HANSARD

Printed and Published by Nova Scotia Hansard Reporting Services

Ms. Maureen MacDonald (Chair)

Mr. Chuck Porter (Vice-Chair)

Mr. Keith Bain

Mr. Graham Steele

Mr. David Wilson (Sackville-Cobequid)

Mr. Keith Colwell

Mr. Leo Glavine

Ms. Diana Whalen

WITNESSES

Department of Labour and Workforce Development

Ms. Margaret MacDonald, Deputy Minister

Mr. Stuart Gourley, Senior Executive Director, Skills & Learning Branch

Mr. Jacques Pelletier, Director, Labour Market Partnerships Division

Skills and Learning Branch

Ms. Vicki Elliott-Lopez, Manager, Labour Market Agreement Operations

Employment Nova Scotia Division, Skills & Learning Branch

In Attendance:

Ms. Kim Leadley

Committees Office

Ms. Sherri Mitchell

Committees Office

Mr. Jacques Lapointe

Auditor General

Mr. Gordon Hebb

Chief Legislative Counsel

HALIFAX, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 15, 2009

STANDING COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC ACCOUNTS

9:00 A.M.

CHAIR

Ms. Maureen MacDonald

VICE-CHAIRMAN

Mr. Chuck Porter

MR. CHUCK PORTER (Chairman): Order, we'll call the committee together. It is a little bit after 9:00 a.m. and I know the committee members were here early and anxious to get going and some new guests we haven't had before so we'll ask them all the questions - I'm just kidding.

Just a couple of reminders, before we start, about microphones. I had a call from our gentlemen upstairs about just keeping them where they're placed and not moving them around, if you would, so that Hansard records properly and accurately. We'll start with Mr. Steele, perhaps, for introductions this morning.

[The committee members and witnesses introduced themselves.]

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you. Just a reminder, for the witnesses, as we're asking our questions, that they would direct them to the appropriate person they'd like to have answer or attempt to answer the questions this morning. That's a request of the witnesses, just so they know who you'd like to speak to.

We'll start off this morning, we'll invite the guests to bring us any opening comments or remarks.

MS. MARGARET MACDONALD: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and through you to the members of the committee, we'd like to thank you for inviting the Department of Labour and Workforce Development to appear before you this morning.

If I may, I would just like to reiterate the introductions and some titles of the people who are here today and who will assist me. We have Stuart Gourley to my left, the Senior Executive Director of the Skills and Learning Branch for the department; Jacques Pelletier, who is the Director of Labour Market Partnerships to my right; and to Jacques' right is Vicki Elliott-Lopez, our Labour Market Agreement Operations Manager. As I said, they're all from the Skills and Learning Branch.

I intend certainly to keep my comments, if I can, to 10 minutes but I understood that Mr. Gourley and I received separate invitations and so Mr. Gourley has gracefully agreed that I can use up a little bit of his time, if that's acceptable to the committee, so if I can proceed on that basis.

I'm very pleased to appear before the Public Accounts Committee this morning to discuss the Canada-Nova Scotia Labour Market Development Agreement, the Canada-Nova Scotia Labour Market Agreement, Opportunities Nova Scotia and recent related transition events.

As you know, last June the Province of Nova Scotia agreed with the federal government to accept administration of the labour market programming offered under Part II of Canada's Employment Insurance Act. In direct terms, as of July 1, 2009, Nova Scotia will accept administration of over $80 million of programs and supports for those Nova Scotians who are or have been in the labour force and who wish to retrain or increase their skills. At the same time, Minister Parent also signed the Labour Market Agreement which provides $14 million per year for six years, to assist those who have not been fully engaged in the labour force, with programs and supports for entry to the workforce.

Funding under the LMA commenced during 2008-09 and, as a result, we have started to develop programs in relation to the needs of the communities that are identified in the Labour Market Agreement. We have carried out discussions with our community organizations and, as I call them, those are our partners on the ground who carry out a lot of the work with us, as well as with our stakeholders, to ensure that our spending plans are on the right track for the coming year. We've also included other government departments in this planning and coordination of the funding, such organizations and departments as Immigration and Community Services, so they can also develop programs and supports using the funding available under that agreement, but also to ensure that we're also coordinating appropriately among ourselves in respect to the general services that are available under the Labour Market Agreement.

We consider that we are well positioned to accept responsibility for the federal programs and services which, as I mentioned, will devolve to the province on July 1^st of this year. Currently we are very much focused on the human and business requirements of accepting such responsibility. We're working to ensure that we have the appropriate transition for all federal employees who choose to become employees of the province and

we're also managing all information and asset transfers. So as you can appreciate, at this point it's a huge undertaking, it's very transactional, but we do consider that we are proceeding well and we are on schedule in respect to that particular piece of work.

Once we have what we call the transition phase done, which is, as I call it, the very transactional, detail-oriented transition, and we feel that it's very important for us to do that as best we can because there are a lot of people who rely on those services, there are a lot of external organizations that are also relying on ensuring that funding continues in a smooth manner. So once July 2^nd - as I say, it looks like June 30^th - and we feel that we have that transition done well, then we hope to turn to what we call the transformation.

As staff who are experienced in this field tell me, a lot of the programs under the federal government have been developed on a national basis and we hope to - within the terms, of course, of our federal agreement, because we're a delegated responsibility - we hope to look at those programs that are delivered and see if we can transform those programs to be much more relevant to Nova Scotians. So that is sort of the future look around the LMDA.

It's interesting and it's worth noting, as I was thinking about my comments this morning, that all of these, what I would consider to be huge undertakings and some significant challenges for us, occurred and happened well prior to the Fall of 2008, when economic difficulties that we're now in were starting to be felt worldwide. So it's interesting to think that in a short period of time we went from, when those agreements were signed, looking at those agreements as a huge resource for labour shortages, because at that point we were dealing with significant labour shortages in the province in particular areas and we were finding innovative solutions in order to meet those labour needs.

As I said, in that short period of time, just between the time that we signed the agreements and last Fall, the world changed somewhat significantly and now we're seeing significant increases in unemployment. But we also know that while we continue to experience the increased rate in unemployment - and hopefully that would be a short-term impact - we will also continue to face the demographic challenges of an aging population and a declining birth rate. So we're in a very interesting time, I guess, to use a very old phrase, so we have some interesting challenges associated with both of those particular issues.

In the recent federal budget, as part of its stimulus package, which looked at the need and opportunities for retraining and skill development during an economic downturn, the funding under the Labour Market Agreement was increased by approximately $8 million per year for the next two years, and under the Labour Market Development Agreement by approximately $16 million per year for the next two years. So we have again, I think, some good but substantial challenges associated with ensuring that money is used in the best way possible.

Through the partnerships that we have developed both through our efforts and through the work of Service Canada - the folks who will be coming to us in July - and many other efforts that have been on the part of the federal government, we have many partners in the community who assist us, as I said, in the delivery of many of these programs and who are actually very excited and very engaged about both the short-term and the long-term possibilities associated with these agreements and with what we may be able to do with these agreements for Nova Scotia.

As I said earlier, staff of both Labour and Workforce Development and Service Canada have met with many of these organizations over the past while to assure that they understand our transition phase, to talk about the potential for the transformation phase. The understanding that I have is that many if not all of these groups feel well informed about the process.

To move to Opportunities Nova Scotia, this was an initiative that was delivered in 2007 and it was delivered in response to feedback from employers who were starting to have difficulty at that time in attracting skilled employees. There were two phases to Opportunities Nova Scotia. The first was focused on alerting Nova Scotians about employment opportunities in their own province. We held a number of events across the province that introduced employers to prospective employees. There was a second phase to it, it focused on repatriation and it involved going to Ontario and Alberta and speaking with people and letting them know that there were employment opportunities back home in Nova Scotia.

Repatriation, as many of you are well aware, is one of the four Rs in the work that is done through the Labour and Workforce Development Department and through many people who work in these areas. The four Rs, of course, are recruitment, retention, retraining and repatriation. But given the economic situation that has developed over the past period of months, we're finding that many people have returned to the province and so the need for the repatriation efforts we find have been reduced as a result of that particular initiative.

I would say that Opportunities Nova Scotia is a good example of the kind of initiatives that the department does take on with respect to labour market initiatives. We're not a job-finding service, so we're not an employment agency, we try very hard not to get between an employer and an employee because that is a specific particular relationship and sort of investigation, I guess, if I could call it that, that occurs between those two people. So we try not to do that, but we do try very hard to be facilitators, to bring people together so that they can have those discussions about the employment opportunities.

We also help employers by funding programs in the community college, in workplaces across the province, in many places after-hours and other venues, so we can help people reach their full potential. We inform people about opportunities now and in the future so that they can plan sustainable, rewarding careers. We've had some successes in those endeavours. The Nova Scotia School for Adult Learning we consider to be one of our shining

examples of assisting people on that path. Our Bright Career Futures, Parents as Career Coaches, we've focused as much as we can on giving information to young people, and we've adapted programs to meet the special needs of the Aboriginal and African Nova Scotian communities, and we'd be pleased to give you details on these.

So as I've said, we've made strong ties with the communities in our work and have a number of meetings with them. As well, we're about to host a series of five information sessions around the province designed to connect people to the training, education and technology needed for sustainable career opportunities in industries in today's economy.

So if I could sum up our philosophy to these labour market initiatives, and it's something I've been learning over the last year, it really is one person at a time. There is no cookie-cutter approach to helping an individual get to the point where they are a contributing and full member of our labour force in Nova Scotia. So the results sometimes can be difficult to show or to quantify and it can take a considerable period of time to achieve some of our goals.

