Panel Addresses Alberta’s Skilled Labour Issues And Workforce Challenges In The Oilsands BY CARTER HAYDU – NOV. 26, 2014 – VIEW ISSUE The number one issue among Canadian Chamber of Commerce members is finding the right people for the jobs required, which is a sentiment no more so true than in Alberta’s oilsands sector, where demand for skilled workers exists across multiple trades. “Alberta’s skills challenges are, in fact, Canada’s skills challenges in many ways,” Sarah Anson-Cartwright, director of skills policy with the federal chamber, told a panel discussion at Tuesday’s CI Energy Group Oil Sands Symposium. She noted that of the 10 occupations that make up 57 per cent of the oilsands workforce, the top two are power engineers and heavy equipment operators. “Those two occupations in oilsands operations make up almost one-third of the workforce,” she said, adding employment is expected to increase by 58 per cent over the next decade, creating approximately 15,300 new operations jobs in the oilsands. The demand is most prevalent with in situ projects. “You can see that from 2014 to 2023 the growth rate of the in situ workforce significantly outpaces mining and upgrading. In situ operations will in fact double today’s employment, by another 10,600 jobs.” At Rocky Mountain Equipment Co., heavy equipment mechanics are among the most sought-after skilled labour positions in the oilsands, said Jon Beatty, the company’s human resources vice-president. He added that securing talent is not a problem solved with one easy answer, but rather is a process requiring much planning on the part of the employer — with key consideration to apprenticeship training. “You need to have those people who are apprentices and who are working, and you have to be able to match them with journeymen mechanics in order that you can continue that apprenticeship, and you have to know what that ratio is within your organization, and what the cost of that is.” For those who know early on that their career interests rest in the trades, the Registered Apprenticeship Program [RAP] enables Alberta high school students to learn and practice for their desired profession, and it is a program Beatty’s company supports wholeheartedly when planning for long-term personnel requirements. “We have found that students in the RAP programs — who know about the apprenticeships they’re getting into and have an understanding of what that looks like — have a greater success of following through and completing that apprenticeship to become journeymen,” he told the symposium. According to Beatty, a company’s apprenticeship program must also be matched with the needs of projects, and should include talent pool supplementation by encouraging interprovincial migration to Alberta, and by using temporary foreign workers in order to backfill remaining personnel holes. Over the last six months, though, he noted, Canada’s Temporary Foreign Workers Program (TFWP) has changed rather rapidly and he expects it will continue to change over the next few months — and likely until the end of the 2015 federal election. “It is a political volleyball that is being pushed around, and as organizations we are seeing the impact of it,” Beatty said, adding the government is requiring companies not only to be heavily compliant with the rules of the program, but also show transition plans demonstrating how they will move beyond those temporary employees. “The changes are happening so fast, that from one service officer you get in terms of asking about your transition plan, the answer will change from one to the next.” Sarah Watts-Rynard, executive director for the Canadian Apprenticeship Forum, told the symposium that she would advocate that Employment and Social Development Canada streamline TFWP applications for companies proving support for early apprenticeship training for those Canadians seeking skilled jobs in the trades, and she said public policy is showing some support for that sentiment as well. While the completion rate for apprentices in Alberta is about 78 per cent, the reason that figure is so high is because the province does not count first-year apprentices, Watts-Rynard said, and there is a much higher percentage of dropping out from the trades during the first year of apprenticing. “If you look at completion rates across the country, generally the completion rate is about 50 per cent, and that is truly a reflection of the Alberta completion rate when you do include the first year,” she said, adding there is a “huge problem” of people dropping out of their programs early on, in part, because there is a lack of demand on the part of companies to invest in training a first-year apprentice. “It is where the biggest investment is being made, and it is where the highest risk is to employers. We do have to recognize that those are big challenges,” she said, adding: “[Tradespeople] are grown in work, and that means employers must not only accept their responsibility, but also actually be a tangible part of creating the workforce they want and need.” According to Anson-Cartwright, the federal government wants employers to conduct more training, which is the goal of the Canada Job Grant. By and large, though, she said there is a lack of will on the part of the federal government to make substantial improvements and take leadership on skills training. “In the next federal budget, the chamber has asked for specific requests to address skills shortages. We’re asking for a tax incentive to help employers retain apprentices in their third and fourth years, so they can move towards completion — we are not seeing the number of completions we would like to see. “We recommend a financial incentive to assist the temporary relocation of skilled tradespeople … because if you get a payment to support relocation to a job, then that is a taxable benefit on the employee and we think that is unfair. We want labour market data and investment by the feds and local-level data, and we want the federal government to investigate the impact of [TFWP] changes.”
Posted on: Tue, 23 Dec 2014 16:35:04 +0000
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