Insights on postsecondary institutions, Canada’s current and future workforce, and industry sectors.

POSTSECONDARY INSTITUTIONS

 Students need online and hybrid courses but postsecondary institutions lack the financial and human resources to develop them

Online and hybrid courses and programs are recognized as being desirable for some students, and viewed as a potential solution for boosting enrolments and revenue.

“Despite this potential, many institutions do not have the financial or human resources to develop such offerings,” according to the 2025 Pan-Canadian Report on Digital Learning Trends.

“The Canadian postsecondary system has found itself in a Catch-22: new, flexible offerings are needed to meet the demands of prospective and current students and to increase funding, but funding is needed to develop these offerings.”

At the same time, faculty competencies to teach effectively in online or hybrid contexts are questionable, says the Canadian Digital Learning Research Association (CDLRA) report by Dr. Nicole Johnson, PhD, executive director of the CDLRA.

The 2025 survey results re-emphasize findings from past years that identified a need for faculty professional development, the report says. “There is considerable room for improvement in how we (as a sector) prepare faculty to teach at post-secondary institutions.”

The majority of survey respondents don’t feel confident that all or most postsecondary faculty have the skills and know-how to tech in modalities that require substantial technology use,

Survey participants also reported room for improvement in how their institution prepares faculty to teach (both online and in person), the report says.

Conversely, when asked to assess their own competencies, respondents who had taught over the past 12 months tended to view themselves as having the skills and know-how to teach effectively in any modality.

Respondents identified the financial stability of their institutions, student enrolments, developing AI policies and strategies, and academic integrity as the most pressing challenges facing their institutions, according to the report.

Awareness of open educational resources (OER) as well as institutional policies for OER have remained relatively unchanged over time, the report notes.

The majority of respondents expect growth in online and hybrid learning over the next two years. The majority do not expect in-person and multi-access learning to grow.

The CDLRA’s findings, combined with findings from a student survey conducted by Academica Group, showed that the primary reasons driving student preferences for online or hybrid learning are to manage competing priorities, cost savings, an inability to find affordable housing near campus, and an inability to access affordable and reliable transportation to and from campus.

One faculty/instructor commented for the survey: “Online courses have the potential to meet the needs of our students, and I believe they want more, but due to limitations in staffing, training, tools and budget, this is not currently possible.”

One teaching and learning leader commented: “The current focus on in-person programs prevents the institution from focusing on best practices for using technology in teaching. Additionally, because the focus is on in-person learning, the quality of online/blended/hyflex courses is inconsistent, although the courses continue to be in demand and have high enrolment.”

There are also critical barriers, such as collective agreements, that restrict mandated training, regardless of the need, the report says. “This is an ongoing, system-wide problem that needs attention.” CDRLA

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Canada needs to embrace open learning to develop the human capital needed to boost productivity

Canada needs to embrace open learning because the legacy higher education system is insufficient in developing the human capital required to boost productivity and the economy, according to a commentary in The Conversation.

In Canada, postsecondary education plays an “oversized role” in developing human capital, wrote David J. Finch, professor and senior fellow at the Institute for Community Prosperity at Mount Royal University, and Joseph Marchand, professor of economics at the University of Alberta (U of A), founding director of U of A’s Alberta Centre for Labour Market Research, and co-director of the university’s Institute for Public Economics.

The percentage of the population that has completed postsecondary education in Canada is 63 percent – 22 per cent higher than the Organisation for Economic Development and Co-operation (OECD) average, they noted.

Today, 15 per cent of the working-age population have graduate degrees, the same share that held bachelor’s degrees in 1997.

Canada also invests 20 percent more in postsecondary education than the OECD average. “Yet despite this, it’s also a global leader in graduate underemployment. The number of unemployed degree holders now exceeds the number of jobs requiring such qualifications by a factor of five.”

Research indicates Canada’s most pressing shortfall lies in foundational competencies, not in job-specific expertise, as is commonly assumed. Chief among these is adaptability – the capacity to learn, unlearn and relearn.

Canada scored above the OECD average in a recent international assessment, but the data shows that only slightly above half of the Canadian workforce can meet the increasing literacy demands of most jobs. Research suggests that a one per cent improvement in literacy can boost productivity by up to five per cent, Finch and Marchand said.

For Canadians born in 2024, life expectancy is projected to be 83 years, they said. Longer lives now mean longer working lives: 40-year careers are now the norm, and 60-year careers are fast approaching.

“Yet Canada continues to spend $60 billion annually on a post-secondary education system optimized for a single stage of life – young adulthood – rather than a lifetime of learning, they pointed out. Eighty-three percent of post-secondary students are 29 or younger, and 67 percent are under 25.

“The human capital system that has sustained Canada’s social and economic prosperity over the past 150 years doesn’t possess the capacity to lead Canada into the future,” Finch and Marchand said.

The solution is not as simple as spending more money; the future demands a paradigm shift in how Canada develops its human capital, they said.

Over the past year, a multidisciplinary team of researchers and industry experts at The Productivity Project explored this question through a six-report series, Productivity and People. This series synthesizes interdisciplinary research, with new data to explore a new learning paradigm.

A true paradigm shift requires collaboration among policymakers, employers, credentialing bodies, learning providers and individuals, Finch and Marchand said.

Learning pathways are limitless and today, with only a fraction of learning occurring in classrooms; the vast majority takes place in workplaces, community organizations, libraries, places of worship, on sports fields and stages, and through podcasts, blogs and books.

“Accelerating this paradigm shift offers Canada a unique opportunity  to improve its productivity by unlocking the value of existing learning assets.”

Open learning unlocks the full learning ecosystem, from the workplace to volunteering and self-directed learning. Open learning resembles a dynamic climbing wall, where learners are empowered to explore infinite learning pathways. The result is a far more inclusive and agile lifelong learning system, designed to drive innovation through collaboration and competition.

