Vancouver’s film and construction industries are hoping to benefit from the federal government’s recent changes to the Express Entry system.
The program ranks applicants based on various factors including age, language proficiency, education and work experience, and then matches them with Canadian companies. The new rules came into effect November 19 and make it easier for certain highly skilled workers already living in Canada, as well as international students who have completed post-secondary education in Canada, to gain permanent residency.
Nancy Mott, executive director of the Vancouver Film & Media Centre, said multiple sectors within the film industry, most significantly positions in animation and visual effects, could benefit from the changes. Mott added there’s a certain type of employee within this industry that Canada lacks.
“There is no one specific skill that we have too little of, but the hardest jobs to fill locally right now are mid- to senior-level positions – managers and specialists who can then train more folks,” she said. “Generally speaking, the people qualified for the empty senior positions have already been hired elsewhere.”
Vancouver’s visual effects and animation industry has about 60 studios, making it the largest cluster in the world, according to the Vancouver Economic Commission (VEC). Mott said there are not enough people coming out of post-secondary institutions in the province to fill all the junior positions within what is an exponentially growing sector. The VEC estimates around 8,000 people are employed in the visual effects and animation industry in Vancouver.
“If there was a local who could fill any of these positions, the studios would be happy to have them,” Mott said. “But the industry is growing faster than our local talent pool is. As it grows, it requires senior oversight, which will be in short supply until the junior people filling the position rack up their years of experience.”
Mott said the most logical places to target, given the new Express Entry rules, are Los Angeles and London, with their large film industries. Many of the people working in the visual effects and animation sectors in these cities were actually born in Canada, she added.
“The people we’re working especially hard to court right now are Canadians who have gone abroad to work in the U.S. or U.K. and put a few years of experience under their belts. Long story short, we want them back.”
Fiona Famulak, president of the Vancouver Regional Construction Association, said the changes to the Express Entry program are good news for the construction industry as well.
“We know that the retirees from the industry are tracking at a faster pace than the new entrants,” she said. “So by 2025 there are going to be approximately 15,000 unfilled jobs in construction due to labour shortages, and we need to be able to address that gap.”
Famulak noted the province’s construction industry employs about 210,000 people, and the various major infrastructure projects already slated for the next few years mean more hiring will have to take place.
“There’s a shortage of skilled trade generally,” she said. “And in recent years the industry has been hiring from Europe and the U.K. and Ireland. But their economies are turning around too, so we’re really glad that our members will hopefully be able to pull from a variety of countries in order to support the work that’s going to be coming down the pipe.”
A recent report from the Conference Board of Canada estimates B.C. is losing out on as much as $4.7 billion in economic activity because of a lack of skilled workers, which includes $616 million in provincial tax revenues annually.
Daniel Munro, a principal research associate for industry and business strategy for the Conference Board of Canada, said in the news release for the report that B.C. companies are having difficulty finding the right people for certain jobs.
“There is a disconnect between the education and skills that employers need, and those that employees and graduates have.”
