EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Wednesday, March 20, 1996

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[English]

The Chairman: Order.

First I would like to welcome the President of the Movement for Canadian Literacy, Susan Sussman.

As you know, we're in the process of listening to Canadians from coast to coast to coast on ways in which we can improve Bill C-12, an act respecting employment insurance in Canada. To date, we have been fortunate in having listened to some good presentations that have outlined some new ways and have given us greater insight into the bill. I am sure that your presentation will be no different.

We have approximately one hour. As a committee, we prefer to get an overview of your major points from you so we can engage in a question-and-answer session thereafter.

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Ms Susan Sussman (President, Movement for Canadian Literacy): Thank you very much. I'm very pleased, honoured, and nervous at this opportunity to speak before you today. I'm a novice at coming before a committee of the federal government. To make sure I've done the right job, I've brought my two sons with me, the two young gentlemen in the red shirts.

The Chairman: Could you stand, please?

Ms Sussman: For the sake of motherhood, I hope you'll be kind to me.

I'd like to acknowledge Beverlee Bell, who is staff with the Movement for Canadian Literacy and who has helped us pull this brief together in a relatively short time. I'm very grateful for the assistance she's provided. To my sons I'm grateful for other things.

Without any further ado, I would like to give you a sense of what I'm going to speak about. Then I'll probably quite closely follow the brief we've presented you with.

The Movement for Canadian Literacy is a national organization that receives support from Human Resources Development Canada through the National Literacy Secretariat. We work on behalf of an estimated seven million Canadian adults who lack the literacy skills they need to function effectively in their day-to-day life.

We do our work by bringing together twelve provincial and territorial literacy coalitions. Those coalitions in turn are comprised of all the local literacy programs and individuals who have a commitment to literacy across Canada. We also work in partnership with four other national organizations: Frontier College, FCAF, which is a francophone literacy coalition, ABC Canada, and Laubach Literacy Canada.

The reason we are coming to speak to you today is that Bill C-12 and any changes to the employment or unemployment insurance system of Canada will impact on adults in Canada who have difficulties with literacy. Today I will be addressing the specific issues I think this bill raises for Canadian adults who struggle with literacy.

Now I will turn to my brief and quote you. You have recognized that

...one of the keys to both greater social justice and improved productivity and competitiveness is the development of our human resources. This involves our investment in the knowledge, creativity, skills and motivation of individuals - a critical input without which our technological and economic progress will founder.

That comes from your own interim report in 1994.

In the summary of the discussion paper that was released on the social security reform initiative, the government says to us that millions of Canadian adults

...have trouble reading, writing or using numbers. These basic skills are essential for jobs today. We need to make basic skills training more accessible to those who need it.

Therefore the submission from the Movement for Canadian Literacy is looking at the way in which Bill C-12, an act respecting Employment Insurance in Canada, will support the development of Canada's human resources, and in particular how it will affect the millions of Canadians who have difficulty with the literacy demands they encounter each day, at home, in their communities, and most significantly in their jobs.

I have to start by stating what our understanding is of what Bill C-12 proposes, because everything we say after that is built on those assumptions. Our understanding is that this initiative is but one part of a plan fundamentally to restructure the federal government's approach to national labour force development. In simplest terms, we understand the restructuring is expected to create savings for the federal government by reducing the number of unemployed Canadians who will be eligible to receive benefits and by reducing the overall amount of wage replacement benefits eligible unemployed Canadians will receive. At the same time we understand the government will be increasing federal investment while decreasing federal control over labour force development initiatives.

We've been told the proposed changes to the unemployment insurance system will result in annual savings for HRDC in the order of $2 billion. We've been told these savings are in addition to savings of a similar magnitude that have already been realized by other cuts to the unemployment insurance system.

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Of the $2 billion to be realized through Bill C-12, HRDC expects to redirect $800 million into five types of active supports to help Canadians get back to work: targeted wage subsidies, earning supplements to induce low-wage employment, self-employment programming, job-creation partnerships, and skills, loans, and grants.

Our understanding is that the $800 million proposed for active supports represents a 42% increase in HRDC spending on similar supports over 1994-95. However, money for this increase will be coming from reductions in wage-replacement benefits and from tougher eligibility requirements.

So the question is, why is Bill C-12 an issue of particular concern to the adult literacy community?

The 1989 Statistics Canada study that was called ``Literacy Skills Used in Daily Activities'' shows, first, that adults with low literacy levels are much more likely to be unemployed or out of the labour force than adults with moderate to high literacy levels. This finding is supported by the recent international adult literacy survey that was produced by the OECD in collaboration with Statistics Canada.

Because unemployment and low literacy are linked, any changes in Canada's insurance system for unemployed workers will have a greater-than-average impact on adults with low literacy levels.

LSUDA, which is the first study, and IALS, which is the second - I'll refer to them by their acronyms - also clearly demonstrate that Canadian adults with low literacy levels are likely to have significantly lower incomes from wages and earnings than adults with moderate to high levels of literacy. Therefore any reductions in the amount of employment insurance benefits will have a greater-than-average impact on these Canadians.

Finally, there's widespread recognition that literacy skills are the foundation for future training and future learning. Adults with low literacy levels must improve their basic skills before they can benefit from more job-specific training opportunities. At the same time, the IALS study makes it clear that adults with low literacy already have a lower rate of participation in adult training and education than those with high literacy skills. Thus, any reduction in access to quality literacy programming will have a negative impact on literacy levels in Canada, as well as negative impacts on the lives of adults who struggle with literacy issues.

I'd like you to keep in mind the fact that in your own government documents you've said this is a major issue, a major concern.

What impact do we believe Bill C-12 will have on adult literacy? As a result of changes in the structure of Canada's labour market and the associated increased demands for higher levels of skills, people with low literacy levels are at greater risk of being unemployed in today's economy. We know that their employment prospects in the future are likely to be even worse.

Any reductions to wage-replacement benefits or any criteria that make it more difficult for unemployed workers to qualify for benefits will have negative impacts on the large numbers of Canadians with low literacy levels.

Given the clear correlation between low levels of literacy and low incomes, people with low literacy levels and low incomes will suffer greater-than-average hardship as a result of any cuts in wage-replacement benefits or changes that make it more difficult to be eligible for benefits.

These points notwithstanding, MCL really is not going to address today any of the specific proposals contained in Bill C-12 related to wage-replacement benefits. This is because we believe that other national groups coming before you are in a better position than we are to research and articulate the impacts that those changes will have on the poor and the unemployed.

We do, however, want to add our voices strongly to those who are urging both federal and provincial governments not to pursue deficit-reduction strategies that penalize poor or disadvantaged Canadians.

I would like to speak to you about the dollars that you are intending to make available for active supports.

We applaud the decision to increase the level of active supports to the unemployed. Unquestionably, we see the need for increased government spending to help people to get back to work. However, given the comments I've just made regarding benefit levels, it should be clear that MCL is opposed to funding increased active supports by reducing wage benefits to unemployed workers.

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Overlooking the source of your $2.7 billion proposed for active supports, it must be noted that this figure is still grossly inadequate to address the training needs of Canadian adults with low literacy levels. In order to be more precise about how inadequate $2.7 billion is, we would need data that's currently not available. For example, we'd need to know the average annual number of unemployed adults who have low literacy skills and the portion of the active support dollars that would be invested in training for adult literacy.