Open learning stands in contrast to the legacy higher education system, Finch and Marchand said.

In Canada, public institutions control an estimated 90 percent of the post-secondary marketplace, and often lack the incentives, culture and structures to deliver the dynamic and innovative learning the country needs, they said. “The result is a postsecondary experience resembling not a climbing wall of endless possibilities, but an inflexible ladder from a bygone era.”

While postsecondary institutions don’t monopolize learning, they do monopolize recognition, they noted. “As a result, at the centre of this paradigm shift is the unbundling of learning pathways from the recognition of learning.”

Today, a bundled four-year degree composed of 40 courses costs about $75,000. Given this, it’s not surprising that almost one-third of students never complete their degree, Finch and Marchand said.

An unbundled system would allow individuals to select their own learning paths, with outcomes assessed and certified by an independent authority that has the support and legitimacy of the provincial government, they argued. The Conversation

Janet Lane, a senior fellow at the Canada West Foundation, co-authored Finch and Marchand’s commentary.

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More than 47,000 foreign students may have violated the terms of their visa and are currently in the country illegally, a representative for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) told a House of Commons committee. Aiesha Zafar, head of migration integrity at the agency, said 47,175 people who entered Canada as students are potentially “non-compliant,” meaning that they are not attending classes as required by the terms of their visa. “We have not yet determined whether or not they are fully non-compliant, these are initial results that the institutions provide to us,” Zafar told the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration. Zafar that the 47,175 figure comes via Canada’s postsecondary institutions reporting that they’ve lost track of an international student. India is one of the top countries for potentially non-compliant students. Zafar said it would be “challenging” to nail down a precise number on how many international students are officially in violation of their visa terms. In the first six months of 2025, IRCC approved 36,417 study permits, compared with 125,034 over the same period in 2024. National Post

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 Alberta needs a new funding framework for postsecondary education: expert panel

Alberta should replace its current funding approach for postsecondary education with a new funding framework to enhance the system’s competitiveness and adaptability, according to an expert panel’s report.

The five-member panel, appointed by the Alberta government and chaired by prominent Canadian economist and academic Jack Mintz, said Alberta’s approach to funding the postsecondary sector “is not conducive to achieving excellence,” and recommended that the province focus on the needs around growing enrolment, the use of incentives for better performance, and the need for greater autonomy for institutions.

According to the panel’s report, “the current funding levels for postsecondary institutions and the current funding model will not be sufficient or effective in meeting the demands of growing enrolments, cost increases and the demands of the marketplace.”

In making 11 recommendations, the panel engaged with representatives from 26 postsecondary institutions, faculty associations, student associations and industry organizations as part of its review.

For 2023/24, provincial government operating funding of $2.64 billion accounted for 39 percent of total funding to postsecondary institutions. Tuition and student fees make up 31 percent of funding to postsecondary institutions for a total of $2.05 billion.

Own-source revenues of $2 billion make up a further 30 percent of revenues available to support postsecondary education.

Capital funding ($147 million in 2023/24) is allocated separately to public institutions through two streams of funding: one for capital expansion and upgrading capital projects and the other for capital maintenance and renewal.

“Alberta postsecondary institutions need a funding framework that is transparent, flexible and supportive of enrolment growth,” Mintz said in a statement.

“Students need to know that tuition fees won't rise abruptly during their multi-year programs. Governments want institutions to have more flexibility to improve the quality of student experience while being incented to improve their performance.”

The panel said the new funding framework should have three components:

• An enrolment-driven component which takes into account enrolment, cost of programs, market demand and government priorities. Based on those factors, each postsecondary program would be placed in a “cluster” that determines the payment provided to the institution for each enrolled student.
• A performance component which recognizes and rewards outcomes achieved by postsecondary institutions in three categories: teaching and student experience; research; and community impact.
• A base funding component which addresses the costs of staffing, administration, facilities, information technology, services for students, research coordination, and other related costs.

The panel recommended that the new funding framework should be phased in over the next five years.

No new institutions should be funded so available resources can be directed to funding enrolment growth and supporting better performance rather than adding greater per student costs to the province, the panel said.

In addition to the new funding framework, the panel recommended that the government should introduce targeted, time-limited funding initiatives in three priority areas:

• attracting top research talent.
• supporting innovation and developing technology.
• providing incentives and support for collaboration among institutions.

The panel also recommended that apprenticeships should continue to be a priority for provincial funding as part of the funding framework:

• The base grant for apprenticeship funding provided to institutions should reflect overhead costs. Performance should also be evaluated resulting in additional funding to institutions providing apprenticeship programs.
• Enrolment should be funded as currently done with the apprenticeship learning grant but placed in a cluster reflecting both its high cost and provincial priority.
• The earliest possible commitment to the number of funded spaces for the coming year should be provided to postsecondary institutions offering apprenticeship programs.

In another recommendation, the panel said that major IT replacements and new systems that are long-term investments should be funded accordingly rather than through ongoing base operating funding.

Funding for deferred maintenance should be allocated on a three-year basis, acknowledging that adjustments may be made in the second and third years depending on annual provincial budget decisions.

When it comes to tuition, the panel recommended that the current two-percent cap on all annual tuition fee increases should be replaced with a new approach that would provide certainty to students for the duration of their programs but also allow institutions to adjust tuition annually for incoming first year students.

Under this approach:

• First year students would be guaranteed that their tuition would not increase by more than two percent per year for the duration of their program.
• Advanced Education should set the maximum allowable tuition for each of the clusters developed under Recommendation 1 and review the maximum rate regularly based on enrolment demands, cost of the programs, market demand and government priorities.
• Each year, institutions would have the autonomy to set the tuition rate for new, first-year students, up to the maximum amount for each cluster set by Advanced Education.