[9:15 a.m.]

In reflection and looking back over the past six years that the Skills and Learning Branch has been in existence, I can say that there have been many innovative programs developed around literacy, essential workplace skills and around labour market partnerships. Now with the creation of the Department of Labour and Workforce Development, I find it particularly exciting that the programs in the Skills and Learning Branch will be linked up with a lot of the work that has been done in what I call the traditional labour functions of our department, the public safety, occupational health and safety, and labour standards, just to name a few. So I think the opportunity to link a lot of these initiatives inside of the two divisions of the department is really going to serve Nova Scotians well in terms of creating a department that really is about labour and really is about the workforce capacity.

We did a strategic planning exercise this year, we developed a vision. The vision is fairness, safety and prosperity for all Nova Scotians by living, learning and working to their highest potential. We think that we've got a pretty good basis to work towards that vision and to achieve that vision.

So with those comments, I would be happy to respond to any questions that you may have.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Ms. MacDonald, and we'll start with Mr. Steele.

MR. GRAHAM STEELE: Thank you very much. Now, I have to start by saying that the topic that's on the committee's agenda today was requested by the Progressive Conservative caucus, which is a good thing because they only put things on the agenda that

they consider to be good-news stories and it is a good-news story, the work that's being done. My fear, however, though is that it's a little early for you folks to be here in the sense that these agreements were only signed last June, you've come to the end of your first fiscal year, but it wasn't even a full fiscal year and I think it's fair to say that things are still being put in place. When would we expect to see the first progress report on how things are actually working in practice under these two agreements?

MS. MARGARET MACDONALD: I appreciate your comments because I think it is important to let you know that the Labour Market Agreement was signed last June, so funding didn't start to flow until about September. So we had a limited period of time last year in order to get some of these programs on the ground, so it was a bit of a limited effort because of that. What we've done is a lot more consultation with the community groups and with stakeholders, so I think our 2009-10 plan will be a bit more robust, but I think that is a fair comment. Also, the fact that when I look back to last Fall, things have changed fundamentally in the sense that we went from, as I said, looking at labour shortages to now looking at unemployment, so I think that requires us to change some of our approaches significantly.

In terms of reporting, to be quite honest with you, we haven't actually identified specific dates. We are required in our Labour Market Agreement to report on an annual basis, so I would expect we would use that opportunity in order to report out. I think I would ask Mr. Gourley to provide some additional information on that.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Gourley.

MR. STUART GOURLEY: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. To further my deputy's response to that, under the Labour Market Agreement and the Labour Market Development Agreement, the Auditor General is required to audit the expenditures under those reports, so certainly he would have an obligation. We're actually negotiating with the office right now about how that is going to be done.

The other piece of it is, the federal government has asked for their own reasons for us to report to them by the end of June on this past year's expenditures, because I believe they have a commitment in their own legislative forums to report out. So the short answer to the LMA question is, by the end of June we would have a fairly detailed report available for public consumption.

I'd also note that each one of the projects under LMA is put up on a Web site, so as soon as the contract is signed and the details are worked out, that's available to the public. Again, it's part of the negotiated requirement that we have for the money that all of these projects are publicly available for viewing. But that doesn't include a results component, that comes after the fiscal year is over.

MR. STEELE: Okay, I'm very glad to hear that because, of course, just putting those kinds of things on your Web site is very important in terms of accountability, letting the public and interested members of the public see exactly what's going on and make their own judgments about the value for the money that is being spent.

I think your answer has underlined for me that you're probably here a little bit early in the sense that this committee usually functions better when we are dealing with something like a progress report, so we can look at progress, see what has gone well, see what could be improved. We're at the stage where, with respect to these two agreements, we don't even have the first progress report.

So let me turn to another issue that you've alluded to, Ms. MacDonald, and that's the way the world has changed since these agreements were entered into. When they were signed in June 2008, I don't think anybody saw what was coming. By the time the money started flowing in September, people had a pretty good idea that something very, very serious was going on with respect to the economy.

Let me ask you a general question before we get into the details. How has the changing economy affected what is being done under these two agreements?

MS. MARGARET MACDONALD: I think, as I mentioned in my remarks - well, what I should do is back up a little bit, I think, because I think I could reflect some of the discussions that we had as provinces, with the federal government, when we talked about the additional funding that the federal government was going to provide in its budget, because I think it's a good starting point. We all recognize that the next couple of years - hopefully it's limited to a couple of years, we don't really know how long it's going to be, but the federal government has provided funding for two years.

So one of the things that we as provinces said to the federal government, if you're going to do this then - and it's going to be short-term money and we'll need to try to get it out the door as soon as we can, then can we build it into the current administrative structures that we have. So instead of building something new for the next two years, and we would have to sort of figure out how - how to administer it and how to deliver it.

We had some lengthy conversations about the fact that the funding should come in through the current administrative structure, so it should be additional funding to LMA and additional funding to LMDA. In fact, that's what happened and I think that's a positive approach to it.

I think what it tells you is that we feel cautiously optimistic or reasonably certain that we've got some good programs in place right now that are helping people find their way to employment. So not to go into a whole lot of detail about them and if you need detail, we'll be happy to provide it, but you know it's from the level of literacy, moving people up in

literacy to workplace education, to partnerships with the community college, to that place of employment, when you actually achieve that.

I think it's probably fair to say that we haven't radically changed how we are going to deal with a particular issue on the ground as a result of the additional funding, or as a result of the downturn, in terms of the program deliveries, because we think those are pretty solid programs that we want to get out and make sure that people have access to them. So the fact that there's additional funding I think will mean that we will be doing more of many of the same things that we have done.

Also, I think the other area - as I mentioned in my opening remarks - we are developing five series of events across the province over the next couple of months. What this is designed to do - and I think I'll again ask Mr. Gourley to give you more detail, if you want, on those events - but basically what they're designed to do is sort of raise awareness around the fact that we're there, we have supports in place for people who are seeking to make changes. We're also going to be bringing in a large number of other people who are engaged in this with us. We'll bring in employment insurance people, Community Services folks, ourselves, in terms of the supports that people can look at in an economic downturn by way of income assistance or programming.

We'll also ask regional development authorities to join us, because they will have knowledge about whether there are employers in the region who are actively out there searching for employees in this particular circumstance, to link it into some of the infrastructure programs that the government has mentioned this year. So we will bring employers to these events, as well, so that they can start talking to folks who are out there looking for work, to see if they can match up an employee with an employer, given where some of these projects will be going.

MR. STEELE: If I may, before you go any further, I don't want more information on those events right now because really what I'm trying to focus on is not what is happening under the agreements, it's what, if anything, has changed. Let me give you some statistics to try to focus my question a little bit. Private sector forecasters say that employment in Nova Scotia, in 2009, the average forecast is for a drop of 0.6 per cent and an increase of 0.1 per cent in 2010. The same eight private sector agencies forecast the unemployment rate in Nova Scotia, in 2009, will jump from 7.7 per cent to 9.2 per cent, and that in 2010 the average forecast of where unemployment will be is 9.8 per cent. So it's a very large, very sudden jump in unemployment.

My question is, given the changed economic context from when these agreements were signed in June to today, what, if anything, has changed in the way the province is going about administering these agreements?

MS. MARGARET MACDONALD: I'll ask Stuart to respond.

MR. GOURLEY: Economists were put on the earth to make weather forecasters look really good, so I'm going to hope that the weather forecast for 2010-11 is too high, but the point that you make about rising unemployment is a key, key consideration. In addition to that, the stabilization and lowering of the participation rate for Nova Scotia's labour force is always a concern going forward, so your point is well taken.

Have we changed our outlook? In dealing with the unemployment piece of it, let me first talk about preventing unemployment. So our biggest tool is a federally administered program called Work-Sharing. Now, Work-Sharing has been available in the province through the federal government for the past 10 years - the best kept secret around. What Work-Sharing allows an employer to do is to put a certain percentage of their workforce on unemployment for a period of time and retain workers in their workforce, and then to switch them out so that the folks who were on unemployment come back to work and the other folks go on unemployment.

What we're doing is partnering with that program to upgrade and up-skill workers who are off the job for that period of time. So an employer comes along, a processing plant of some sort or another, and says we'd like to do the Work-Sharing Program and 35 of our folks are going to be off on unemployment insurance for this period of time. We would come behind it and we would say, okay, let's do some agreements about essential skills training, let's do some agreements around certification in special technologies that they may be using in the plant, literacy training, those kinds of things. So that's a reaction to trying to prevent unemployment and increase productivity when the plant begins to come out of its downturn.

If the plant is in a closure situation and you have pure unemployment, then what we're doing is beginning to restructure our program delivery to more individual, what we call, SDA agreements. So that's having a contract with Graham Steele to go back to college or to go back to a training program to achieve a specific certification in an occupation that you would like to move into, which matches a labour market need that we see coming down the pike.

An example of that would be, we may have a plant close and some of those workers may identify that in their local community the nursing homes or long-term care facilities are really looking for workers, so what we do is we provide skill development agreements with those individuals to go and take continuing care assistant training and then they can go to work with local employers. So it's that kind of reacting right on the ground, in a specific community, to identify needs by individuals that match the labour market coming forward.

One of the things we don't want to go through is a situation where we're training people for a non-labour market need. To be slightly offhanded about it, we don't want to be training basket weavers if we don't need them, so we're really trying to connect with the labour market in that local area. For us, spending a fair bit of time with employers and with

local community development organizations around what they believe is going to grow in a community is a key piece of what we're doing and how we're shifting some of our focus.

