Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Transport and Communications
Issue No. 13 - Evidence - March 29, 2017
OTTAWA, Wednesday, March 29, 2017
The Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications met this day at 6:48 p.m. to study the regulatory and technical issues related to the deployment of connected and automated vehicles.
Senator Michael L. MacDonald (Deputy Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Deputy Chair: Honourable senators, I call this meeting of the Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications to order.
This evening, the committee will continue its study on the regulatory and technical issues related to the deployment of connected and automated vehicles.
Appearing before us we have the officials of Employment and Social Development Canada: Ms. Amy Mifflin-Sills, Director, Program Policy, Skills and Employment Branch; Mr. Atiq Rahman, Acting Director General, Canada Student Loan Program, Learning Branch; and Mr. Jonathan Will, Director General, Economic Policy Directorate, Strategic and Service Policy Branch.
I welcome our witnesses and invite Mr. Will to begin his presentation. Afterwards, senators will have questions.
Mr. Will, you have the floor.
Jonathan Will, Director General, Economic Policy Directorate, Strategic and Service Policy Branch, Employment and Social Development Canada: Good evening, Mr. Deputy Chair and distinguished members of the committee.
I am here to speak to you about the implications of autonomous vehicles for Canada's labour market and labour market programs.
I'm joined by two colleagues, Amy Mifflin-Sills, Director, from the Skills and Employment Branch; and Atiq Rahman, Senior Director, from the Learning Branch.
In recent years, technological change and its potential impact on jobs and workers has become the subject of considerable attention. There is no doubt that the introduction of these new technologies will create both challenges and opportunities for Canadian workers.
It is important to recognize that historically, technology has been a net job creator. Its adoption has increased productivity, driven economic growth and secured greater prosperity and higher standards of living.
However, it is also important to recognize that in the past, we tended to automate physical work, and people maintained an advantage over machines when it came to cognitive tasks like driving, which requires complex information processing skills.
Looking forward, thanks to advances in artificial intelligence, this comparative advantage will likely erode, but exactly what this will mean for the labour market is the subject of debate.
While some experts anticipate a relatively smooth process of incremental adjustment, others predict severe labour market disruptions, with entire occupations disappearing rapidly.
[Translation]
For a variety of reasons, it is difficult to predict how technologies like autonomous vehicles will impact jobs.
Once something has been invented, it will not necessarily become commercially viable right away. A number of factors could impact the speed of uptake, including resistance from incumbent firms, legal and regulatory challenges, the cost of adoption, unexpected technological glitches and even consumer discomfort.
[English]
In addition, new technologies do not always function as an exact substitute for a given worker. Representatives from the trucking industry indicate there are a number of tasks that will continue to require a driver, like driving during a snowstorm, negotiating shipping docks and loading and unloading.
[Translation]
We also know that automation could result in the creation of new occupations. In the future, there could be a demand for new workers needed to oversee a fleet of self-driving transport trucks.
At this stage, what we can say with a relatively high degree of confidence is that the best strategy to mitigate any disruptive impacts of automation is to provide Canadians with access to the kind of employment and training supports that will help them participate in an innovative and globally competitive economy.
Accordingly, Employment and Social Development Canada is continuing to work with provinces, territories and other stakeholders to help ensure that our programs are aligned with an evolving labour market.
[English]
Each year, the Government of Canada invests nearly $3 billion in transfer agreements with the provinces and territories for skills training and employment supports.
Building on stakeholder engagement and consultations conducted in 2016 with the provinces and territories, Budget 2017 proposes to reform the Labour Market Transfer Agreements by consolidating three transfers into new workforce development agreements, with a new investment of $900 million over six years.
It also proposes to invest an additional $1.8 billion over six years in existing labour market development agreements, along with expanded eligibility to allow more Canadians to access Employment Insurance-funded supports.
Budget 2017 also proposes to work with provinces and territories and other stakeholders to establish a new organization that will support skills development and measurement.
ESDC is also rolling out a new student work integrated learning program to provide more opportunities for students to require on-the-job experience during their post-secondary studies, with a particular focus on science, technology, engineering and math — the so-called STEM fields.
