The global talent pools swim meet is well underway, and Team Canada is trailing badly behind offshore competition.
The home side’s game plan is weak and shopworn; in B.C.’s case it’s reliant in large part on being another pretty face in a field of far less appealing places to live.
That might have worked well in the past, but it’s not enough any more, and Ottawa knows it. Retooling skills training programs is a key part of the federal government’s 2013-14 budget.
Talent has become increasingly mobile and now goes where the dollars make the most sense when balanced with the host region’s standard of living.
That goes double for companies. And without companies, the best place to live in the world geographically is not going to be much fun if it doesn’t have an economy to support it.
In Metro Vancouver, cultivating local talent is running into some serious roadblocks.
They include an education system that’s turning out too many job skills the marketplace doesn’t need. Throw in a lack of initiative from workforce entrants to move where the jobs are, and you have a recipe for serious demographic human resources deficit disorder.
An estimated 30% of businesses in Canada now face skilled labour shortages. Yet the country’s unemployment rate continues to hover around 7%.
Hardly a day passes now without pleas from some sector of the economy for people. The right people; those with practical skills; those who will show up on time.
Among the most recent: truck drivers. A Conference Board of Canada report noted that tens of thousands are approaching retirement and too few young people and immigrants are entering the truck-driving field to refill that industry’s talent pool. Considering that most products in North America are moved via long-haul truckers, that deficit could put a severe crimp in the supply chain. That means higher prices, less inventory and a weaker economy.
So if the local population is not up to the task, we’ll need to look abroad. But, as noted in the truck-driving example, the current population of immigrants is none too keen on entering that field either.
So aside from failing to outfit residents with the right workplace skills, Team Canada is not hitting the mark with its talent cultivation via the free agent market.
Good thing then that immigration overhaul is in the wind on a number of fronts.
For example, some immigration programs are being modified; others are set to be introduced. They range from federal skilled trades and Canada experience classes of immigration to new startup visa and expression-of-interest programs.
Jim Flaherty’s March 21 budget also outlined some intentions to rethink the temporary foreign worker program, and Ottawa’s new Canada Job Grant initiative is aimed at training more Canadians to meet specific job market needs.
As of January, federal skilled trades and Canada experience classes have been adjusted to give the federal government greater flexibility to target needed skills quicker when the marketplace demands it and make it easier for desired applicants to enter the country.
The new startup visa program requires applicants to have a business plan that has backing from a private investor or incubator in Canada. So it’s focused on immigrants bringing viable business plans to the country.
The expression-of-interest program, meanwhile, will allow immigrants to post in a government pool expressions of interest in permanent residency that will be ranked and provided to employers. The Workopolis-style immigration program is scheduled to come into effect in 2014-15.
The challenge with all of these programs, however, is measuring how well they’re filling the needs of Canada’s job market and building the country and how well they’re setting up immigrants to succeed in this country.
Continuing to import temporary foreign workers to fill short-term needs rather than filling them from within is a poor long-term game plan.
Besides, major sources of immigrants like China are facing their own human resources challenges. The country’s one-child policy has set the stage for that.
As pointed out in Ryan Berlin’s recent Statistically Significant column (“Economic growth requires deft demographic dance” – issue 1220; March 12-18), the working-age (15 to 59) population in China declined by 3.45 million last year.
As big a challenge as it is to rewire education aspirations on the home front, a bigger challenge is convincing companies to set up shop in the province and keeping those that are here. Nice place, sure, but it’s expensive to do business here, and the workforce does not appear to be much interested in building the economy.
As Corvus CEO Brent Perry said in a recent Business in Vancouver story: “If I knew in 2010 what I know now, I probably would have started the company in another city, even outside of Canada. We chose Vancouver because we wanted to live here, but … I’m paying a heavy price for the quality of life that Vancouver represents.”
A lot of companies will soon not be willing to pay that price. That’s when the losses for Team Canada’s West Coast contingent will really start adding up. •
