Employers need to improve — a lot — when it comes to offering competitive wages and paying to train workers, federal Employment Minister Jason Kenney said November 13.
Kenney made the comments at a Business Council of British Columbia summit held in Vancouver.
B.C. is expected to have one million jobs to fill in the next ten years and to have a tight labour market during that period, according to the provincial government's Labour Market Outlook.
The federal government plans to allocate more resources to post-secondary trades training, Kenney said, and increase funding for apprenticeship programs. The government will be also be looking to other countries, such as Germany and Australia, for ideas on how to improve trades training and apprenticeship systems.
However, employers need to do more to increase wages, which "have barely kept pace with inflation," Kenney said.
"My point to employers is, when they come to me and complain about labour and skills shortages, the first thing I say to them is, 'What are you doing to create incentives for people to work in those occupations by increasing wages?'"
Kenney also attacked employers' poor record on pitching in to train workers.
"According to the OECD [Organization for Economic Development and Co-operation], Canadian governments spend more than any other developed country on education and skills training," he said. "But Canadian employers are at the bottom of the OECD."
Kenney also promised more changes to the temporary foreign worker program. Rules were tightened this summer in response to complaints about the system being abused.
The changes already put in place include a new application fee and the removal of an accelerated process to obtain a Labour Market Opinion (LMO) – an acknowledgment that local workers cannot be found for the job.
The accelerated LMO may be brought back, but only for select, high-paying and high-skilled jobs that are truly in demand, and perhaps only in regions with low unemployment.
"We want to reinforce that the temporary foreign worker program cannot, must not be the first option," Kenney said. "It must always be last option."
