The Ontario government is overhauling its program supporting job seekers following scathing reviews from the auditor general that found Employment Ontario was “not effective” in finding workers full-time work.

Change, experts agree, is needed. How to do it is trickier.

Some in the employment sector say the rapid transformation the government is now undertaking could disrupt services for workers — and could introduce a role for American for-profit organizations.

“I’m not convinced that this will actually deliver superior service and we will end up shedding a lot of people with a lot of great expertise,” said Margaret Eaton, executive director of the Toronto Region Immigrant Employment Council.

“It sounds a bit like Target coming into Canada,” she said of the U.S. retailer’s ill-fated foray north of the border.

Ministry of Labour spokesperson Janet Deline said the current system is “unnecessarily complex and not focused on getting the results job seekers, employers and Ontario’s economy need to grow and succeed.”

She said the changes, which will start to take effect as early as January, would “deliver stronger, locally focused employment and social assistance services that help more people find and keep jobs.”

Currently, Employment Ontario programs are delivered through contracts with hundreds of providers across the province, many of which are community-based non-profits. That, according to a government spending review last year, resulted in high administrative costs that could be reduced through “consolidation.”

Under the new model, Ontario will be divided up into 15 regions — each with its own “systems manager.” The province recently tendered bids for three pilot contracts for that role in Peel, Durham, and Muskoka. The successful bidders will be responsible for deciding how money is spent and distributed in their region.

Qualified bidders include a mix of non-profits, local school boards, and for-profit organizations including multinational employment-service giants like Maximus and ResCare. Deline said the ministry could not comment on who submitted a bid while the process was still active.

While having for-profit players in the sector is not new, a potential role for large multinationals is.

“Will we end up sending taxpayer dollars to the U.S.?” Eaton asked. “Will they be able to deliver that service if they don’t understand our labour market works? What kind of service can they really provide?”

Several years ago, British Columbia began implementing a similar model to the one Ontario is now adopting. Earlier this year, after a bidding process for the province’s new catchment areas, the B.C.-based group Board Voice, which describes itself as a voice for volunteer and community group leaders, wrote to government to express “major concerns” about the impact of the new system.

“Strong working partnerships among multiple community organizations were destroyed in this procurement,” the January letter posted to the organization’s website said.

“Charitable organizations that had been partners ended up pitted against each other, all chasing elusive dollars that in a number of regions will now go to international corporations with no ties in the communities where they will work.”

Deline said Ontario’s changes would be “locally responsive.”

“Transformation will create a more efficient system and (is) not intended as a cost-saving initiative,” she said.

Under the new system, employment supports previously offered separately through Ontario Works and the Ontario Disability Support Program will also be rolled into Employment Ontario’s services.

Pedro Barata, executive director of the Future Skills Centre, said whatever direction the government takes, the services it offers job seekers need to be tailored to clients’ needs, based on hard evidence and create “real outcomes.”

“I think everybody recognizes when it comes to the skills development system right now, change is required.”

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“(Sectors) that we have relied on for generations are all of a sudden undergoing significant change,” he added. “We need to have a skills development system and programs that are going to be just as nimble.”

The auditor general’s 2016 report found that most — in some cases over 60 per cent — of clients who used Employment Ontario services did not find full-time jobs.

“While the Employment Ontario network helped approximately one million Ontarians in 2015/16 ... we agree there is opportunity to transform Ontario’s employment and training system to better meet client need, improve outcomes and ensure our resources are targeted most effectively,” the Ministry of Advanced Education and Skills Development acknowledged at the time.

But a followup report from the auditor general in 2018 found that few of the recommendations made to improve service had actually been implemented.

Oversight of Employment Ontario moved to the Ministry of Labour this year.

Funding for employment support providers will also change under the new system; it will require a greater proportion of resources to be spent on those who face the biggest barriers to finding a job, and will reward programs that successfully place workers in long-term positions.

Eaton said there are long-standing issues with the status quo, including poor incentives for organizations to deliver the most effective service possible.

“Could they have been doing a better job? For sure,” she said. “(But) this is a pretty radical solution to that.”

Many of those organizations, she added, have significant experience and deep ties in their local communities. Now, she said, both staff and job seekers are facing an uncertain future.

“It becomes confusing for clients to know how to get service,” Eaton said.

“I don’t think you can put the blame on one part of the system,” Barata said. “Service providers at the community level have been working extremely hard.”

Ultimately, he said, for any new model to be successful, it must do one thing: “live and breathe the reality that workers and employers are facing.”