But what we absolutely do know for a fact is that three billion adult Canadians lack the most fundamental literacy skills needed to adequately meet the demands of the workplace. This has been demonstrated by the LSUDA survey from Statistics Canada in 1989 and replicated in the OECD-StatsCan survey in 1995. We also know that an additional four million adults are having some difficulty with the everyday reading tasks they face. If every single penny of the $2.7 billion were directed exclusively to literacy training, the amount would not be enough to enable seven million Canadians to develop the literacy level they need to remain employed and to be employable in an increasingly high-skilled labour market.

I'd like to speak to you about the skills loans and grants that are being proposed. Bill C-12, as we understand it, will eliminate the federal government's role in directing the purchase of training from training providers. Instead, a system of skills loans and grants for eligible claimants, developed with the consent of provincial governments, is proposed.

We have several major concerns about this proposal as it relates to Canada's adult literacy problem. Our first relates to the question of whether literacy education will be recognized as legitimate training under the proposed skills loans and grants. Under the proposed legislation, will the federal government require provinces to recognize basic literacy education as legitimate training for the purposes of skills loans and grants? If not, then Bill C-12 will do nothing to ensure greater access to basic skills training for Canadians.

On the costs of training, Bill C-12 proposes to pass an undetermined portion of the costs of training over to the individual, essentially asking them to incur debts at the time when they're out of a job. This proposal might be reasonable if it were realistic to assume that the individual will find work upon completion of the training program. However, we know that literacy training must be recognized as a first step towards employment readiness. In most cases, an individual may be expected to require more job-specific training once he or she has gained sufficient literacy skills. Thus, we do not believe that the government should encourage adults to incur debt for literacy education programs.

On the issue of responsibility for choosing training, let us assume for a moment that literacy education is recognized as legitimate training. Our next concern relates to the unmanageable burden that may be placed on adults with low literacy skills to locate and make choices about literacy training programs. I wish I could have had one of the learners here with me today. The notice we had for this presentation was too short for us to arrange that, but if you were to meet them, you would understand that many of the people we're talking about serving would have enormous difficulty taking, as the bill requires, primary responsibility for identifying their employment needs and locating services necessary to allow them to meet the needs.

Adults with low-level literacy skills need considerable assistance when it comes to accessing information and making their way through the maze of training opportunities that exist. The special access issues and needs of adults with low literacy skills were clearly overlooked when decisions were made to reduce the number of CEC employment counsellors and centres and replace some of these with this guy: This is a very poor quality photocopy of the automated kiosk that has been set up at the Canada Employment Centre, and on the following pages are some of the screens that you have to work your way through.

Let me make it really simple. For three million Canadians, it's of no use. Three million Canadians - if you want them to get back to work, if you want them to have access to information about jobs - need something more than what these screens can provide them with, because they lack the literacy skills to access this information.

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The issue of access goes beyond the technical domain into the more personal realm. As you're sitting poring over this material, try to imagine what it would be like to have lived your entire adult life unable to read this material. It impacts on your sense of independence and on your sense of self-confidence.

The information and referral services that have been shown to be effective with this group of the population are human services, and they are humane. In addition to providing information, effective information and referral services for adults with literacy problems also provide empathy, encouragement, respect, and client-centred assistance.

Now I'd like to talk about program quality controls in Bill C-12. Let's assume again that an adult with low literacy skills has managed to find his or her way to an appropriate training program. Our next concern with Bill C-12 focuses on what could be a lack of quality control over and accountability of training providers.

As far as we know, there are no provisions in Bill C-12 guaranteeing that public dollars will go only to high-quality training programs. While this concern applies to all training, the issue is all the more acute with respect to adult literacy education.

You have to understand that for an adult to come forward and acknowledge publicly that they have this problem and seek help is an incredible hurdle to overcome. If you put them at risk of receiving services that might not treat them with the respect, empathy and care they require in order to be sustained, you will finish them off as learners for the rest of their lives and they will be dependent on the system forever - maybe not this part of government support but some other part of government support. An insensitive or inappropriate approach to the new adult learner with these particular vulnerabilities could, as it says here could - I believe will - do irreversible damage to that individual's willingness to participate in training.

The issue of outcomes from training programs is tied closely to the issue of program quality. We understand that some are calling for national training exit standards to provide some measure of program quality control, standardization and accountability. We support this direction, with one caveat; that is, the issues of assessing training outcomes for basic literacy education are many and they are complex.

The organization I work for - my day job - is with the Ontario Literacy Coalition. We've recently produced a paper reviewing all of the research that exists on looking at outcomes of adult literacy programs. In a nutshell, I can tell you it's a complex issue. Before outcome measures can be used to control the quality of literacy education programs, a great deal of related development work will need to be done.

There are some promising initiatives in this regard beginning to emerge in provinces. For example, in Ontario we have the Recognition for Adult Learning Systems. But I have to say that these systems are in a very, very early stage of development and implementation.

Finally, I'd like to address the issue of portability of training credentials. Our final concern is in regard to the move away from direct purchasing of seats to a less controlled training marketplace and the impact on portability of learning credentials this could result in. In Agenda: Jobs and Growth, the government's document, you've recognized the need to make learning more portable. You've said helping adult workers move between jobs, educational institutions and training institutions across the country is a goal.

If the employment insurance system under Bill C-12 loosens government control over training providers and requires no standardization in training programs or approaches from province to province, I have to ask how Bill C-12 will contribute to the goal of making learning more portable.

These are the issues we have identified from the point of view of the adult literacy community. We have some recommendations for you:

First, Bill C-12 should be amended to require that provinces recognize basic literacy education as a legitimate form of training under the provision for active supports benefits.

The second is that funding for adult basic education must be grant-based, not loans-based, in recognition of the need to ensure that all Canadians have the right to access a basic education.

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The third is that pre-training information, referral and counselling services should be included in the range of services under the subsection for which CEC may provide financial assistance. And quality standards around these support services should be developed to ensure they are delivered in a manner sensitive to the needs of adults with limited literacy skills. National training standards with respect to adult basic education should be developed.

Finally, a supra-provincial mechanism responsible for coordinating and articulating all the federally-funded labour force development activities should be established.

In closing, I'd love to give you my own personal two cents. However, I'll read from the document.

We understand that the proposed changes to Canada's employment insurance system are to be a key part of a plan to fundamentally restructure the government's approach to national labour force development.

But the average Canadian understands all too well that these changes are just part of a major rethinking of every commitment the provincial levels and the federal levels have to the people of Canada.

While our presentation has focused on the specific impact of Bill C-12 on people with low literacy skills, we recognize that the employment insurance system is only a single thread in the fabric of Canada's social security system. For all its faults, our social security system has been the hallmark of Canada's commitment to meeting the basic needs and protecting the rights of all members of our community. Every single Canadian, rich and poor alike, has benefited tremendously from this commitment.

And here I'll stick in my own two cents. I grew up in the United States. I can tell you that this is what makes Canada different and this is what makes Canada better. Just in a nutshell, this is it.

We need only look to our neighbours south of the border to see the effects of government policies that favour rugged individualism and survival of the fittest over a commitment to shared responsibility for ensuring the well-being of members of society. Among these effects are lower levels of taxation and dramatically higher levels of violent crime, drug abuse and homelessness. When I lived in Manhattan, I watched seven people get shot from the window of my apartment building. I live in downtown Toronto and I keep my door unlocked. I won't give you my address, but my door is not locked.

Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

Ms Sussman: We call upon the Government of Canada to ensure that the changes to the employment insurance system of Canada are articulated. You can't just talk about this in isolation. It must be articulated with the other social security programs at the federal and provincial levels in a such a way that we continue to ensure the basic needs of Canadians are met.

Thank you.

The Chairman: Thank you very much for an excellent presentation.

Some hon. members: Hear, hear!

The Chairman: We're going to move now to the question and answer session. We will start with members of the Bloc Québécois, followed by Reform, and then we will move to the Liberals.

Mr. Dubé.

[Translation]

Mr. Dubé (Lévis): Thank you for appearing before us today. I find your brief most interesting.

I have a problem with English - I have some trouble reading it. Because of this, I am better able to understand the problem facing illiterates.

Nevertheless, I found some of the points you made quite interesting. For example, you say that the labour market is changing, and that it will become increasingly difficult to find work. Looking to the future, you are right to say, that if something is not done, the problems facing the illiterates, among others, will get worse, because the labour market will be increasingly demanding. Until now, the illiterate has been able to do some manual work, but this will become increasingly difficult.

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All this is very interesting because the department is in the midst of a reorganization. While we are doing our consultation, there is an initiative under way to streamline the Canada employment centres. The result will be fewer CECs. In some places, they will be replaced by job banks.

I'm sure the point you made in this regard is accurate. Imagine an illiterate person having to use this tool with no assistance from anyone. There is little room for optimism regarding any improvement in the situation for the illiterates.

You quoted a figure of 3 million illiterates. During the travels of the Human Resources Committee in the fall of 1994, we did in fact meet with many groups across the country who spoke about the problems facing the illiterates.

Something I find surprising in your brief - but perhaps you did not have much time to prepare it and I don't blame you - is the fact that you do not refer to the specific situation of francophones living outside Quebec. In northern Ontario, where I did some work in cooperation with ACFO, 40% of adult francophones are illiterate. That was the figure three years ago. I would add that in some francophone communities in western Canada, the figures are comparable or even worse than the situation you describe generally. I would ask for your comments on that.

In addition, your position is very different from ours, because you are demanding a strengthened role for the federal government regarding provincial programs for the illiterates. However, since education is a provincial matter, you will appreciate that since I am from Quebec, I do not entirely share your view, although I do respect it.

That leads me to the following question. You spoke about a group of 12 provincial and territorial agencies that were all partners. You also spoke about the Quebec coalition. Can you tell me whether you are supported by your Quebec partners in your desire to see greater control by the federal government over programs for the illiterates?

[English]

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Dubé.

I'd like to remind the members that if we can ask questions in a more succinct manner, we might get more input from the witnesses who appear in front of us.

Ms Sussman.

Ms Sussman: Those are good points. They are well taken.

First let me clarify. They're the FCAF. I regret I can't even tell you all of what it stands for, but it is a national francophone literacy coalition. They speak to the issues of the francophone population in Canada. We don't attempt to represent their views here today. What we share with them is a fundamental concern about literacy for all Canadians.

I recently had the opportunity to participate in a meeting with 25 people brought together by the National Literacy Secretariat, and eight francophone members were there. They raised the very same issues you're raising. They pointed to things that absolutely made me, as an English-speaking Canadian, understand what I....

Can you imagine, in this document, where we report Canada's literacy figures, we don't recognize that Canada has two official languages. The Swiss do, so they report German and French. But Canada reports only English.

There are issues. The data available to document the size of the francophone literacy issues outside Quebec so far are not accessible to us, so we can't provide you with the data. The detailed information on Canada's literacy issues, information that would break things out into English and French, is not available yet, so I don't have that information for you.

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I very much respect the concern you have. Our organization simply sees a critical need for a federal role in ensuring there's access to adult literacy education, that it is of a quality that is appropriate, and that the benefits of an unemployment insurance system do not penalize people - the three million or the seven million, depending on whom you're counting in - for whom literacy is a major issue.

[Translation]

The Chairman: Mr. Dubé.

Mr. Dubé: I just like to provide some information. The coordinating mechanism you mention in point 5.5 already exists. The Council of Ministers of Education has been looking at this issue for some time and would like to achieve the same objective as you. So the mechanism already exists. All we have to do is speed things up.

There is another point I would like to make but it's not mentioned in your brief. Often, the illiterates not only have learning difficulties, but also and primarily financial problems. There is often a large gap between their income and the average income.

I'm stressing this point because of proposals similar to those made by Ms Augustine, who has asked that the lowest income-earners be exempt from some UI rates.

Yesterday I heard a group of handicapped that they would not want to be covered by the hour-based system, and that there should be equipment available to facilitate their entry into the labour market.

I would like to be brief, but it seems impossible. There are also some illiterates who cannot attend an ordinary program. I'm thinking of those with specific handicaps such as dyslexia or other similar problems. Do you think it's important to focus on the type of equipment needed to help people with serious language-problems?

[English]

Ms Sussman: I'm not sure of the specific proposals you referred to that Ms Augustine has proposed, so I really can't speak to that.

You would be really interested to know what a wide net we cast when we speak of people with literacy problems. We speak of people who never had an opportunity to go to school. They're 50. One woman with whom I work regularly is the eldest of 27 children, and the daughter. So she was kept at home. She didn't have a chance to go to school.

Other people have neurological-based learning disabilities such as dyslexia. So there are special kinds of programming needs. One of my neighbours is a professor at McMaster University. When I was talking to him about literacy issues, he confidentially mentioned to me that he was dyslexic. So you have people who are well integrated and functioning well and have learned to make accommodations.

I can tell you where we get our empathy when we meet with members of provincial governments, which we do in Ontario. I cannot tell you how many members of government have been able to say ``Oh, I struggled with that'' - or ``My son struggles with that'' - ``and if it wasn't for my family having the extra resources to get me the help I needed, I'd be down the tubes''.

That's why there is not a single approach that is the answer to the literacy problem. You have a wide net. There is a wide range of people who have this problem, and there are lots of differences among them. An appropriate solution has to be tailored to the different needs or the different parts of the population.

There's a fellow in Peterborough they call the half-million-dollar man because he raises $500,000 every year for the United Way. Despite months of literacy education training, he doesn't think he will ever be able to spell or write very well, because there's a wiring thing going on.

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It took him about two years of fighting - I think it was with the Workers' Compensation Board - to be allowed to get a speech-assisted device that would allow him to go up to university. It was a fight because it wasn't one of the things that normally...it wasn't a wheelchair and it wasn't a hearing aid. But when he finally got that assistance, he was able to enrol in university and is now doing really fabulous work.

So there is a range of supports. I understand your point, and I agree with it.

[Translation]

Mr. Dubé: How many of the three million have this type of problem?

[English]

Ms Sussman: We don't know. I'd love to know.

The Chairman: You were succinct on the last one.

Mrs. Jennings.

Mrs. Jennings (Mission - Coquitlam): Susan, I'd like to thank you for your presentation. Indeed, I'm very familiar with literacy and literacy problems, being a teacher for 30 years.

While I understand and sympathize with the people who experience this terrible disability - and it is a disability, and it puts them in a very difficult position - I question a couple of things.

As literacy critic for the Reform Party, I have been trying to get the government and others to recognize that literacy begins at birth - that's where it must start. To do that, it actually has partnerships, and I think we're all involved in the partnerships.

In my community, and since I've been reading.... I know Mr. Scott in New Brunswick has a strong partnership program in his community. A lot of it is volunteer; it's money given by businesses, and colleges volunteer their time. It's quite successful.

Where I'm leading to is already we have a place for literacy and education, and that's a provincial responsibility. Is it the job of the employment or unemployment insurance, as it has been in the past, to promote literacy, or should it stay with education and we have a standard program for literacy across the country?

In view of the fact that we already have programs in the old UI training programs and their success rate is very, very low - I've asked for statistics and they are not at all good.... I wonder if we're not attempting to set up another bureaucracy that already has a place in Canada in the education system. Already there are arrangements in place with schools to use them at night and things like that. What would you say to that?

Ms Sussman: Oh, great. I have lots to say to that. You've raised many different points, and they're all very interesting.

The first one that came to mind is why I'm glad I'm not in government. The fact that something's a provincial responsibility and something's a federal responsibility - I understand that's your concern. As a Canadian, all I know is we have problems, and the governments have to work together to figure out how they are going to be solved. The jurisdictional issues are critical but I'm not the master of them, thank God.

On the point you raised as a teacher, there are a couple of things I'd like to say. One of the most popular things to do when we speak about literacy problems is people start bashing the schools. If you look at the statistics on adult literacy, you will see that the preponderance of adults with low literacy levels are not the people who are recent graduates of Canadian schools. Those graduates are the least likely to have literacy problems. It's people over the age of 35 or 40, between 40 and 65, people who still have a good 25 years.... And if you up the pension reform, they'll have to be in the workforce for another 30 years. That's where the problem is. It comes from a time when the education system was doing very different things with different resources, perhaps with less of a recognition of learning disabilities.

Having said that, the other point you make is there is very, very solid research to show that you start to acquire literacy skills as an infant. There's all this kind of pre-literacy stuff that happens in a literate home - magnets on the fridge, rhyming games in the car on the way to the cottage, reading the cereal box, whatever literate parents do.

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A study that was done in the States spent time in the homes of literate families and then in the homes of non-literate families and estimated that a child entering grade one from a literate household has had the advantage of 2,000 hours of one-on-one literacy training from their parents beyond what the child growing up in the non-literate household has had, and that kid who is coming in from a non-literate household with a 2,000-hour disadvantage to a teacher with 25 children and everything else in the world to teach will never catch up.

From my point of view, the point is if we are ever really going to make a dent in this problem, it is not going to work....

There's also research showing that children growing up with parents who are not literates never do as well in school. Their performance in school is as predictable from their parents' literacy and education as anything else.

So if we are going to make a crack in this one, it's not going to be sufficient to fix the system for the kindergarten kids on up. We have to deal with the generation of adults, parents, who are raising children and make sure they can raise them in a literate household.

To your point about whether we don't already have systems, adult literacy is the poor stepchild of the education system in provinces across the country. The amount of resources, the lack of stability of resources, the dependability of those resources....

In Ontario - I can speak from my personal experience - literacy got bounced from ministry to ministry to ministry. Now it's in OTAB. Next month God knows where it will be. It's because the K-12 system is the primary focus of the ministry of education, and every day, given the reforms and the need to cut funding now, the first thing getting cut is adult education.

Maybe it's in provincial jurisdiction. Maybe there's a federal role. I'm speaking on behalf of seven million adults who have a problem, and you're the guys who have to fix it. You have to work together and find a way to address the problem.

That's the only answer I can give to your point.

Mrs. Jennings: I can only reinforce, Susan, that in fact the programs that have been in UI have not been successful either. So I'm not sure that's the way to go.

Ms Sussman: Are these literacy programs? I don't wish to interrupt, but -

Mrs. Jennings: These are training programs, literacy and all types of training.

The other thing is that partnerships in the communities are starting now, and I anticipate that when people get involved helping others you'll see a success that is rising even more than it has already started to. We are seeing success, and I think that's a positive thing.

The last thing is the businesses. I am aware that right now we have businesses across this country that actually are looking after literacy within their own corporations and paying for it. I've travelled on the plane back and forth with people who have actually been doing this, going to companies. What is your experience there? Has it been positive? Is there a real opportunity here?

Ms Sussman: You need to understand that the delivery of literacy training across Canada is very diversified. First of all, there's a very strong, wonderful, and inspiring movement of volunteer-based literacy programs, where the only paid staff and the only investment are in the coordination of volunteers. Tens of thousands of people are volunteering two hours a week, four hours a week, to work with an adult with literacy issues.

The only federally funded programs I'm aware of as coming through UI developmental uses under the current scheme require that somebody attend a program in a classroom for 25 hours a week. I can tell you volunteers are not working in classrooms for 25 hours a week. So school boards and colleges have also developed programs, and they're classroom based and they're group instruction.

So what we have is an array of program types. We have sitting at the kitchen table two hours a week. We have dressing up and going off to college 25 or 30 hours a week. We have school board programs in between.

Some people have asked, well, why do we have all these different kinds of programs? Do we need them? My position is yes, we do need them, because the learners have different goals and they have different needs, and they are at different places. Somebody who has been in the closet - I don't like to use the word ``illiterate'' - masking, hiding, their literacy problem all their lives - man, they don't want to go back into a school building right away, I'll tell you. That's where they failed. Or if they're working all day, it may be in their kitchen at night, at their own table, with a volunteer. Whereas somebody else who is well established in their community and has been successful and is now prepared to say hey, guess what, I've done this despite the fact that I have a reading problem - they feel good about walking into a college. They don't want to go back to kindergarten. They don't want to do it at their kitchen table. So the diversity of programming is necessary.

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The other thing I would say is that research suggests that for an adult to make the amount of progress in acquiring literacy skills that will sustain their motivation, two hours a week doesn't cut it.

Numbers can come from all sorts of sources, but the best estimate we have is that something like 100 hours of instruction is needed to move up a grade level. Imagine that you've got a life and kids and a job and all these worries. Parcel that out at two hours a week. After a year of volunteer instruction, some of these adults may have moved from a grade three level in reading to a grade four level. Why bother? That's not the kind of gain they're looking for.

My point is that it's a complex issue. It's a complex group of people, and that's why we need a range of responses to the kinds of problems they're having. Some people will be incredibly well served because they have a lot of skills intact and the reasons why they didn't learn to read may have been situational rather than neurogically based. Others have different problems.

Regarding your question about the workplace - and right now I'm speaking only from experience in Ontario, because that's where my knowledge comes from - there are some investments from the private sector in adult literacy education, but they're a drop in the bucket and they're a hard sell. The Ontario Federation of Labour co-sponsors with business some programs in the workplace, but they continue to be a hard sell.

There's now a program in Ontario whereby the provincial government is making all kinds of subsidies available to business to offer literacy programs in the workplace. They're having a very hard time in selling it to business. So, at least in the short term, I'm not 100% confident that's going to be a solution we can count on.

Mr. Scott (Fredericton - York - Sunbury): Thank you very much, and congratulations. It was a wonderful presentation. Having spent a great deal of the last two years of my life doing literacy, I can say that you've nailed it completely.

One of the best ways in which literacy kicks off this discussion is that it's an area where it's very obvious that you can't use the market to judge the success of the program, because basically nobody can deny that a person who improves their reading skills has had their life enhanced, whether they get a job at the other end or not. In speaking to your reference to south of the border and so on, I think that's important.

Second, we'll offer absolution in terms of the fact that no one is taking your support for the active measures as being support for the cuts that might be accompanying those measures. So you're off the hook, so to speak.