The provincial government should provide more assistance to students in the form of non-repayable assistance rather than increasing the amount of assistance students are required to take on in loans, the panel recommended.

Regarding international students, the panel recommended:

• The provincial government should continue to work with other provinces to advocate and influence regulations set by the federal government and ensure qualified international students continue to be welcomed at Alberta’s postsecondary institutions.
• The provincial government and postsecondary institutions should continue to explore ways of promoting Alberta’s outstanding postsecondary programs with various countries and international students to address the reputational impacts of the federal government’s policies and continue to attract top talent to Alberta.

When it comes to governance, institutional authority and reducing red tape, the panel recommended that:

• The government review the range of institutional controls currently in place with a view to providing significantly more flexibility and more autonomy in relation to raising other revenue and reducing costs.
• The government should explore ways of reducing the amount of red tape and administrative burden on postsecondary institutions by:
• Reducing the number and frequency of reporting requirements from Advanced Education to only those that are necessary for planning and accountability purposes, including performance metrics identified in the performance component of the new funding framework.
• Coordinating a review of regulatory requirements from ministries in addition to Advanced Education with a view to reducing the combined volume of reporting requirements.

The panel also recommended that the government should streamline and speed up the process for approving new programs, especially those with high demand in the marketplace.

The panel pointed out that studies show more than 60 percent of the 1.5 million job openings over the next 10 years will require at least two years of postsecondary education.

The most significant workforce shortages in the next 10 years are forecasted to be in nursing and allied health profession, technical occupations in health, assisting occupations in support of health services, technical trades contractors and supervisors, technical maintenance trades and professional occupations in applied sciences.

Demand for information technology skills and talent will also grow, especially in relation to artificial intelligence.

Alberta faces an anticipated shortage of more than 10,000 engineers by 2030, according to an op-ed in the Calgary Herald by Anders Nygren, dean of the Schulich School of Engineering at the University of Calgary and Simaan AbouRizk, dean of the faculty of engineering at the University of Alberta.

Finally, the panel recommended that the government should expect all public postsecondary institutions to adhere to the principle of institutional neutrality; to refrain from policies and practices that are contrary to the equality of individuals and freedom from discrimination provisions in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Alberta Human Rights Act; and to uphold and protect freedom of expression and intellectual diversity.

The panel raised concerns about diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, suggesting some may conflict with institutional neutrality, though critics argue these programs enhance access without compromising merit.

“With respect to neutrality, it is not open to post-secondary institutions, or to their senior administrators, to publicly take sides on political questions,” the panel said.

Taking contemporary examples, when universities align with one side in a war, seek divestment from particular countries or industries, or issue pronouncements on social justice causes, they contravene the principle of neutrality, the panel said. “In the Panel’s view, this concept of neutrality applies not only to universities but to all public postsecondary institutions.”

The Alberta government said Alberta Advanced Education will be reviewing the report while engaging with the province’s postsecondary institutions to discuss the recommendations and next steps. Government of Alberta

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The Government of Alberta introduced Bill 3, the Private Vocational Training Amendment Act, 2025, which will strengthen oversight of private career colleges and improve transparency for students. Advanced Education Minister Myles McDougall said the legislation attempts to curb misleading claims about student loans and job prospects, citing reports of institutions telling students that loans were free or that attendance wasn’t required. The bill would require colleges to disclose graduate employment rates, strengthen curriculum standards, clarify tuition fund rules, and allow regulators to suspend licences or issue stop orders for violations. Bill 3 also targets third-party recruiters who mislead students and establishes a new Student Tuition Protection Fund to help ensure students can recover their tuition if a college closes or violates consumer protection rules. The government said these measures will protect students while maintaining confidence in Alberta’s growing private training sector. Industry representatives have endorsed the move, saying it will help rebuild trust by holding low-quality institutions accountable without penalizing reputable career colleges. As of October 16, 2025, there were 207 private career colleges in Alberta, serving 66,431 students and delivering 1,050 licensed programs. Govt. of Alberta

CANADA’S CURRENT & FUTURE WORKFORCE

The Edmonton-based Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute (Amii) has brought together 29 Canadian postsecondary institutions, collectively representing over 500,000 students, to form the consortium of the AI Workforce Readiness program. The consortium is focused on helping students develop AI literacy and skills. Members of the consortium will collaborate with Amii educators and other members to develop open-source teaching materials that integrate AI skills into existing programs and courses. “By fostering a strong national collaboration, we are directly addressing the urgent AI skills gap and empowering both instructors and students – especially those in underserved communities – with the necessary AI literacy skills and resources,” said Amii CEO Cam Linke. Amii

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National workforce strategy is required to realize Canada’s plan to build national projects and double housing

The federal government’s ambitious plan to build national projects and boost housing are at risk without a countrywide strategy to mobilize and train enough skilled workers, according to an analysis by Deloitte.

Doubling home construction would require a six-fold increase in construction workers by 2030, authors Trevin Stratton, Alicia Macdonald and Theo Argitis say in their analysis.

Under constant productivity, the authors estimate the additional workers required for just housing rise from about 58,000 in 2026 to roughly 290,000 by 2030.

If construction productivity improves by 10 percent, the 2030 requirement still lands near 264,000.

“To put these numbers into perspective, the housing plan alone could need more workers than Alberta’s entire construction labour force, all by the end of the decade,” they say.

Stratton is global economic advisory leader and partner at Deloitte Canada; Jancik is director of the Future of Canada Centre; Argitis is senior vice-president, policy, at the Business Council of Canada.

The authors note that during the “perfect storm” of labour shortages in British Columbia in 2022-23, four megaprojects – Coastal GasLink, the Trans Mountain Expansion, LNG Canada, and the Site C dam – all hit their peak labour demand at the same time.

