Thank you.
There are so many places. Where do I start?
When we are going around looking for labour market information, we are asking employers about what are they going to need. Normally, the qualifications people request are credentials. They label people by the job description.
We need to help employers to break that down into the competencies they need for that job. Sometimes they would say you need an engineer, but they don't need an engineer; they need a technician or a technologist, for one example.
When we're talking about lower-skilled workers, they say they need high school graduation. Sometimes they don't actually need high school graduation for that particular job—which is not to say I don't want to support people to graduate from high school—but let's find out exactly what it is employers are looking for. I think we don't do a good enough job of that.
Then we give them canned curriculum in our programs: “Oh, you need that; then we have just the curriculum for you” That's instead of customizing the curriculum for the employer for what they need in the moment.
I'm all for learning more than what's just needed at the moment, but in order to solve the problem in the short term, let's find out what it is that the employer really needs, rather than talking about certificates. Then let's find out what the gaps are between what they have, what they are able to hire, and what they really need. Then you can fill the gap, rather than enrolling people in a four-year program that they're going to have to go through after they do the pre-training and all of that.
Sometimes it's not necessary, certainly not for our aboriginal people and our new immigrants, since they already have some level of competencies. Let's assess those and then let's fill the gap, rather than putting them through particular programs we already have in place. I think we need to help employers to understand what it is that they are really looking for.
This proxy of using credentials is not serving us. For instance, this company I've been working with has journeyman ironworkers, but when they bring people from different parts of the country or from outside of the country, because they have a journeyman certificate, they are supposed to be able to work up at 300 feet. They might not have ever worked at height. They may not have ever worked in the cold. They may not ever have done that particular weld.
Let's find out exactly what it is that employers are looking for and assess people for what they have, and then fill that gap.