Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.
BioTalent Canada is pleased to be included in your discussion here today.
We're addressing an issue that is very pertinent to the biotech sector, or the bio-economy as we like to call it, which includes industries that stretch from health, medicine, and pharmaceutical manufacturing, to agriculture, medical device, nanotechnology, and even food processing.
While the bio-economy is growing rapidly in areas like agrifood and sustainable development technology, the huge pharmaceutical industry remains a massive contributor to the Canadian economy but is facing huge economic challenges.
Nonetheless, recent estimates conclude that the bio-economy contributes no less than $86.5 billion, or 7%, to the total of Canada's gross domestic product.
BioTalent Canada is a national not-for-profit sector council currently funded primarily by HRSDC and led by a volunteer board of industry leaders. We provide skills development and human resource information and tools for job seekers and employers in the bio-economy.
Like many industry verticals, labour market research has shown that Canada's bio-economy companies continue to need skilled, job-ready people. Due to the vastness of the sector, the skills that are in demand range from the highly specialized to those used in lower-skilled jobs.
Through commissioning our own research, we have conducted the only national studies in Canada that are exclusive to human resource issues in biotechnology. In our most recent labour market surveys, we learned that more than 80% of biotech companies in Canada are small to medium enterprises, which means that most of their time is spent innovating, and there is often no dedicated human resources department. Research also indicated that 34.4% of the companies were currently facing skills shortages, and 32.5% had active vacant positions to fill.
In turn, BioTalent Canada identified potential talent pools, including persons with disabilities, aboriginals, internationally educated professionals, new graduates, and retired and retiring workers. While dealing with labour gaps directly affecting persons with disabilities is not BioTalent Canada's specific mandate, of those companies surveyed, research indicated that only 21.9% have hired persons with disabilities. In other words, persons with disabilities is a labour pool whose full potential is not currently being realized in Canada's bio-economy.
BioTalent Canada has developed tools and techniques to bridge the skills gaps identified by those labour market surveys. Our 2009 study, “Generating opportunity”, showed a need in the biomanufacturing sector that was specific to skills gaps in positions that required less training.
The problem was two-fold. First, it was found that industry could not find people with the skills they require, and secondly, skills from potential candidates were not recognized as being relevant to the biotech field. Our solution to this was the successful launch of our biomanufacturing skills transfer program, which kicked off in February 2012.
We found that the area we referred to as biomanufacturing—that is, manufacturing related to biomedical devices, agricultural biotech, bioenergy, food processing, nutraceuticals, and pharmaceuticals—lacked skilled workers. In the companies surveyed, 30% of the biomanufacturing positions were vacant. Also, in the recent downturn, we knew there was an available labour pool of unemployed and displaced traditional manufacturing workers in southwestern Ontario region, particularly Kitchener and Waterloo.
Our biomanufacturing program identifies, recognizes, and matches traditional manufacturing skills with the desired biomanufacturing skills. BioTalent Canada then helps these workers connect with industry. Our goal is to transfer 100 unemployed manufacturing workers into jobs in biomanufacturing by the end of 2012.
What has worked best for us is to try to look at skills gaps with a pragmatic approach. For the biomanufacturing skills gap, for example, we took an entirely new approach and looked at areas of the economy where economic conditions resulted in a glut of certain skills—in this case, manufacturing. Then we mapped the deficiencies necessary for those workers to transition into the bio-economy—in this case, biomanufacturing. This skills recognition is a unique approach to addressing competency gaps and a departure from the credential recognition commonly applied in other industries.
From a governmental perspective, with federal funding being cut from all sector councils in 2013, the federal government has effectively put the responsibility for sector skills assessment and corrections squarely in the hands of private industry. While we're working toward the transition, it is quite possible that there will be no national organization like BioTalent Canada to act as the skill-set watchdog for the national bio-economy. There's a real risk that there will be no national vision on sector skills in the future, and no watchdog to ensure Canada's approach remains consistent and competitive with the skills approaches implemented in other countries in the international sector.
This abrogation of sector skills responsibility could pose a real risk to Canada's continued competitiveness for internationally educated immigrants, and for investment in human capital to drive the robust Canadian bio-economy.
Thank you.
