Ministers announce plan for labour statistics council

BILL CURRY

OTTAWA — The Globe and Mail

Published Friday, Jul. 10, 2015 7:25PM EDT

Last updated Friday, Jul. 10, 2015 7:27PM EDT

Ottawa and the provinces are promising to create a new labour statistics body, but frustration is mounting over the fact that no money has yet been announced and no date has been set as to when it will launch.

Federal and provincial labour ministers announced at a meeting this week in Quebec City that they will create a Labour Market Information Council, but few details were provided other than to say that governments were still working on a final plan.

“The local market needs is one of the most important issues,” Sam Hamad, Quebec’s Minister of Labour, Employment and Social Solidarity, said in a brief interview this week.

The idea of such a body has been discussed as far back as 2009 when the federal government commissioned a detailed report on how to improve labour market information. Business and labour groups have been calling for better data in recent years in response to the heated debate over policies such as the Temporary Foreign Worker Program and whether such measures are truly needed to fill Canadian job vacancies.

Additional information on the proposed council provided to The Globe and Mail said the body will be run jointly by Ottawa and the provinces under the Forum of Labour Market Ministers (FLMM) and will operate under a “consensus-based decision-making” process led by a committee of deputy ministers.

Federal Employment Minister Pierre Poilievre said ministers made “significant progress” this week.

“Rather than a new bureaucracy, ministers have agreed to work together through the [Labour Market Information] Council to improve labour market information for Canadians,” he said in a statement. A spokesperson for Mr. Poilievre said the council will be funded by the federal and provincial governments, but did not provide an amount.

The 2009 report commissioned by the FLMM and led by economist Don Drummond had estimated that such a council would cost about $49.4-million a year, with $41-million going to Statistics Canada.

Polytechnics Canada chief executive officer Nobina Robinson, who has advocated for the creation of such a council, says it is taking too long to get going and she’s frustrated that Ottawa has not announced any money for the project.

“If we say that the No. 1 priority for any political party is jobs, then surely the No. 1 action has to be a way of connecting those people who are being trained to those people who need those workers,” she said. As a result, employers may be bringing in workers from abroad without knowing about recent Canadian graduates who could fill the position.

“Instead, we get really dangerous policy decisions such as ‘do this on temporary foreign workers,’ or ‘don’t do this on immigration’ and we don’t know what’s happening in our domestic [labour] supply,” she said.

Ms. Robinson said there is huge potential in merging the information currently being gathered by postsecondary institutions in order to provide governments, employers, parents, high school students and Canadians looking for new jobs with valuable information about what skills are in demand and what areas of the country are most in need of workers.

The Canadian Chamber of Commerce issued a report card earlier this year that gave C grades to most aspects of Canada’s labour market system.

Sarah Anson-Cartwright, the chamber’s director of skills policy, said Friday that the announcement of the council is positive but she shares the frustration of others that no money has been announced to fund the project.

“We do see that this is a useful step but it needs to be completed by proper investment,” she said. “I don’t think it’s a big-ticket item.”

Canadian Labour Congress president Hassan Yussuff said the lack of action is frustrating.

“I think they’re just repeating the same rhetoric that they’ve done before,” he said. “There’s no new money here.”

The Source:http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ministers-announce-plan-for-labour-statistics-council/article25421942/

Victoria restaurants face chef shortage, 

broken industry, says restaurateur

"The simple answer is, cooks do not make enough money for

 the hard, hard job they have," says owner

By On the Island, CBC News Posted: Jul 12, 2015 
1:47 PM PT Last Updated: Jul 13, 2015 11:06 AM PT

Chefs need to be paid more, but the current restaurant model is broken, says Victoria
restaurateur Sterling Grice, co-owner of Foo, Foo Ramen, and Part and Parcel. (Getty Images/Caiaimage)

British Columbia led the country with more than 15,000 job gains across the
 province in June, but one sector in particular is having trouble filling those jobs.

