White Paper

This Council has established as a key success measure the objective to generate $ 15,000 more in household median income above the current forecasts by the year 2030. Achieving such ambitious aspiration, despite economic changes and rapid social, require targeted action, persevering and concrete. It will also continue to monitor progress in order to terminate ineffective programs. The Council believes that bold initiatives and mutually reinforcing, such as those published today in October, can help resume economic trajectory of our country and help us achieve inclusive growth that will provide the most solid foundation for the future prosperity of our nation [googletranslate_en]

Economic growth that Canada has experienced over the past 50 years has been driven largely by growth in participation rates in the labor market. In 2015, Canada had one of the participation rate in higher labor market of member countries of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). While it is true that our population is now aging and the labor market will increase over the rate at which we were accustomed, Canada still has a strong labor market whose potential remains untapped because the under-representation of a number of demographic groups. Find ways to include a greater number of Canadians to these groups in the labor market would improve their quality of life and their opportunities for success in the economy. These means would implement the promise of inclusive growth in a way that would also improve the general outlook of the economy, and reduce the likelihood that the social safety net of Canada become overloaded.  The Commission has identified four demographic groups for whom an increase in participation to levels "best in class" could have a significant effect on the economy: the indigenous peoples, low-income Canadians, women with young children and Canadians over 55 years. We hope that the federal government intervene to promote inclusive growth by raising the participation rates of the four groups over the coming years. The four groups referred to herein are not intended to represent an exhaustive list. Several other groups face barriers to participation, such as people with disabilities, recent immigrants and young people who are neither students nor employees nor training. Ensure that a greater number of members of these groups get a job is also very important, but we focused on groups whose increased participation in the labor market will have the greatest economic impact, as we believe that the more the economy is dynamic, there are opportunities for all Canadians.  This memo does not consist of a recommendation of a strategic approach rather than another; rather it is a set of general recommendations to help policy makers so that they thoroughly examine the context of existing policy and identify ways to remove barriers to employment. In some cases, the appropriate response would be the implementation of a new policy; in others, the government could simply have to "deviate", for example by eliminating distortions caused by existing policies that disadvantage employment. The approaches described here are only examples and do not constitute an exhaustive list of strategic options. In addition, it is important to note that policy makers are not the only players in this field: employers, private sector and the public sector, have a role to play in terms of establishing the conditions for a more inclusive participation in the labor market. [googletranslate_en]

To accomplish a mission so ambitious, laboratory of future skills will have three basic functions.  1. Support innovative approaches to skills development: seek, select and co-finance innovative pilot programs in development and skills development that bridge the identified gaps among workers, post-secondary students and young people.  2. Identify and propose new sources of information on skills: Collect the signals of skills needs labor market by raising a pilot project proposals portfolio, supporting innovative information initiatives on the labor market oriented employer expectations, using web sources to extract and synthesize the emerging trends in the labor market and establishing links between skills and abilities.  3. Define the objectives of skills and advise governments on programs focusing on skills: rigorously measure the results of targeted training programs and forward-looking information and initiatives on skills, identify and disseminate best practice general for education and training stakeholders across Canada and determine a set of skills for future goals. If the players decide to participate, these objectives can then help direct more than 17 billion in annual public expenditure on development and training programs on the work of organizations that produce and analyze information about the Canadian labor market and practitioners directly involved in training and education programs. [googletranslate_en]

The education and skills survey 2009 provides authoritative information on employers’ views of education and skills issues. It is being published at a time when business is facing tough economic conditions, but the benefits of investing in skills remain undiminished. The survey covers the full range of issues, including employer and employee commitment to training, basic skills, science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM), and business links with school and universities.

To meet these challenges, it is necessary to update and improve Canada's immigration policies. The Government of Canada should take four specific actions to boost economic growth and prosperity for all Canadians:  Annual 1. Increase permanent economic immigration from 300 000 to 450 000 people over five years (which will mean an increase of about 75 000 principal applicants and 75 000 of their relatives) to expand growth of the workforce and to counter the drag caused by the slower growth of the population and its aging.  2. Facilitating the entry of experienced talent and specialized streamlining permanent entry and temporary programs to make them faster and less costly for employers, which help give innovative companies and high growth capacity and skills management they need to expand their business and compete globally.  3. Rethinking assignments Express Entry points to make eligible a greater number of foreign students who conduct their studies in Canada for permanent residence to enable companies to tap into a young and educated talent pool that is already integrated.   4. Improve national accreditation standards to create conditions that will allow all immigrants to Canada to realize their economic potential for the benefit of all Canadians.  These recommendations, although they will reduce the current dragged on growth resulting from the aging population and specialized talent gaps, form only part of the solution. For immigration compensates fully the implications of this impending economic pressure for Canada, the annual permanent economic immigration to almost double from its current level of about 300,000 per year - which is increasing much more drastic than the 50% increase recommended in this document3. Moreover, immigration can not and should not solve all the talent shortages. Fast-growing companies may have no other alternative, given the immediacy of their talent needs, but longer-term governments and employers should ensure that Canadian training and education programs are responsive to the emerging needs of the labor market. [googletranslate_en]

