Employers say more needed to address looming skills shortage,
Employers happy but Quebec balks at participating
Groups representing Canadian employers and colleges said they welcome the Canada Job Grant, Ottawa’s $500-million-a-year solution to the country’s skills shortage.
But they also say that more needs to be done to address the looming skills shortage in Canada.
And the joint federal-provincial-employer plan had already hit a major snag Friday, when the Quebec government said it refuses to participate.
Many employers welcome the jobgrant plan, which will require them to match the $5,000 per trainee that Ottawa is committing.
“I think most of them are very interested in it,” said Jim Burpee, president and chief executive officer of the Canadian Electricity Association.
Utility operators are facing a wave of retirements in the next decade, whether in engineering, maintenance and construction, he noted, while too few young people are opting to learn these trades. Much more needs to be done to ensure that skill shortages do not choke economic growth, the Canadian Council of Chief Executives said in a statement Friday.
“Finance Minister Jim Flaherty has put his finger squarely on the problem: far too many well-paid jobs are going unfilled because employers can’t find people with the right skills,” the council’s president and chief executive officer, John Manley, said.
“What Canada needs now is a comprehensive strategy to better align education and training with the skills employers need.”
The job grant was one of the centrepieces of Ottawa’s federal budget on Thursday.
The program would allow businesses to apply for a $5,000 federal grant to train an unemployed or underemployed Canadian for an existing or better job.
Under the plan, both employers and the provinces and territories would be required to match the funding, for a total of up to $15,000 per employee.
But the provinces’ participation is far from assured.
Indeed, Ottawa’s share of the funds will come out of money it currently transfers to the provinces under Labour Market Agreements that expire in 2014.
There is provincial concern that they could not only lose those funds but be expected to come up with more of its own to match the job grant.
“There’s no question” some provincial programs may disappear under the new federal plan, Ontario’s minister for training, colleges and universities, Brad Duguid, told The Canadian Press on Friday.
The province currently receives $194 million a year from Ottawa.
Duguid and Ontario Finance Minister Charles Sousa said the province is willing to talk to Ottawa about the plan.
Quebec, which won jurisdiction over labour training after an independence vote in 1995, said it is not.
“We’re asking for Quebec to be excused from this federal program,” Labour Minister Agnes Maltais told The Canadian Press. “We refuse to go 15 years backward.” A non-profit organization that works with unemployed youth said it was pleased to see the federal government make jobs and skills training a priority in the budget. “I’m very glad that message is getting through to our government,” said Nancy Schaeffer, executive director of Youth Employment Ser- vices in Toronto. But very little in the budget is aimed specifically at young people, Schaeffer said. “We’ve got almost a 17 per cent unemployment rate for youth,” she said. “And in Toronto it’s much higher. It’s way too high. Young people are getting very discouraged An association of colleges and ad- vanced research institutes said its hopes the grant will encourage more Canadians to upgrade their skills.
“Anything that drives business investment in training is a good thing,” said Nobina Robinson, chief executive officer of Polytechnics Canada. “But there are miles to go. It’s not something that’s happening tomorrow.”