The result was bidding wars for electricians, welders, crane operators and concrete crews, schedule delays, and spiralling costs.

The same pattern held true during the frenzied oilsands expansion in the first decade-and-a-half of the 2000s, despite the safety valve of an influx of Atlantic Canadian workers into Alberta, they add.

If the federal government’s “build, baby, build” ambitions materialize, the national jobs market could start to look a lot like B.C. and Alberta at peak overlap when it was not a shortage of money or projects holding back activity, but the lack of available workers, they say.

Deloitte’s modelling estimated incremental labour headcount requirements from three big demand streams emerging from the federal government’s agenda.

One, doubling housing starts. Two, lifting public infrastructure spending from current levels, amid a push for more nation-building projects. And three, unlocking an additional $500 billion of private investment, as pledged in the Liberal platform.

Along with housing, public infrastructure spending is a second potential source of pressure. Right now, public infrastructure expenditures as a share of GDP stand near their long-run average, about 3.9 percent of the economy.

Holding public investment at current intensity implies a relatively modest addition of about 22,000 extra workers by 2030, according to the authors’ calculations. “But it’s reasonable to conclude Ottawa will try to push the envelope.”

Should the public investment share return to prior peak levels (of about 5.1 percent of the economy), the labour lift rises to roughly 87,000 additional workers by 2030. A midpoint scenario between current levels and earlier peaks brings total new demand to about 54,000. “While these figures are smaller than the requirements for new housing, they stack on top of it and would draw from many of the same trades,” the authors point out.

Private investment is a third planned source of additional demand for construction workers.

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government has set a five-year goal of “catalyzing” $500 billion in additional capital spending by business, or about $100 billion a year. That would represent a sudden increase in business investment of nearly 20 percent.

The authors’ model points to roughly 140,000 extra workers needed by 2030 at flat productivity should that investment occur. An ambitious 10-percent productivity gain would ease the strain, but only to about 128,000 by 2030.

Adding everything up from all three sources of demand, Deloitte’s 2030 estimates for new labour requirements range from about 410,000 to about 520,000, depending on the mix of ambition and productivity assumptions.

Canada’s construction workforce was about 1.7 million in August. So, the additional requirements would equate to a one-third increase in the current construction workforce over a five-year period, a growth rate not seen since the boom years before the global financial crisis.

“It appears we may be setting the stage for a new perfect storm, this time on a national scale, in which governments, businesses, and real estate developers all compete simultaneously for the same pool of trade workers,” the authors say. Deloitte

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AI is a potential “job-pocalypse” for young people entering the work force

Young people entering the workforce are facing a “job-pocalypse,” as business leaders invest in artificial intelligence rather than new hires, according to a study of global business leaders.

Bosses are prioritizing automation through AI to plug skills gaps and allow them to reduce headcount, instead of training up junior members of staff, a report by the British Standards Institution found.

In a survey of more than 850 business leaders across seven countries: the U.K., U.S., France, Germany, Australia, China and Japan, four in 10 (41 percent) of bosses said AI was allowing them to cut the number of employees.

Nearly one-third (31 percent) of those surveyed said their organization was looking at AI solutions before considering hiring a person, with two-fifths expecting this to be the case within five years.

In a sign of the challenges facing workers belonging to Gen Z – born between 1997 and 2012 – at a time when the labour market is cooling, one-quarter of bosses said they believed that all or most tasks carried out by entry-level colleagues could be performed by AI.

In addition, two-fifths (39 percent) of leaders said entry-level roles had already been reduced or cut as a result of efficiencies made by using AI tools to conduct research or carry out administrative and briefing tasks.

Meanwhile, a recent working paper from Stanford University’s Digital Economy Lab found that early-career workers aged 22 to 25 in the most AI-exposed occupations have experienced a 13-percent decline in employment, while employment for experienced workers and those in less exposed fields has remained stable or continued to grow.

Employment declines are concentrated in occupations where AI is more likely to automate, rather than augment, human labour.

The evidence is “consistent with the hypothesis that the AI revolution is beginning to have a significant and disproportionate impact on entry-level workers in the American labor market,” according to the researchers. The Guardian, Stanford University

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School-to-work transition is key to addressing high youth unemployment in Canada

Canada’s labour-force statistics showed the unemployment rate held steady at 7.1 percent in September and the youth jobless rate rose to 14.7 per cent – the worst youth unemployment rate in decades.

The high youth unemployment is primarily a business-cycle phenomenon, Claude Lavoie, who was director-general of economic studies and policy analysis at the federal Department of Finance from 2008 to 2023, wrote in an op-ed in The Globe and Mail.

The youth unemployment rate remains higher than the adult rate even in times of economic prosperity because of normal turnover in the labour force, he argued.

New jobs constantly open at some companies while disappearing in others. This has nothing to do with the type of occupation or industry: It’s the usual loop of needing experience to gain a stable job, but needing a stable job to get experience, Lavoie said.

“It has little to do with a greater number of immigrants or older workers clinging to their jobs. Rather, it reflects how the school-to-work transition works – or doesn’t.”

High youth unemployment inflicts serious generational damage, he noted. Research shows that being unemployed at a young age negatively affects mental health, increases crime rates and leads to lower lifetime earnings. Persistent difficulties in finding work also delay young people’s ability to reach independence and can leave them disillusioned with society.

Bringing youth unemployment closer to adult levels represents a worthwhile policy goal – and an achievable one, Lavoie said.

He pointed to some countries that have demonstrated success. Germany and Japan, for example, maintain much narrower gaps between youth and adult jobless rates because of better management of the school-to-work transition, he said.

They have stronger linkages between general and vocational training and workplace experience, personalized career guidance, and incentives encouraging collaboration among businesses, labour organizations and educational institutions.

