Here is a dispiriting story for any Canadian worried about finding a job, and any business worried about finding skilled workers.

In 2008, Canada’s labour ministers — federal, provincial and territorial — appointed a blue-ribbon panel to come up with ideas to improve the way their departments collect and share data on the country’s workforce.

No one doubted the importance of the panel’s mandate. By helping to match people efficiently with jobs, reliable labour market information is an invaluable — many would say essential — tool to boost productivity and overall economic growth.

After more than a year’s work, the five-member group, headed by former Toronto-Dominion Bank chief economist Don Drummond, submitted 47 recommendations. It estimated the cost of implementing its proposals at little more than $10 million a year, split among the governments.

“Labour market information,” the panel concluded, “can be made a shining example of how Canadian governments can work together to make the Canadian economic union function better to the benefit of all Canadians.”

Four years later, however, the report is gathering dust. Only two of its 47 proposals have been fully implemented. One is a new job-vacancy survey compiled by Statistics Canada. The other is free access to StatsCan’s online database.

As for the rest, Mr. Drummond notes: “We seem no closer to this reality being seized today than we were four years ago.”

The meagre fruits from the Drummond report are emblematic of the obstacles that dog labour market reform in Canada, and thus hamper progress toward an effective national system of skills development.

While many complain about the mismatch between jobs and skills, few have so far been willing to take meaningful action. With a handful of exceptions, all the main players — in business, government and academia — appear reluctant to accept the risks that come with striking out in a bold new direction. Knee-jerk responses to avoid political controversy have invariably trumped thoughtful long-term planning. Little progress has been made in crafting the national (or even provincial) skills development strategy that almost all agree is an essential first step. Inertia rules.

The inaction on the Drummond report highlights another disturbing dimension of the skills debate. There is little point bemoaning a shortage of engineers and pipefitters in Alberta or a surplus of teachers in Nova Scotia without addressing the root causes of the problem. As Harvey Weingarten, president of the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario, puts it: “Blustering about a ‘skills gap’ is neither a sophisticated question nor one that leads readily to an answer.”

The reality is that mismatches between skills and jobs, where they occur, are symptoms of complex and contentious issues involving, among other factors, Canada’s education system, business attitudes towards employee training, federal-provincial relations and even the culture of work. Canadians’ prolonged failure to come to grips with the causes of the problem means that frustration has become the order of the day among all concerned.

Rick Miner, a consultant and former president of Seneca College in Toronto who was also a member of the Drummond panel, says: “Relative to what others do, we’re an embarrassment.” Mr. Weingarten adds: “Every country I know that’s trying to advance and remain competitive and advance the lot of their people concentrates on education and higher education in particular. How is it that we cannot address this problem in the most coherent, effective way possible?”

The depth of the business community’s unhappiness was reflected by Michael Denham, president and senior managing director of Accenture Canada, in a recent speech: “This is a real and serious issue that has the potential to undermine the strength of individual companies — and the broader prosperity of Canada itself.”

Government clearly also senses the enormity of the challenge. On the day he was sworn in as minister of Employment and Social Development in July, Jason Kenney promised via Twitter that he would “work hard to end the paradox of too many people without jobs in an economy that has too many jobs without people.”

Examples of such mismatches are not difficult to find. Too many bright, ambitious youngsters with university degrees are working behind cash registers, as administrative assistants or as unpaid interns. Nova Scotia and Ontario, among others, are struggling to find jobs for droves of unemployed or underemployed teachers. At the same time, businesses complain about insufficient numbers of engineers in Alberta, construction workers in British Columbia and computer experts throughout the country. Women make up only 10 per cent of Canada’s computer science students, many disabled people are working well below their potential, and too many skilled immigrants can find only low-wage work in fast-food outlets or driving cabs.

Little progress has been made in crafting the national (or even provincial) skills development strategy that almost all agree is an essential first step. Inertia rules.

Some of these imbalances are likely to worsen in the years ahead as a result of demographic trends — in particular, the gradual aging of the country’s labour force. According to Statistics Canada and the Conference Board of Canada, the average age of Canadian workers rose from 38.3 years in 1996 to 40.2 in 2006. Yet the influx of young people into many critical occupations has slowed under a combination of corporate cost containment, restrictive union rules and poor planning by universities and colleges, among other factors.

An example that touches many industries is the shortage of truck drivers. The average age of a trucker climbed from 40 years in 1996 to over 44 a decade later, and is almost certainly higher now. Only 12 per cent of Canadian truck drivers are under 30 years old. Many companies struggle to find drivers, and the shortage is worsening as baby-boomers retire and the economy grows.

The same problem is rearing its head in the skilled trades. The pool of journeymen available to train young apprentices is shrinking as experienced plumbers, millwrights, welders and other badly-needed artisans reach retirement age and drop out of the workforce.

On the other side of the equation, demand for highly skilled workers is rising — not just in absolute numbers but as a proportion of the overall workforce.

Canada has been slow to come to grips with the fact that even existing occupations require ever-higher degrees of skill. Jobs that once were open to anyone with a secondary school diploma now demand an apprenticeship, a degree or a professional accreditation. For instance, the job of an auto mechanic has changed dramatically as cars have evolved to include increasingly sophisticated electronic equipment. Indeed, the person once called a ‘mechanic’ is now more often described as a ‘technician’.

Many other jobs once considered relatively straightforward — from elevator repairman to telephone technician — are in the throes of a similar journey up the skills ladder. This phenomenon is not confined to occupations with a technical bent; consider the fact that the Ontario government is currently considering a set of minimum qualifications for condominium managers, an occupation that up to now has had low barriers to entry.

The deputy minister of Employment and Social Development Canada (formerly Human Resources and Skills Development Canada) has estimated that three-quarters of new and replacement jobs will require at least some post-secondary education or equivalent training. British Columbia’s Ministry of Advanced Education and Labour Market Development has put the number even higher, at 80 per cent.

Mr. Miner estimates that without dramatic changes in skills development policies, almost 550,000 Canadian workers will not have the skills needed to fill available jobs in 2016, growing to 1.1 million in 2021. (These figures are in addition to normal unemployment.) At the same time, he says, almost 1.5 million skilled jobs will be unfilled in 2016 due to shortages of trained workers, rising to 2.6 million in 2021 and almost double that number a decade later.

Canada clearly has much work to do in the field of skills development. Deep-seated reforms are urgently needed across a wide swath of the labour market and education system. Success will be measured not by some magic formula that matches available people to available jobs, as the issue has hitherto been framed. Instead, all those involved need to come to grips with a range of profound and, yes, contentious questions. Among them:

Should the private sector play a more active role in Canada’s education system? If so, how?

How can Canadian education be infused with a spirit of entrepreneurship, innovation and accountability?

How can school and university teachers’ performance be measured and improved?

How can students improve their chances of securing a fulfilling and well-paid job after graduation?

How can we further foster a culture that places as much value on an apprenticeship or technical certificate as on a university education?

What can be done, whether in the public or private sector, to produce more useful education and labour market data?

Can tax incentives for training be adjusted to make them more effective in balancing supply and demand, without necessarily costing taxpayers more money?

What can be done to realize the unfulfilled employment potential among groups such as senior citizens, immigrants and disabled people?

Regardless of the shape they take, the answer to these questions will not be easy to implement. But without progress on at least some of these fronts, Canadian businesses will not find the workers they need, Canadian students will not find the jobs they want, and Canada’s economy will not achieve the growth that its citizens have a right to expect.

Bernard Simon is a writer and faculty member in the Global Journalism Program at the Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto. This article is excerpted from Skills development in Canada: So much noise, so little action, a paper published by the Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE).

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