[Translation]
Building on Budget 2016 measures to help make post-secondary education more affordable, Budget 2017 proposes to expand eligibility for Canada student grants to part-time students and students with dependent children. Budget 2017 also proposes a three-year pilot project to test new approaches to make it easier for adult learners to qualify for Canada student loans and grants.
[English]
To help unemployed adult Canadians pursue studies and upgrade their skills, Budget 2017 also proposes to use existing flexibility within the Employment Insurance program to allow EI claimants to pursue self-funded training while still being eligible to receive Employment Insurance benefits.
Steps have also been taken to improve labour market information. For instance, an online career tool was introduced as part of the national job bank site to support learning and training decisions by providing information on labour market outcomes by field and level of study.
Finally, the department is working closely with the provinces and territories to soon launch the Labour Market Information Council to support the collection, analysis, and distribution of labour market information to stakeholders across Canada.
I thank the committee for this opportunity to share information with you on our programs. We look forward to your questions.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you, Mr. Will, for your presentation. We will move to questions.
[Translation]
Senator Boisvenu: Thank you very much for your presentation. Can we compare the arrival of automated or semi- automated machinery to the impact robotics had on the auto manufacturing workforce?
[English]
Mr. Will: Yes, you can compare the two. In the auto sector, the technology development so far has been mainly manual, but for automated vehicles and other artificial intelligence devices, it is more of a cognitive information processing task.
[Translation]
Senator Boisvenu: Based on your experience, do you believe that the transition period could really impact certain trades or professions? Things are currently at the experimental stage. We are not seeing any direct impacts on employment, except in the area of research. What do you think the time frame will be for the transition toward automation?
[English]
Mr. Will: Predictions on this topic in terms of how fast technology will be adopted tend to vary and it's important to distinguish between predictions that refer to the point when autonomous vehicles are ready to go to market and others that look when they'll actually be adopted on a significant scale.
By 2020, most major car manufacturers intend to have vehicles in their showrooms that are capable of driving themselves partially and by 2025, a number of manufacturers have indicated they expect to have autonomous vehicles available to consumers.
However, by most estimates it will take much longer for autonomous vehicles to become truly commonplace. Please bear in mind that not everyone will have the means or desire to trade in their current conventional cars just because autonomous vehicles are for sale. According to a number of credible sources — Moody's Investor Service, industry consulting group IHS Automotive and expert consultation conducted by re-code.ca — it will be at least two decades before the majority of vehicles on the road are autonomous and even longer before autonomous vehicles are nearly universal.
As a result of this long transition period, one would expect the effects on the labour market to unwind over a longer period of time. However, these are all predictions, and there's no certainty in terms of what will happen in the future.
[Translation]
Senator Boisvenu: When it comes to preparation and strategy, how does Canada compare to European countries or the United States in terms of educating businesses or creating training programs? Is Canada in a good position compared with other countries or is it lagging a bit behind in terms of preparation to ensure a smooth transition?
[English]
Mr. Will: In terms of how Canada compares to other countries, Ontario has become the first province in Canada to create a pilot regulatory framework to test autonomous vehicles on its roads in 2016. The pilot is intended to position the province as a global leader in the autonomous vehicle market. Other countries, such as New Zealand and the U.K., have introduced legislation around testing autonomous vehicles. This is intended to position these countries as world leaders.
A number of states have also taken action. Twenty U.S. states have introduced legislation related to autonomous vehicles, primarily to legalize and regulate their testing on public roads. Notably, Michigan recently passed legislation that will enable the deployment of on-demand networks of autonomous cars and eventually the sale of autonomous vehicles.
Senator Mercer: Thank you for an interesting presentation. I am a little confused by a couple of things you said. You said that historically technology has been a net job creator, but then you went on to say that it is difficult to predict how technology like autonomous vehicles will impact jobs. Then in the rest of your report, five or six times you make reference to EI. The only reason people make reference to EI or the use of EI is because they're unemployed.
You seem to have made an assumption without stating it. You stated earlier in the presentation that technology has been a net job creator, but then you spent a fair amount of your presentation talking about the support EI may give to those people who are going to be unemployed. I'm a little confused how you got from talking about technology being a job creator to spending a good deal of your presentation talking about how EI is going to help unemployed people that will be affected by driverless cars.