We're going to come around to this. There's a middle ground on these literacy classrooms that very much is connected to what these amendments are trying to do. So I'd like you to think a little bit differently about the unemployment insurance or employment insurance.

The reference in your brief was to unemployed people and the fact that we're saving money on their backs. But the fact of the matter is that many people - not the majority - draw unemployment insurance every year at a very high level.

My personal feeling is that unemployment insurance serves two purposes. If you lose your job, then your income is replaced. That should not have anything to do with the level of income. I think that's a function of the program.

Another application of the program has to do with income supplementation if you're working in an industry that simply can't sustain you for the whole year or you're working in the kind of job in which you move around.

So those are the two functions of unemployment insurance.

Unfortunately, or not unfortunately - I don't want to put values on this - there are people at the high end who are getting income supplements. So I don't have difficulty with clawing that money back and putting it into the programs we're talking about. I wouldn't take it away from the people who need it, if you like. I don't want to get caught on the semantics of these words, but I want you to understand exactly what I'm getting at.

Having said that, what if I were to tell you that in fact the bill offers more access at the lowest socio-economic level by virtue of its conversion from weeks to hours as the eligibility measure. There are seasonals from New Brunswick, people who work 70-hour weeks. Before this, that was one week. For all intents and purposes, it's now two. That gives them quicker access.

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The second point has to do with the fact that because we've changed the requirements for the employment benefits part of the bill - in other words, the non-income support - many more people will have access to the very programs you're talking about. There are large numbers of people. I think it's about half a million Canadians. These are important programs. We agree on that point.

In our province a lot of the problems with literacy have to do with the fact that people leave school to enter resource industries. If the eligibility requirements were in fact more stringent for them as new entrants they would be less likely to do that. It's a hard truth. I don't want to penalize people who need it but neither do I want that to happen. I don't want a kid in grade eleven in Boiestown, New Brunswick, to quit school and in five years be on a list somewhere that we'll be talking about when we talk about this issue, all because of a federal program. I think that would be a tragedy and I'm sure you would agree.

Now what I'd like to speak to is the use of this program. Daphne mentioned it. In New Brunswick we have 500 classrooms. In fact, last year in Beijing we received the award for outstanding efforts in the area of literacy. The kinds of things we're doing with this bill touch on that program in a number of ways.

First, more people will be able to access it. They'll be eligible for employment benefits because of the expanded definitions that allow them to be in even if they're not getting income support. Also, many people who are currently outside the system will have access to income support by virtue of the shift from weeks to hours, so they'll be able to sustain themselves when they're in one of our 500 classrooms.

Probably the best part is that the teacher, the facilitator in our classrooms, very often leaves UI. They bring their benefits. It's part of what would become HRIF. That's who teaches in these classrooms. They are people who are otherwise unemployed, who bring their benefits to the community partnerships that Daphne talked about. That's how they get paid. They bring their benefits through a program like the Human Resources Investment Fund.

I'm not asking you to support anything you don't want to support. I'm trying to help you imagine that what's driving this is actually a flexibility that would help the people you're talking about.

My final point is about the low income levels. You mentioned the correlation between employment and people who don't have literacy skills. I assume you also accept that correlation on income levels.

The Chairman: That's quite a speech you're delivering.

Mr. Scott: Can I finish it then?

The Chairman: Absolutely. We want to hear the finale. Go ahead.

Mr. Scott: My last point is that the low-end, low-income group is going to see a 7% or 15% increase in their benefits in this exercise because of the low-income supplement. This is to relieve your conscience.

Ms Sussman: Oh, I'm relieved.

The Chairman: You have 30 seconds to respond to his statement. Go ahead.

Ms Sussman: I can't pretend to have done a real analysis of the benefit levels, the entry requirements and stuff like that. I'm relying on the expertise of people in the community with the skills and the background to do that.

I am somewhat familiar but not as familiar as I would like to be with the program you have in New Brunswick. I've heard some things about it. Some were very positive and some of them were less so.

I think at first it wasn't clear whether the people who were being hired to provide the instruction actually had any kind of teaching background. Subsequently I think as more and more teachers were losing jobs they were being hired to do the work. But incomes are being driven down. People are working for a fraction of what they were working for before and are doing the same job. That's a cause for concern because we're just going to have more low-income Canadians.

I'm not in a position to respond with any more than that to what you've said, except that I recognize you have a model that has increased access for some people. It should have more study.

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[Translation]

Mr. Dubé: I cannot trust Mr. Scott to teach me how to ask brief questions.

[English]

The Chairman: Mr. Scott feels passionately about literacy, so we'll excuse him this time.

Mr. Regan.

Mr. Regan (Halifax West): Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thanks to all of you for coming.

I want to lead off where Mr. Scott left off, but I will not lay it on quite so long.

It seems to me the government does recognize that literacy is a basic component of basic skills. It ought to recognize that. I think you've made a very strong presentation to that effect today.

I have this quick question: do you know the regional breakdown of the seven million people you referred to who have literacy needs? Second, do you know the breakdown of that group by industry? For instance, how many of those people are seasonal workers? As an Atlantic member, I'm of course thinking about people in the fishing industry and in other kinds of industries. Because of the wider eligibility rules here and because of the movement to hours and so forth, they have a better chance to benefit from the active measures in this bill. That's what I'm interested in.

Ms Sussman: This is the skill-testing question I was afraid you would ask. That data you're asking for is available from the 1989 LSUDA study. The detailed Canadian report from IALS has not been released yet. It will have that information on a more recent basis. I was afraid you were going to ask that question because I don't have that detail memorized.

I do know that low literacy levels are mostly an urban phenomenon. I do know that people with low literacy skills are disproportionately over-represented in resource-based industries and in hazardous occupations like mining and forestry and fishing.

I would be very happy to get back to you with the breakdown you've asked for. It is available but I don't have it memorized. But I'd like to cheat and take an opportunity to say something that I think speaks to a point you've raised.

Canada is a signatory to a convention on the rights of the child. Canada signed a declaration saying it recognizes literacy as a basic human right. Therefore, to talk about it only in the context of unemployment insurance is a problem for me because we recognize it as an issue that is more far-reaching than the issue of employability.

Mr. Regan: I guess you see our problem. Our job is to focus on the bill before us.

Ms Sussman: Yes.

So when do you integrate and see the big picture? And how do you do that?

Mr. Regan: When we leave the room.

Ms Sussman: Okay. I mean that's part of what you have to be bringing to the task at all times. That's the problem with pulling a single thread as if the single thread isn't woven into something else. When you pull each single thread you have something that doesn't stay together any more.

Mr. Regan: Sometimes the challenge is that you have to work on one thing at a time. It's very hard to work on everything at once.

Ms Sussman: I understand that. There is very strong evidence to show that there also a direct correlation between literacy and health and health care spending. There is very clear evidence to show that there is a direct correlation between literacy and crime and spending on incarceration. As I mentioned earlier, there's very clear evidence to show that there is a direct correlation between the parents' literacy levels and their kids' performances in school.

And of course we have the employability and income issues. The point is that it touches so many things, not to mention civic participation. There's very strong evidence suggesting that people with low literacy skills are least likely to be volunteers in the community, least likely to be giving back to the community.

So in every way, shape and form, whether reading the red book or the common sense revolution, you've got three million people who don't have the access to everything that Canada has to offer. And their problem has costs associated with it, costs that government has to pick up. We are imploring you to help us find a solution.

