November 18, 2024

By Hem Dholakia

The global net-zero transition is inevitable and Canada could position itself as a clean-economy world leader. The pathway to this global leadership begins by attracting, training, retaining and building a skilled workforce. Without one, our economic growth will be limited.

Canada’s success depends on investing more in green jobs and skills. Doing so would have cascading effects across the economy and society, from growing wages to creating more jobs. A skilled workforce attracts sustained financial investment, which leads to economy-wide prosperity. Helping equity deserving groups such as women, Indigenous Peoples and people with disabilities gain skills and land jobs would further enhance the socio-economic benefits of investing in green skills and help address labour shortages too.

A recent assessment by Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) found that students from rural areas, equity deserving groups and in lower income brackets were more likely to participate in work-integrated learning programs. Through these programs, schools help students find jobs, write resumes and prepare for interviews. Students who participated benefited monetarily and developed skills. This assessment by ESDC has helped decision-makers focus policy and funding in those areas that need most attention.

Governments at all levels have recognized the opportunity and are investing in training and education for green skills. For instance, the federal government has allocated close to $100 million over four years to the Sustainable Jobs Training Fund. A core objective of the fund is to increase participation of Indigenous Peoples and other members of equity deserving groups to upgrade or gain new skills for jobs in the low-carbon economy. Similarly at the provincial level, programs such as Skills Ontario aim to create equal opportunities for youth by raising their awareness of available jobs and training programs to build a diverse and skilled workforce.

Building off our existing research base on green skills, we have identified three ways to boost current and planned public investment in green skills training and education:

1. Pursue regional collaboration to build skills ecosystems. A major finding of our work is that to quickly grow a skilled workforce we need a regional “skills ecosystem” approach in which decisions are made at the local level. A vibrant skills ecosystem would require regional stakeholders—policymakers, employers, unions, educational institutions and learners—to unite around a common vision.

A key to success is the presence of local leaders willing to champion a regional approach and a combination of bottom-up and top-down methods. For example, in Northern British Columbia, communities seeking to take advantage of the opportunity of mass timber should work together to make sure they can attract, train and retain workers with the right skills.

Establishing a skills ecosystem to seize a clean-growth opportunity requires a variety of collaborative approaches. For instance, local colleges can work with employers and learners to design courses that teach the necessary skills. Employers can provide on-the-job training opportunities to youth and newcomers. Governments at all levels can work together to make necessary infrastructure improvements to help bring down transportation and other costs faced by industry.

2. Adopt continuous skills assessments that include “soft skills”. As the net-zero transition accelerates, so will the pace of technology change that workers will have to adapt to. For instance, the lithium-ion batteries that most of today’s electric vehicles run on may be replaced by newer, solid-state batteries. To remain responsive to this fast-changing technology, decision-makers will need to employ continuous skills assessments. One way to accomplish this is for skills to feature more prominently in labour market assessments, such as Statistics Canada’s Labour Force Survey, which does not currently include questions on skills. Better information around the most important skills by job type and how they are changing over time can aid decision-makers in targeting their investments to make sure workers have the right skills to meet industry demands.

Skills assessments employed by governments should also include non-technical skills. Our research found that non-technical skills such as critical thinking, decision-making, coordination and time-management will be critical across all clean-growth opportunities. This would be a departure from the current practice of focusing primarily on technical skills or literacy and numeracy.

3. Incorporate clean-growth objectives into assessing the success of skills initiatives. Program evaluation is a well-established practice, but assessing green skills initiatives is newer. Assessors may need to expand the scope of their work beyond monitoring and evaluating the individual outcomes of participants to also assessing societal-level outcomes by asking questions such as: Are we creating a skilled workforce quickly enough to keep up with our net-zero ambition? What seems to be working well in developing a regional skills ecosystem and what is not working? Answering questions like these will require a different approach to   monitoring, evaluation and iteration. By designing such a framework, policymakers can better ensure that the skills development agenda is responsive to changing technological needs and contributing to Canada’s clean growth.

The message is clear: investing in green skills presents Canada with a low-cost, high-leverage economic opportunity in the absence of which our net-zero ambitions may stall.