. I'm speaking of people who do have qualifications in fields such as biology and chemistry, and so on and so forth, and do have advanced degrees in this area but cannot work in the high-tech sector because their skills are not relevant to that particular sector.
Given the shortage associated with that particular sector, the forum decided to try out a pilot program, the O-Vitesse program, to see if it was possible to retrain people who had skills in other areas that were not currently relevant to the high-tech sector and to see if they could be trained in sufficient time to meet the growing demands of this sector.
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When we tried to work on this particular program, we discovered that while there are people who are interested in retraining and reskilling in this particular area, the effort and time required in terms of resources is enormous.
For example, the O-Vitesse program attracted about 450 applicants, but the absorption capacity at our universities and our institutions was limited. We could only take about 10 out of the 450 in the retraining program because of the commitment required to retrain these people.
Secondly, the time required to retrain is significantly long. This particular program - the O-Vitesse program - is a 16-month program. At the end of the 16 months, we'll have the first group of 10 people who will be capable of working in the software engineering sector in this region.
I think this is indicative of some of the limitations that are faced in addressing requirements from local sources.
Nonetheless, these initiatives are indeed taking place. We've learned recently about the University of Ottawa creating a School of Information Technology and Engineering to meet the needs of the high-tech sector in this area. Again, the program does not start until September and will take a couple of years before the first products from the school are available for use in the high-tech sector.
It is evident that solutions to the shortages are needed now and for the short term and medium term to ensure that the Canadian high-tech sector continues to grow and that companies that have entered the global markets are able to maintain their edge.
I believe that not all countries are able to take the quick action that we here are capable of taking in resolving some of the issues associated with highly skilled manpower and our growing high-tech sector.
I believe it is imperative that the federal government departments and institutions also be competitive to try to attract the labour pool that all of the other countries are also going to go and search for in this great demand for growth in this sector.
In brief, essentially there are two points I wish to make. First, there is clearly a need in the short term and the medium term to look for solutions, not only from local sources but from external sources in the larger high-tech sector by expanding the number of categories that may be associated with this particular high-tech sector. Second, there is clearly a need to increase the time for any experiments that the department would wish to carry out in soliciting and seeking workers from outside Canada.
Those are really the two main points I wish to make today. Thank you.
The Chairman: Thank you very much.
Mr. Nunez, you have eight minutes.
[Translation]
Mr. Osvaldo Nunez: You are telling us that universities have but a limited capacity to train the skilled workers we need. Despite your sympathy for my colleague here, let me remind you that it is the Liberals who have cut transfers to post-secondary education. Federal transfers for universities have been shrinking for a few years. This a problem you have just raised.
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[English]
Mr. Mauril Bélanger: That was a Reform idea. It was Jay's.
An hon. member: They're stealing your ideas.
Mr. Jay Hill: That's all right. I feel in a generous mood today.
Mr. Mauril Bélanger: Not in the House, you don't.
[Translation]
Mr. Osvaldo Nunez: Companies, if they are left on their own, do not spend a great on manpower training. In Quebec, a legislation had to be passed because companies do not do that voluntarily. Would you like us to legislate so that all provinces do what is being done in other countries and make it mandatory for companies to spend part of their income on training?
[English]
Mr. Chhatbar: Thank you for the question.
Clearly some of the needs associated with training are expressed by various organizations and units in industry and so on. Take the example of the O-Vitesse program. It was undertaken with the assistance of one particular company in this region that decided to invest resources to meet certain needs and demands for its own requirements.
It is clear, though, that training is a very broad issue and the responsibilities associated with training are equally broad. Efforts should be made to encourage various parties to make relevant contributions in order that the shortages associated with this are adequately dealt with.
[Translation]
Mr. Osvaldo Nunez: In your presentation, you did not make any suggestion or recommendation for the Department of Citizenship and Immigration concerning amendments to the rules on the entry of temporary workers from abroad. Are you investigating this issue?
[English]
Mr. Chhatbar: I have personally not examined the issue of the actual process associated with immigration. I'm quite aware, though, in the relationships we have with industry and in some of our own requirements, of the need to reduce the time period associated with the processing of various applications.
One primary reason for doing this obviously is the opportunity that always presents itself when seeking foreign workers to work here: that if sufficient limitation on processing time is not imposed, then the particular opportunity disappears and the competitive forces in the marketplace tend to have a negative effect on the performance of companies and so on and so forth.
One way of assisting in this process is to find ways to fast-track the processing of applications in key high-tech sectors that are predefined. We were pleased to hear about the experiment the department is planning to undertake within certain specified categories. That's a very useful and positive development. One needs to examine whether the experiment needs to be expanded and whether the categories need to be increased in order to meet the requirements across the country for the high-tech sector.