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The Chairman: Ms Sussman, there are no further questions.

Mr. Scott took six minutes for his speech, and on his behalf I would like to apologize to the committee.

First, I would like to thank you very much for your presentation. It's not often that members of the committee applaud presentations. That was a natural reaction to the thoughtful analysis you presented.

Ms Sussman: Oh, really? Good.

The Chairman: Also, we take the message quite clearly about looking at things in a sort of comprehensive and holistic way. The fact remains, though, that we are looking at Bill C-12 and we need to improve this piece of legislation. But we thank you for helping us also in the formation of our thoughts for any future piece of legislation that appears in front of this committee or any other committee.

Ms Sussman: Thank you very much for the opportunity.

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The Chairman: Order. We have the pleasure to have with us representatives from One Voice - The Canadian Seniors Network: Andrew Aitkens, the director of research, and John Paterson, member of the Canadian Network of Experienced Workers.

Welcome, gentlemen. We are certainly eager to hear your opinion on Bill C-12, an act respecting Employment Insurance in Canada. We are currently listening to Canadians from coast to coast - ``to coast'', as some people remind me - about ways in which we can improve the present piece of legislation.

There's probably going to be a bell ringing at approximately 5:15 p.m., which means the members of Parliament have to find their way to the House of Commons so they can vote. If we can ask you to give us a sort of synopsis, or the highlights, of your presentation, that would allow us still to have close to half an hour or 40 minutes for a Q-and-A session.

Welcome. You may begin.

Mr. Andrew Aitkens (Director of Research, One Voice - The Canadian Seniors Network): Thank you for the opportunity to appear before the committee. I regret the short time did not permit us to prepare a full written brief, which we would have liked to do. Lacking time and resources, we are here to talk with you instead, and to provide a few facts and figures that I hope will be of use to you as you review this bill.

Just a quick reminder. One Voice is a national non-profit, voluntary, charitable organization representing older Canadians. In this case we do not limit that term to what some people think of as seniors, which is 65-plus. We find that in the midst of the phenomenon of our aging population it's important to consider 55-plus, and even 45-plus. In fact, the current definition of ``older worker'' as put forward by the human resources development department is 45-plus, which sometimes scares me a bit. I fall into that category.

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We have done considerable work in the area of older workers, beginning in 1990, when we brought together the then dozen or so seniors employment bureaus from across the country to look at some of the issues they were facing in their communities. A subsequent consultation was held in 1994 in Calgary to explore how these groups could work together more effectively and what were the issues relating to the aging of our workforce and the aging of our society in general.

In preparation for that consultation in 1994, we commissioned a good deal of research. That has been published and in fact was presented to this committee during the social security review process. So rather than go over old ground, I'm just going to raise a couple of highlights from that material. But I hope your research staff and you will consult those documents, because there's a lot of very useful information there.

Turning now to the goals of Bill C-12, it seems to me that the original goal is intact, which is income replacement during job loss. The new goals seem to be that you want to reinforce work and people working, you want to help unemployed people become productive members of the labour force. Presumably, the exercise is not one of cost-cutting, considering that there is a surplus predicted for the account.

Some of the particular problems that older workers face bear looking at in this context. First of all, there is a systemic discrimination against older workers. There are many reasons for this, most of them false and artificial. The main one perhaps is that we have to clear out the dead wood and make space for all these up-and-coming young workers. That just isn't the case any more. The fact is that we're going to end up with a labour shortage starting in about ten years if we don't start actively keeping our older workers, not to mention the fact that we lose all of the expertise, the wisdom and so on, the corporate memory that older workers carry with them.

When older workers lose their jobs, they face not only the discrimination in terms of getting a new job and finding re-entry, but they also end up being on unemployment insurance longer. This is costly. Typically, they're at the higher end of their income level, so their benefits are higher. If you look at the first chart I've distributed to you, you will see that older workers spend about 32 weeks looking for work, compared to younger workers, who spend about 16 or 17 weeks. This isn't because they like to loaf; this is because they are discriminated against and can't find jobs.

We call this forced early retirement; we don't call it retirement. It's job loss, but a lot of older workers end up calling themselves retired because they get discouraged and drop out of the labour force. And then they're not even counted properly.

Another reason they can't find work is that the nature of work has changed. The major job losses over the last decade and more have been in the area of goods production primarily. As a consequence, people with semi-skilled and unskilled labour backgrounds do not have the skills that are required for the new jobs, which tend to be in what we call the dynamic service sector: computers and information technology, and so on. They have what we could term a training deficit. What that means in respect to what you're dealing with is that any kind of training program that's designed for workers in general will not be applicable to older workers because they have a different profile that needs to be dealt with. Their education typically does not match the jobs of today. They don't have computer skills. A lot of them have worked with their hands, and a lot of them lack basic education.

I believe the second chart shows who you has been laid off and become an involuntary retiree. You'll see that the largest percentage are the semi-skilled and the unskilled. A third chart shows you the educational profile of different age groups.

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If you look at the third column you'll see the age 55 to 64 group, who are likely still in the labour force and want to stay until they reach retirement age. You see that over 50% of them have less than high school, men and women alike. So in designing a training program for older workers this has to be taken into account, because for training to be effective you have to make up that deficit first and then do the specific skill training that's required.

Finally, older people tend to have a lower ability to be mobile and follow the new jobs. They've lived in their community for many years. They have children. They have aging parents. They've bought a house. They have a mortgage. They have a network of friends. To move is not as easy for them as it is for a 24-year-old who can just pack up a knapsack and follow the work.

Some of the measures in Bill C-12 seem to be saying if the work is seasonal and it's dead for six months then find work somewhere else. You'll have to leave and go to another community. That's really not a realistic expectation for older workers.

Younger workers have problems too. They're facing a lack of jobs and they're also facing bad jobs. A lot of the jobs that are out there are not what we'd call good jobs. They're not full-time. They don't have good wages. They don't have coverage in terms of benefits and so on. These are bad jobs.

Younger people are faced with a very small pool from which they can draw. For their lifespan issues it's increasingly difficult for them to consider something like saving for retirement because they can barely get by on their own as it is.

With changes in educational funding, these young people are going to have much larger student loans to pay off, which will last longer and longer - into their thirties probably. By the time they've paid off their mortgage, if they're lucky enough to be able to buy a house they really won't have been able to save for retirement.

So bad jobs really have a bad influence on the ability to save for retirement and will ultimately produce a more dependent older population, dependent on government programs because they just won't have been able to save.

One other problem I'd like to point out in regard to younger people is their eligibility for retraining programs when they are hired. This is problematic for older workers too, but a lot of young people will take a job because they refuse to go on UI. They are then trapped, because they're working and they're not eligible for upgrade programs. I have friends who are pumping gas when they could be an airline mechanic or something like that. The training just isn't available because they're working.

One of the problems I have with the bill is that there is an assumption of abuse running through the whole thing: let's get those guys. I think older workers usually don't abuse the system. There are always people who abuse the system. Sure, we need to crack down on those people, but I think for older workers who have responsibilities, who have dependants, unemployment is not a choice, it's something that happens to them externally. It could be the nature of the work in terms of seasonal work, as I mentioned, and often it's employers who use the system almost as a wage subsidy to lay off workers while they retool a plant or something like that. I think a distinction needs to be made somehow in this legislation so that you're not broadbasing the whole population and penalizing those who really are victims of circumstances like these.