The German dual vocational-training system, or “Ausbildung,” combines practical, on-the-job training at a company with theoretical instruction at a vocational school. Japan’s success lies in the “Jisseki-Kankei” system, designed to build a strong trust relationship between schools and companies hiring students from those schools.

Canadian educational institutions must devote considerable effort to establishing and maintaining good relationships with employers, which is challenging in a context where these institutions are increasingly financially strapped and where faculty members aren’t rewarded for doing so, Lavoie said.

Institutional constraints also hinder educational institutions from developing innovative programs.

Providing good training opportunities for interns is costly to employers, who often lack the human resources to provide adequate supervision and training, he said.

Employers are also reluctant to invest time and money in someone who, after graduation, could work for a competitor. And if they pay less than other employment, students may not be able to afford taking part in these internship programs as they need to make enough money to pay for food, rent and tuition.

Lavoie said addressing these challenges and creating a more seamless and inclusive transition for Canadian youth into the work force will require stronger collaboration between the various social partners, more support for youth at risk, strengthening some existing government programs, creating new ones and changing some employer and educational-institution incentives. The Globe and Mail

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Canada needs to do a better job of assessing and utilizing people’s skills in the workplace

Canada needs to improve how workers’ skills are assessed – including recognizing the skills of foreign-trained immigrants – and utilizing those skills in the workplace, panelists said during a webinar by the Future Skills Centre.

Also, employers need to believe in and take a risk on employing racialized people, 2SLGBTQIA+ people and under-served communities.

“Too often, there’s an inconsistency between the skills people actually possess and how those skills are utilized or not in the workplace,” said Kaylie Tiessen, chief economist at the Canadian SHIELD Institute.

“This disconnect actually leaves an immense amount of value on the table and it stifles personal growth and it stifles economic growth,” she said.

The Toronto-based Canadian SHIELD Institute is a non-partisan, independent policy institute committed to advancing strategic solutions that strengthen Canada’s economic resilience, sovereignty and global competitiveness.

“Workers in Canada are credentialed up the wazoo,” but aren’t being utilized in a way that grows the economy or fulfills them as individuals, Tiessen said.

Immigrants come to Canada with PhD degrees, medical training and skilled trades, “and they’re not allowed to put those skills to work. They’re actually blocked from putting their skills to work,” she said.

Thousands of people in Canada are taking a college-level trade apprenticeship program, Tiessen said. “But they don’t actually have access to the pathway that gets them into becoming a fully-fledged journeyperson.”

“That’s not because they’re not skilled. It’s because employers aren’t actually providing the pathway anymore that used to exist,” she added.

“We just keep talking about how we have a skills shortage. Let’s provide these pathways,” Tiessen said.

Employers need better tools for assessing people’s skills rather than just relying on credentials and ability to answer questions in an interview, she said. “There are skills, competencies [and]abilities that folks have and it might just not be possible to prove it on [their] resume.”

Employers need a system to properly assess those skills, Tiessen said, “so that we’re matching people and understanding who they are as a whole person and not just one piece of education or a micro-credential, in order to fit them into jobs that exist.”

Better skills-assessment tools would enable employers to identify the “gap training” that people need for specific skills that are missing, she said.

Instead, employers approach skills assessment from the perspective that people will require a new degree or a whole new lengthy piece of training, Tiessen added.

Bobbie Racette, an Indigenous, Métis-Cree, 2SLGBTQIA+ leader and entrepreneur, and founder and president of Virtual Gurus, said employers and grant funding agencies need to believe in historically under-represented individuals.

This includes First Nation, Métis and Inuit peoples, members of LGBTQ2+ communities, racialized peoples, individuals of alternate abilities and those living in remote communities.

“When you ask me, ‘How can Canada help people like me?’ it’s belief,” Racette said.

“How can we make sure that Canada has people with the right skills at the right place at the right time? Believe in the people that don’t have that.”

Calgary-based Virtual Gurus combines human insight, machine learning and innovative technology to match diverse talent – “verified virtual assistants” – with work opportunities and to assist other businesses in their growth.

Racette said nobody believed in her as she pursued a path to becoming an entrepreneur.

Not only did she found Virtual Gurus, she’s now the first Indigenous woman who has closed a Series A funding round in Canadian tech and the first Indigenous woman in her family to earn a degree from Harvard University.

Virtual Gurus was included in The Globe and Mail's list of Canada's Top Growing Companies in 2023.

Among other accolades, Racette received the Indigenous Entrepreneur of the Year 2022 and Distinguished Entrepreneur of the Year 2023.

However, she noted that she has applied for more than 200 funding grants “and been denied every single one of them.”

Virtual Gurus has received contributions of $75,000 from the National Research Council’s Industrial Research Assistance Program to support the application of AI and machine learning into the company’s software, and $39,750 from the federal CanExport SMEs program to support the company’s export market development.

Racette pointed out that of more than 300 pre-revenue or very early-stage startups in the Indigenous Tech Circle that Virtual Gurus is a member of, 98 percent of the startups have been denied funding.

Alfred Burgesson is founder and CEO of Halifax-based Tribe Network, which works with Black and other racialized entrepreneurs across Canada.

Tribe Network developed a program called the Black AI Youth Fellowship, which launched its first two cohorts this summer.

The initiative brings in university students for an eight- to 12-week program focused on artificial intelligence. The program includes a capstone project where participants actually build an AI tool to solve a problem.

“I believe we need to approach AI literacy as a nation-building project,” Burgesson said.

For example, a sovereign health data cloud would enable doctors, nurses and other in health care to use AI to improve predictive modelling, preventative treatments and preventative health care, he said.

A national AI literacy project could includes some sort of AI skills credit for all workers and students, he suggested.

