Women's Access to Training

CCLOW Annual General Meeting: A presentation on Women's Access to Training, with guest speaker, Ursule Critoph, Senior Associate, Canadian Labour Force Development Board.

Cheryl Senecal, President, welcomed all to the CCLOW AGM and Joanne Lindsay, Executive Director, introduced the guest speaker, Ursule Critoph.

Ursule began with some background on the Canadian Labour Force Development Board (CLFDB), noting that it is funded by, but not an arm of HRDC. It is autonomous. Ursule focussed on the impacts of recent federal policy changes on issues that the CLFDB had, since its inception in 1991, worked on: policy relationships within the federal government and between federal and provincial governments; and delivery of training and other labour adjustment programs. She spoke, in particular, about her recent research for a project known, within the CLFDB, as the Monitoring Project. In this context, she reviewed her findings, on the impacts of all the changes on individuals, delivery organizations and governments.

Ursule outlined the research process she undertook in the form of focus groups, a survey of providers and numerous discussions with government officials. The 39 focus groups were conducted across the country, with 9 of these groups specifically organized by members of the National Women's Reference Group on Labour Market Issues (NWRG). Other sessions were organized by reference groups from the visible minority communities, peoples with disabilities, labour and business, all constituencies within the CLFDB. Most of the individuals within the focus groups were users of training or employment services offered through Human Resources Development Canada (HRDC) programs.

Before providing her preliminary analysis of the focus group data, Ursule spoke about the economic and political context, specifically about globalization, changes in the structure and power between business and government, the increasing concentration of wealth, the loss of government as an instrument of public good, the downloading of responsibilities to provinces, the loss of the training delivery infrastructure, and the overall loss of a national safety net. In this context, we also find the deregulation of labour markets, reduced employment standards, and the loss of targetted programs and affirmative action as a mechanism to redress the historical disadvantage of certain groups, including women, in the labour market.

In Canada, three major changes have taken place: the federal government has transferred responsibility for most labour market development issues to the provinces, they have also cut back almost totally on their own general revenue spending on the equity groups and they have introduced the Employment Insurance Act to replace the Unemployment Insurance Act.

All of this has resulted in a severe drop in the spending going to women's training and labour market services. At the same time, cuts to federal transfers to the provinces, in the form of the new Canada Health and Social Transfers (CHST) are also being felt at the community level since most provincial spending on education and training has always been a flow-through of federal monies. Historically, these funds have allowed for a secondary safety net for the unemployed re-entering the labour market or moving from one job to another. Now, if an individual is not eligible for Employment Insurance benefits, they don't get access to training or employment services, as these are only for those eligible for EI. At the same time, there has been a dramatic drop in the number of people who can access EI (from 83% of the unemployed pool to 42% of the unemployed pool). A drop that continues to grow!

Other changes include the elimination of the system of direct purchase of training and the increased use of for-profit organizations as the preferred mechanism for delivery of training and employment services. The new system of skills loans and grants, while making it much more difficult for individuals to afford training, also covers only about 20-45% of the costs of delivering programs in public and many community institutions but 100% in for-profit organizations. This is resulting in a large shift away from community organizations as delivery agents to the for-profit organizations and in the process, we are losing a basic level of public infrastructure. As this happens, the experience and knowledge of workers from within these institutions is being lost.