I think restricting the benefits and the eligibility period and all of those things for so-called frequent users could have that effect if you're not careful. What I would suggest is that you try to establish some kind of mechanism for identifying whether the cause of the unemployment is really due to the individual or whether it's circumstance such as seasonal work or the employer's abuse.

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I recommend that in any kind of training program that's developed as part of the reforms you recognize that the new skills required in the changing labour market will require specialized, tailored programs for older workers. They should be available to older workers. Don't buy the ``you can't teach an old dog new tricks'' cliché, because it's not true. Also, they have just as much right to training as anyone else has.

Finally, it's necessary to recognize that someone who's worked for 30 years and suddenly finds themselves out of a job has different needs for placement and counselling services from employment agencies and so on. After you've worked all your life, it's very difficult to adjust to unemployment. From our work with seniors employment bureaus, we know that wholly different sets of skills and materials and so on are necessary in order to serve this population.

I know we're in a rush, so I'll ask Mr. Paterson to say a few words and then we'll take questions.

Mr. John Paterson (Member, One Voice - The Canadian Seniors Network): I would like to give you a little grassroots example of something to which my colleague has alluded, which is the systemic discrimination against the older worker. It may well be that it's the result of the propagation of myths or misconceptions, but unfortunately they have taken hold all over the place.

One of my functions at the moment is that I'm president of the local seniors employment bureau of Ottawa-Carleton. So I have a very good grasp on the local scene. But I'm also on the options committee, which is funded by HRD and has been put together to examine what we are going to do in order to help the over-45-year-old to obtain work. So I have a national view on it as well. That is a national committee made up of people from the Maritimes right through to Vancouver.

This grassroots example that I will give you is one that can be repeated, and I know is repeated, in every community across the country.

We at the seniors bureau here decided to do an experiment to find out whether these misconceptions and myths that everyone hears about and reads about in every article that's written about employment of seniors really have taken hold amongst the employers in the communities. We ran a small experiment. We chose three people to do it. One was a retired engineer in his sixties, one was an out-of-work executive secretary in her fifties, and one was a former associate deputy minister at DND, who at that point was in his seventies. Those three people went out in Ottawa-Carleton and over a three-year period conducted close to a hundred face-to-face interviews with CEOs, senior human resource directors, and so on of relatively large corporations, middle to large corporations.

We devised a series of questions to test the myth. We asked them to regard these questions and to answer them in relation to their own businesses. The first question was whether the older workers were slower at their work and consequently less productive. The consensus of opinion was that while they might be a little bit slower, they were certainly not less productive, because the accuracy of their work and their past experience more than made up for any slowness they were suffering.

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The second question we asked them was whether the older workers are more prone to be absent because of ill health. The answer almost universally was certainly not sufficiently that we have ever noticed it.

The third question was whether they are less conscientious. Are they more unpunctual? Do they take more voluntary time off? If it's nasty outside and there's freezing rain, is it the old ones who don't turn up or who come in late? The answer again was no, that is not the case; they do tend to be here first and they tend to stay later.

Having gone through this exercise, we then had a punchline: why are you not hiring more of these paragons? The answer was they had never really thought about it.

What we have to do, and what we are trying to do, if there are options and a project is working, is to raise the awareness of the employers of this country about the value of the older worker. The older worker has great value. It's a shame that we are frequently tossing that value on the dust heap.

The Chairman: Mr. Regan.

Mr. Regan: Gentlemen, thank you for coming today.

I want to focus on one particular aspect of the bill. I know you have a variety of concerns. I have one in particular in mind. I'd like your advice and your wisdom on it. It's a structural matter within the bill.

You talked about the assumption of abuse, and I understand what you're saying there. At the same time I think there are arguments that we do need to have some incentives in the bill to ensure people have reasons to work longer than the very minimum they're required to work to get eligibility to draw UI. I think that's accepted widely. It makes sense to me. What doesn't make sense to me, however, is that we have a system proposed in this bill.... What's proposed is to have a divisor, which means the period over which you divide the income....

Let me explain. Let's say it's an area of high unemployment. At the moment you have to work the equivalent of twelve weeks, and now in hours, to qualify; to become eligible. But to determine what your income is to base the EI payment on, you go sixteen weeks back from the period when you apply. So it's four weeks more. In some areas, the high unemployment areas, it's three, and in some it's four. Whereas in the low-unemployment areas it's zero weeks beyond the period to become eligible as the period of the divisor.

That seems to me to be unfair. It seems to me the divisor should be an equal number of weeks above the minimum eligibility period everywhere in the country. That would be a fairer system of doing it. For instance, if it were two more weeks....

I also think it shouldn't be an unduly harsh thing. People should try to adjust themselves for it, and you want to have an incentive, but it shouldn't be unduly harsh in its impact.

If in the areas where they have the equivalent of twelve weeks you divided it over fourteen, and in the areas where you had to have twenty weeks you divided it over twenty-two weeks, it seems to me it would be much fairer to all workers; and that would certainly include older workers. I can see the impact on them in my area, for example, Atlantic Canada. I think people would be treated much more fairly and equally in that manner.

What's your view of that proposal?

Mr. Aitkens: It seems to me the purpose of that is to prevent people who experience periods of low wages during that period from being effectively penalized for that loss of income. So that would lower their benefit. Is this trying to correct that?

Mr. Regan: Yes. For instance, you could have a situation under the present rules where you might have not worked for.... Let's say you have twelve weeks of work during the year, and over a long period. Under the present legislation you would go back sixteen weeks from the day you apply to determine the average of your income over that period.

This is one aspect of the problem. There's another problem, the gap my colleague Mr. Scott, who left us earlier, is interested in, and still trying to deal with.

But on the issue of how much the divisor should be - in other words, how much additional you need to have an incentive to make sure people work as much as they can - should it be two more weeks or four more weeks, and should it vary across the country, I'm saying it shouldn't vary across the country, and also that two weeks would be sufficient because it would be less harsh on people across the country, particularly in the high-unemployment regions.

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Mr. Aitkens: To be honest, I don't see a particular older worker angle on this, so I don't think I can give you any particular wisdom from that perspective. I would just be giving you my own opinion on something you've raised, and I don't think that's my area of expertise.

Mr. Regan: I'll accept that. Maybe we can come back after these other questions.

The Chairman: Mr. McCormick.

Mr. McCormick (Hastings - Frontenac - Lennox and Addington): Thank you very much, gentlemen. I do remember you being here a year ago or whenever for SSR.

I certainly think we all recognize that older workers would like to contribute to society. I see it in my riding, which encircles Kingston. We've got major corporations there that have laid off a few hundred people and now there's a billion dollars worth of activity. They're hiring a few hundred people but they're not recalling the older workers, and it hurts. They're missing the talent; it's not being recognized.

One part of this legislation, which I think can be of considerable help.... A bit of trivia is that the number one fear in North America is public speaking. The number one dream of people in North America - their dream, their wish and their goal - is to be in business. It's amazing. Whatever professional people you're talking about, they often don't think of themselves as being in business. Teachers, the plant workers, the engineers - they'd like to be in business.

I think for these people with their talent and experience who are laid off now, this employment tool of self-employment assistance, which would give them a helping hand, tied in with actual money for up to a year, could be a real opportunity for a lot of people. I wonder whether you had any thoughts about that, and how it might help some people.

