To deal with the country's worker shortage, Canada needs to do more to help immigrants and aboriginals integrate into the workforce, according to a Public Policy Forum study.
The report sponsored by the Certified General Accountants Association of Canada described a dozen recommendations for dealing with the country's skills and labour shortage.
They include:
providing better child-care programs for aboriginal and immigrant women, which help them acquire new skills and jobs;
instituting a national credit transfer system to address academic mobility of educated workers;
providing enhanced incentives to employers who offer jobs to skilled immigrants by recognizing the costs of training; and
adapting pension eligibility rules to encourage retirement-aged workers to stay in the workforce longer, even on a part-time basis.
The report said that Canada's fragmented educational and professional training environment is one of the reasons the country's skill shortage is not improving.