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Training
A Step in the Right Direction
When Jamil Akhter arrived in Canada from Singapore in September 2005, the joy of being reunited with his family was soon replaced with desperation. It’s a common experience for many immigrants. They search for months to find work but continually face barriers that prevent them from getting jobs.“I had a terrible situation here in Prince George when I could not get a job,” says Akhter. “I thought I would have to leave and go back to my home town. After four or five months when I didn’t get a job, I was worried how I would survive.”
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Women Working Wonders
In 2008, the Elizabeth Fry Society of Greater Vancouver (EFry) launched Women Working Wonders, a pilot program aimed at providing marginalized women with the skills and training necessary to become qualified trades people. Developed in conjunction with the Roofing Contractors Association of British Columbia (RCABC), the pilot also provided a new pool of skilled workers for the construction industry.
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Training Challenge Ahead
Construction activity and employment in B.C. and Alberta has been outpacing most other industries for more than a decade. The construction industry went through layoffs during the economic downturn but rebounded in 2009 and is looking forward to sustained growth. Until roughly 2005 the industry successfully recruited from traditional domestic labour sources, and drew skilled workers from other industries and regions of the country to meet demand. Over the last five years, however, the demand for skilled construction workers has often outstripped supply, and the industry has been faced with serious recruiting challenges.
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Awareness and Capacity
It is certainly no secret that Canada is facing the reality of a shortage of workers across the country. In July 2010, according to Statistics Canada, the country’s unemployment rate was eight per cent; 7.5 per cent in British Columbia and 6.3 per cent in Alberta.This is not a new challenge by any means. Canadians have lived through recessions in 1982, 1990, and again in 2008, where jobs were lost and people suffered financially. With that being said, there is something that makes Canada’s recovery from the current workforce shortage that much more difficult, and that is an aging workforce.
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Designing Tomorrow
Faced with today’s grim economic reality, filled with layoffs and cut backs, it seems almost impossible that only six to eight months ago, architecture firms were engaged in a hiring frenzy, competing against each another in attracting new talent. The good news is the current economic slump is thought to be but a natural part of the ebb and flow of modern day economics. From the long-term perspective, the looming question for the architectural profession may not be “will there be enough work?” but rather “will there be enough architects?”
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Raising The Bar
In response to the residential construction industry’s continued desire to enhance professionalism in the sector, the province through the Homeowner Protection Office (HPO) established a collaborative process with the residential construction industry to develop a new system of prescribed qualifications for licensees under the Homeowner Protection Act. An industry task group (The Main Task Group) was charged with developing recommendations for a new system of qualifications for licensees which includes core competencies for different categories of licenses, educational benchmarks, training programs and professional development requirements.
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