In the fall of 2015, Ontario appointed the five members of the Expert Committee of the Prime Minister for the development of a highly skilled labor (the "Committee"): President Sean Conway and members Carol Campbell, Ph. D., Robert Hardt, Alison Loat and Pradeep Sood. (See Appendix E:. Biographies of Committee Members) Committee members were selected based on their professional experience, knowledge of the business environment, their relationships with various stakeholder groups and their understanding of employers, the world of education and the public sector, as well as issues affecting the labor market. The Committee was mandated to develop an integrated strategy to help the current and future workforce in the province to adapt to the demands of a knowledge economy focused on technology, establishing a bridge between the media skills development, education and training. [googletranslate_en]

A recent study suggests Canadians are worried about technological change and how it will change work. Governments must acknowledge this anxiety.

This paper reports on the results of a global field study conducted in 2014 and 2015 amongst leading manufacturers from a wide range of industries. It provides insights about managerial practice surrounding production sourcing as well as the factors driving these decisions. Exploratory factor analysis and multiple logistic regression models using the response data generate the following seven key findings: (1) Companies are currently restructuring their global production footprints. (2) The majority of firms engage in offshoring. Reshoring is indeed occurring but not largely for corrective reasons. (3) North America may be at the cusp of a manufacturing renaissance, but not because of reshoring. (4) China is still the most attractive source for production, followed by developing economies in Eastern Europe and Southern Asia. (5) The decline of manufacturing in developed economies, i.e., Western Europe and Japan, continues. (6) Labor cost is no longer the driving force in manufacturing location decisions. Instead, firms make complex trade-offs among a variety of factors. (7) Firms localize production in developed economies and use developing economies as production hubs.

In this report, we propose 21 new jobs that will emerge over the next 10 years and will become cornerstones of the future of work. In producing this report, we imagined hundreds of jobs that could emerge within the major macroeconomic, political, demographic, societal, cultural, business and technology trends observable today, e.g., growing populations, aging populations, populism, environmentalism, migration, automation, arbitrage, quantum physics, AI, biotechnology, space exploration, cybersecurity, virtual reality. Among the jobs we considered, some seemed further out on the horizon and are not covered here: carbon farmers, 3-D printing engineers, avatar designers, cryptocurrency arbitrageurs, drone jockeys, human organ developers, teachers of English as a foreign language for robots, robot spa owners, algae farmers, autonomous fleet valets, Snapchat addiction therapists, urban vertical farmers and Hyperloop construction managers. These are jobs that younger generations may do in the further off future. Others that we considered are somewhat niche forms of employment – e.g., tattoo removal artist or e-gaming sportsman – that will employ only hundreds of people. Those jobs, while interesting, are not covered here. Similarly, jobs that are already well understood and well developed, and which are set to boom in the short-term future – e.g., cybersecurity developer, cloud computing programmer – are also not covered in this report. The 21 jobs we present here are those that we expect to become prominent in short order. Most importantly, we believe these jobs will create mass employment, providing work for the many people in offices, stores and factory floors displaced or disrupted by technology. Our 21 jobs of the future are positioned over a 10-year timeline and according to their “tech-centricity” (see diagram, next page). Each is presented in the form of a job description. They’re not science fiction – they’re jobs your HR department will have to fill before very long. Some are highly technical, while others won’t require much tech knowledge at all. (Some may insist that one day all jobs will be tech jobs, but we don’t agree, and that certainly won’t be the case in the next 10 years.) Work has been central to mankind for millennia. Our very names convey that fact: Baker, Brewer, Glover, Woodman, Wright, Mason, Judge, Weaver, Hunter, Dyer, Fisher. In the future, work will continue to be core to our identities, our nature, our dreams and our realities. But it won’t necessarily be the work we know or do now. Read on to examine the new jobs that will be central to the future. You never know, one day you might be doing one of them.