Bergesson noted that China, as of September 1, 2025, implemented mandatory AI literacy for all primary and secondary school students, with a minimum of eight hours of instruction per year.

“If we don’t get our students and our workforce people adopting and learning how to use AI, we will be left behind,” he said.

Burgesson and the other panelists said more needs to be done to provide young people seeking employment with “in-real-life” experiences, such as informal networking events that connect them to potential employers and mentors, and help them build “social capital” valued by employers.

“We need to stop gatekeeping and start greenlighting,” Racette said. Greenlighting involves introducing, in person, young people and others to people who might help them.

The biggest impact in her entrepreneurial journey has been peer-to-peer mentorship, she said, adding: “Entrepreneurship is now medicine for me.”

Tiessen said Canada also lacks a “one-stop shop” for navigating the maze of government programs and bureaucratic systems where people seeing work or retraining and upskilling can get help.

“We need to build online systems” that are easy to navigate, supplemented by real people who are easily reachable by phone or email, Tiessen said. “What if we put the systems in place to utilize the skills that we already have?” CSPC

SECTOR SIGNALS

 Canada’s natural resources sector confronts many challenges amid a huge global opportunity

Canada’s natural resources sector faces numerous challenges – from U.S. tariffs and domestic policy uncertainty, to outdated technologies and lack of business investment – that limit growth and hinder innovation, industry leaders say.

At the same time, Canada has a huge opportunity – given the shifting geopolitical landscape – to become a global leader in renewable energy, lower-carbon oil production, value-added forest products and ocean technologies, they said during a Canadian Science Policy Centre (CSPC) webinar.

Several panelists in the webinar, moderated by Shannon Quinn, secretary general at National Research Council Canada, said Canada spends too much on research and early-stage technology and not enough on commercialization of products, supported by government procurement.

“We invest a lot in early-stage research but we don’t see the commercial outcomes in industry [investment] in innovation,” said Kendra MacDonald, CEO of Canada’s Ocean Supercluster.

Canada lacks a supportive ecosystem for scaling innovation companies and hasn’t had the necessary government procurement strategies to help firms build to full commercial scale, she said.

“We risk companies coming to Canada, taking full advantage of our early-stage innovation ecosystem, and then going somewhere else to be able to scale,” MacDonald said.

“It’s lamentable that we actually spend so little on innovation and commercialization within Canada,” agreed Douglas Morrison, president and CEO of the Centre for Excellence in Mining Innovation and mining advisor at the Mining Innovation Commercialization Accelerator.

“We have lots of research that dies on the shelf before it can ever become commercially viable,” he said.

Canada needs to shift its business innovation funding support toward the commercial end of the spectrum because that’s where the country will have impact, he added. “Businesses are built on commercial success, not on brilliant ideas.”

“We have to get across this divide between technological developments and commercial business creation. That’s the fundamental issue that we struggle with in Canada,” Morrison said.

Wes Jickling, vice-president of technology development at Canada’s Oilsands Innovation Alliance under the Pathways Alliance of six oilsands companies, pointed out that for most countries, access to oil is a key part of their national security.

Canada has the world’s third-biggest reserves of oil, about 96 percent of which is located in Alberta in the oilsands, and is the world’s third-biggest producer of oil.

Regardless of the geopolitical landscape, the oilsands industry will continue to innovate and reduce carbon emissions, including with the Pathway’s Alliance proposed $16.5-billion carbon capture and storage project, Jickling said.

However, the industry needs policy and regulatory certainty around producing natural resources in Canada to be able to develop the Pathways Alliance project, he said. “Right now there are a number of federal policies and provincial ones, but mostly federal ones, that make it very, very challenging to do that.”

Achieving transformational technological change in producing natural resources will take new massive projects requiring hundreds of billions of dollars of investment, Jickling said.

How government will regulate those projects once industry makes the investments has to be clear, certain and predictable, he added. “And right now I can’t say that’s the case in the oilsands.”

For Canada’s forest products industry, the biggest challenge is U.S. anti-dumping and countervailing duties on softwood lumber now exceeding 35 percent, said Mahima Sharma, vice-president, innovation, environment and climate policy at the Forest Products Association of Canada.

Canada’s forest industry has over decades built a highly integrated supply chain with the U.S. and usually sells about $8 billion annually in products to the U.S., she said.

“We have this massive disruptive change that’s happening in the sector geopolitically,” Sharma said. “The biggest priority for our sector right now is getting a good deal with the U.S. for trade.”

Certain natural resources industries face some specific challenges

Some of the challenges confronting Canada’s natural resources sector depend on the industry.

For example, the mining industry for the most part is still using technology platforms for metals production and waste management that are roughly 40-plus years old, Morrison said.

Mining operations move thousands of tonnes of material every day, yet the industry has made very few changes in how it manages its waste and “made almost no impact in reducing the liabilities [from that waste],” he said.

“No other sector of the economy is using technologies that have changed so little in such a long, long time, he added.

At the same time, the industry faces the increasing demand for base metals and critical minerals needed to help double or triple Canada’s electricity supply in the energy transition to a low-carbon economy.

“This is a massively disruptive change in the consumption of metals. That means a massively disruptive change in the production of metals and minerals to make that transition possible,” Morrison said.

There’s a strong innovation base in Canada, but Canadian mining companies tend to be relatively slow in adopting new technologies, he noted.

“The challenge for the industry is how quickly can it begin to adapt to mine for those metals and how quickly can it begin to adopt new technologies that will make it possible for the industry to meet that demand,” he said.

Another challenge is that the conditions in most mining operations aren’t attractive to young people in terms of a career, Morrison said.

“The average age in most of our mining operations is well above 50 and we have to do a far better job of attracting young people to do what we do,” he said.

Sharma said that for Canada’s forest products sector, apart from punitive U.S. duties, another major challenge is the increasing severity of the wildfire season.