MR. STEELE: These forecasters that I was talking about, they're professional economists. They range from the National Bank, the Atlantic Provinces Economic Council, TD Bank, Royal Bank, Bank of Montreal, and so on, and they predict a significant worsening of the employment situation in Nova Scotia for 2009-10. If the Department of Labour and Workforce Development hasn't adopted these numbers, what forecast are you working from?

MR. GOURLEY: In actual fact our unemployment rate, as we sit here this morning, is 8.9 per cent, so already the trend is there. We believe that we're going to come somewhere around 9.5 as a top end.

[9:30 a.m.]

MR. STEELE: For 2009?

MR. GOURLEY: For 2009-10, 2010-11, that's an average that we're going to work with. We're not really into predicting the unemployment rate, we're into who is being laid off in the province and how we can prevent that from happening as individuals. We have enough resource on the ground now to deal with individuals and really don't move toward econometric forecasting about the unemployment rate. As you said, there are lots of experts out there who can do that for us.

MR. STEELE: Let me ask you those questions that you just asked rhetorically. Who is being laid off in the province and what are we going to do about it?

MR. GOURLEY: All right. What we're seeing is a trend to have manufacturing layoffs, it's no surprise, it's happening all across Canada. We can look across and see Magna up in Sydney, we can see Eastern Protein down in the Valley, we can see some temporary layoffs with Abitibi-Bowater; it's the manufacturing sector that's being hit the most and that's where we're focusing a lot of our work. That's happening for global reasons, it's happening because there were systemic issues in our manufacturing sector anyway, it's happening for a lot of different reasons.

My perspective on it is, I need to catch those workers as they come out of those situations, I need to catch them the moment we know there's going to be a plant closure. The earlier we can get into a plant before it closes, the better off we are in working with individuals to move them to other places in the labour market, so it's really focused on specific situations and individuals.

MR. STEELE: By far the largest chunk of money, the Labour Market Development Agreement, as I understand it, applies only to people who are already eligible to receive

employment insurance. There are many people who say that the rules around employment insurance are too tight, that the government should be loosening up the rules to take into account current economic conditions. What steps, if any, is the Government of Nova Scotia taking to encourage the federal government to loosen up EI eligibility?

MR. GOURLEY: My deputy alluded earlier to conversations we had during the budget planning process for the federal government. At that time we were fairly appointed in our interventions around the eligibility requirements for EI that you've just alluded to. So we're on the record as saying provincially, from the perspective of Labour and Workforce Development, you need to do some work with those eligibility criteria. The other thing that we were doing with our intervention with the federal government is saying that the money you give us you must make more flexible, we must have the ability to deal with a broader range of people.

You said that for the LMDA, EI eligibility was the criterion by which they could access and that's true, but even within that statement there are things which would cause people not to be eligible. Our intervention was, forget about that kind of stuff, we need to be spending money on people who are unemployed, whether they're unemployed because they quit work, whether they're unemployed by happenstance, or whether they've been long-term unemployed, we need to be able to use our money, use the money that you're giving us in a more flexible manner.

If you went through the federal budget you will see that for the new money that came with this most recent budget, there is a much wider flexibility, we are able to use money in the LMA and the LMDA to get to a larger group of people. We're hoping that after the two years - because it isn't our decision but we're trying to influence it - they'll maintain those criteria and during the two years they'll look at the eligibility requirements for the EI Act, so we're on the record as saying that.

MR. STEELE: I want to make sure that I understand this; are you saying that the Labour Market Development Agreement has essentially been amended so that now it's no longer a requirement that somebody be eligible for EI?

MR. GOURLEY: No, I didn't mean to imply that. What they have done is they have given us $16 million, roughly, in new money under the LMDA and that new money has more flexible criteria to it than the $80 million that we're getting under the LMDA, so it's the new money.

MR. STEELE: I'm talking about the sort of $80 million, $81 million . . .

MR. GOURLEY: It will stay the same.

MR. STEELE: . . . so far they haven't made any changes to that. Do you have any reasonable hope that there will be changes to that? Are they sending you any positive signals?

MR. CHAIRMAN: Ms. MacDonald.

MS. MARGARET MACDONALD: I think my comment on that would be that if you look at the Labour Market Agreement, that is probably in some respects the federal response to some of those issues because it is much more flexible funding and it does reach people who are not constrained by the rules around LMDA.

Again, as I talked about, the transformation side of LMDA is where we hope to have some of those discussions with the federal government around it. But we are a delegated province so in that respect we're still subject to the EI or the legislation so that will be our challenge, seeing whether we can effect any change to the legislation but we have to operate within that particular constraint.

MR. STEELE: I do think it's important for people to realize the relative size of the pots of money. The Labour Market Development Agreement is around $81 million per year and that's the one with the tight EI restrictions, and the Labour Market Agreement is $80 million to $85 million but spread over six years, so a much smaller pot of money, and that's the one where they're showing some flexibility.

I do hope the federal government will see the need to make the Labour Market Development Agreement, the large pot of money, more flexible. Thank you.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Mr. Steele. Order, please, the time has expired. We'll now recognize Mr. Colwell for the Liberal caucus. You have 20 minutes, Mr. Colwell.

MR. KEITH COLWELL: Thank you. First of all I want to thank you for coming today and this is, I believe, a very positive thing for Nova Scotia and probably the timing is absolutely perfect with the economy the way it is.

I've got some very specific questions. One thing that always happens with these programs - I've seem them as an employer over the years and as an employee working for companies - is that these programs always start off with a great idea, they start to move forward and then nobody tracks what happens to the individuals after they've gone through the training, to see if the training was adequate. Sometimes the training isn't adequate and when you do get an employee who should be trained for a particular type of skill sets, they have some of the skill sets but not enough to make money for a business, because if they can't make money for a business, the business doesn't make money and if the business doesn't make money, they lay other people off.

What kind of system are you going to have in place to track this, to ensure that indeed, after you've provided the support to organizations or to businesses or wherever you're going to supply the support - and I think that you have to play with a bit to get something that really works but I'm sure you will do that - how are you going to track this, if you had Joe and Fred and Susan all trained to do some particular job that indeed, in two years time or three years time yes, they're doing that job, yes, the employer is very happy with them and yes, it has made a difference to our economy because that employer has done better than he would have done without these people being trained the way they were?

MS. MARGARET MACDONALD: I may get Mr. Gourley to give you a bit more detail on that but our Labour Market Agreement does require us to provide certain information back to the federal government so I expect that we will be starting to put some systems in place in that respect. I think Mr. Gourley could give you a lot more information.

One of the things though that I wanted to mention, because of the comment that you did make, was really around the discussions with the employer, maybe not so much about tracking the impact but what we have been working at, particularly in the last three or four months inside government, is to say that we're here as a department, we have a lot of supports for people who are not just looking for work but for people who are already in the workplace, in terms of skill development. So we've gone to some of the other departments and said, when you are dealing with an employer - if an employer is coming in looking for financial assistance or in other ways contacting your department - can you talk about the human resource needs inside that business and can you ensure that that employer is aware that labour and workforce development is available and most willing to sit down and talk about the HR needs for that employer, so that when they come into government, it isn't just about the financial issues, it can also be about the HR issues.

I just wanted to give you that piece of information to tell you that we have been working a lot with individuals but we also recognize and are making a lot of effort to get out and talk to employers. I think that may start to engender some of the conversations that you're talking about.

In terms of specific tracking, I'll ask Mr. Gourley to respond to that.

MR. GOURLEY: You make a couple of good points, which have two issues to them. One is the quality of the training that they're receiving, and does that match with what the employer requires in the field? Our best source of information for that is from the employer. Hence, my deputy's intervention around the more information we can get from employers and the more mechanisms that we can give to employers to feed back that the training quality is not there, that the skill level that was required by the business is not there - that is important to us.

The other piece of it is what kind of tracking do we have on individuals. Under the Labour Market Agreement we will have to go back, we are required under the agreement and believe it is a good policy decision, to do follow-up surveys three, six and 12 months for individuals as best we can, so that we will do. Under the Labour Market Development Agreement we don't have that capacity and under the information and data sharing agreements, we won't have that capacity. Hence, the need for the employer to identify.

There's a problem here, in terms of the graduates we're getting out of an apprenticeship program, out of a continuing care assistant program - something is not right about the training that's being done. So it's the employer on the LMDA side of the house that we will need to get feedback from.

MR. COLWELL: That's very positive. I think that's one thing that the federal government hasn't done very well. They'll get all kinds of stats back that look really great but, at the end of the day, the results aren't really great. Not that they haven't spent the money, not that they haven't tried hard, but it just doesn't seem - the two things don't seem to match. So I'm pleased to hear that. It would be nice if you could go past the 12 months, though, because a lot of times someone will employ someone for six months or 12 months and try to train them and if they really adapt quickly to the workplace, it's fine. But if they don't adapt quickly and they don't have the proper training, you see that problem after the 12 months, when things get a bit tighter, as they do on and off in the business, especially in manufacturing.

You did mention one thing that I want to bring up again, that's access to the community college system and upgrades in literacy and all the other things that you may have to do, or university or whatever the case may be. You did mention that there are some programs that you are considering or have done after hours, off times or whatever, to ensure that you can train people. Could you elaborate on that just a little bit? Just a short answer on that, if you could.