Canada sheds 6,400 jobs in June

"Qualified cooks are so few and far between that my poor business
 partner and chef Grant [Gard] is working 90 hours a week because 
he can't find the right fit," said Sterling Grice, co-owner of Foo, Foo Ramen 
and Part and Parcel in Victoria.

The summer usually brings with it a rush of young applicants, but 
not this year, he said.  Already he's spent more than four months 
looking for new kitchen staff, and other restaurateurs are no better off, 
he added.

"If you look at Craigslist, there's nothing but chef and line cook positions
 available at way too many restaurants."  

The problem is both the high demand for quality chefs and the short 
supply of ready candidates, said Grice, who said the city has North America's
 second-highest number of restaurants per capita, behind San Francisco.

'Glamour-less' job

"The simple answer is, cooks do not make enough money for the hard,
 hard job they have.

"It's a really hard place to work. It is loud and rude. Burns and cuts. 
Poor pay. Long hours," he said.

One of his fellow restaurateurs has gone through four chefs this 
summer alone, Grice said. 

"They see it on TV with Gordon Ramsay, with all these new celebrity 
chefs [like] David Chang, and it seems like an amazing job, but the reality
 is there's only a small percentage that actually attains that super ultra cool 
and lucrative lifestyle."

Can't afford to pay more

Grice, who has been in the business for nearly 27 years, said he
 pays a higher hourly rate than most restaurateurs in the city, 
and his restaurants split tips equally among all staff.

He hopes that adds up to a living wage, he said, because
 he's running out of options.  

Others who have tried to do away with tips altogether and
 charge a higher menu price have failed, said Grice, referring to
 David Jones' three-month long experiment with Smoke 'N
 Water in Parksville.

"The system is broken. We need to charge considerably more
 than we are, and if we did it and if we were the only restaurant 
to do it, we would be out of business."

Rising food prices, stagnant menu prices

Statistics Canada reported a five per cent increase in food prices
 overall, and a 14 per cent jump in meat costs between January 2014
 and January 2015.

"That hasn't been reflected in anyone's menu, because you're almost 
afraid to raise your prices by 50 cents, because people are going to balk. 

"People do not want to pay for what food is actually worth."

To hear the full interview with Sterling Grice, listen to the audio labelled: Restaurateur Sterling Grice on Victoria's chef shortage

The Source:http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/victoria-
restaurants-face-chef-shortage-broken-industry-says-restaurateur-1.3148241

Comment:

"Garbage in … Garbage out

In 2014, Jason Kenney went across the country giving away money for skills training.

On June 20, 2014 Jason Kenney went on television and stopped Canadian employers from hiring legal skilled workers. 

Kenney admitted that he did not have the statistics to justify his actions. Kenney said that he would use the employers’ money to come up, by the spring of 2015, with statistics to prove the availability of qualified Canadians. 

Kenney took the employers’ money. He did not come up with any statistics.

Last week, Kenney’s government announced that, after 148 years, Canada now requires a new federal provincial committee to come up with the skilled worker numbers.

For 148 years, Canadian employers and provincial government’s workers trained workers.  The shortfalls in training were made up through legal immigration.  

The employers and the provinces must have done something right. They built a pretty good country.

Now we are told by Kenney’s government that:

• There are no skilled worker statistics
• We do not even have the mechanism to generate the statistics.

All of which begs two questions:

1. How did the nation train workers and admit foreign workers without a federal/ provincial statistics committee?
2. If Kenney does not have the statistics, then why is he giving away training money and stopping foreign workers?

The answer is simple: Jason Kenney has done his pre-election focus groups.

Kenney is giving Canadians exactly what the focus groups want …Employers, unions and consumers get hundreds of thousands of illegal workers who will work longer and better for less. ….Unemployable Canadians are paid to pretend they are being trained  … Qualified Canadians squeeze out the new workers and are free to hold  employers to ransom by demanding more for doing less.

After 148 years, Jason Kenney has given us what the focus groups want --- Greece. "

Richard Boraks, July 13 2015