The cost of learning new jobs should decrease slightly for Canadians.
The Liberal budget proposes an annual $250 refundable tax credit, accumulating over time, to allow workers to offset the costs of acquiring skills for a new job. The plan, to cost $710 million over the next five years, would be available to workers earning between $10,000 and $150,000 a year.
The tax credit is part of $4.6 billion over five years earmarked to help more Canadians afford and access skills training to keep up with the rapidly evolving workforce.
Finance Minister Bill Morneau said the investments will make “an enormous difference for people” worrying about having the skills needed for tomorrow.
“The Canada Training Benefit will allow people to have more time, have the ability in that more time to continue to provide for their family and also to pay for training courses,” Morneau said.
Local reaction
Nan McFadgen, CUPE Nova Scotia president and a vice-president at large with the Nova Scotia Federation of Labour, isn’t convinced.
“This did miss the mark, most definitely,” McFadgen told The Chronicle Herald in an interview from Saskatoon, Sask., where she is attending a weeklong CUPE bargaining conference.
The budget document says the credit is expected to be launched in late 2020 — a year after this fall’s federal election — and will apply against the cost of programs at eligible universities, colleges and institutions.
“If we had a perfect world, I’d much rather see them reduce the cost of tuition and other fees up front so that the low income and unemployed can actually access training,” McFadgen said.
McFadgen said the the tax credit does not provide much support for the unemployed or the precariously employed who are tied to an employer but don’t have regular shifts, a pension plan and often work without benefits as they gain hours only when other employees call in sick.
“If you have a job, lucky you,” McFadgen said. “But if you’re unemployed or precariously employed, you need to be making $10,000 a year and you have to pay half the cost up front. You have to pay half the cost up front and then you have to wait until income tax time to get the rest. ... It’s like they (politicians) live in a different world. The struggles that regular people have every day, they don’t get it.”
Nova Scotia Premier Stephen McNeil said the skills training program is a good idea.
“The job programs that we saw, particularly toward students, putting them in the workforce, are very similar to graduate opportunity programs that we’ve started here so hopefully that will be a case that we can build on,” McNeil told The Chronicle Herald.
“Whether you took a new job or in an existing job, that tax credit would be available to you. If you went to work or you needed to improve your skills, that would still be available to you and your new employer.”
EI changes
The federal government also plans to create a new employment insurance benefit for those who take time off from work to attend a training program, up to a maximum of 55 per cent of earnings. That program carries a price tag of $1.04 billion over five years.
Only those who qualify for employment insurance would be eligible for the four weeks of leave, redeemable within a four-year period. It would also require the federal government to negotiate labour code changes with provinces whose jurisdictions cover approximately 90 per cent of Canadian workers.
The measure means workers have a right to training before they lose their job, but several details still need to be worked out, said Hassan Yussuff, president of the Canadian Labour Congress.
“The federal government is going to have to really listen to what people are going to have to tell them about how they envision impediments in terms of a good program that could prevent them from even getting access to it,” said Yussuff.
In particular, he said, it could be a hard sell to convince those living paycheque to paycheque of the importance of paying up front for future job training.
McFadgen said the training measures let the employer off the hook.
“If you’re employed and the employer wants you to train, why aren’t they in this mix,” McFadgen said.
“If you think your job is on the horizon for a cut and you say to yourself, ‘I’d like to educate myself and move on,’ that’s great. That’s not a bad thing. But when you think about the unemployed and the precariously employed, they really are the ones that we should be reaching out to. The EI training once again leaves out our precariously employed. It’s hard to get 600 hours when you are picking up different shifts at different jobs.”
She said it would be great for casual workers to have access to training but they have to accumulate 600 hours of work in a year to even benefit from the EI proposal.
Government officials have worked behind the scenes for years on ways to help Canadians prepare for shifts in the so-called “gig” economy, marked by fewer lifelong careers and more short-term jobs. There are also concerns that automation will affect more than half of Canadians’ jobs in the next two decades, and federal officials aren’t sure the disruption will create enough jobs to offset losses.
A new federally backed centre to test new training programs and help workers navigate career choices opened earlier this year, and is expected to work in tandem with the additional spending the Liberals unveiled in the 2019 budget.
“The knowledge economy requires us to think about talent and I’m glad that the federal government is focusing on the tools and ways to help Canadians really overcome challenges,” said Mohamed Lachemi, president of Ryerson University where the Future Skills Centre is housed.
“We have to adapt to new realities.”
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