QUEBEC’S BAD HAIR FUTURE.

We ordinary folk see the future dimly, if at all. Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard apparently views it in HD. Somehow he knows that between now and 2024, Quebec’s labour market will need to fill 1,372,200 jobs. Not 1,372,000 but exactly 1,372,200. This he told a gathering of discrimination stakeholders Tuesday — discrimination stakeholders because the meeting originally was to be part of a provincial inquiry into systemic discrimination, a provincewide guilt tour whose launch contributed to the governing Liberals’ thumping in a recent byelection. It has now been retooled as an inquiry into fostering inclusion, especially in the province’s regions.

When governments lose by-elections you know it will cost taxpayers. Though the inclusion tour has barely begun, the premier announced a $15-million, five-point, 13-sub-point plan, including a new strategy for the Ministry of Immigration, Diversity and Inclusion based on a regional focus, acceleration of foreign-credential recognition (how many times over how many years from how many ministers have we heard that one?), pilot projects on “virtual recruitment” (as if Quebec businesses haven’t heard of Skype), and so on and so on.

The estimate of 1,372,200 jobs — only 240,400 of them new, the rest replacements for retirees — is actually from a government organization called Emploi-Québec, which at least provides lots of emplois for economists. It has done a detailed analysis, largely based on how old current workers are, of where and what kinds of jobs will be opening up. (Desjardins has a nice discussion of the numbers in a recent summary of the labour-market situation.) If they tied you to a chair and forced you to make predictions about the labour market, you’d probably produce something similar. But let’s not kid ourselves: People worry about fake news? This is fake future. Wellintended, no doubt, but unlikely to have much to do with whatever reality actually does emerge over the next seven years.

In his remarks, Couillard said he’d heard the “cries of employers” having trouble filling jobs. (everyone has a sob story) Emploi-Québec combined survey and hiring data to figure out which occupations had the highest ratio of difficult-to-fill jobs. “Store shelf-stockers”? No problem. Only one per cent of positions were difficult to fill in 2014. “Counter staff, kitchen help and other supporting staff”? Also no problem: two per cent. “Programmers and developers”? Bigger problem, as you might expect: 15 per cent. Biggest problem of all? Barbers and hairdressers. The ratio of hard-to-fill positions to positions actually filled was 58 per cent. Mind you, barbers and hairdressers were only one-tenth of one per cent of all Quebecers hired in 2014, so the crisis is not quite existential.

OK, so barbers and hairdressers are retiring in appreciable numbers and salons are having trouble finding replacements. Is this really a job for the premier? Or even the ministry? Not if you have a well-functioning labour market, and there’s no reason, in a nominally capitalist society, that we shouldn’t have. What’s a price system for? If there are shortages, employers need to look harder for workers. (In the Emploi-Québec study, 13 per cent of employers said they did.) They may even have to offer higher wages (though only 12 per cent said they did that).

Emploi-Québec has a handy website with detailed descriptions of hundreds of different jobs. Helpful information for would-be barbers includes: “Work activities are performed near the worker… Colour discrimination is relevant in the performance of the work… Work activities involve co-ordination of upper limbs … (and) … handling loads up to 5 kg.” The main page for barbers indicates that a two- or three-year junior college program is often required but that, uncharacteristically for Quebec, which insists on credentials for almost everything else, “trade certification for hairstylists” is voluntary. Employers having trouble finding recruits could relax the requirements. In provinces where certification is mandatory — Nova Scotia, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta — governments could reduce any shortages by doing the same.

By contrast, the premier makes it sound as if salon operators, instead of being entrepreneurial and taking action to solve their own staffing problems, should run first to the new regional office of Immigration, Diversity and Inclusion and arrange for the immigration of hairstylists from other French-speaking areas of the world (Berber barbers?) and their assimilation into rural Quebec, where the demographic decline is most precipitous and, so far, the resistance to people with unfamiliar habits most acute.

It’s nice to see the premier focused on real problems rather than whether Quebecers greet each other with “Bonjour” or the culturally genocidal “Bonjour-Hi.” But it would be better if he found a problem where government could actually do something useful. Montreal’s punitive 63-per-cent tax on new business investment could be a start.

SALONS ARE HAVING TROUBLE FINDING REPLACEMENTS. IS THIS REALLY A JOB FOR THE PREMIER?