MS. MARGARET MACDONALD: Eventually I'm going to have to stop saying that I've only been in the job a certain amount of time, but I mean I'm learning a lot - it's just over a year in the department. One of the most interesting things I find is the approach that the community college takes to a lot of the work that gets done through the department and through the assistance to people. So they are open to all kinds of sort of flexible arrangements that will help Nova Scotians get the kind of training that we need.

We recognize that you may have a person who is working at a minimum wage job but that job is very important to them and they can't just give it up in order to go and get some training, so what we've talked to the community college about is developing what we're calling a flex program. We, as a department, will be supporting the community college in this fiscal year, in 2009-10, with developing the sort of structure around what we're calling the flex program. Again, in it's most simple form, it's about - as the President of the

community college, Joan McArthur-Blair would say - she's got the infrastructure, she's got buildings and she's got people and what she'd like to do is put the buildings and the people, the instructors and whatever, to work after hours and on weekends.

So, because of the work that we're doing around some of the populations that we want to get at, we're going to support her in the development of that flex program, so that over the next year or two we'll start to see, I think, some of these alternative venues open up.

I think we already have a number of these out there anyway and again, things that I'm still learning about. We have community organizations that provide the teaching and the training in off hours, in their own offices and in other venues, but this is another kind of leap forward in making all of the resources that we have as available as we can to individuals who want to take advantage of them.

MR. COLWELL: Thank you. The other thing you mentioned, too - there's an increase in the unemployment rate in Nova Scotia. What was the unemployment rate last year and what is it presently?

MS. MARGARET MACDONALD: Since September 2008, my information is that the unemployment rate has gone from 7.7 to 8.9 per cent.

MR. COLWELL: That's quite a significant increase in unemployment.

MS. MARGARET MACDONALD: Very.

MR. COLWELL: That's scary and it's probably going to get higher I would guess based on people I have talked to and they're losing their jobs and other things.

[9:45 a.m.]

MS. MARGARET MACDONALD: So far, if I might, it's interesting to note that the increase in unemployment in Nova Scotia is actually somewhat lower than the increase nationally. I don't know that that provides a whole lot of comfort, but I think it's an interesting statistic.

MR. COLWELL: No, it doesn't give me much comfort because typically we don't have enough well-paid jobs that are outside the government and service sector that we really need to generate wealth in Nova Scotia, but that's just my opinion. It is good that we're a bit slower; anything helps.

One other thing I want to talk about is, you've got five years funding on the $80-plus million. Any opportunity to renew that? One thing I hate about these programs is if you get something working well, you see some results, all of a sudden the federal government comes

back and says ha, we can cut $80 million and bang, they just close the door on you and you're gone. Is there any renewable clause in the agreement now?

MS. MARGARET MACDONALD: Currently, we don't have any renewal clause. It's a six-year agreement and it's $14 million per year for the six years, with the extra funding added in for this fiscal and the following fiscal years. We are as concerned as you are because what we have to keep in mind is that we have to build programs that then can come to an end after six years or, at least if they don't come to end, then there would be significant pressure on the province to find the funding to continue them. We see that as a significant problem

I think we have roughly five years to try to work with the federal government. I think some of it may come about if we can show product and show results, I think that's going to be significant in terms of getting them to change their minds. I would also maybe make reference to the questions that Mr. Steele asked about whether we can look at the Labour Market Development Agreement and find more flexibility inside that agreement as well. My understanding is that the reason why we got the LMA funding was as a recognition of some of the inflexibility around LMDA. So probably our best effort is to really focus on whether we can get some fundamental changes around eligibility done in the LMDA and hopefully try and serve all Nova Scotians.

The issue associated with it that I think tends to come back is that the funding under the LMDA comes out of the EI fund, so it is money that employers and employees have paid into, whereas the LMA funding comes out of general revenue of the federal government. I guess the issue and the argument that is associated with more flexibility under LMDA is that the funding comes from people who are in the workforce and they have paid for it, so it tends to go back to those particular individuals. So that's kind of the issues associated with this flexibility.

MR. COLWELL: That's where I sort of thought you were and hopefully over the next few years you'll be able to negotiate and continue this program going.

One thing that I have a real serious problem with is, you mentioned there are some opportunities in long-term care facilities and home care and these types of facilities. Those are good positions, they're good, essential jobs, but unfortunately they don't add anything to our economy. They are service the same as someone working at a grocery store, it's a service. When we start losing manufacturing jobs, especially exporting manufacturing jobs, we're losing wealth in the province. As we lose wealth in the province, then our overall economic situation in the province deteriorates, not only provincially as a provincial government would have to face, but also for individuals who really don't have opportunities that should be there and the money just isn't in the province to make things happen. If you have a manufacturing facility where somebody makes considerably good money they can get a home built, so that means carpenters work and it just grows and grows whereas people like myself and yourselves, we don't add anything to the economy, we really don't. We just

circulate money around and we spend the money we earn and we buy services and stuff like that and that circulates the money, but it doesn't add money into the pot. It's like boiling a pot of water and eventually if you put enough heat on it there's no water left. I'm really nervous about that.

I'm pleased to hear that you're talking with employers, really more than to the extent of with some of the organizations because the organizations are great and they do a fine job, but you really have to talk to these manufacturers, people who are really making things happen in the province and do inject a lot of money into Nova Scotia and really seriously look at really sophisticated training for these people who are losing their jobs.

I know you didn't mention another one that's losing a significant amount of jobs, Pratt and Whitney and those are very high-paid jobs, very stable jobs and I think that list is going to grow. We've lost Moirs candy factory, we've lost TrentonWorks, those companies are just gone and those were jobs that were export oriented and indeed added a lot of money. I know when I was manufacturing, the federal government told me that every dollar I could sell outside of Nova Scotia to either New Brunswick or New England or Europe, wherever we were selling, it had a $7 impact on Nova Scotia; 7 to 1. I don't know what the ratio is now, it's probably even higher than that. Those are the things we have to do, in my opinion. Again, it's just my opinion.

You've already talked about what you're doing with manufacturers. Is there any real discussion going on with really improving productivity? Productivity is a major issue and productivity goes back to training and it does go to the concept of the work ethic as well and that's very important. In order to compete now with countries like China and even Japan, where there is a very strong work ethic and a whole different situation than what we have now and turn out as good quality or a better quality than some of our manufacturers are, what do you foresee that we can do to help those manufacturers to ensure that we keep those valuable jobs? I'm not talking about the huge companies here, just some of the small companies that export products that may need some special training for an employee that is presently working there, in order to compete down the road? Do you have any plan around that or any ideas around that?

MS. MARGARET MACDONALD: We have lots and I'll let Mr. Gourley speak to that; I think he's got lots of information. Just to come back to the discussion around employers because what struck me is that, as you said, there's really important work being done on the ground. There are lots of organizations out working with people who are trying to increase their literacy skills, increase their general skills, get back into school, all those sorts of things and it is one person at a time and all of that stuff is very important. What struck me in the last little while was the fact that we weren't really talking to employers, or at least it was my impression, and I think we had been, but we weren't really making some traction with employers. Quite frankly, I think a lot of the work that was being done through

the Skills and Learning branch in government was one of the best kept secrets in many respects because we just weren't sort of hearing people talk about it.

For example, we spent about an hour and a half about a month ago - Mr. Gourley and I met with the senior management of Nova Scotia Business Inc. We went through all of the initiatives that we're working on in the department because in my view, the department is a big and interesting department and has a lot to do with business because of much of the work that we do. You can take occupational health and safety, pension regulation, all of those things should be of interest to an organization like NSBI when they're out talking and trying to bring employers into the province.

We really focused on the supports that we could bring to employers, particularly in the workplace and tried to emphasize that we don't necessarily have to be at the table when the employers come in and talk about financial opportunities through Nova Scotia Business Inc., or through the Department of Economic and Rural Development, but at a minimum they should be told that we are out there and that we're willing to sit down and talk to them about their workplace needs. So we're working hard to get that in place inside government. We've also met with the deputy minister and staff at the Department of Economic and Rural Development, to have a similar conversation. So we're trying to raise our profile with employers.

What we also do is, we have a program that's called Workplace Education. Again this is one of the supports that we could talk to an employer about, if they were interested in having a discussion with us about what's happening inside their plant or with their employees. It's called essential workplace skills and what it does is that if the employer will agree to allow us to come in, then the employer has to provide the space, allow the employees to attend and, by virtue of that, it means that they'll still pay for the person while they're in training. Then we'll bring people in and, in a small classroom setting, we'll deal with, or at least attempt to deal with, some of the issues that the employer may identify to us as being problematic, in terms of his productivity.

So it could be things like simple levels of reading. So if you're in a manufacturing plant and it's necessary that you be able to look at the instructions that are posted on the wall and be able to follow them, well some of your productivity may be around just the simple ability of the people in your plant to be able to read and understand those instructions, or to take some of the numeracy issues or the math issues that they have to deal with. It could be just communication among your staff, it could be . . .

MR. COLWELL: Could I just interrupt you for one second. I like what you're talking about here and it's very positive but one thing that I can tell you, as a former employer - if you're going to come to my business and use my space to train my people, which I would have absolutely no problem with, I can't afford to pay them while you're doing that, I just simply cannot because if you want to use my space after hours and I can supply other things

to assist the employee but I cannot afford to pay that employee. You may not be aware, but if I have an employee who is out of production and if you pay that employee $10 an hour, I am losing $30 an hour, not $10. I'm losing $30 for every hour that person doesn't work. So there's got to be some way around that, to make it more attractive to employers and to employees. I don't know what you would possibly do there . . .

