The key to meeting Canada's crucial skills challenge
PERRIN BEATTY AND CLAIRE M. MORRIS
Special to Globe and Mail Update
February 26, 2008 at 12:44 AM EST
Canada has a skills problem that's well on its way to becoming a skills crisis. The critical need is to become a more productive economy, and spending on postsecondary education is one of the most effective ways for government to spend tax dollars and to make an impact on the productivity and competitiveness of the Canadian economy.
Canadian businesses, universities and colleges can and will work together to achieve this objective. Increased government investments in higher education and university research are required to address this crucial challenge.
Demographics play a huge role in dealing with this issue. Canada's population is greying. The baby boom generation, which represents a significant percentage of the Canadian workforce, is approaching retirement age. We will end up with too few workers to meet the needs of our economy and of society.
Technology will also play a significant role in the evolution of global competition.
In this global economy, distances have become irrelevant. The smallest firms and the largest corporations can both compete on the global scene. But while technology has meant great and positive changes for the world's economy, it brings with it the obvious requirement that those wielding that technology must be sufficiently trained to harness it effectively, efficiently and productively.
Technology has also allowed Canadians to improve our competitiveness. The federal government has invested significantly in university research over the past decade through the granting councils and the Canada Foundation for Innovation, to name just two investments. In light of the potential of a serious shortage of workers and the threats to the long-term health of our economy, we need to further strengthen and support our universities' capacity for research and enhance the transfer of research discoveries to our communities and to the marketplace.
The Canadian economy also depends heavily on international trade. To keep up with our competitors and enhance our performance, businesses need to create wealth, and universities and colleges need to provide the skilled and highly educated people who will drive this economic development. Canada must invest more in higher education and university research in order to produce the ideas and people the Canadian businesses and communities need to be innovative and compete internationally.
So how can we collectively address these challenges? We can educate more Canadian students from all sectors of society and attract the best and the brightest students from abroad. We can ensure that our university research environment is internationally competitive to attract top researchers from around the world. We can provide talented students with strong research and analytical skills, and more opportunities to gain research experience. We can give them opportunities to apply their newly learned skills in our businesses and other working environments. Graduates — particularly those with advanced degrees — are essential to the development of private sector research capacity and the successful commercialization of university research discoveries.
Canada's relative under-production of graduate degrees, especially compared to the United States, is widely identified as a barrier to increasing our country's international competitiveness and productivity. For example, in 2004, American universities awarded twice as many master's degrees per capita as Canadian universities and about 35 per cent more doctoral degrees per capita than their Canadian counterparts. The OECD reports that Canada trails far behind the leading nations in terms of doctoral graduates.
Immigration will also play a critical role. Streamlining our immigration process to make Canada a more attractive option for skilled immigrants will be important. However, Canada cannot count on maintaining current levels of immigration of advanced degree-holders to meet future labour market needs. In an increasingly knowledge-based world, competition for highly-educated immigrants is growing in developed nations and emerging economies alike.
Consequently, more needs to be done to attract the best and the brightest international graduate students who remain critical to fuelling the country's pipeline of highly qualified personnel.
Canada can no longer rely on growth in the population of traditional working age people to drive economic growth. Now is the time to ensure that an appropriate mix of student financial assistance is available to assist Canadians, including young people from under-represented groups such as aboriginals, low-income families and first-generation learners, to obtain a postsecondary education and, in turn, to increase their rates of labour market participation and productivity.
Canada is a wealthy, highly developed country with enormous promise. Ensuring our country's long term economic growth and continued prosperity — and realizing this country's promise — will depend heavily on the education and skill levels of Canadians and their success in creating and applying ideas and knowledge. Both of our organizations strongly support government investment in higher education and university research as vital steps in addressing Canada's productivity and competitiveness challenges.
Perrin Beatty is president and CEO of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce; Claire M. Morris is president and CEO of the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada.
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