Mr. Will: When I mentioned that technology has been a net job creator, by "net'' I meant more jobs created than are lost. It does not mean that in the past, as a result of technology, there have not been people who have been displaced and needed assistance such as Employment Insurance.
Going forward, it's anticipated that there will be some disruption of the labour market, perhaps resulting in some unemployment, but the hope is that more jobs will be created as in the past.
Senator Mercer: Unemployed people are frustrated people. Unemployed people don't want to be unemployed. They want to work.
You also talked about Canadians having access to the kind of employment training supports that help them participate in an innovative global economy. Two questions are associated with that. Number one, are we ready? Number two, are you ready?
Amy Mifflin-Sills, Director, Program Policy, Skills and Employment Branch, Employment and Social Development Canada: There are a couple of things that we look at when we're designing and developing programs. First and foremost, we work very closely with provincial and territorial governments and other stakeholders to make sure that we develop programs that are flexible enough to withstand adjustments to the economy; that is, structural adjustments and cyclical adjustments to the economy.
First, within that, we work closely with our stakeholders to develop programs that help prepare people for the workforce. As Jonathan mentioned earlier, one of the new programs that we're going to be launching shortly is the Student Work-Integrated Learning Program. You may have heard about the concept of work integrated learning. It's starting become more common place. It's really about aligning studies in post-secondary education and training with the skills required in the workplace. As the skills required in the workplace evolve, it's more and more important that we have students who are not just getting the theory in the class but also the experience on the job so that when they do finish their programs, they're better prepared for the workforce. That's one thing we're doing for youth to help them prepare for a changing workplace.
As you mentioned, senator, there are people who will find themselves on Employment Insurance who don't want to be there. For that reason, we've worked closely with the provinces and the territories on the transfer agreements that Jonathan spoke to earlier. Those transfer agreements allow the provinces to develop programs and services to help both unemployed people and under-employed people receive skills development, training and employment search assistance programs.
Provinces and territories within those transfer agreements have the ability to shift those programs and change them as they need to in order to align with the changing needs of the workplace.
Senator Mercer: We have been talking a bit about privacy around driverless vehicles, and it's a concern that we have.
When you factor in the training aspect, first, I think we need people to be trained, obviously if we're going to have this technology, to use it properly. One of the things we need to be careful of is training people to the extent that a man or woman sitting in their basement with a powerful computer can use the knowledge they've learned to be disruptive of a whole fleet of driverless vehicles.
In your presentation, you talked about the possibility of a fleet of self-driving transport trucks. If somebody sitting in their basement with a powerful computer finds a way to be disruptive, that could play havoc. If they only played havoc on one highway in this country, the 401, it could do major economic damage, God knows.
I would hope that in the training that we're talking about, we're being very careful that we're teaching people how to operate things and not how to stop them from operating — just a word to the wise, if I could.
Senator Galvez: You give a lot of money to the provinces and territories. You said it's $3 billion every year. What is the follow-up of this money? Is it going to universities, to CEGEPS, to secondary schools, and in what proportion? What do you get for the money? What are the outputs of this investment?
Ms. Mifflin-Sills: To give you a few examples of where the money goes in the transfer agreements, provinces and territories use that money to help individuals to access training and employment assistance benefits. In some cases, the money goes to those individuals to access tuition, to pay for training programs, to receive employment counselling services, et cetera.
In addition to that, with some of the transfer agreements, provinces have the ability to fund partnerships of industry, employers and educational students to develop curriculum for students. The transfer for education is another transfer payment that goes directly to educational institutions.
Did you want me to answer the second part of your question about results?
Senator Galvez: No, that's okay. I am an engineer. I teach in the university. I'm sorry to say this, but I never heard about money that was coming from your organization to finance programs in engineering. The only experience I have had was with Human Resources Canada. It was for an exchange program with other universities and countries and the accounting for the money that was received, which was in the range of $50,000 per year, required so much administration that instead of teaching, I was doing accounting.
I really want to know how you ensure that the money that you are putting in there is really getting to the objective of training people. How many people are trained? For me, that would be an indicator. How many people were trained with this money that you give?
Ms. Mifflin-Sills: I can answer part of the question and then I will turn it over to my colleagues to answer a broader question about post-secondary education financing.