Over the past three decades, Canada’s forests have gone from being an enormous net carbon sink to being a large source of carbon emissions. In 2018, the greenhouse gas emissions from Canada’s forests reached almost 250 megatonnes, just from that year’s wildfire season.

Government can play a role by enabling policies that support the removal of excess biomass and incentivizing private sector investment in the forest products sector, Sharma said.

Jonathan Robinson, senior policy advisor at Marine Renewables Canada, said the challenge for Canada in this space (which includes offshore wind power and tidal and weave energy) is competing for global investment.

That investment suffered a loss of confidence due to massive offshore wind projects that were in the middle of construction being shut down by the Trump administration, he said.

Nevertheless, the Government of Nova Scotia is committed to licensing five gigawatts of offshore wind power by 2030 and recently announced a goal for 60 gigawatts of offshore wind over the coming decades, Robinson said.

Currently, no buyers have been identified for that power. Building a high-capacity electricity transmission line from Nova Scotia to Quebec and Ontario could to potentially open up markets for that clean electricity.

However, the industry needs to have a firm sense of not only how much electricity will be licensed, but how much will actually be purchased, Robinson noted. “Providing that clear signal to industry would be extremely helpful right now.”

“There is a need to be bold because nobody is going to wake up in 2040 and regret having too much electricity,” he said.

For tidal and wave energy, the big opportunity in Canada now is small community-scale solutions, mostly to offset diesel fuel to generate power, he said.

However, most small communities can’t take on all the risk and capital cost themselves. Communities also often face a patchwork of programs designed to support this type of technology adoption.

“There’s not a way to pull together the capital without knocking on many, many doors,” Robinson said.

Canada needs to integrate and harmonize these provincial and federal programs so communities can find the capital to make that initial investment, he said.

Improving innovation in Canada’s natural resources sector

When it comes to innovation in the oilsands industry, Jickling said entrepreneurs come to oilsands companies with dozens if not hundreds of new ideas and innovations every year.

“So the real limiting factor is time,” he said. “We can’t do the full analysis and techno-economic evaluation and screening and give the full suite [of attention] to hundreds of innovators every year.”

The oilsands industry did collaborate on a program supported by Prairies Economic Development Canada to cost-share thorough techno-economic assessments of potential technology solutions by engineering firms and third parties, Jickling said.

“If we could leverage some public and private resources, and get more of those assessments happening, it [would take] some of that resource and time burden off the plates of folks who are already strapped,” he said.

MacDonald said that Canada has the potential to grow its ocean economy to $220 billion by 2035. Canada also is well positioned to secure some of the $175 billion of investment required to achieve the United Nations’ sustainable development goal of “Life Below Water” by 2030. The goal is focused on conserving and sustainably using the oceans, seas and marine resources.

But there’s a lack of awareness and general understanding of these opportunities, MacDonald said. This lack of understanding affects investment in the sector and its ability to attract entrepreneurs, she added.

“We have a huge job to do in terms of storytelling around the opportunities, what technology jobs look like in ocean, how they are transforming [the workforce].”

Another challenge is that developing the “blue economy” is spread across all of government and lacks coordination, MacDonald said.

If the ocean economy isn’t well understood, then multiple organizations with the word “ocean” in them go to government asking for separate things, and “then the message gets completely lost,” MacDonald said.

Canada’s Ocean Supercluster has recommended the government establish a body like an Office of the Blue Economy or a secretariat that looks holistically at developing the ocean economy.

The innovation cluster also developed its Ambition 2025 plan, a common vision of what the ocean economy can be for Canada.

“It makes it easier for government to be able to align [its support],” MacDonald said.

Another challenge is the lack of sustained government investment and innovation, she said. Government’s typical three- to five-year innovation programs leave companies, by the time they receive support, scrambling for new funding. Also, the government programs are a mismatch with how large industry invests.

Other countries offer sustained, continuous and predictable funding for innovative companies, MacDonald said. “If we really are serious, [this type of funding] can lead to better innovation outcomes than we’ve been achieving in Canada.”

Canada also could move faster in reducing regulatory frictions to enable more innovations to be adopted faster by ocean industries, MacDonald said. “There’s a lot more technology out there that could be adopted if we could deal with some of the cultural challenges we’re facing.”

MacDonald noted that Canada is an international leader both in natural resources and artificial intelligence research.

“We could really bring leadership by bringing those two together. Practical use-cases of artificial intelligence will win the day,” she said.

Several panelists also pointed to Canada’s international reputation as a politically and socially stable country and reliable partner, with stringent environmental regulations and respect for human rights and the rule of law.

“In most parts of the world, Canadians and Canadian companies are very welcome and [other countries] like to work with them,” Morrison said.

MacDonald agreed, saying: “We don’t lean into Canada’s international reputation the way that we can and should. We have a real moment to be leaders in North America in clean tech and beyond.” CSPC

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Governments – not the market – should determine whether a new Canadian oil pipeline to B.C.’s coast is in the public interest

There is a case to be made for a new Canadian oil pipeline to the West Coast to access Asian markets, but there are also risks of having an overbuilt pipeline network and opposition from First Nations, according to a report from the Institute for Research on Public Policy (IRPP).

A decision on a new pipeline to B.C.’s coast shouldn’t be left solely to the market, Andrew Leach, an environment and environmental economist at the University of Alberta and co-director of the Institute for Public Economics at the U of A, said in his paper.

“Only governments can determine whether a pipeline is in the public interest,” he said.

In hindsight, the federal decision to build the Trans Mountain oil pipeline expansion from Edmonton, Alta. to Burnaby, B.C. was the right decision, Leach said.