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please. The time has expired for the Liberal caucus but if Mr. Bain, who is next for the Tory caucus, would allow the time to complete the answer, that would be fine. Keith, thank you. Carry on, Ms. MacDonald.

MS. MARGARET MACDONALD: I'll ask Mr. Gourley to give you a bit more in-depth on that because I appreciate what you're saying. I mean sometimes, though, you know it is a level of interest that the employer needs to have in order to make that commitment to his employees and I think to some extent that gets translated to the employee as well but I'll ask Mr. Gourley just to comment.

MR. GOURLEY: So Workplace Ed could move into a plant and do four hours paid, four hours not paid, but we have no capacity under current legislation to do wage replacement yet.

What we found with employers is, they are willing to make this investment when we can show them that there's a productivity gain coming out of the other end and it's really connecting into what their business is doing. The deputy described the essential skills training and those kinds of things - we're also moving into the technical areas now. So if you're bringing in a new piece of equipment into your plant, we can do this to bring your workforce up to speed about how to use and maintain and work with that piece of equipment. In those cases, employers are all over us and are quite willing to pay because there's a real, direct productivity issue around using this new piece of equipment.

There's a balance there that we go with to employers and we've done a little over 290 of these things with different employers in the provinces. The big businesses are less likely to take us on in the Workplace Ed than the smaller businesses, which I think is a particularly interesting phenomenon. I think to your point, it has to do with how close small business is to what's really happening on the shop floor and what the impact of even a point or two increase in productivity can be right away. So I think that's why the uptake is much better with smaller businesses than it is with larger businesses.

As I say, we work with employers to try and do it. Very often in union situations, we have the ability - the union does the wage replacement so for the four hours where the employer isn't paying, the union will come in, which is a great partnership and we do those quite often. It's in the non-union situations that we have to be more flexible, I guess, is the best way to put it, but your point is well taken.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Mr. Gourley. Mr. Bain, thank you and you have until 10:16 a.m.

MR. KEITH BAIN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and once again thank you for appearing here this morning. Deputy, in your opening remarks you referred to some of the successes that have been out there, like the Nova Scotia School for Adult Learning - career coaches and everything. Could you tell us more about the Nova Scotia School for Adult Learning, what it is and why it is necessary to offer this type of program?

MS. MARGARET MACDONALD: Yes, the School for Adult Learning is, I think, a fairly innovative initiative in Nova Scotia. Certainly the people who work in it in the Skills and Learning Division are some of the most energetic and engaged people that I've met. What it is - we've all, I think, heard of GED and the GED is the equivalency test that you can take so we don't, as I understand it, provide any training or supports. We just supply the tests and people can come and take the GED and if they pass, they pass, and if not, we may be able to support them in trying to take it again but the GED is an equivalency.

[10:00 a.m.]

What the Nova Scotia School for Adult Learning is, it is a system whereby if you graduate from the school, then you actually have the same high school diploma that I got or that anyone else got going through the regular school system. So for people who are over the age of 19, who haven't been in a high school situation in at least a year and who want to return and get that high school diploma but are not going to go back to the regular school system and don't want the equivalency, then they can enrol in this program and get a high school diploma, so they can hold it up and say, I have the same diploma as anybody else does.

That, in itself, I think is a real achievement. I think it's somewhat unique across the country that we've been able to do that. Just on the ground, as I understand it, these things are delivered in some cases in buildings on their own, that are owned by some of the school boards but some of the training and the classes are also delivered through the Nova Scotia Community College.

What I understand, and in fact I experienced this last year, I went to some of the graduations for the School for Adult Learning and I think what's really quite remarkable about it is that we've got people in field offices, you might have a Community Services person who is working next door to one of our staff who is working in the field of literacy or adult learning. Again, I visited people last year and they told me about these stories, so you may have a relatively young woman who comes in to the Community Services office, who is on social assistance, who didn't graduate from high school so she's sort of taken on a bit of a journey, I guess, if I can call it that, and encouraged to enrol in the Nova Scotia School for Adult Learning.

What I was finding when I was attending some of these graduations is that you would have young people, really - like people who still have lots and lots of lives ahead of them - who were walking across the stage, getting their high school diploma through the School for Adult Learning and because many of them had actually taken that training inside the community college, they were still getting their high school diploma, they were acclimatized to the community college, if I can call it that, they were comfortable there, they saw a whole lot of people in other programs who were progressing with their lives. So this isn't a statistic that I can rely on but my own impression was that about 75 per cent of the people who came across the stage to get their high school diploma were going on to something else afterwards. I asked them, I said, what are your plans for next Fall? I would say that just about three-quarters of them said, well I'm enrolled in this or I'm enrolled in that and many of them are enrolled in programs in the community college.

So I think the School for Adult Learning, in my opinion, is in and of itself a wonderful jewel. Some of the challenges that we have ahead of us are scary, the statistics that you hear about - I'll get this slightly wrong but I think something like 56,000 jobs that are coming up in the next few years are all going to require high school as a minimum requirement in order to get those jobs. So we're moving into a world where the opportunities for people who worked in manufacturing for a long time, who were able to make a good living and work productively in that capacity and have lost that job and who didn't have a high school diploma at the time that they had those jobs, are going to have difficulty in moving into sort of the next world and the next level of jobs that are coming at us.

So the School for Adult Learning I think is one of the best things that we have going and I think it's complemented by some of the placements that occur in respect to it and how it just gives people that kind of opportunity to see what the rest of the world can provide to them. We have lots of statistics on the School for Adult Learning. We did a recent report that we'd be pleased to provide to you if you want it. I don't have the details in my head, but it was a really remarkable survey of people who have graduated, where they've gone on to, what they've accomplished. I think it's a story that doesn't get told very much in the province, it probably needs to be told more because it's a really remarkable story.

MR. BAIN: Some of the experiences that you've had through the School for Adult Learning, are there a lot of people out there who don't have their high school certificate?

MS. MARGARET MACDONALD: I should refer you to some of the staff for the details, but I can tell you one of the statistics that really just blows me away, to be honest about it, is that we have about 250,000 Nova Scotians who are at Level 2 literacy. Again, my understanding is that you have to get to Level 4 literacy before you can consider graduating from high school - Level 3, sorry, and I think Level 4 is high school. We have less than one million people in Nova Scotia, so if 250,000 of them are at Level 2 literacy, then we've got tremendous challenges - big, tremendous opportunities for productivity improvement because many of those people are in the workplace, I think. So there's plenty of opportunity for the

school to be much more active. There are many other ways that we can help those folks - I'm not saying everybody has to do that, but I think this is a real opportunity for many of them.

MR. BAIN: That's interesting and actually it's quite shocking to hear that large number, we're talking almost 25 per cent of the population. I guess I'm going to go for the next step. We have students enrolled in the School for Adult Learning and once they obtain their diploma, they're going to go to the community college for further training. At a recent meeting that our committee had with the Nova Scotia Community College, they said they have a two-year waiting list for some training in the trades and everything. What is your department doing to make that two-year waiting list disappear, or to help make it disappear?

MS. MARGARET MACDONALD: We are working on that. I'll ask Mr. Gourley to give you a bit more detail around some of the partnerships that we've had with the community college, because I think we've done some really good work with them. As I mentioned earlier, one of the things we're doing to try to deal with the tremendous interest in the community college, and some of the wait lists that they have, is the development of this program that will allow the community college to open its doors evenings and weekends. So as I said earlier, I think there's a recognition that we've got the infrastructure and we have the instructors, we just need to try to find the resources in order to put those other resources to work on a longer period of time. We're working on that and developing what we hope to call the flex program around the community college, so there are some great partnerships there.

There are some other things, and again I'm going to ask Mr. Gourley to go into a bit more detail, but we do work with specific industries. So if you take the aerospace industry, for instance, I think that's an interesting story. It's interesting, I guess, to note that the Moirs plant is now being used as a training institute for the aerospace industry, so it's one of the ways, I guess, that we've morphed into something else. That was a partnership between the aerospace industry, ourselves and the community college, and I'm sure some other people who supported it, in order to get more training opportunities for that industry out there so that people can start to get trained and get into that industry.

We do a lot of that kind of work with the community college and with employers to try to address specific needs, which hopefully will take people out of that lineup and move them to another venue so that they can get the training they want. I think we've got some reasonably good examples that we can talk to you about and I'll just ask Mr. Gourley to mention them.

MR. GOURLEY: A couple of things. Just to go back to the School for Adult Learning, the best-kept secret in Nova Scotia, there are 5,000 enrolled students today - that's bigger than St. F.X., that's bigger than Acadia - so there are a lot of people taking advantage of that. It's tuition-free and you get the full high school graduation diploma when you leave the school. We've had about 3,200 graduates since it was put in place in 2003. It's unique

in Canada, there's no other one like it in Canada, and it's delivered in the community, as well as in the community college. So the community does Levels 1 and 2 of the school; the community college does Levels 3 and 4. A graduate of community college is already considered to be a student so they don't stand in that line of 2,000; however, that line of 2,000 is an issue for us.

You heard the deputy allude to the flex program that we're working on with the college, that's looking at different ways to deliver college programming not inside the bricks and mortar of the current college. It might take the form of itinerant faculty who would go out into the community to deliver programming. It might take the form of alternate delivery from say 5:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m., it might take Saturdays and Sundays. So it's a whole different menu of options for delivery of programming that the college is coming up with. We think that's one of the ways that we can get to the clientele that we're looking at to include them in the college.