In terms of the training dollars that are spent on individuals to access training programs through the Labour Market Transfer Agreements, every year we publish the "Monitoring and Assessment Report.'' So every spring, we publish it for one and a half years prior, essentially. That is a compilation of our spending using the employment insurance account, which essentially finances the labour market development agreements.
It includes reporting from provinces and territories on the clients they serve, how they fared in the interventions and training they received and what their employment and labour market outcomes were. It is tabled in Parliament every year.
Senator Griffin: Thank you for being here, folks.
One of the things we've been discussing is literacy in Canada. I spoke about it one day in relation to Prince Edward Island, in particular, but someone spoke yesterday about Newfoundland and Labrador. This is not unique in Canada, but we do have a fairly high rate of functional illiteracy and in many cases poor numeracy skills. There are two things related to this.
With the automated vehicles, I'm concerned about how the general population may relate to them. I can see there is a certain group that will take to them like ducks to water, just like they do to these things. But there will be others who will simply be lost in the shuffle, so that is one concern I have. You have partially answered that by saying people like me will still be able to drive my old Mustang for a while, until it falls apart.
The other group I'm concerned about is the people who are truck drivers, for instance, or working in assembly line jobs. Often these people are not as well-educated as a lot of other workers. I can see that a lot of truck drivers are going to be very frustrated at some point. Depending on their age, I'm not sure how well they will get picked up by your programs. I think the programs are great and it's good to see, but do you have any indication what you anticipate the impact to be, first of all, on drivers who won't be able to cope with the automated vehicles? And second, what type of jobs should people be training for now who are not as adaptable, not as well-educated, who have literacy problems and will really have difficulty adapting to the new economy in this field?
Mr. Will: To answer your question, I will start by talking about the workers in the motor vehicle and transit driver fields in terms of age and education level, which I think helps in terms of your question.
There's a wide variety of ages within this broader category and there are details on subgroups. This group includes motor vehicle and transit drivers, bus drivers, taxi and limousine drivers and chauffeurs, and delivery and courier companies. About 12 per cent are between the ages of 15 and 29; 18 per cent are between 30 and 39; the 40 to 54 age group has 38 per cent of the population. There are a number who are young and who would have the time in order to make investments in their careers. At least my perception before I started on this thing was that it would be a fairly old workforce, but there is some age variation that provides a time period for people to recoup investments or the government to realize those investments.
Also, in terms of educational attainment, there are a variety of levels. Eighteen per cent do have lower than high school education, which would probably be associated with the poor literacy and numeracy skills that you mentioned; 33 per cent have high school graduation, stopping at that; 6 per cent have some post-secondary education — that is, they didn't complete a degree; and 33 per cent have some sort of post-secondary certificate or diploma. That gives a bit of information about the individuals who are in this broad category of workers in terms of age and educational attainment.
Senator Griffin: So while there are younger people who are coming in to take over from those of us who might have retired, there is still quite a large group here at risk. They're not going to perhaps have the skills or the inclination to really benefit from the training, and I guess right now it would be hard for them to visualize what type of jobs they should even be training for.
Ms. Mifflin-Sills: One of the components of the transfer agreements that we have with the provinces and territories provides employment counselling for people who find themselves unemployed or underemployed, perhaps in low- paying jobs that may have a low skill level associated with them. Through those employment counselling services, the individual works with an employment counsellor to look at labour market information that is available in their local region and beyond about the jobs that are available to them and what training might be required for those jobs. That service has been in place for many years, and it's a key service that the provinces and territories do provide to work on an individual level with people who might find themselves in a difficult labour market situation.
I'll pass it over to my colleague Atiq because I think he will probably want to speak about some of the recent measures announced in Budget 2017 to help workers who need to go back to school to train.
Atiq Rahman, Acting Director General, Canada Student Loan Program, Learning Branch, Employment and Social Development Canada: I can add to that. I'm from the Canada Student Loan Program. What the program does is provide grants and student loans to post-secondary students directly to pay for their tuition, living expenses and other things. What Budget 2017 announced is actually one of the steps to help adult students who might be returning to school to upgrade their skills. Three measures were announced. One of them was a pilot project that Jonathan already mentioned, a three-year project to try new approaches to help adult students go back to upgrade their skills.