“But it is not clear that another pipeline will offer the same benefits, particularly when the full slate of risks and rewards is considered,” he said.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith is pushing the federal government to approve a new oil pipeline to B.C.’s northern coast as one of Ottawa’s major projects designated to be in the national interest. Such approval would also entail lifting an existing federal ban on oil tanker traffic off B.C.’s northern coast.

The Alberta government has committed $14 million to a technical advisory group, formed with major pipeline companies and Indigenous partners, to determine the route, size and costs of the pipeline.

B.C. Premier David Eby is strongly opposed to building a new oil pipeline to the West Coast, arguing that it would risk the goodwill of First Nations for other projects and is an environmental threat to B.C.’s coast.

Leach said in making the case for another Canadian oil pipeline to the West, governments should consider:

• The United States – Canada’s key crude oil customer – has increased its oil production from five million barrels per day (b/d) in 2005 to more than 13 million b/d in 2025, contributing to an oversupplied market in regions served by Canada’s oil pipelines.
• S. refiners used to pay a premium for Canadian crude, which drove the construction of much of Canada’s existing pipeline infrastructure to the south. Today, Alberta is selling into a market flush with supply. Alberta oil sells at a discount because of its crude quality and distance from new markets.
• Canada’s current pipelines are close to full. A lack of pipeline capacity could reduce oil value and limit oil production in the future, as shipping by rail is too costly in a world of lower oil prices.
• A new pipeline to the West would help Canadian oil sell at closer to global prices, reducing discounts. Alternative pipelines such as the Keystone XL (KXL) pipeline to the United States might be quicker and cheaper to build, but would involve longer distances to final markets, increasing costs.

However, Leach pointed out that there is a risk that a new pipeline could lead to worse conditions for Canada’s oil industry:

• An overbuilt pipeline network can erode the value of Canada’s oil resource and decrease the viability of existing pipelines such as the Enbridge Mainline from Alberta to the U.S. Midwest and Ontario. If pipelines are underutilized, tolls rise and costs increase for oil shippers, which could eventually risk the viability of the pipeline.
• While forecasts for global oil consumption have increased over the past few years, this is primarily due to more readily available supply at lower prices. Projected declines in global oil prices will reduce the attractiveness of investment in new oil production from Alberta’s oilsands.
• If increased oil production does not materialize after the pipeline is built, the risks of excess pipeline capacity and higher shipping costs rise.

Leach noted that it also getting harder for the federal government to force a pipeline through Indigenous territory.

Recent court rulings show that the government needs to make a serious effort to fulfil its duty to consult Indigenous communities, he said. “Expectations are pushing closer to requiring consent from substantially affected First Nations.”

“Any new pipeline will be expensive, time-consuming and fraught with controversy,” Leach said.

“And despite the efforts of Prime Minister Carney’s government, it seems unlikely that new legislation will offer regulatory certainty and judgment-proof approval for a prospective pipeline,” he said.

As for B.C. Premier Eby’s opposition to a new oil pipeline to B.C.’s northern coast, the Fraser Institute maintains Eby’s arguments are all incorrect and based on fallacy, not fact.

A commentary by Kenneth P. Green, senior fellow at the Fraser Institute, challenges the argument that any pipeline would pose unmitigated risks to B.C.’s coastal environment.

Oil transport off Canada’s coasts is “very safe” (since the mid-1990s there has not been a single major spill from oil tankers or other vessels in Canadian waters), Green said.

The federal ban on oil tankers only applies to Canadian tankers, and a regular stream of oil tankers and large fuel-capacity ships cruise up and down the B.C. coast (between Alaska and other U.S. ports) with “stupendous safety records,” he said.

Eby argues that B.C.’s First Nations oppose a new oil pipeline to the northern coast. But in reality, Green said, such opposition “is quite contingent.”

The Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project, which has increased shipping capacity from Alberta to the West Coast, has signed agreements with 81 Indigenous community groups (in both provinces) worth $657 million and produced more than $4.8 billion in contracts with Indigenous businesses, Green said.

Eby also claims that Premier Smith’s proposal is not “real” because no private-sector companies have proposed to build the pipeline.

But Green argued that “no rational investor would look at the regulatory barricade facing pipeline construction and spend the time and money to propose a project. Those applications cost money and lots of it.”

The Alberta government’s pipeline proposal has the backing of an advisory group that includes energy companies Enbridge, Trans Mountain and South Bow – “likely because they want to invest in the project after there’s some assurance it will survive the regulatory blockade,” Green said.

Eby’s claim that there’s no market demand for new pipelines (which implies there will be no investors) is unsubstantiated, Green said.

According to S&P Global, Canadian oilsands production will reach a record annual average of 3.5 million barrels of oil per day (b/d) in 2025, five percent higher than 2024. By 2030, production could top 3.9 million b/d, 500,000 b/d higher than 2024.

“This profit potential will almost certainly attract investors, if they can overcome the regulatory blockade,” Green argued.

However, Leach in his study noted that the lack of projected oilsands growth is not due to a lack of approved oilsands projects.

Alberta currently has over three million barrels per day of oilsands mining and in situ projects holding regulatory approvals, but for which construction has not started or is currently on hold. “The challenge for these projects is the willingness of proponents to invest in long-term oil production in an environment of decreasing oil price outlooks, with any potential transportation disruption amplifying the impact of low prices on investments,” Leach said. IRPP

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Alberta, Ontario, and Saskatchewan are moving forward with a feasibility study for a potential east-west pipeline and energy corridor that would transport oil and gas to a proposed port on James Bay. The project was first discussed at a summer meeting of premiers and is now being advanced by Ontario Premier Doug Ford, who called it a nation-building initiative to enhance energy independence and open new export markets. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe both praised the collaboration as a boost to Canada’s energy security. The study, which is expected to conclude next year, does not yet have a cost estimate. Govt. of Ontario

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