The other part to this is we've had a number of successes where we've put together businesses, the college and ourselves to deliver what I'll call sector-based training for specific industry sectors in the province. One of those, as an example, was composite fabricators. These are the folks that use very specialized material to build parts of airplanes, cars, ships, that are made from Kevlar and other types of technical sorts of materials.

We partnered with a business and the college to deliver the fabricator program in a business. So we actually were able to partner with a business that made available space and equipment, we provided the students, the college provided the faculty. The Department of Labour and Workplace Development purchased the curriculum off the shelf from another jurisdiction and were able to put that in place within four months of it being identified by a sector-based industry. We want to continue those kinds of partnerships and we feel there are many opportunities to do that.

The other place where we're playing is a program called One Journey: Work and Learn. One Journey: Work and Learn is a partnership between the Department of Community Services, ourselves and industry, and it works this way. Industry will identify a particular skill shortage that they have; the most recent example that I have is floor installers.

The floor installers association came to us and said, we're having a terrible time recruiting, we can't get people with the right skill level to come forward and apply for jobs. So we went to the Department of Community Services and said, on your Community Services rolls you must have people who are ready to go to work, who are employable at this point in time. They may have some other issues and other barriers that they have to deal with, family and all the rest of it, but are they employable? The Department of Community Services identifies those folks, they go to them, they ask them and do all the due diligence things that they need to do. We provide the training and the employer's role is then to guarantee the graduates a job.

So the floor installers come to us and say, we need the training. We provide the training, we go to Community Services for the folks and the folks get trained. Then they go to work in the floor-installing business and the employers guarantee them jobs. If they identify the need for 16, we'll take 20 folks because we know there is going to be some dropout, there are going to be some other issues that come into it and those kinds of things. Again, we're trying to encourage those kinds of partnerships between a sector or a specific industry, ourselves, the college and other government departments.

I'd like to go back to my deputy's intervention around Nova Scotia Business Inc. One of the things that we've always struggled with is Nova Scotia Business Inc. is responsible for recruiting businesses to the province, and businesses to the province means that you're importing skill requirements to the province. Up to the time where we got into partnership with NSBI, that was a touch-and-go situation because they may bring a business here which is not an indigenous skill to the province. So if we had known that six months earlier, we could have put into place the kind of programming that would support that business-labour skill requirement that's being brought into the province, or alternatively we could identify if the skill base is here, where there is a pool of labour, and so maybe that might influence where the business locates.

So it's that partnership on what they're bringing to the province that's very important to us and it's ongoing development of those kinds of efforts and partnerships that we want to do that will help us get around some of the capacity issues that may exist. A long-winded answer to a short question.

MR. BAIN: And it's quite interesting, actually, to hear how the whole process is working. You mentioned Community Services and I guess in our Poverty Reduction Strategy that came forward, what role did your department play in that whole process?

MS. MARGARET MACDONALD: Minister Parent is co-chair of the Poverty Reduction Strategy so we were engaged in - of course, some of our initial efforts and our work in that was involved around the minimum wage requirements in the province because our Labour Standards division in the department administers that particular aspect.

Significantly where I think we can be a major partner in the Poverty Reduction Strategy is using probably primarily the Labour Market Agreement funding, which is much more flexible, and work to preventing poverty I think is where we think that we can be a significant player. So again, it just captures some of the work that we've already described to you that we are doing and intend to continue to do around the Labour Market Agreement because the Labour Market Agreement is really designed for people who haven't had that attachment to the labour force and the labour market historically. So in the agreement itself it talks about African Nova Scotians, Aboriginals, people with disabilities, immigrants, low-skilled. So essentially the Labour Market Agreement is a place where we can spend money on people who don't have the skills and who aren't ready to enter into the workforce.

[10:15 a.m.]

So our belief, of course, is that one of the best ways to ensure that you're not going to live in poverty is to have a good education and to be able to get a job as a result of that education. So our efforts in many ways will be focused on those particular initiatives and it's really about preventing people, to the extent that we can, from going into poverty and, if they're already there, then to work with them to develop the job skills so that we can assist them in getting work.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please. The time has expired.

I recognize the NDP caucus, Mr. Wilson. This round 10 minutes, please.

MR. DAVID WILSON (Sackville-Cobequid): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I know we've been talking a lot about what services we're going to see in the province and the people we're trying to target to try to get back to work. Now I'd like to talk for a few minutes about those employees who are affected by the transfer from being a federal employee to being a provincial employee.

No question, I've talked to a few people who are going to be affected. They're concerned and worried and there's always this feeling that we're taking a step backwards, being now a federal employee and going to the province and being a provincial employee. I'd like to first ask or confirm, I believe the number of employees that will be shifting to fall under the provincial government is about 140, is that correct?

MS. MARGARET MACDONALD: No, right now we made offers to 87 people in the federal system and 77 people have agreed to come and join the provincial government. So I think the number of positions under the agreement that we will eventually fill will take us to about 100, or slightly over 100, as a full complement. So there would be a number of positions identified by the federal government that they would no longer be utilizing in the work, but I think they were able to say that there were certain people in those positions that they would not be releasing. So we will be getting 77 people in those positions, plus we will be getting a number of vacant positions that we will be doing recruitment for.

Given that 77 out of the 87 who were given the offer, we feel pretty happy and pleased about the fact that we had a significant result like that.

MR. DAVID WILSON (Sackville-Cobequid): I got the 140 from the comments of the minister. He had stated in a news release or in an interview that there would be 140 positions available, though you're telling me today that 87 were offered, 77 have accepted?

MS. MARGARET MACDONALD: That's people, right? So it's the difference between people and positions. So the positions themselves - like, that was last June, when

we hadn't really - you know, the numbers were floating around a little bit. I don't have the exact number but there will be vacant positions coming over in addition to people, I guess, and that's where you'll find some of the difference in the numbers.

MR. DAVID WILSON (Sackville-Cobequid): So out of the 87, 10 just refused to be transferred to the provincial . . .

MS. MARGARET MACDONALD: My understanding is some people would have found other job opportunities in the federal government, some might have chosen to retire or chosen to find work in other places. I don't know exactly the reasons for them, that would be an individual decision.

MR. DAVID WILSON (Sackville-Cobequid): So potentially with the transfer, there could be loss of employment with those who were instrumental in providing the services. So potentially there could be loss of employment by transferring the requirements to the province?

MS. MARGARET MACDONALD: I don't believe that - certainly from our perspective we're hiring everybody who has agreed to accept our offer of employment. That's about as far as we can take it because whatever happens between the individual and the federal government is nothing - we wouldn't even have that information. So we are hiring everybody who has accepted our offer.

MR. DAVID WILSON (Sackville-Cobequid): I know the minister had mentioned - the key component is ensuring pay and benefits to these employees. I believe it is the Employee Transfer Agreement. Is that settled? Is that defined? Everything is in place to ensure employees are paid?

MS. MARGARET MACDONALD: Yes. We did a significant amount of work with the federal government. The Employee Transfer Agreement is signed. It's available on the Web site if you are interested, or we could certainly provide you with a copy. There was a significant negotiation that went on around that but a lot of the decisions that I think were made were made with the employees' best interests in mind, so we were able to - and our union, the NSGEU, agreed, for instance, that these employees would come in and that we would allow them to come in at seniority levels inside the Civil Service. So if they have 20 years of experience in the federal government, we will recognize that seniority.

That wouldn't necessarily be the case where they're coming from because as I understand it, they don't have seniority. Again, that puts them in our system in the appropriate place.

The federal government, the agreement itself required that we have a period of three years without any layoffs and a period of three years with salary protection. So again, we've agreed to those particular instances.

This information is a little - I don't know how factual it is but the understanding that I'm getting, I know for a fact that every individual from the federal government who agreed and accepted our offer of employment, if they gave us their resumé, then we would actually take their resume and evaluate them against our compensation system. I think in many instances people actually received a higher rating than they were getting at the federal system. So the information I'm getting is that the information sharing and some of the work that we've been doing is being really well received.

The other thing that we did that I remember talking about was there was some possibility that their collective agreement might not settle until after they became provincial employees and were we going to recognize that. Again, we wanted to send a message that we are a good place to work, we are going to recognize that and we will. It did settle prior to, but you know I think we sent a lot of good messages across the way to the employees.

MR. DAVID WILSON (Sackville-Cobequid): That's good to hear. One of the other concerns I heard about was the fact that currently you have the employees all working in the same location. Where are you with identifying where these employees will be working? From my knowledge currently they'll be staying where they're at. I'm sure there's some, not agreement, but where are you at on transferring them to a new location or a new office space?

MS. MARGARET MACDONALD: Yes, that's a big challenge. Right now what we've agreed with with the federal government is that they'll stay where they are. We will co-locate for a period of time and then what we're going to do is work to - it's really a bit of a chess game, I guess, in sort of figuring out well when is the lease up in this particular area, when we can move people over to other areas. I should probably let Mr. Gourley answer this in a bit more detail.

Right now my understanding is that people will stay in their current locations, so we do have some time in order to work out where we can place people eventually. Again, we're looking at all of our own regional offices. We have regional offices for the Skills and Learning Branch, we have regional offices for Labour Standards, for other initiatives. So we're looking at all of our offices to try and figure out when all the leases end and when we can start getting people into common space. I don't know if you wanted to add anything to that.