Two other measures also announced that could help these returning adult students are enhancements towards existing Canada grants for part-time students — the announcement will make it more generous — and Canada Student Grants for students with dependent children. For that one as well, an enhancement has been announced to make it more generous for those students.
These are some of the steps that the government is taking to assist students who might have been in the workforce for some time but need some upgrading of their skills and might be coming back to school.
[Translation]
Senator Cormier: Thank you for your presentation. I would like to know what you think about the recommendation made by the Advisory Council on Economic Growth to create the much talked-about FutureSkills lab. That is a creative and interesting idea that influences skills development and measurement. We know that Budget 2017 has earmarked $225 million over five years to support the acquisition and creation of a new organization. Can you tell us more about that project? What is the lab's targeted clientele and what is its potential relationship with the provinces? Although our main topic is the arrival of connected and automated vehicles, what sectors are targeted by that lab?
[English]
Ms. Mifflin-Sills: As you've picked up, the initiative was announced in Budget 2017 last week, and it was related to a recommendation that came from the Advisory Council on Economic Growth.
One thing I can say is that, in looking at rationalizing and expanding on the labour market transfer agreements that I spoke to earlier, we did undertake with provincial and territorial governments, through the forum of labour market ministers last year, extensive consultations across Canada. One thing that we heard through those consultations is that we needed to have innovation in the training system to adapt to a changing labour market.
While I can't speak to the specifics of the announcement, as it's still pretty early in the process, I can say that we will be working very closely with our partners — the provinces and territories, indigenous organizations and other stakeholders — to move forward and act on that commitment that was made in the budget, and more details will follow in the coming weeks.
[Translation]
Senator Cormier: Do you think that transfer agreements between the federal government and the provinces will be part of creating that lab?
[English]
Ms. Mifflin-Sills: It would be a bit early to pronounce either way on that. However, the agreements, and the new commitments around upscaling and the commitment around the new organization were announced in the same chapter in the budget around new commitments to support lifelong learning.
Senator Bovey: I have some time-frame questions, and I'm not sure any of us are sitting here with a crystal ball to know when exactly all this is going to happen, in what order and in what order are we going to have the skills in place.
History is a great teacher, and it seems to me as I look back in history to the Industrial Revolution and the combustion engine, there was a peak where the car came in and the horse went out. In your time frame, are you looking at when that peak for the change in employment needs and training are going to be?
I, too, have worked in universities, and I've led a lot of programs where the graduate students have been working in the field. What it takes to make that work is a professoriate that knows what the field will need, an industry that knows how to work with students and guide those students, and make sure those training opportunities are really effective. There is more effective training in some areas of the country and in some disciplines than others.
I want to know what kind of measurements you're putting onto all of that, rather than a fixed rate that money is being pumped in, don't get me wrong. But you want it pumped into an effective use rather than an experiment gone wrong. I'm interested in your time frame, your assessment of when those skills are going to be shifting — when society will shift — and are there really the people here now who can implement the programs you're putting in place who know what is needed?
Ms. Mifflin-Sills: Yes, the crystal ball is an important piece and we don't have the crystal ball.
One of the things that we're going to be doing over the next several months and years is to be closely monitoring any indications in the labour market that signal a significant change. We'll do that through some new investments that we've made recently in labour market information, working closely with the provinces and territories. We're going to launch a new labour market information council soon that will look at gathering better, more granular data on what's going on in the labour market. We'll make it available so that people can use it to adapt curriculums in post-secondary institutions and for employers to make investment decisions, and most importantly for individuals who are making decisions about their careers to make the right decisions. Labour market information is key.
One of the advantages of disruptive technology is that we have new technologies available to us to make more data available and to do more analysis with that data on the labour market. One of the projects that we're doing with the provinces and territories now using data is to look at the employment and labour market outcomes of training interventions, particularly with respect to the transfer agreements. What are the outcomes of those on an individual level and what are the trends over time?
Technology is allowing us to be able to do more analysis with the data we have been compiling. So we will be doing that as part of our plans moving forward.
