According to the key strategies outlined in Vancouver's Greenest City Action Plan, nurturing the development of a Vancouver-based green workforce is essential to its goal of becoming the world's greenest city by 2020.
That belief has prompted the city to form partnerships with the six post-secondary institutions that make their homes in Vancouver.
The collaborative initiative, for which the Vancouver Economic Commission acts as secretariat, intends not only to foster the development of innovative academic programs to better prepare students to enter the green workforce but also to create opportunities for students to work on real-world problems through partnerships with the private sector.
By connecting educators and their students to local industry, the program hopes to encourage students to remain in the community after graduation.
The idea was the focus of the Green Workforce Development Symposium hosted by Vancouver's Campus-City Collaborative. The conference was attended by representatives from each of the city's colleges and universities, as well as by local industry representatives from both product- and process-based sectors that include clean technology, mining, transportation and green building.
It's an idea that holds a lot of appeal for talent hunters like Rob Henderson, executive director of BioTalent Canada, who also attended the symposium.
"You've got a supportive municipal government and you've got a supportive educational infrastructure, so when you're looking for partners or stakeholders, you have two places that can either fill that role or direct you to where they are."
Among the future partners are designers such as those graduating from Emily Carr University of Art + Design.
"We're hoping it creates some leverage for the students," said Bonne Zabolotney, the university's dean of design and dynamic media. In her view, students benefiting from the partnership will be better prepared after graduating to enter the green workforce.
Zabolotney said any industry sector that depends on, for example, a manufacturing or engineering process will have access to students who have gained specific theoretical and practical knowledge in those applications.
The city's 2020 Action Plan projects that two sectors of the economy – green building construction and the supply of green building products – will constitute almost three-quarters of 13,000 green jobs created by 2020 if the plan is fully implemented.
More than 50% of the jobs in those two sectors require training to professional levels, according to the plan's assessment. That translates to a projected increase of around 4,500 jobs in green construction and building products that will require higher education.
At the symposium, talk centred on identifying those areas of the private sector that are currently facing gaps in knowledge and expertise.
"Already, there is a skills mismatch in the general economy, with people without jobs, and jobs without people," said Lee Malleau, CEO of the Vancouver Economic Commission.
"In order to avoid bottlenecks in the supply of a green workforce in the future, many municipalities are working with their post-secondary institutions to develop green workforce development strategies to prepare for a low- carbon future."
According to Malleau, 70% of all green jobs in the economy of the future will require some post-secondary training, and the greatest need will be in the green-building and clean-technology sectors.
The participating educational institutions are aiming at filling that need, and there appears to be no shortage of students who want the training, said Zabolotney.
Yet it gives rise to the question of whether there exists sufficient time to train enough of them to meet the projected demand.
This too is compounded by the nature of some parts of the industry.
"Depending on the product, [the developmental cycle] is long for biotech, typically five to 10 years," said Henderson.
On the question of being able to achieve the goals by the deadline, Zabolotney isn't ready to guess at the answer.
"Our students have only been exposed to these projects in the last six months," she said. "I think it's a little early to speculate." •e