Thank you.
[Translation]
Mr. Osvaldo Nunez: There is also a problem with the recognition of degrees. Many immigrants who come to Canada and have a Ph.D. or a master's degree complain because their degrees are not recognized by companies, the government or professional corporations, which are sometimes reluctant to recognize degrees from abroad.
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Would you like to comment?
[English]
Mr. Chhatbar: Again, this is a common problem associated with recognition of foreign diplomas and degrees. We encountered this problem when we were working on the O-Vitesse program itself, where a number of applicants, as you indicated, held PhDs and equivalent qualifications. It was a significant task trying to assess whether those qualifications met some of the standards we have.
I think it is an area in which work is being done by various universities to have accreditation programs and that would link and associate different programs at different universities with those programs here in Canada. It's not an easy task, but it is something some universities have done so it is predetermined that the programs of certain countries meet the criteria we have in this country.
[Translation]
Mr. Osvaldo Nunez: The National Research Council has examined this same problem abroad. How do other countries address the manpower shortage problem in this sector? How do they cope? What do the U.S. do, for example? Besides hiring foreign workers, what kind of local solution do they have?
[English]
Mr. Chhatbar: Frankly, at the National Research Council we have not conducted any studies on what foreign countries do with respect to their needs for their areas. We are aware, of course, of some of the strengths we have in Canada.
Canada, for example, is known for its strengths in the growing high-tech sector. This will not necessarily be true for some other countries. I think it is something that, while not a unique problem to Canada, is certainly a problem of greater significance to Canada than it is for other countries because of our own size and because of the nature of the Canadian economy.
I think it is certainly of interest. It would be worthwhile examining the solutions other country adopt in order to resolve their human resources problems using local sources. What is clearly evident in Canada, though, is that our capacity has been beyond prediction when you look at it in terms of high-tech sector output and growing demands, particularly in the last little while.
I think the growth of the high-tech sector, particularly the telecommunications and information sector, was not so advanced as it is now. People were of the view that personal computers and many other new technologies would not penetrate as widely as they have. This has clearly placed an enormous burden on educational institutions and others to be able to respond and address the explosion that has occurred in this particular area.
So I think it is a phenomenon that is typical of countries whose growth is dependent on the high-tech sector.
The Chairman: Mr. Hill.
Mr. Jay Hill: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
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First off, Mr. Chhatbar, let me say that I appreciate that you have taken the time to come in to make your presentation today.
From what I've heard today, one problem I can see - and I don't think anyone can dispute this - is that there is a need to find workers to fill jobs in the high-tech sector. I haven't seen the numbers today, though, so I'm not convinced of the extent of the need.
Second, I have not been convinced today that this three-year pilot project is going to even partially solve the problem. Third, I guess I haven't been convinced of a commitment from industry in terms of a long-term vision for solving the problem after three years. Last, I haven't been convinced that this pilot project of fast-tracking foreign labour is going to even partially solve this problem.
What I have heard today is that this is a global problem. I think it's widely recognized that it's not a problem that is necessarily unique to Canada. What I've heard today is that we have had - and continue to have - a serious brain drain that sees some of our brightest young minds in the field leaving Canada to work abroad. One would therefore have to ask how a fast-tracking of foreign labour is going to provide a pool from which to draw in order to fill these positions. If we can't keep our own people here, how are we going to be able to attract these other people?
Mr. Chhatbar: I appreciate the recognition of the fact that this is a global problem associated with advanced countries. While there is always competition with respect to seeking some of these human resources from other countries and by other countries - in the same fashion that we would undertake - it is very clear that the high-tech sector in particular is a sector that is extremely competitive. While many people face more or less the same situations in a competitive industry and in a competitive world, those who are able to respond to some of these requirements quickly are the ones who are able to succeed.
While I think it is true that there need to be longer-term solutions with respect to the need for human resources, the need to remain competitive in an extremely competitive world demands that creative solutions be found, and it also demands that institutions and organizations at the government level find creative and quick solutions to immediate needs. If those needs are not met, some of the advantages presented to the high-tech sector will quickly be lost, which would mean that the existence of the high-tech sector in Canada would not be there.
Yes, it is true that some of our people move to better-paying jobs outside the country. I think that is an ongoing process, and I think it is something that companies know well. It is also something that is clearly a factor of competitiveness, and those who can do it quickly will likely succeed.
