Training, collaboration needed to develop workforce for mobility sector

This piece originally appeared in the Toronto Star on April 12.

Daniel Komesch and Guillaume Cote

Canada’s nation building has always been intimately tied to our ability to move people, goods and ideas from coast to coast to coast. It started with birchbark canoes and a national railway. Since then, we’ve come a long way: we’re building hydroplanes, ferries that keep us connected over oceans, drones, autonomous trucks and scores of other innovative and sustainable vehicles.

Our railway of tomorrow could very well be a hyperloop.

As businesses adapt to climate change, emerging technology and increasingly dynamic global markets, what we move, how we move it and where, is changing. For example, across Canada’s mobility sectors — including (but not limited to), aviation, marine and rail — vehicle fleets are transitioning to cleaner fuel sources, productivity-enhancing digital technologies are being more widely used, and our supply chains are facing considerable pressure to adapt and innovate.

If Canada is to succeed as we undergo these changes, we need to invest in developing the talent for a workforce that can shape this future. We need a workforce that will drive our mobility sector innovatively, sustainably and safely.

How do we get there?

First, governments, employers and training providers need to invest more in giving learners real-world opportunities with industry.

The Canadian Mobility and Aerospace Institute (CMAI) is working with the Business Higher Education Roundtable to deliver 7,500 work-integrated learning placements and to promote new and innovative opportunities for an increasingly diverse workforce. That’s a good start.

In the mobility sector, we are committed to developing an early-talent pipeline by creating traditional work-integrated learning opportunities like applied research projects, apprenticeships and field experience that give young people the work-ready skills they need to thrive. Recognizing that flexibility is key for both learners and employers, we are also innovating in the delivery of shorter work-integrated learning experiences that will enable learners to provide solutions to real-world employer challenges.

Second, a talent strategy for the future is going to require governments, employers and training providers to commit to upskilling and re-skilling. As the jobs in Canada’s mobility sectors shift to keep pace with external changes, the skills employees need are shifting too — and the urgency resides in action, not words.

There should be many tools in our collective tool kit to support upskilling and re-skilling that address how the tasks required in existing jobs are changing. To this end, we need not create entirely new education programs, but focus instead on topping up the skill sets of our existing workforce.

This could mean short-burst upskilling for current employees, helping them adapt to new software, for example, or it could include retraining jobseekers who, with some short-term, last-mile training, will be able to convert their existing skill set from an adjacent industry into one that is directly relevant to mobility.

At a time when Canada has a surplus of talent waiting in the wings, we need to put all of the resources we can to ensure jobseekers can leverage their existing skills to in-demand careers.

Third, we need to promote more sectoral collaboration. Encouraging employers and training providers to work more closely together across their respective sectors can be a boon for employment, productivity and innovation. Sharing information like labour market intelligence resources, like training equipment and best practices, can reduce firm costs and ease labour market friction by helping employers showcase job opportunities and strengthen the resiliency of their workforce.

All sectors in Canada are facing pressures from technology shift, climate change and an evolving global landscape; mobility is no different. To succeed in the face of these changes and to ensure that our mobility sector can continue to contribute to nation building, we know we need to increase our investments in developing new talent, and that this talent will get to decide what the future will look like.

As we continue to endure the pandemic, making investments in helping young learners obtain real world experience, re-skilling the existing workforce and incentivizing employers to collaborate within and across strategic sectors are three important ways our government can ensure that Canada has the workforce it needs to keep us moving forward into the future.