That a great deal of effort has gone into organizing and institutionalizing ALT activities over the last ten years is beyond dispute. However, while the available statistics and qualitative studies indicate substantial progress, they also highlight a number of problems that will confront the parties involved as they continue their work in this undertaking, which is, after all, only ten years old.
The development of work-related ALT suffers from four major disparities: the underdevelopment of ALT in small businesses, among less qualified employees, among older workers and in certain sectors of industry. Another question arises from the fact that the inclusion in the workplace of immigrants and their involvement in ALT above and beyond French-as-second-language courses are unfortunately still very poorly documented. The differences in participation rates between people born in Canada and those born elsewhere are well known. Footnote 39 This requires further study, as does the better known but still inadequately addressed problem of recognizing qualifications obtained in home countries.
In Quebec and in the rest of Canada, the situation regarding structured ALT in small businesses shows, and this fact is now well supported statistically, that there is low participation in ALT for the staff working in those enterprises (Bélanger, Doray et al., 2004). Certainly, as Bernier et al. (2003) have shown, ALT in very small firms is likely based on a different conception of training than that applied in large enterprises. There is a tendency to prefer "endogenous experience and transmission of knowledge based on learning that takes place in the work environment" (p. 2, transl.). A small business, for example, would tend to make use of informal coaching and to use the tools provided by the professional networks as well as to benefit from the education and training given by suppliers. Footnote 40 The idea of mutuelles de formation (section 2), which allow some small businesses to create a shared ALT body, is also progressing, slowly but surely.
Variability in participation in job-related training by company size is a well-known phenomenon in all advanced industrial countries (Bélanger and Valdivielso, 1997; Turcotte, Léonard and Montmarquette, 2003; Bélanger, Doray et al., 2004). This trend may also be observed in Tables 2.1, 2.2, 2.4 and 4.4. The participation rate in job-related ALT in Quebec in 2002 ranged from 14% in the smallest firms to 20% in firms with between 20 and 99 employees and 37% in firms with more than 100 employees, a range of more than 23 percentage points between the large and the very small companies (Table 2.4). The DGARES survey referred to in the Five-Year Report 2000-2005 (p. 27) reached the same conclusion. In the Five-Year Report for 1995-2000, it was noted that though the overall contribution of employers with higher payroll is smaller, they tended before 2001 to benefit more from the fund and its granting program (Table 3.1).
Return to note 39 In Quebec, the rate of employer-sponsored participation by the employed population 25 years of age and older ranged from 26% to 13%, depending on whether people were born in Canada or elsewhere (Statistics Canada, 2003).
Return to note 40 Note, however, that some surveys show that informal education and training increase with company size (see section 4.3).