Mr. Aitkens: We have, as a matter of fact. I will leave with you a copy of our last newsletter, in which we provided a mini-analysis of the bill. Here is one of the things I mentioned in it:

Another benefit for older workers will be the provisions to assist Canadians establishing themselves as self-employed. This is an option for those forced into early retirement, and may benefit experienced workers as they discover that they can market their skills as self-employed individuals or by starting a small company and creating additional jobs in the process. The new measures will provide EI benefits while claimants take training and establish their business.

So we have supported that particular -

Mr. McCormick: Thank you. When I was home one weekend, John, I saw the article in a daily paper about the options that are funded under HRD, and I'm really looking forward to what we can learn from that. There's such a need for that program, so I trust you're going to furnish the information as we go along.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. McCormick. Now we'll move to Mr. Crête, followed byMiss Jennings.

[Translation]

Mr. Crête (Kamouraska - Rivière-du-Loup): I think you've convinced us, or at least you've convinced me, that the reform will increase any systemic discrimination that already exists in our current system. The proposed changes will increase this discrimination.

Should we not start by changing two of the proposals? The government should state clearly that it will undertake to make maximum use of our human resources potential, rather than emphasizing the race for productivity, as it is doing at the moment. Second, should there not be a more integrated approach for seniors? I would love to ask some questions related to the old age pension.

Everything you say about people on unemployment insurance is related to the proposed old age pension reform. Should the government therefore not adopt an integrated approach?

Third, with respect to the intensity rule, we are to understand that there will be a 1 per cent wage reduction for every 20 weeks. The negative impact of this will be much more considerable for seniors because of their reduced mobility. What should be done? What would you suggest? Should we simply eliminate the intensity rule? Do you have any other solutions?

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[English]

Mr. Aitkens: I guess, as I said earlier, I would try to find a mechanism to determine the cause of the unemployment, the particular job loss, or whatever. I don't think it's fair to penalize an individual for circumstances beyond their control. In the best of all possible worlds, if someone quit their job because they wanted to go on unemployment insurance there would be a way of getting at them for doing that, and rapping their knuckles or giving them a lower benefit.

Compare that to another individual who's stuck in a community where the only job they can get is a job where they keep going in and out and in and out of employment. Those are circumstances that people just can't help. And as I said, an older worker will find it more difficult to escape that and travel to a new location where there may be more regular work. I think that needs a lot of attention and I'm glad you raised the question again.

As for your second point, I think we always need to keep in mind the larger picture and people's ability to manage their lives, from the time they are first realizing they have a life that they can manage. There are elements there a person should be in charge of so they can maximize their life over the course of the lifespan.

This is not sounding very concrete. What I mean is a person's ability to save for retirement, for example, and provide for themselves, provide for their family - all of these things are really number one to the individual, and we should be designing systems that permit the individual to do those things to the best possible degree, and not set up a situation through the system where they are either prevented from doing that or compromised in their ability to do that. What I'm seeing now with the education issue is that people are going to find it harder and harder to pay for everything because it's getting to be too much. By the time you're 50, you'll finally have paid off your student loan, and by then it's too late to start saving for retirement. I think those long lifespan issues need to be taken into account.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Crête. Mrs. Jennings.

Mrs. Jennings: First of all, I'd just like to say it was really interesting to hear about the questions, John, that were on that questionnaire that went around. I think all it did was reinforce what we already know - that our seniors have work ethic and they've always had it. I was pleased to hear the results of that.

I'm concerned about some of the things I've been reading lately. One of them I believe is the Caledon report of June 1995, which actually put out some statistics like: we think of 65 as the retirement age, but in actual fact 60% of the men and 70% of the women retire before 65, and 27% of the men and 38% of the women retire before 60. Some of those figures represent forced retirement, and some voluntary. I know sometimes you're offered a financial package or you have a pension plan you've paid into, or a private one that you can access earlier. Sometimes, unfortunately, it's due to health, and sometimes it's due to job loss, which brings us back where we are here.

I'm concerned with the percentages, and I wonder if maybe John or Andrew know of any statistics or any numbers that could give us what percentage of the 45 - because, as you say, age 45 is where we're looking now, to 65 - what percentage of workers retire voluntarily and what percentage are actually impacted directly because they're in a deficit position of being trained, or something that you've mentioned.

Mr. Paterson: This is an interesting question, because until two years ago almost every seniors' employment bureau in the country, with the exception of the ones in Alberta, worked with the people who were 55 years of age or more. Two years ago it was decreed by HRD that the definition of an older worker was now anybody over the age of 45 and that any bureau in the country that was receiving funding from HRD through one or another of their programs would be required to handle the needs of displaced workers aged 45 and over.

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This presented a very large problem to us because the needs of a 45- or 47-year-old who still has a tremendous number of commitments often took in counselling, and many of the bureaus were not prepared and didn't have the staff. They were all voluntary bureaus, running with volunteers, and they didn't have the staff to provide this type of in-depth counselling a person of that age would need.

The urgency for these people to find work was very often greater than the example you've given of someone who is laid off, or gets a bit of a golden handshake, or a brass handshake, or whatever, and therefore perhaps has more funds to take them through the initial period. So it presented us a great problem.

As a matter of fact, we expected as a bureau here to be totally overwhelmed by this. We envisaged all of these 45-year-olds and upwards appearing on our doorstep. It hasn't happened. At the present time about 7% of the people we are handling are in the 45 to 50 age bracket. The largest percentage of people are in the 50 to 60 age bracket.

We find now that of most of the people we used to handle, who would have been from 60 years upwards, there are fewer and fewer of them coming to us looking for work. Whether they have given up, whether they have read all the horror stories that seniors can't get jobs and thought they might as well stick with their pension and settle down to live in that way....That may be the answer, but those people have disappeared. They haven't disappeared entirely, but they certainly have gone backwards in numbers.

Does that help you?

Mrs. Jennings: Yes, it does. Thank you.

Mr. Aitkens: As a follow-up, if I may, I have a few other statistics that might be useful and interesting for you.

Of the people who retired earlier than they had planned, 28% retired because of illness or disability; 42% retired because of economic factors - that includes either laid off or given a golden handshake; and other reasons was 30%. That 30% breaks down into: care for relatives or a friend; wanted to stop working; or not stated. So it is kind of a grab-bag. But interestingly, 42% were either laid off or got some kind of retirement incentive.

Mrs. Jennings: Thank you very much.

The Chairman: Mrs. Jennings, does that conclude your question?

Mrs. Jennings: Yes, it does.

The Chairman: On behalf of the committee, I would certainly like to thank you very much for your intervention and for raising some very important points, which you can rest assured are duly noted.

As I did last week, I would like to request that Mr. Regan develop and present to me an expanded version of what he was stating earlier today in relation to the divisor. I would require that work to be completed by Monday, in the same manner that the member, Jean Augustine, has addressed the issue of family income supplement in relation to the intensity rule and that Mr. Scott has done on the gap. So that's for Monday. Is that clear? Okay.

Mr. Paterson and Mr. Aitkens, thank you very much for your presentation. Hopefully, we'll improve this bill.

[Translation]

Mr. Crête: I just hope that the cheese will have so many holes in it by the end that it won't have the same taste at all as it had at the beginning. Do you understand what I mean?

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[English]

The Chairman: Yes, we're always improving.

The meeting is adjourned. We will have another meeting tomorrow at 9 a.m. in Room 237-C. Have a good evening.

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