Mr. Jay Hill: I was just trying to fathom that answer. In your presentation, you made reference to the retraining project, Mr. Chhatbar. I was interested in that. I understand it involved450 applications, and I believe you said only 10 could be accommodated in the project.
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It seems to me that our universities are turning out some incredibly bright, highly educated, competent young people. Unfortunately for them, they're jobless.
I wonder if you could elaborate a little bit more on what the problem was with this project you undertook and why, out of 450 people that exhibited an interest in being trained to fill these positions that are going wanting, you can only handle 10.
Mr. Chhatbar: This particular project, the O-Vitesse pilot project, was our experiment to try to see if a chemist, somebody who has a PhD in chemistry, for example, could be given necessary skills in a short period of time to become a software engineer, or a biologist, or a medical doctor, or whosoever felt that there weren't sufficient jobs in his relevant field could be retrained to become somebody else in a short timeframe. I think there is a need to do that.
We felt that to be able to do that effectively, one needed to put in place necessary support for each one of these candidates so that we are able to examine in the pilot program what are the potential difficulties one would encounter in retraining and reskilling some of these individuals. So any expansion of the program takes into account some of those difficulties faced during the pilot program. That is one of the reasons the number of candidates was limited.
The second reason the number of candidates was limited was because of the fact that we wanted to try to institute a program that did not stretch the existing resources of the universities where these students were going to be studying, that it was something that could fit within the current structure of the university and limitations of the university's resources but at the same time provide an opportunity for an additional number of people to come out of the system.
Therefore, it required that there be one university adviser per student, as well as a capacity at the industry to be able to get this particular individual working with a company while studying, so that there is a combination of a study program plus a work assignment, in order that some of these students could quickly pass through the system, which is not traditional, if a student simply wants to take a master's degree or some other degree in university where it would be a full-time study program.
It was a combination of a study and work term, to permit the student to acquire skills by working at the university and in the industry at the same time. The capacity associated with putting in resources to train students in the industry were certainly limited, and therefore one could not have staff working at companies devote a considerable amount of time for training when they had their own demands and needs in the industry.
The Chairman: Mr. Bélanger.
Mr. Mauril Bélanger: I want to explore this competitive nature a little bit more. Our witness was saying...well, everybody is acknowledging that it's a global problem we're trying to look at and that it's perhaps even growing, and that the competitive nature is taking over because there's a growing shortage.
In that sense, I wonder - and I know it's probably not addressed to the proper person - if our witness would have an idea of how other countries might have dealt with the immigration process we're trying to look at in Canada, where I think we really haven't gotten to the nuts and bolts of it yet.
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Do you know how other countries might have changed their process to streamline it, to make it more simple and shorter, in order to attract perhaps the same people we're trying to attract here? If you have any comments on that or can point us in any direction, I'd certainly appreciate it.
Mr. Chhatbar: One of the difficulties of course is in assessing the particular candidate and the evaluation process that takes place through the immigration system. Because priority is not given to the needs here, it is difficult to have some of these applications passed through in a rapid way. Perhaps because of the number of applications received by the Department of Citizenship and Immigration, there is no way in which to prioritize and say this is critical to the industry needs and therefore ought to be looked at differently from the many other applications. Perhaps that's one way of doing it in terms of identifying and prioritizing applications for jobs associated with the high-tech sector over other job applications.
The other way is to streamline the process of appreciating the different types of people and their qualifications. A better understanding of what types of candidates and what qualifications are most relevant to the high-tech sector is another way of doing this so that people are aware that some of these things are more critical than other particular occupations.
Mr. Mauril Bélanger: Do you have any idea, though, of what the process is in the United States?
Mr. Chhatbar: No, I'm not familiar with that.
Mr. Mauril Bélanger: Then, Mr. Chairman, I don't know if this would be asking too much of the resources of the committee, but would it be possible to find out how one or two other countries do this? For instance, on Tuesday, Mr. Chairman, you asked for a flowchart on the process. Would it be tasking our resources too much to find out how that is done in the States and maybe another country so we could have a comparison basis?
The Chairman: I've just been notified that we're going to go ahead and do whatever we can to satisfy that need.
Do you have any further questions? Thank you very much.
Does anyone else from the government side have questions?
If not, thank you very much for appearing. We were very fortunate today. The committee had three very comprehensive reports, and certainly you have enlightened us and given us more information pertaining to this very serious problem.
If there is no further business, I would like to point out to you that at the next meeting, on Tuesday, March 18, at 4 p.m. in room 209 of the West Block, the main estimates are going to be dealt with. The minister, the Hon. Lucienne Robillard, will be appearing.
Thank you very much. The meeting is adjourned.