MR. GOURLEY: Sure. The accommodations agreement, which is really what you're talking about, has yet to be finalized, but in the Labour Market Development Agreement we have said that if we are currently operating, if the federal government is currently operating

in a geographic area we're staying there. So, you might find a situation where if a lease came up in a federal building in Sydney, as an example, we would move out of the leased space that the federal government has and into a provincial space, but there would still be the office in Sydney and still have those same employees, it would just be a transfer. We do that only when the federal government's lease expires, so it can be planned out over time.

The one place where we are getting some pressure is actually here in the city and that has to do with lease expire dates very early (a) and (b) the federal government, as you may have heard, is under significant pressure around EI Part 1 and the processing of claims. So they have decided that Atlantic Canada is going to increase their level of processors, they want to put those inside current space, so they're coming to us and saying, can you not co-locate here and we're saying, well, we've got employees who have concerns, make us a deal. So we'll see where that goes, I mean that's a fairly recent detail. Wherever we can, we want to minimize the disruption to the federal civil servants transferring to us.

To go back to your question around the 140; in the early days, back in 1996, is actually when the federal government made the offer to Nova Scotia to devolve and we chose to go in another direction. That offer included money, positions and all the rest of it, so the number the minister was referring to and that you were referring to is actually a 1996 number. In the interim time, business got changed , how it was delivered was changed, it was moved to third-party delivery, so the number shrank to about 110 from that original number of 140 which he originally quoted.

The 87 offers have a differential between that 87 and the roughly 110 and that's because Diana Whalen would have been delivering EI Part II programming and also opportunities fund programming, and youth programming. Well, those two components that she was working on are staying with the federal government, so she had the option of being identified as an employee who was going to stay because of that need, but the position was going to come to the province and so that's why there were vacant positions.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please. Thank you. I will now recognize Ms. Whalen. You have 10 minutes, Ms. Whalen.

MS. DIANA WHALEN: Actually, Mr. Colwell would like to ask one question first.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Colwell.

MR. COLWELL: Just a really quick question, an information request. You indicated there ware specific programs for African Nova Scotians. I don't need an answer, would you forward to our committee all the details on that so I can make sure it's available to people in my community? That's my whole question, thank you.

MR. GOURLEY: Yes.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Ms. Whalen.

MS. WHALEN: Thank you very much and welcome this morning. I know 10 minutes is going to go very quickly, so I have some pretty quick questions and I hope we can just get them on the record today. I don't have a lot of the background, but I understand in some of the other provinces - and it was mentioned to me, Ontario and New Brunswick - some of the non-profit organizations that were delivering specific programs were shut down as a result of the transition into a new model. I know we're in the midst now of a new model transition as well, I'm just looking for some confirmation. I was pleased to hear you say you've been talking to a lot of your stakeholders, is there any assurance you can give us that the agencies that are out there that are non-profit, community-based, dealing perhaps with the specific needs of women or disabled employees, that we're going to be able to sustain them and work with their expertise?

MS. MARGARET MACDONALD: I'll ask Mr. Gourley to give you a bit of detail, but my understanding is that, as I mentioned, the transition phase, we want the system to be stable, so we are not making any changes with respect to the non-profit organizations that are out there. That's the message that we've really been delivering to them, but I haven't been delivering the message personally, so I think I'll ask Mr. Gourley to just give you a bit more detail.

MR. GOURLEY: We've heard a lot of the same types of information come back to us, particularly from New Brunswick. There are two things we've done, we've made an agreement with Service Canada that they could renew all of the EAS - sorry, that's the type of contract that you have, EAS agreements, with those third parties - for up to two years after transition, so up to two years after July 1^st. That decision is for Service Canada to make, but the purpose for that was exactly what the deputy has alluded to, stabilization, let's get the bus over here and figure out how we're going to drive it. That is the message we've tried to deliver to all the EAS contract holders, we want business as usual in the transition piece of it and we think that will take about 18 months, roughly.

MS. WHALEN: Okay, I think that's important, then you can track the success of each of the programs. I'm not suggesting it has to be set in stone, but I believe there's a lot of expertise in our communities through those non-profit organizations that have been working with specific groups, or have that level of on-the-ground understanding. I'm pleased to hear you've got the stabilization and some commitment to them, that's very good.

A couple of other things around your partnerships. You spoke initially - I guess this is for Ms. MacDonald - about the partnerships within government that you've got and that would be Community Services, Immigration, you talked about Education, so I wanted to quickly explore a few of those. Mention was made earlier with Community Services about the Poverty Reduction Strategy and perhaps you can point to a couple of things that are being done there. In other provinces there were certain incentives put in to help people transition

again from community services to the workplace, incentives to go back to school to learn and others to actually go into work. One of the suggestions at the Community Services Committee meeting some years ago when we did a forum on poverty which led ultimately to the Poverty Reduction Strategy, one of the suggestions had been to stop the clawback, the 70 per cent clawback, dollar for dollar, when somebody goes back to work, even if they work a little bit. Unlike the federal program, if you're receiving federal disability, for example, you're entitled to earn something like $3,000 or $4,000 a year with no clawback, nothing to harm you.

[10:30 a.m.]

I know the government brought in a program to help people go and work on farms, but that was more directed to, I think, the labour shortage in the fields, than it was to helping people transition from community services, I'm a little bit skeptical about that. I think a program that does not have a clawback should apply here in the city as well, it should apply in every community. If somebody can pick up a couple of shifts in a store or a restaurant to begin to build their skills and self-esteem and so on, that's an essential step towards getting back to work. I'm wondering if you have addressed that somehow through this program that you're administering?

MS. MARGARET MACDONALD: Those are Department of Community Services rules, if I can call them that, so we'd have somewhat less of an influence on them. I think where we hope to work really significantly with the department is the proposal in the poverty strategy about looking at the employment support and income assistance for people and trying to get really defined about which of the populations of Nova Scotia really aren't going to work. I don't mean to be overly blunt about that, but there are people who are always going to need support from the government and it's appropriate for the government to continue to support them and they're not necessarily going to be able to go out and work.

What we've talked about through the poverty strategy is - and there would be a lot of work associated with this, so my description may not look like what it will look like in the end, but effectively saying we probably have two populations, some who will work, some who can't work, so we have to work to try to see what we can do for both, but try to look at them as different populations. I think where we will be working with Community Services will be, obviously, around the people who can return to work, so those will be some of the areas that I think we'll be having the discussion on where we can use some of our funding within the rules that we're governed by, to provide some of the supports for people to get back to work.

MS. WHALEN: If I could, I just would like to mention that the fact that we have this new funding coming into the province, particularly the two-year funding that's short term and can make a difference, that might help to influence other departments, like Community

Services, to even, on a pilot basis take a look at some other things that they've been reluctant to do because of financial reasons.

MS. MARGARET MACDONALD: The difficulty that we have, I believe, though is that we also are a bit rule-bound because we get the money from the federal government and so we are limited in how we can use the money; so direct income, as they call, passive income support, is not something that we are able to do with that money. I should refer you to Mr. Gourley, who knows really the ins and outs of it much better than I do. We are a bit constrained, I think; we can use it for a lot of employment supports in order to get people into the workplace, but in terms of replacing or subsidizing as a working income, I think we are limited in that respect. Maybe I'll just get Stuart to give you a bit more clarity.

MR. GOURLEY: Passive income support wouldn't be something that we could do, direct passive income support. I couldn't replace salary whether that's coming from government or whether it's coming from industry, but what I could do is I could support transportation, I could support child care, I could support tuition. You know, I can pay the other things that cause people to take their income support and move it. So those are the kinds of places that we're going to try and work with Community Services and the ESIA review. That's the key piece of it, is the ESIA review, as I'm sure you know.

MS. WHALEN: Yes, well I appreciate that and it's good news if you can do, for example, child care. I'm just looking at your reports here, 65 per cent of the individuals getting employment support are women and a lot of times the reason they can't get back to retraining is because of the child-care responsibilities and the hours that things are available.

Newfoundland and Labrador, for example, for an incentive to learn gave reduction in rent to people in public housing if they were taking any training, if they enrolled in a course. I mean that would be a mutually supportive program, even a small reduction that rewards people for taking that step, to support what you want to do, which is to get them into the programs.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Ms. MacDonald.

MS. MARGARET MACDONALD: We have seen some recent changes in some of the Community Services rules, if I can remember them right. The income tax refund, for instance, just recently they made a decision that that would not be counted in respect of income for income assistance purposes. There was another initiative, yes, the child tax benefit. There were a couple of initiatives in that which shows that I think the doors are starting to open a little bit on some of that discussion.

MS. WHALEN: I have just one more question. I don't think I have too much time, do I - 40 seconds. I wanted to ask you some questions around the repatriation and I realize that is not the flavour of the day today, that you don't need to go out and advertise to get

people to consider coming home. I wonder if you could tell us, in the last, say, from 2007 to now, how much was spent on repatriation activities? That would be the advertising campaigns, there was an on-line special Web site that was set up, there were a couple of, I'll call them trade missions where we went across the country to hold sessions in Toronto, Ottawa and Alberta.

So I would like to get a record, if we could, of what was spent and if you could also tell us the tracking that was done on that, the number of inquiries. I know it's difficult again with people to actually say did they return.

MS. MARGARET MACDONALD: In the interest of time, we could put a report together for you on that. We do have that information and I could give it to you now but if you would . . .

MS. WHALEN: I think that would be great if you report it to the whole committee, that would be wonderful. Thank you.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please. Time has expired, thank you. I'll now recognize Mr. Bain, 10 minutes.

