Speech for the Honourable Patty Hajdu Minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Labour for the Colleges and Institutes Canada annual conference

Ottawa, Ontario

May 1, 2017

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It’s great to be here today to celebrate the importance of learning and its impact on the economy.

I’d like to start by saying that it’s a joy to be here with you on the traditional Algonquin territory and today, I really want to talk about not just what you contribute to communities, but also the important role that you play and the partnership that we want to have with you. You’ve been partnering with government for a very, very long time, and we believe that our government is going to be an excellent partner in the work that you do, because of the work that we’re doing to ensure that people have the skills that they need to succeed.

We place a high priority on learning, and as you know, this last budget I have to say must be thrilling to all of you in the focus that we have on making sure that people have the skills that they need to succeed. We’ve talked a lot about the middle class. You hear us talking about that all the time, and it’s my firm belief that post-secondary is essential to actually joining the middle class and to staying in the middle class in many cases, and I have to tell you that’s a very personal belief.

I am the first in my family to graduate with a university degree. I headed off at 17, thanks in part to a government that believed in ensuring that education was affordable. And there was OSAP available, and that made me able to take the leap into post-secondary education, but I still faced a lot of barriers. I faced the kinds of barriers that you see every day in the work that you do, barriers such as that I wouldn’t even have known what a registrar’s office was. I had no idea how to make my way around a campus. I didn’t know that there were student supports. I didn’t know how to access supports from teachers. I didn’t know how to tell anyone if I was struggling, and so after two years I dropped out of university. It was a really difficult time. I was really young, and I was really broke.

And I went back to Thunder Bay after a period of time, from Toronto, with my tail between my legs, feeling that I had failed. I’d failed not just myself, but I had failed my family, and I felt a profound sense of shame.

I actually went back to school as an adult to pursue learning after my children were born because I knew that if I didn’t get that university degree, I couldn’t open that door. I had this wise uncle who was always saying to me, “You know, it’s just a door. It’s a door that you need to be able to open. Education is the key to the door that you need to be able to open.” And I know that I had to go back to school because I had to set an example for my children, and I had to provide for them, more than anything. I became a single mom at a very young age, and I realized that without education, they were going to grow up in a similar way, struggling essentially from hand to mouth. My mom was a school bus driver, she retired as a school bus driver, so there was never really a lot of money in our family.

And so I did just that. I went to Lakehead University, and I took courses at night while I worked, and it was very difficult. I remember that I had the most rigid bedtimes for my kids - anybody who’s ever gone to school and raised kids knows this: eight o’clock comes, and it was bedtime, because I had to get that studying done.

After I finished by Bachelor of Arts, I did go on and do an honours, and I just graduated with my master’s from University of Victoria just before the election was called. So I’ve been a lifelong learner.

Today, my children are both graduates from colleges. One is a graduate from Confederation College, and he’s a welder. The College had a fantastic partnership with the high school that he went to, with a welder on site in the high school. I saw my kid was coming home from school excited about something, and excited that he was learning.

And so off he went to the College, where he took a one-year program, and now he’s welding. And he’s very, very happy. At the moment, he’s making $20.00 an hour, he feels like he has a purpose, he feels like he has a community, and he feels like he has a skill. He feels self-worth.

My other son is a graduate of Humber College from the Journalism program, and he is here in Ottawa, in fact starting his first day in a summer internship today.

These are the kinds of successes that I see with education. It’s really not about the individual, it’s about unlocking that pathway for generations to come. My sons had the example of a mother who put a value on education, who was able to access education and who then was able to achieve better earnings -  and who was pushing them all the time, and could help them come through those barriers that no one really was there to guide me through when I was younger. This is the kind of thing that we can do together. It really does level the playing field. So all of you play that vital role in making sure that people of all ages can join the workforce.

What I love about the colleges is that your programs—and you can tell by the stories I’ve just told—are in sync with the current job market, and they closely align with employer demands. The skills that students gain in the college setting often lead to immediate or very rapid employment.

In fact, according to recent data from the National Graduate Survey, over 90 percent of college and institute graduates find work in their field. That’s phenomenal, and that’s the kind of story that we want to hear.

I have to say that I saw firsthand during my time as a sessional instructor at Confederation College this very story. This was a mandatory course for a number of different programs, programs that would interact with individuals who were Indigenous—things like support care workers or child care workers, for example.

