Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
I'm very pleased to be here today. Your committee is tackling one of the single most pressing issues for members of the Canadian chamber and for businesses across the country, which is the skills and labour shortages that are affecting Canada's competitiveness.
Last year we went out to our network of 420 chambers and boards of trade across the country and asked members, as well as our corporate members, what is the single most important issue we should be focusing on in 2012? The issue of skills was the one that was named time after time.
This is a sprawling issue, and it's extremely complex. Canada will need a myriad of tools to address it. Today, given the tightness of time, l want to talk particularly about just one or two of those critical tools.
The most important message l have for you is this: as a country, Canada must be more aggressive in its immigration efforts, and we must move now.
Let me repeat that. Canada must be more aggressive in its immigration efforts. We must move now. We are in competition with many other countries in order to attract the most talented people in the world. We have very little time to deal with labour shortages and the lack of skilled workers. To tell you the truth, I wonder if we have not already missed the boat.
We must move forcefully and attract more of the world to help us build our country now.
Over the years immigration policy has been designed to give Canadians the advantage before immigrants, to avoid disrupting the Canadian workforce. Even today Ottawa wants more EI claimants to consider positions before they're offered to foreign workers. The government wants unemployed workers to be retrained, which is laudable but takes time. However, even if we do a better job of training and tapping into domestic workers, our aging society means we must also rely on immigration.
Chambers across the country are telling me that they're looking at immigration to help them solve the labour shortages. In Alberta recently the Red Deer Chamber of Commerce highlighted how they're turning to Irish immigrants and working with local businesses to recruit new workers. In Saskatchewan I heard a similar story from the Regina Chamber of Commerce. When committee members were in Halifax last month, you also heard that businesses are seeking more immigrants and higher immigration levels.
Time is not on our side. The fact is that Canadian businesses need more employees more quickly than in the past. Last month the government launched important changes to accelerate the processing of requests for temporary foreign workers. Now we need to ensure the right numbers of newcomers can be attracted across all programs. We need a renewed recruiting push by government and private industry. There has never been a better time to attract people to Canada, and businesses simply can't wait.
Training can and will also play a vital role, but we need a new mindset. In Canada when students graduate from high school, college, or university, people often feel that their training or education is done. This is not a sustainable approach for the jobs of the future. Continuous learning cannot be seen as a novelty; it must become part of everyone's career. The world has changed and we need to change with it.
In many businesses training is the last budget item—if it makes the budget—and is often the first item to be cut during tough times. However, training should be seen not as a cost but as an investment that brings significant returns. We need to boost tax supports and information-sharing to ensure continuous learning is part of working life.
The Canadian chamber is currently undertaking our largest consultation with our membership on this single issue. We've organized a dozen round tables with members and others across the country. We've mobilized our network to lead the conversation on how to address this challenge. We're asking for best practices, recommendations, and potential solutions. Later this fall we'll share what we've heard with our members and the public.
Canada's skills and labour shortages are endemic. They constitute a shared national challenge. None of us is solely responsible for this crisis, yet everyone shares the same ambition to address it. As a very first step we need to set goals, one of the first of which must be to open our doors wider to people willing to bring their ideas and talents to Canada to help us build a more prosperous country.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.