Business, government, labour gather to identify challenges, brainstorm solutions
Looking to identify Canada’s evolving skills challenges and propose practical solutions, a group of about 20 business, labour and policy leaders from across the country assembled in Toronto on Sept. 15. The meeting was one of several planned to look at the most critical workforce challenges of the near and long-term future.
“The idea here is to provide strategic advice to government about the skills requirements for the Canadian economy as we recover from a recession, and then how do we ensure we have the appropriate skills and education and skills development in place in the future, as well,” said Jayson Myers, president and CEO of Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters and co-chair of the roundtable.
Organized by the Centre for Workplace Skills, the Roundtable on Workforce Skills was also co-chaired by Ken Georgetti, president of the Canadian Labour Congress, and Liseanne Forand, senior associate deputy minister of Human Resources and Skills Development Canada (HRSDC). A keynote address was delivered by Diane Finlay, minister of HRSDC.
The first meeting involved identifying the strategic issues and putting together a work agenda, said Myers. Some of the issues identified at the first meeting included: education; the integration of communities and new immigrants into the workforce; Aboriginal communities; the importance of ensuring essential skills and the changing nature of those skills; the impacts of new technology on skills requirements; and how to ensure a more productive workforce.
There’s plenty of changes on the horizon, as Canada goes through changes in demographics, technology and markets, and shifts into a more digital-based economy, said Myers.
“That has implications not just for what we’re looking for in terms of the skills requirements but also the nature of learning itself, which is going to be changing, already has changed, as a result of new information technologies, new communications technologies.”
The meeting was a success just by having labour at the table, said John Hugh Edwards, a senior researcher in social and economic policy at the Canadian Labour Congress.
“In dealing with key labour market issues, we need to get the key labour market partners to the table,” he said, referring to government, employers and workers. “Over the last decade or so, there has been a diminishing of the kind of tri-partite discussions that need to take place.”
The roundtable is important for Canadian manufacturers and exporters not only for competitiveness and productivity, but the ability of businesses to achieve new results through the workforce, said Myers. That means looking at whether people in an organization can mobilize themselves.
“When we’re talking about our ability to respond to the new economic conditions, some of the big challenges that lie ahead of us, they’re around demographic changes, environmental changes, going after new markets, new business opportunities, responding to technology — all of this goes way beyond an issue of skills. It’s also the capabilities of the workforce itself, the competencies of people in an organization to change.”
The trade unions are willing to play their part in developing a culture of training in the workplace, said Edwards.
“One of the key pieces of that is that we have a skilled, well-trained workforce,” which will increase innovation and productivity, he said.
The next step will be to develop research and a work plan, said Myers, so the roundtable will come up with action plans, things that can be done on the policy side, but also workplace training best practices that can be developed by industry and labour groups.
“The idea here is to go beyond just simply talking about the issues. If that’s all we’re doing, then it’s yet another report and that’s certainly not what we’re looking at here. What we really want to do is focus on what can be done, and this roundtable is also providing a way of being able to co-ordinate efforts here and bring together business and labour and government, because it’s that partnership that’s necessary here.”