And what I found in teaching that course was that the skill set that the college was providing was going to make for better employees because there were so many “aha” moments. This was translatable. The students could understand why they needed this information.

I learned as an instructor that you have to respond to very dynamic learners. In my class, I had learners who were young, who were just coming out of high school, who had very little exposure to many life experiences, but I also had older learners. I had people that were coming out of an industry that maybe wasn’t doing so well. We had older workers who were returning to work after injuries. I found that the dynamism of having those intergenerational students in a class was also one of those intangible benefits that you probably see every day in the colleges. The intergenerational learning that was happening almost spontaneously in the classroom was something that I will never forget.

Creating work-ready graduates isn’t just smart, it’s essential. Many young Canadians are having a hard time breaking into the job market. It’s a logical place where we focus to address that gap. I have the privilege in this job of finding solutions with you that will help ensure that the gap’s not insurmountable and that young people and even the not-so-young people that I’ve referenced get the skills that they need to succeed in the workforce. Because we do believe that your next job should be a better one, and I think that’s a philosophy that we share.

I’m very excited about some of the things that we’re going to be doing together, and I want to talk a little bit about the Essential Skills Social Finance Project.

Colleges are the main drivers of innovation in the economy, so we look forward to working with them. I am happy to be working together on this project with CICan. I hope many others will follow suit.

We’re keen to work with you because colleges are key drivers of innovation in the economy.

We have launched a first-of-its-kind social finance initiative, the Essential Skills and Social Finance Project, in partnership with Colleges and Institutes Canada, private investors, service delivery partners and the Social Research and Development Corporation. It delivers training to improve the essential skills levels of unemployed adult Canadians. We will repay investor capital and any earned return on capital if essential skills gains have been achieved, and we’re testing this pay-for-performance model with hopes of seeing better outcomes for students, and we’re already seeing signs of success.

Participants are feeling more job-ready following the training. They have improved confidence. They have improved communication and organization skills. I’m really excited about this collaboration, and it is really a model of innovation. We have to try new things. If you do the same thing, you will always get the same result. Trying these new things is something that we can do together.

As you saw in Budget 2017, our government is committed to ongoing education so that the next job is also a better job.

Another key opportunity for us to work together comes from our government’s Budget 2017 commitment to lifelong learning. You’ve heard my story. This is something that I’m passionate about. I really don’t have to tell all of you why it’s so essential that your institutions are often the first choice for people returning to school. People feel comfortable in colleges, and I hear that all the time. They’re comfortable in their school, and they’re comfortable asking tough questions. As a matter of fact, some of the hardest questions I’ve ever received have been at events I’ve participated in at Confederation College, and that’s because, I think, people feel so welcomed in the space of a college. I’m a very strong advocate for the supports that adults need because I do believe that it changes generations.

The reality is that workplaces keep changing. It’s never been more important for workers to keep pace with this change and for educational institutions to do the same. Adults who want to upgrade face unique challenges, and you heard a few in the story that I shared with you about my upgrading. They often have multiple barriers—things that we can see, like children, poverty, demands on time—but there are other commitments that sometimes we can’t see. For older adults, they’re often taking care of both ends, the children and their older, aging parents. If they’re studying full-time or part-time, some of the things that we can offer that will make the biggest difference is that flexibility and the support that they need to get through the challenging schedules that they’ll have when they return to school.

That’s why we’re stepping up to help adults who want to go back to school to improve their outcomes and their children’s outcomes. We’re expanding eligibility for Canada’s Students Grants and Loans for people attending school part-time. We think this is going to help 23,000 people per year extra return to school. It will be especially helpful for women, because women make up more than 60 percent of part-time student loan recipients. And we know that women face additional barriers in terms of accessing education, and often that comes in the space of child care, so we’re expanding eligibility for Canada Student Grants for students with children. We anticipate that four out of five students with children receiving these grants will be women. This will help students to shoulder the costs of child care and other expenses related to having children that can pose a barrier to pursuing post-secondary education.

And, we’ll be putting forward a new three-year pilot project that will test even more approaches to make it easier for adult learners to qualify for Canada Student Loans and Grants.

The last thing we want to see is someone who doesn’t pursue post-secondary education because they can’t afford it.

