The central problem, however, appears to be that these programs are seriously under resourced. The total size of the training budget is inadequate to meet the needs. Project officers are overworked and under skilled, with the result that programs are forced to deal with a revolving door of changing personnel who frequently arrive on the job with little conception of the importance and history of the programs they work with, and with less understanding of the nature of the employment issues their programs are meant to address. Available funds are not equitably distributed across program areas. Within programs, allowable budget and time limits are frequently insufficient to maintain staff and activities for more than a few months at a time. It may be that CCLOW's energy should be directed at least as much to Treasury Board as it is to EIC.

In our view, what is required in the area of access is policy which endorses the right of every woman who seeks employment or who is confined to low quality employment to further training and education, and which recognizes that such a 'right to learn' must go hand-in-hand with measures -- in areas such as employment equity and equal pay for equal work of equal value -- designed to ensure that women with training can find jobs to compete for. Ultimately, this kind of policy position would require the adoption of a new approach to full employment for all willing workers -- either male or female -- in Canada. This is not an impossible position to take. Other countries, including both Sweden and Japan which have very different approaches to the management of the national economy, have much lower official unemployment rates than Canada does. Within Canada, economists have identified approaches to full employment policy which are consistent with our own history and culture (57).

5.4 Privatization

In the area of privatization, we found that the recent adoption of policies in support of privatization has created a certain degree of confusion at all levels. Basically, there are two approaches to the privatization of training. The first, which is explicitly endorsed, for example, by the province of Ontario, concerns increased support for employer-sponsored, workplace-based training. The second, which has been taken by programs such as the federal Canadian Jobs Strategy Re-Entry, involves shifting funding from public and voluntary sponsors of training to private sector training organizations. There is as yet no established body of data on which to base evaluative conclusions. However, employer- sponsored training has traditionally not included women in anything like the proportion in which they are represented within the labour force. It will be important to monitor this situation in order to ensure that women receive their share of employer-sponsored training. Of critical importance, however, in assessing the strengths and weaknesses of policies supporting employer-sponsored training is an examination of who gets left out. Not only does employer-sponsored training leave out that section of the labour force which is unemployed -- about 1 in every 10 people on a nation-wide basis and as many as 9 out of 10 in some native and remote communities, it also does not address the needs of those whose jobs provide no incentive for employer-sponsored training. These people -- the unemployed and the working poor, risk being forgotten altogether, or having their training needs even more seriously under- resourced than is already the case.