Thank you so much. It's so good to be here. I really appreciate the opportunity to address all of you.
My name is Jennifer Flanagan. I am the CEO of Actua, which is a national charity. Thank you for inviting us to talk a bit about how our organization is contributing to Canada's growth and economic competitiveness.
For the past 25 years, Actua and its network of 37 local member organizations have worked to provide essential STEM skills to Canadian youth and to instill in them the confidence to pursue careers in these high-demand fields. Every year, we engage 250,000 youth in 500 communities, reaching every province and territory in the country.
It is very fitting, and in fact an honour, to be able to speak to you here in Whitehorse, where Actua, through our partner, Yukon College, has been working for many years to deliver STEM programming to youth right across the territory.
Actua prioritizes outreach to youth who most often face exclusion from the workforce. This includes indigenous Canadians, girls, newcomers and those facing other socio-economic barriers. In fact, half of our total annual budget is committed to the work that we are doing in partnership with 250 first nations, Inuit and Métis communities.
Key to our success—and in fact what this looks like on the ground, whether it's in downtown Toronto or here in the Yukon—is year-round programming, where teams travel to communities and engage youth outside of the classroom to build the skills that are required for them to fully participate in the workforce of the future.
How does federal government support for Actua help to ensure our economic competitiveness?
By 2020, Canada's STEM workforce will require 220,000 additional workers to meet demand, a workforce gap that, as you know, is only growing. To remain competitive, Canada will need to look for creative approaches and partners that address this challenge—a challenge that is not currently being met by schools and institutions. Our work is filling that critical gap in workforce development: the gap between formal education and on-the-job training. We do this by engaging under-represented youth directly in their communities. We use local instructors to integrate STEM skills learning with personalized intensive and culturally relevant programming that is delivered within the local economic context.
We also use a multisectoral approach to achieve impact. We work with our network members, who are located at colleges and universities, and with our private sector partners, who help us develop new innovative content that builds the skills they are identifying as critical for the future of work. We're proud to work with global and Canadian companies such as Google, GE, Shopify, Suncor, TD and Microsoft, to name just a few.
It is within this context that Actua is seeking $45 million in federal funding over the next five years to allow us to scale our programs to meet the growing demand. This federal investment would be leveraged with $115 million pledged from our corporate sector partners, foundations and our network members.
According to a study conducted by the Conference Board of Canada, a $45-million investment from the federal government in Actua would result in the following benefits. It would lead to $560 million of GDP growth. It would increase government tax revenue by an additional $169 million. It would generate $341 million in new lifetime wages for participants. Also, it would encourage as many as 90,000 additional young Canadians to pursue careers in STEM.
Additionally, research indicates that careers in STEM earn on average 20% more in lifetime earnings than non-STEM careers. For indigenous Canadians, this effect is even more profound. Careers in STEM can increase lifetime earnings by as much as 141% for men and 150% for women.
However, as great as these results may be, we cannot achieve them without the federal government coming to the table. By 2023, at the end of that federal investment, we will have reached 3.6 million Canadians, many of whom would have otherwise slipped through the cracks. Less economic diversity means less competitiveness, and we're already facing serious shortcomings in our competitive ability to prepare Canadian youth for the innovative jobs of the future. We simply cannot afford to leave large parts of the Canadian population out of the future workforce.
As you consider your recommendations to the Government of Canada and the Minister of Finance, we ask that you endorse Actua's $45-million request over five years to support and scale these these programs across the country.
Thank you.