Senator Bovey: Let me go back to the future — even younger children. I know that elementary and secondary school curricula are provincial issues. On the other hand, these are national and international changes that are coming to society. Is anybody digging deeper into the educational system? What about our five-, seven- and nine-year-olds? Are they still learning the times tables the way I did, or are there new ways of teaching them? I don't see it yet. I don't see it in the students I have, and I don't see it in my grandchildren. They're schooled internationally. I don't see the system that's supposed to be training our kids to take on these job-skill training programs at university and beyond. I don't see us training them.
So whose responsibility is that as we're looking at this huge industrial shift — I'm going to call it an industrial shift — in society?
Mr. Will: One contribution that our department makes, so that is the program for international student assessment, which is an assessment across all countries in the OECD plus a number of other countries that have joined the project of 16-year-olds where they're tested in terms of their numeracy and literacy. We're working with the Council of Education Ministers of Canada in order to do this testing at the age of 16, which allows provinces to make adjustments to their educational program and pedagogy for teachers. Often the results come out — you see public attention to it and you see responses by governments in terms of making them responses to ensure that they produce better results and are competitive.
Senator Bovey: I contend that the age of 16 is too late. By that time, students are choosing what they're taking for university entrance. I'm talking about the 7- to 11-year-olds, because that's where the mental shift has to take place, I think.
Senator Galvez: You mentioned that the focus is on STEM. It is true there are a lot of hard skills. For me, this is hard skills. But in this automatization and these media in the GIS and GPS, there is a lot of art and creativity. In my field, we say softer skills but sometimes you are stronger. So I have accreditation of engineering programs, and I have two things in parallel. I have the harder skills, which is my math, et cetera, and I have the softer skills, which are ethics and the desire to continue to educate yourself — environmental impact of these advances of this technology.
In the money that you give, do you have an idea of how much is applied to harder skills and softer skills? It is important that you balance that and see that the money is properly and efficiently used.
Mr. Will: There is a growing recognition of the importance of non-cognitive — what are often called soft skills — for individuals in the work force. Increasingly, as you said, as there is increased automation, more creativity is required. We do see that. Employers will make comments such as "we hire on hard skills and fire on soft skills.''
There's a project that our department has been working on with Siemens Canada in order to produce a program targeted toward their value chain, as well as expanding that to other sectors of the economy.
Senator Mercer: I want to go back to the discussion of EI. You've talked about an EI program to allow EI claimants to pursue self-funded training while still being eligible to receive EI. One of the concerns that I have is that, that being the case, you get EI for a certain period of time. But if you're on EI and you sign up for a program to retrain, is there an option from the department to say to a person that is in a qualifying program, "Yes, you can continue on EI''? As a matter of fact, in the middle of this training period, your EI ends because of the time limit. Is there an option for the department to say, "We're going to extend EI to the end of the training period so that you can continue the training, and hopefully when you come out the other end of the training, you will be better trained, qualify for a job that will employ you and, number one, take you off EI and maybe keep you off EI''?
Ms. Mifflin-Sills: Thank you for your question. It is a good one.
Currently, the rules of EI set a limit to the number of weeks total that a claimant may receive EI benefits, whether they're unemployed and not in training or in training.
While I can't speak to the details of the new measure, because the details will come out in the coming weeks and months on the measure that was announced in the budget last week, we are looking at the impact of the changing nature of work on individuals who will need to upskill. So while I can't speak to the details at this point, the point was made in the budget.
Senator Mercer: I know you aren't policy-makers or policy implementers, but I urge you to take the message back to those in the departments who are policy-makers. It makes no sense to be part of the training, to be halfway through the program and have a Canadian who has been unemployed leave the program because his or her EI has expired.
I also know we have to protect against people who might abuse the system. But if a person is in a training program, attending and doing their work, cutting off their EI with only months left to complete the training to make them a better qualified job applicant doesn't make much sense to me.
You may not be the policy-maker, but you two can talk to them.
The Deputy Chair: I want to thank the officials of Employment and Social Development Canada for their participation today.
Honourable senators, for our meeting next week, we'll hear from the officials of the RCMP, Public Safety, and Communications Security Establishment of Canada. I want to inform the senators that the meeting will take place in 257 East Block.
This meeting is adjourned.
(The committee adjourned.)