Workers and jobs not matching

Too many workers without jobs — too many jobs without workers.

It sounds like a contradiction. But that’s the situation facing Canada’s economy over the next few years. Thursday, federal Employment Minister Jason Kenney came to Ontario — the engine that drives Canada’s economy — to do some tinkering with the status quo — that he hopes will solve the problem. He also outlined details of the Harper government’s vision for economic renewal.

40 percent of Canada’s gross domestic product (GDP) is generated by business and industry located in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), and Southern Ontario. But with high unemployment rates for both Canada’s youth and new immigrants to the country, Jason Kenney thinks it’s time to give this economic engine, a tune-up:

The Minister came to the Toronto Board of Trade to explain the two biggest challenges facing Canada’s labour market. Immigration. And skills development.

Over the next decade, Canada would have to add nearly a million new immigrants a year, to fill the jobs left behind by retiring baby-boomers. Something Kenney says isn’t possible: “This is not xenophobia it’s just, there’s a practical limit to our capacity to integrate new folks. We just can’t pedal fast enough.”

Already — Canada has an underemployment problem with immigrants who have already arrived. Something the Government blames on the point system used for the last 40 years, to select newcomers to Canada. That system says Kenney — does not match the reality of current employment needs: “We want immigrant engineers, working as engineers, not as taxi drivers.”

To do that — Kenney says — the federal government needs help. From both provincial education systems and the business sector: “The data tells us that Canadian businesses overall have been freeloaders, when it comes to training.”

“I don’t think it’s acceptable for employers to come and complain to me about skill and labour shortages, if they’re not putting more skin in the game.”

And he gave short shrift to Bank of Canada Governor Stephen Poloz’s controversial suggestion — that young workers should work for free: “I disagree with Governor Poloz on this. And I don’t think we should be sending a message to young people to reduce their expectations, I think that’s the wrong message to send.”

Instead, the message he wants to send — is this: “Young Canadians have to take responsibility for their choices. And if young people choose to go and get a University degree in a discipline for which there is no employment demand, then they have to accept some responsibility for the challenge of finding a job.”

Kenney says the Conservatives will soon be introducing new immigration legislation to revamp the “points system” and take a harder look at degrees and trades licences, from institutions that do not match up to Canadian standards.

He will also be working with the Provinces, to emphasize educational opportunities in fields where skills are needed — and pushing Canadian business to get off the billions of dollars in “parked capital” they’ve been resting on during the recession and put more of it into training new workers for the jobs they need to fill.