Thank you very much.
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you very much for the invitation to comment on the issue of skills gaps.
My name is Ken Georgetti. I'm the president of the Canadian Labour Congress. I am also a steamfitter—or a pipefitter—by training.
Before addressing the issue of the skills gap, though, I think we need to define what we mean. The most recent information we have from the labour force survey and the job vacancy survey tells us that there are currently over five unemployed workers for every available job in the country. Given this information, it's clear that our major problem in the job market is still unemployment.
While some employers in some sectors in some geographic regions may have difficulty filling some specific vacancies in particular occupations, Human Resources and Skills Development Canada has stated in its labour market projections up to 2015 that we will be facing no sustained generalized labour shortages. With five unemployed workers for every job available, our main problem remains unemployment—pure and simple.
This is not to say, though, that any gap between available jobs and workers who are qualified to do them is acceptable. It's not.
But let me assure you that if unemployed workers had the means to identify where the jobs were and then had access to training required to do those jobs, they'd jump at the chance. Quite simply, if we find there is a shortage of workers with the skills required to fill a specific job, the answer is to train those workers. What we may have is what we think of as an opportunity gap rather than a skills gap.
If workers can't access affordable and timely training for available jobs, it's an opportunity lost for the worker, for the employer, and indeed for the health of the economy. In a report prepared for the G-20 just a couple of years ago, in 2010, it was estimated that a 1% increase in training days leads to a 3% increase in productivity. Further, the share of the productivity growth attributable to training is around 16%.
Unfortunately, the participation of workers in work-related training in Canada has fallen below the rates for workers in many industrialized countries, according to the OECD. In fact, we have one of the poorest performances in the G-20. At the same time that Canadian corporations are not meeting the level of workforce training being done by their competitors and our trading partners, the Governor of the Bank of Canada confirms what we've been saying for a long time: that corporations are hoarding cash and sitting on half a trillion dollars of what he called “dead money”. Clearly, it's just a matter of priorities for how that money gets deployed and spent.
Given the current levels of unemployment, the unsustainably high unemployment rates for our young people, and the continuing low participation rates of women, aboriginal people, people with disabilities, and others in the labour market, we would recommend that efforts to overcome specific and potential skills gaps begin with training our people for the available jobs today.
In part, this will need, first of all, an early identification of emerging skill shortages through sophisticated and timely labour market information. Employers will need information on their current and future skills needs. Workers will need easily accessible information on job trends in the market. A rapid response to emerging skills shortages in specific jurisdictions would include identifying training needs and then mobilizing the resources to meet those needs.
Also, we need to identify where training happens and create the environment for this training to be improved and enhanced. In general, we can identify the public school system, community colleges, other post-secondary institutions, and the workplace itself as the primary locations for that training to take place.
Specifically, in order to ensure that we have an efficient and effective labour market in which employers can find workers and train their current workers, and in which workers can access the training required to meet their occupational needs and aspirations, our recommendations would include maintaining and increasing funding for the bilateral training provisions contained in the current labour market agreements and the labour market development agreements between the federal government and the provinces and territories, and then ensuring that key labour market stakeholders, employers, and workers are involved in the development of labour market policies and programs through development of labour market partner forums. Models for these forums can be found today in Newfoundland and Labrador in the strategic partnership initiative, and in Quebec in the Commission des partenaires du marché du travail.
Still, we would argue that incentives for employers to provide workplace training, including a tax credit for employers who train, would be very helpful. We recommend increased support for training in the employment insurance system, including work sharing while working, extending benefits for workers who are in training, and continued and restored support for organizations that provide support and encouragement for the development and the expansion of workplace training, such as the Canadian Apprenticeship Forum.
It is very discouraging for us to learn that only 14% of young people say they were encouraged by guidance counsellors to enter the skilled trades, while at the same time our government is cutting funding to the primary national organization that supports and encourages the skilled trades through a healthy apprenticeship system.
Finally, I can't emphasize enough, for a national strategy in this day and age, literacy and basic skills and the embedding of literacy training in all workplace-based learning. It's nothing short of a disgrace to think of the lost potential that we continue to suffer when we derail the aspirations and disregard the potential of workers due simply to the lack of access to programs that address literacy and essential skills, which, I would argue, is still the number one productivity-enhancing measure anyone can take in any advanced workplace in Canada.
To reiterate, though, the answer to our skills gap lies in our current labour force, and we will need to develop that human resource to its full potential before we look at other measures.
Thank you very much.