When the premiers meet Thursday in Niagara-on-the-Lake, jobs and skills will be at the top of the agenda. All governments should agree that a comprehensive skills agenda to help workers is necessary for Canada to remain competitive and for Canadians to feel economically secure.

And that’s why most of Canada’s premiers are disappointed with the federal government’s announcement that it will unilaterally cut the transfers that provinces use to pay for job-training programs.

The programs that the federal government plans to cut — delivered under the Labour Market Agreements — are those that fund training for Canadians who are not eligible for Employment Insurance. These workers are typically the most vulnerable and hard to serve. Many of the programs that could be cut are those that support the essential literacy and numeracy skills that are critical for unemployed Canadians to re-enter the workforce.

Why the federal government has chosen to pick a fight with the provincial governments that run the programs is a mystery. This very same federal government spearheaded these programs and was touting their success until the day it announced the decision to tear up the agreements. The federal announcement also goes against the government’s frequent promises that it will not cut transfers to provinces and will stay out of areas of provincial jurisdiction.

The federal government is proposing to use the $300 million diverted from the Labour Market Agreements to create a new program called the Canada Job Grant, which would pay employers to train workers through educational institutions. Employers would have to kick in one-third of the funds, and provincial governments would likewise have to come up with an additional third.

This would act as a windfall subsidy to employers who already provide the type of training covered by the program — mostly large employers — who could see their training bill fall by two-thirds. But it would probably be too complex and bureaucratic for many small and medium-sized employers to access.

Given that the maximum grant from the federal government would be $5,000 per trainee for short-duration programs, it is hard to see how this would actually help provide workers with the advanced skills they need to take the high-skill jobs where there really are labour shortages. There is simply no evidence to suggest that these small subsidies to large firms would be more effective than the current programs that provinces and communities have been building over the past decade to help unemployed people get jobs.

If the program goes forward, provincial governments will be on the hook for $300 million for this new program, and will have to come up with another $300 million to fund the training programs they currently offer. The federal government, on the other hand, won’t have to come up with any new money because it would fund its share of the program from the cuts it makes to existing transfers to support job training.

The federal government is changing the rules, sending the provinces a bill for $600 million, and not spending a cent of new money on skills training — all the while running ads touting its great new program for the unemployed. It’s not surprising that provinces are miffed.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. The appointment of a new minister, Jason Kenney, provides the federal government with an opportunity to hit the re-set button on the Canada Job Grant.

The federal and provincial governments all agree that Canada needs more and better skills training for unemployed people. No one suggests that every current program is perfect. Most recognize that the federal government has a role to play to strengthen the Canadian economic union and improve the functioning of the labour market. But a unilateral approach, along with cuts to transfers, will hurt, not help the shared goal of a highly skilled workforce and an efficient national labour market.

Nine years ago the premiers met in Niagara, just as they are doing this week, and agreed that a new era of federal-provincial co-operation was necessary for health care. The result was eventually the Canada Health Accord, which provided a decade of shared commitment to improving health care in Canada. Coming out of this week’s meeting, governments should strive for that same level of common cause on Canada’s skills agenda.

Federal and provincial ministers should come together, identify which programs have delivered the best results, and re-negotiate new Labour Market Agreements. Employers could certainly have a role. Canadians should not have their jobs and training caught in the middle of an intergovernmental dispute.

Matthew Mendelsohn is director of the Mowat Centre at the University of Toronto and a former intergovernmental affairs deputy minister in Ontario. The Mowat Centre/Caledon Institute paper The Training Wheels Are Off: A Closer Look at the Canada Job Grant, was released this spring (mowatcentre.ca).

©copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen