BC Business
politics | BCBusinessJason Kenney, Minister of Employment and Social Development
“We’re now on the cusp of a big demographic time bomb,” federal Employment Minister Jason Kenney warned in a fiery keynote address at the inaugural B.C. Business Summit Wednesday, imploring the crowd of industry leaders and government officials to take fast action against a growing skilled-labour shortage that is already cutting into economic growth. “Next year will be the first year in Canada’s labour market where more people will leave the labour market than enter it,” he said. B.C. has plans to create a massive new industry exporting liquefied natural gas (LNG) overseas, and to expand its transportation infrastructure to meet foreign demand for the province’s natural resources. But Kenney warned there aren’t enough workers with the proper skills to fulfill these ambitions, and that education is the only solution. Immigration levels cannot prudently be raised enough to meet the labour demand, he said. And the controversial Temporary Foreign Worker program “must not, cannot be a first option. It must always be a last option for employers.” Kenney bluntly chastised employers for not doing their part in training workers. “We are not impressed by the level of investment by Canadian employers on skills training,” he said. “According to the OECD [Organisation for Economic Co-operation and development], Canadian governments spend more than the public sector in any other developed economy on education and skills training, but Canadian employers are at the bottom of the OECD.” B.C.’s 11 public colleges are on the forefront of skills training. The colleges are the gateway to careers in the trades, and operate in the resource-based communities where those skills are in the highest demand. “We have been tasked with a huge undertaking,” Northwest Community College president Denise Henning said at Wednesday’s conference at the Vancouver Convention Centre. Yet despite ambitions to expand resource exports, the provincial government announced in February it would cut $46 million from the Ministry of Advanced Education, Innovation and Technology over the next three years. B.C.’s colleges receive the bulk of their funding from that budget. Employers and the colleges are turning to each other looking for novel solutions. Mining giant Teck Resources Ltd. recently partnered with Okanagan College to import heavy duty mechanics from Jamaica and have them trained on site. “Teck goes and gets the people, brings them over from Jamaica,” explained the college’s president, Jim Hamilton at Wednesday’s event. “They are all people who have experience in the field. We provide the gap training.” The mechanics can then challenge for Red Seal journeyman certification, and have the option of applying to become Canadian permanent residents. The Jamaican recruits are sought-after because they begin their training with more advanced skills than fresh-faced locals who are just beginning the apprenticeships. While this solution is a win-win-win situation for the employer, the college, and the trainees, this might not fit in with Kenney’s stated goals: “We are committed to fixing the skills mismatch in Canada where we have too many Canadians without jobs and too many jobs without Canadians.