When I worked in public health, I was introduced to a program that many of you will know called Pathways to Education. One of the things that I learned there was that even just the fear of accumulating debt can prevent someone from pursuing education. We want to make sure that people feel that they have a pathway, that they’re going to have a way to manage their debt. That’s why we’re making sure that people have to make a minimum of at least $25,000 before they’re required to start repaying their debt. This is all to work on that fear that people have around accumulating debt - because people, especially people who are in poverty—and I can speak quite personally—have a very healthy fear of debt.

Our government is also allowing more Canadians looking for work to go back to school to get the training they need, without fear of losing their EI benefits that they need to support themselves and their families. It doesn’t make sense if you’re on EI, you can’t claim it if you’re in school, improving your opportunities to get employment. That makes absolutely no sense. We’re changing that and we’re fixing that.

We’re expanding our Labour Market Transfer Agreements to the provinces to give Canadian families help when they need it the most through job search assistance and training while unemployed.

We’re also going to be reviewing all federal programs for Indigenous students to ensure that they support post-secondary completion, and we’ll collaborate with Indigenous partners to do so.

Reconciliation, I’ve said this time and time again, this is a big project, but it’s a project that the government can’t do alone. It really takes all partners, and we believe that a key component of reconciliation is striving for equality. We can’t have reconciliation if we don’t have equality—equality of opportunity, equality of funding, equality of access. That’s a real focus. I can also tell you that reconciliation is not a straight way forward. There are going to be many bumps in the road, and we’re going to need to draw on each other to make sure that we’re getting it right. More importantly, I think we’re going to need to be talking to Indigenous partners constantly about what’s right for them, rather than designing it unilaterally like in the ways of the past. That’s the kind of work that we’ll be doing together with Indigenous people.

Many of you already play a key role in recruiting and supporting Indigenous students in their pursuit of degrees, diplomas and certificates. For example, I know that Confederation College has been doing phenomenal work in making sure that access is equitable, not just in terms of presence in the community, but so that Indigenous people can access education in their own communities. I think that’s very critical. I want to thank all of you for the continued effort.

The other thing that we’ve heard over and over and over is aligning expectations with employers’ needs. We hear from you and from employers time and time again about that need for alignment. They want students that are coming out of education programs work-ready and trained with the skills employers need. We also hear that from young people on a regular basis. Young people will say that they’ve graduated with a specific degree or a diploma, and now they can’t find opportunities to get experience in their field. We think that it’s very important that students have hands-on experience to match that theoretical. The obvious advantage is ensuring that students can apply knowledge in that very practical way that employers are looking for. But it also helps them gain what I call the softer skills—how to work in an office, how to collaborate with peers, how to report to a manager, how to work on your own personal development, or how to handle a conflict in the workplace. We don’t, think about those skills necessarily as so essential, but they really are. They’re also really hard to gain, sometimes, in an academic setting.

And so, we are expanding access to work-integrated learning by providing wage subsidies to businesses and supporting them into partnering with institutions like all of yours to make sure that co-op programs and opportunities for your students will fit with the programs that you offer. We think it’s essential that students get that hands-on learning for the practical and intangible softer skills. It’ll help your students graduate from your programs with a more well-rounded education, and at the end of the day, it’ll increase their opportunities to land a great job because they’ll have that experience on their resume that so many employers are looking for.

Now, we also know that you need solid data and information to make informed decisions so that you can closely align your training with the changing job market. So you’ll be happy to know that we’re collaborating very closely with the provinces and territories to improve the data that you access.

As you’ve heard our government say, we believe in evidence-based decision-making. It’s really hard to make good decisions without evidence. We’re investing and working with partners to make sure that we’re collecting the data that will help us all collectively make good decisions going into the future.

Investing in people, I believe, is the best down payment on our future. It pays great dividends, and people who are better educated and trained are happier. In fact, a strong middle class means that people have hope for a brighter future for themselves, for their children, and that the social fabric of our society is stronger.

You’ve heard us talk about the middle class over and over and over. And it’s my belief that the middle class is important for social cohesion, for the stability of our country, to make sure that people have hope, to make sure that people feel themselves productive and valued.

My uncle used to say that nothing’s worse than a life lived without purpose. Everybody needs to feel like they have value, and I think what the colleges and universities do is make sure that no matter what pathway it is that you’re choosing, you have value.

I want to thank all very much for the hard work that you do.

Thank you for taking the time to listen to me today.

And I’m very excited about our journey together. Thank you very much.

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