Anti-poverty groups are questioning the Ford government’s decision to hire foreign companies to run pilot projects aimed at helping Ontario job seekers, including those on social assistance, find work.

They say similar experiments to reform employment services in the United Kingdom and Australia did not lead to better outcomes for people on social assistance and should not be repeated here.

“We don’t understand why the Ford government is embracing a model that seems to have failed everywhere else it has been tried and left a trail of broken lives,” said Tom Cooper of the Hamilton Roundtable for Poverty Reduction.

The pilot projects were announced last year as part of an overhaul of Employment Ontario after scathing reviews by the auditor general found most people were not finding full-time work.

Currently, municipalities are responsible for helping people on social assistance find jobs while Employment Ontario helps everyone else. Together they contract with hundreds of local employment agencies, including many community-based non-profits.

A 2018 review concluded the system’s high administrative costs could be cut through consolidation, prompting the government’s plan to divide Ontario into 15 regions — each with its own publicly-tendered “systems manager.”

Last fall, the province tendered bids for three pilot contracts for that role in Peel, Hamilton and Muskoka. On Feb. 14, the labour ministry, which is overseeing the reforms, announced that a U.S.-based non-profit and a private Australian multinational were among the successful bidders, which will be responsible for deciding how money is spent in the three regions.

“At the ground level, things will work better, move faster,” Labour Minister Monte McNaughton said in a news release.

Social Services Minister Todd Smith said the reforms are part of the Ford government’s overhaul of social assistance.

“We are rethinking ways our government assists people, including those on social assistance and people with disabilities who are looking for employment opportunities,” Smith said in the release.

Fedcap, a U.S. based non-profit employment services provider that has worked in the U.K., was selected as the service system manager for Hamilton-Niagara. It is partnering with several current Employment Ontario and social service providers including Community Living Toronto, Operation Springboard and the Canadian Council on Rehabilitation and Work.

Fleming College, with campuses in Peterborough, Haliburton and Cobourg and a track record of helping 3,000 job seekers annually, was chosen as system manager for the Muskoka-Kawarthas region.

And WCG, a Canadian subsidiary of APM Group, an Australian private sector company that provides employment, health and rehabilitation services in 10 countries, was selected as the system manager for Peel.

The Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO), which represents almost all municipalities outside Toronto, said it was “disappointed” none of their members were chosen as “systems managers” for the trial.

“There are still a lot of unanswered questions,” said Brian Rosborough, AMO executive director.

“Going forward, AMO will be looking for a smooth transition for people who receive these important services, and fair treatment for municipal employees, who are dedicated to helping people in their communities,” he said in a statement.

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Catherine Fife, NDP critic for jobs and economic growth, said municipal governments know their clients and understand the local job market.

“Hiring multinational firms owned by Australian and American companies to navigate local Ontario job markets is a recipe for failure,” she said.

According to the Maytree Foundation, which released a research report on the changes last month, both U.K. and Australian efforts have been largely unsuccessful.

“In Australia, the country’s fully privatized employment and training program — Jobactive — was the subject of a Senate inquiry in 2019,” said Garima Talwar Kapoor, the report’s author.

“The program was not leading to improved outcomes for recipients, and saw many clients cycle on and off support, as the program did not reflect the precarity in the labour market the job seekers were facing,” she wrote.

A similar program introduced in 2011 in the U.K. also struggled to reach its goals and was ultimately cancelled in 2017, added Kapoor, Maytree’s policy and research director.

“Incentives encouraged program providers to only serve clients closest to the labour market, while largely neglecting those in need of greater support,” she noted.

Although she acknowledged Fleming College is a public sector entity, she said it was unfortunate that no municipality currently doing the job was chosen to pilot the new model as a comparison.

Pedro Barata, executive director of Future Skills Centre, a new institute focused on helping Canadians transition in a fast-changing labour market, said Employment Ontario reforms are “long overdue.”

“But there are no simple and neat and tidy solutions to what are some deep barriers that people are facing,” he said in an interview.

Although he would not comment on the successful bidders for the pilot projects, he said it will be “crucial” to ensure they are properly evaluated.

“Let’s make sure evidence is driving our decisions,” he said. “We need to be committed to taking a step back and asking how are we doing, what are we learning and what kind of calibration do we need to make?”

With files from Sara Mojtehedzadeh

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