Thank you so much, Mr. Chair and members. Thank you for the introductions too, and the chance to be here to talk about the issues you're dealing with.
I am going to talk about five trends, namely, shifting economic powers, changing demographics, growth of knowledge, labour market mismatches, and the changing nature of work.
I will go through my slides fairly quickly so that I can cover the five trends in five minutes.
The first trend is the shifting economic powers in the world. Goldman Sachs has predicted that by the year 2050, China will be the number one economic power in terms of GDP, the U.S. number two, and India number three. Canada will slip in a sense, from number 10 to number 16, somewhere between Vietnam and the Philippines. I say “slip in a sense” because it won't necessarily slip; it's that the other powers will become stronger.
The relevance of that in terms of human capital is that it may affect the flow of human capital—not only financial capital, but human capital—as people may find certain countries less attractive than they do today.
The second trend is changing demographics. You are well aware of the aging population in Canada. There are some figures here comparing Canada to some of the other countries. Interestingly, it is the aboriginal population in Canada that is the youngest. I've got some figures to demonstrate that the median age of the aboriginal population is presently about 26.5, which is considerably less than the median age of 39.7 for the rest of the population.
The third trend that is interesting for human resource issues is the growth in knowledge. There is a projection that 60% of kids currently in kindergarten will work in jobs that do not currently exist. We are educating young people and kids for jobs that don't exist. That is part of the challenge ahead of us.
In terms of the growth in knowledge, there's an estimate that somewhere between 65% and 81% of young people and workers in the future will require post-secondary education, including university, college, and apprenticeship. We are essentially expecting the next generation to be both generalists and specialists: to have a fair amount of knowledge about a lot of different things, and at the same time be specialists as we specialize knowledge in a number of different areas.
Trend number four, which you are certainly well aware of, is the labour market mismatch. Dr. Rick Miner, whom you know, has talked about people without jobs and jobs without people. I've listed for you a number of the shortages that are projected for the next decade in their sectors of the economy. How did we get to this point? Certainly aging population is a major part of it, along with growth of the economy, rapidly changing technical requirements, a high level of issues with regard to adult literacy, and the high unemployment level among aboriginal people.
Some of the solutions to better align supply and demand are higher levels of literacy; workforce growth through immigration, which is a part of the solution; including aboriginal peoples more, and focusing more on their education attainment and job attainment; and the inclusion in the workplace of people with disabilities, older workers, and women in non-traditional occupations.
To go about this, we need a national skills strategy. By that I mean a skills strategy that involves all levels of governments, business, the education system across the country, and a number of other stakeholders.
The last trend that I want to mention is the changing nature of work. Career paths are changing by necessity because long-term jobs are hard to find or because upscaling becomes essential or both. The next slide, a brilliant slide by Professor Sylvain Bourdon of the Université de Sherbrooke, demonstrates through these three bars the changing nature of work.
In the first one, the traditional model, people were educated for about 20 years, worked for about 40 years, and then retired.
In the second model, which he has called the lengthened youth transition, people are educated for about 20 years, then for a period of another five or 10 years go back and forth through education and training and back through the work world. Then they get a steady job, work for another 30 years, and retire.
The third model is what he has called the lifelong learning model. This model has both positives and negatives to it. It shows people having a series of jobs that change on a regular basis. They transfer between jobs and training, periods of unemployment, and then periods when they do a bit of both; they may have unemployment and training at the same time, or work and training at the same time. The positives are that people engage in lifelong learning; the negatives are that it is increasingly difficult for people to have both long-term employment and long-term full-time employment.
Some of this happens through necessity: people often have to piece together two or three jobs, all or most of which are not very long term. Contract work, short-term work, is becoming more the norm. This is unsettling both for individuals and for the economy. It is harder for people in uncertain jobs to buy houses, cars, or other major purchases.
Those cover the five tendencies. Let me close with a couple of comments.
I work with the Alliance of Sector Councils, which is an alliance of some 30 organizations that deal with skills development in specific areas of the economy. Some of those were demonstrated in the two slides in which I showed you the skills shortages that exist. Councils deal with a number of issues, with labour market information being the core of what sector councils do. They cover issues such as aboriginal engagement, occupational standards, working with internationally trained workers, and workplace learning.
The rest of the slides, which I won't go through at this time, Mr. Chair, because of time constraints, cover some of the interesting and innovative solutions that various sector councils are involved in. The last slide I have is simply a listing of all the councils with their logos.
There are other important trends out there. One of the trends that I haven't talked about today is certainly the issue around literacy, and I'm very pleased that my colleague today will be talking about that in more detail. She certainly has a lot more expertise and knowledge of the issue than I do.
That covers my comments. Thank you, Mr. Chair.