MR. BAIN: Thank you very much again, Mr. Chairman. Before the 2008-09 LMA investment plan was drawn up there wasn't a great deal, or any, consultation with the community. Now we now that community-based organizations play a very important part in all these programs. I wonder if you could tell the committee how the community now has been consulted and the reaction to the meetings that were held.

MS. MARGARET MACDONALD: If I might, with your permission, I'll refer the question to Mr. Gourley because he was actually on many of those trips out to the community.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Gourley.

MR. GOURLEY: Two things; your comment relative to the 2008-09 spending up to last March 31^st was designed not with direct consultation with the third party organizations but, rather, from feedback we received through other venues. So we used that to drive it and it was absolutely, as Mr. Steele pointed out, a time issue.

On the 2009-10 piece of it, however, we've just done a consultation across the province with 130 organizations around the spending plan for the LMA money, as well as explanation around the LMDA and some of the points that Ms. Whalen went to, relative to are we going to close you down or open you up, those kinds of things.

So we've done a very extensive piece so far and we intend to continue that. As we move from transition to transformation, we intend to provide committee places where third party organizations can actually become part of the process of transformation, that is to go directly to the issue of trying to get community knowledge into the delivery directly.

So there will be many different kinds of opportunities in the future but, as I say, we've just completed 130 different organizations across the province in five meetings I believe it was.

MR. BAIN: Initially, what has been the response from the community about their involvement?

MR. GOURLEY: Well, not surprisingly, everybody is happy about the money. I think they were very positive about the fact that we had taken the time to come out and to ask their opinions about what we should be doing and how the money should be spent and eligibility criteria and things of that nature. There certainly were some very specific administrative points that they made, which we've listened to and would agree with, actually, relative to reporting requirements and the kinds of hoops they have to jump through as they go through the spending of their money.

We've listened to some of those things and we think we'll be able to solve them through the technology development that we're doing right now to replace the federal government technology, which I think is 10 years old and a little bit cumbersome, to say the least.

I think the overall flavour from the third-party contract holders was very positive. The community organizations, particularly the disability community, we've taken an approach of bringing everybody together and I think that has gone particularly well. The disability community has, in past years, been looked at in pieces. We've had sort of a group that organized themselves and we talk to around what I'll call visible disabilities and we had other groups here that we're dealing with invisible disabilities. So we brought them all together so that we have a continuum of service and we have a good interaction amongst the different delivery organizations for referral.

I think in previous incarnations that has not happened all that well, so you might, in fact, have a situation where somebody came in with a visible disability but also had an invisible disability but nobody ever picked that up, nobody ever made the referral to the specialty organization. So we've put mechanisms in place - I shouldn't say we have, I should say the community, the CPN, the Community Partnership Network, has really done the work but we've encouraged it and will continue to encourage it.

It's those kinds of pieces of work that we are going to flow out over the next few years. This is not something that happens July 1^st or happened when we signed the LMA

agreement. It really is a long-term evolution of how we grow the partnerships and how we spend the money, and as needs change, as the economy changes - a year ago exactly who knew, so we have to be flexible around those kinds of. . .

MR. BAIN: I guess one of the concerns in some jurisdictions is the possibility of closing or consolidating community-based agencies. Are you planning to do any of that, to close any or to consolidate?

MR. GOURLEY: No, to reflect my response to Diana Whalen, we, in the initial, have said to them, no, we're not going there, we want business as usual. We've negotiated with Service Canada that Service Canada can provide extensions of up to two years beyond the July 1^st transfer date.

So our real issue is, July 2^nd clients shouldn't know the difference. I mean that's going to be our measure of success. If clients know the difference, something went off the rails somewhere. So from our perspective, absolute minimizing that disruption to individual clients in the system is the key to this whole thing and the key to that whole thing is don't destabilize the third party NGOs.

Now, when we get to transformation, as Diana referenced, you can start to have conversations with the third-party organizations that say, okay, you do this really well, but maybe you don't, and then we can work that out with those so we may see some changes there but it'll be changes that are worked with with the third parties, as opposed to, I've got a list and I'll just start scratching about. We just don't want to go there.

MR. BAIN: You're planning on having information sessions around the province. Can you tell us more about what those information sessions are going to entail?

MR. GOURLEY: What we're trying to do here is bring together all of the parties who would be interested in how our economy is going to unfold over the next 18 to 24 to 36 months. So in general terms, we'd like to have employers, training institutions, regional development agencies and these third-party agencies that we're talking about, in a room, along with just Joe Citizen, who is looking for information and pathways.

My experience - and this is to use Mr. Colwell's phrase - "this is my personal opinion and experience" - is it's the pathways and the information connection that's missing in much of this work. I have this phrase, I call it labour exchange, that whole mechanism doesn't work well in the province. A job seeker knowing where the job is, what the skill requirement is, where he or she needs to go in order to get that requirement and what programs are there to support him to do that, that whole circle of knowledge doesn't work well apparently in the province, so these sessions are designed to try to close some of those loops. Will they solve the problem in the province in five sessions? I'm thinking, not likely, but from that we'll do more learnings about what other things need to be put into place.

We're going to get things with the federal government that are sort of hidden, that haven't been talked about here today, for example, the job bank. So for those of you who are old enough to know this, it used to be - what was it when my brother worked for it? - CEIC, Canada Employment. You used to go into the centres and you could go up to the wall and there were all the jobs in the area on the wall on little cards, you took them off. That is a very simplistic labour exchange, the job bank is a technological answer to that board, but it's passive. Employers call in to clerks, I'm looking for three dishwashers and it goes and it sits there until you come along looking for a dishwashing job.

[10:45 a.m.]

What we're beginning to think about now is how could employers enter the system and do their data entry, job seekers enter the system and do their search and we have matching going on around skill capacity within an individual versus skill requirement in the job? How could we make that more robust and more beneficial to people and to employers? What we're finding now is employers are just getting so busy with so many different things that even the recruitment process is beginning to slide a little bit.

One of our interesting learnings from Opportunities Nova Scotia was that there are a significant number of employers - and it gets worse as you get smaller in business because the time issue becomes more of a crunch - but employers have forgotten, through the 15 per cent and 18 per cent unemployment rates, how to really actively go out and recruit. When we were doing Opportunities Nova Scotia we would see phenomena like four or five recruiters from a company in a booth, with jobs to offer, talking to each other. Right down the road there was another company and their people weren't even in their booth, they were out wandering around talking to everybody they could and that's the difference in what companies have to learn around the recruiting process.

So we need to do some work with employers around that whole question about how do you bring that human resource capacity up and how do you support really small businesses around that human resource capacity. For a really small business, it's getting your receivables paid, the cheque in the bank, the payroll out the door and sell this thing over here and ship it there, they don't have a lot of time around that human resource capacity issue, so how could we aggregate services in order to help those small businesses grow? I think that's the lifeblood of the province. Hey, would I love Pratt and Whitney to open a plant for 1,500 people here in the province tomorrow morning? Yes, I would. Would I like to see a small business double in size tomorrow morning? Yes, I would. Would I like to see 50 of them double in size by tomorrow morning? Yes, I would. So it's getting that churn and that growth through supporting them in their HR piece of it. We can't do much around capital investment and all of those kinds of things, but if we can take care of the HR piece of it then maybe we've got a win.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please. The time has expired. I would invite the deputy and/or any of her guests to make any closing comments.

MS. MARGARET MACDONALD: I just want to thank you very much for the opportunity to come and talk about the department, I think it's a really interesting department. Actually, frankly, we hope to come back some day with more robust information about some of the things that we are doing and we'd be pleased to come back and talk to you about the work that we're doing. Again, thank you so much for the opportunity to be here.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you. Just a reminder to the guests, a couple of things that were asked that you would send to us: one was the report that Mr. Colwell had asked for and - I'm just looking at my notes here - Ms. Whalen had also asked for some fund report on the repatriation. So, if you would, in time, get those to us, we would very much appreciate that.

MS. MARGARET MACDONALD: Yes, I'll do it.

MR. CHAIRMAN: We thank you for being with us today. Mr. Bain, did you have something to bring forward?

MR. BAIN: Yes, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I guess I could refer to it as a point of order. I'm very concerned that the privileges of members of our caucus are not being afforded to them at this committee because of the Chair's ruling regarding who can sit as a member of this committee. She committed to revisiting her decision and I ask that she communicate that decision to us in writing to the Committees Office before the next meeting, to ensure the proper functioning of the committee.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you. Questions, Mr. Steele? Thank you, and that certainly is important to me as well. Mr. Hebb is here and we did not hear anything back at present. I wonder if he could offer an opinion on this today. Have you had time to research this at all, Mr. Hebb?

MR. GORDON HEBB: I should say I've been asked for an opinion by the Chair and I've almost completed that and I would assume that it would be passed on to the committee. I don't know whether you want something orally today, I certainly could speak to it, or whether you want to wait for the written opinion which I expect I will be finishing later today. It's up to you.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you. Mr. Steele.

MR. STEELE: Mr. Bain's request was that the opinion be given in writing in advance of the next meeting. We certainly support that. I think that's as far as we need to go today, so we'll all have it in our hands prior to the next meeting which is one week from today.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Mr. Hebb. Thank you, Mr. Bain. Mr. Colwell, did you have something?

MR. COLWELL: We would support the motion as well, to get this in writing.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you. That is the end of business for today. The next meeting is April 22^nd, across the road at the Committees Office, the AG's Report in camera. So we'll see you all then.

The subcommittee, Mr. Wilson, you're staying I guess and Mr. Colwell. We need to adjourn for approximately five minutes for Hansard to set up.

[The committee adjourned at 10:51 a.m.]