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GVPOD is the podcast of the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade. President and CEO Bridgitte Anderson talks to leaders in the business community about the challenges and opportunities they experience, as well as issues impacting our region.
0:00:03.2 BRIDGITTE: Welcome back to GVPOD – Greater Vancouver's business podcast. I'm Bridgitte Anderson, President and CEO of the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade. We're back to continue our series on labour, sponsored by the British Columbia Institute of Technology - Education for a complex world. Currently there are 150,000 job vacancies in our province, the B.C. government predicts one million job openings in the next decade. Throughout this series, we've been discussing the labor challenges in B.C. and solutions to address the problem. I am delighted today to be joined by the Minister of post-secondary education and future skills Selina Robinson. She was first elected in 2013 and re-elected in 2017 and 2020, most recently, she served as the Minister of Finance. Welcome minister. Nice to see you.
0:00:51.3 SELINA: Nice to see you too.
0:00:55.4 BRIDGITTE: Okay, well, let's start off maybe at the beginning of your professional story, you were appointed minister of post-secondary education in December, and so how does your professional experience in prior roles in government and before being in government impact your perspective in this new-ish role?
0:01:14.3 SELINA: Well, thank you for that question. And I have to say, having been in cabinet for these last six years with a variety of different portfolios has really given me the opportunity to see different parts of our economy and in different ways. So for example, I was the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, and my very first cabinet selection. John Horgan asked me to take on those files, and so I really saw how important it was to make sure we were building a kind of housing in different parts of the province, not just in the lower mainland, but anticipating that there would be housing shortages elsewhere, but also hearing that there were skill shortages in other parts of the province, confined, the development community wasn't active in smaller towns and smaller communities, not being able to find the labour that people needed because there are large projects happening Site C-LNG, and so not being able to find the skilled folks. At the time, I was focusing on housing, of course, and then certainly as I... When I became minister of finance and talking with my various colleagues who all wanted a piece of the limited pie of what government had available to invest was certainly hearing...
0:02:27.8 SELINA: When I would ask my colleagues these questions around, Okay, so you need X number of FTEs to deliver on this, where you wanna find those people from... Because we were hearing from the private sector... From the public sector, as well as a not-for-profit sector. They can't hire people. And so my questions kept being, where you gonna hire these people, where you're gonna hire these people, are we training enough people... So these were things that we've been hearing, certainly, I would say more so for the last four years, certainly since covid in a much more accelerated way.
0:02:58.0 BRIDGITTE: It is definitely the biggest challenge that our members talk to us about that attracting and retaining talent is one of the most vexing problems for them, and interesting that you mention your role in housing because it is correlated to housing, being able to attract and retain talent is the cost of housing, but in this new role... New-ish, it's December, so I shouldn't say new. New-ish role, a big piece of the puzzle is the post-secondary sector and how it is actually shaping talent for the future, so what kind of approach are you taking when it comes to post-secondary about how we're building the workforce that we need, not just for today, but more importantly, maybe for tomorrow?
0:03:42.4 SELINA: Exactly and it takes time to build out your talent pool, so you can't have it available on a dime, so we need to anticipate or rely very heavily on the labour market outlook, we recognize that that is the best piece of advice we have as well as engaging with different sectors about what they're seeing, the very early signs, what are the early signs that we're seeing... And so, when premiere Eby asked me to take on this file, he did say because I've been the Minister of Finance, that I did have a relationship with the private sector, and that that was really important to us, as government, is to have a good relationship so that we could feed in to what it is, we're gonna need not just next year, but three years - five years out, so that we can plan and make sure that we have the programs available and that we're training people with the right skills, and so that's what we're doing with future-ready. That's the plan that we've been putting together, I'll have more to say specifically about it in the next five, six, seven weeks as we were putting the finishing touches on the plan, but we've already started acting on it, we haven't waited until the plan was done, so for example, we know we need everyone working, we have very low-employment rate, I effectively people who can work and want to work are working, so how do we elevate and give our existing talent pool more skills to do more and to do what is needed and relate that to the labor market outlook, so that people can pivot to where the jobs are right now and where they're going to be.
0:05:14.4 SELINA: So last week we announced that we are gonna support anyone who's been a child in care or youth in care that they can access post-secretary education.
BRIDGITTE: It really speaks to maximizing workforce participation, and as you know, we put out our own report on labor and did speak to you and your staff quite a bit as we were going through our own consultation process, and this report was released at the beginning of February, 65 recommendations, which might see overwhelming, but really into three buckets, and maximizing getting people into the workforce is really important, having that holistic view is under-represented groups, like you mentioned Youth and care, women, indigenous communities, that has to be part of the puzzle as well, is making sure that everybody who wants to work, can work.
0:06:04.1 SELINA: Exactly and that's why, and that point is our child care plan, so we recognized early on that we're gonna need everyone working, and if we don't have a robust child care plan, an affordable, accessible one, then we're not gonna have enough parents in the workforce, in the way that we need them to be in the workforce. And so our Child Care Plan is part of our economic plan is part of making sure that the labor force has the confidence that their children are cared for so that they can continue to be productive in the economy, so that's, again, part of the holistic thinking that we're bringing... It's also why we're taking a look at how do we do more micro-credentials, we started doing that some time ago, recognizing that there are people currently in the workforce who perhaps can't leave the workforce for eight months for a year or two years in order to get... More credentials that were... More skills that give allows them to pivot to a new job opportunity or to adapt to a changing and evolving market that they're working, and so creating micro-credentials that are in smaller bytes that affords employers to release employees to go and do this work allows learners to learn in smaller chunks, but that build over time, so if you do five or six or eight of these micro-credentials over a period of time, then you get a certificate of some kind, or you get a diploma of some kind that demonstrates to employers that you're skilled up, but you don't have to actually leave the workplace, the market, the labour force in order to do that.
0:07:41.0 BRIDGITTE: It's a fantastic initiative, sort of stackable, if you wish, we partnered with BCIT and we are one of the first of its kind. We came up with a micro-credential on ESG fundamental, seeing it was a real gap in the market, so delighted to be able to offer that to our members and to non-members, but it has been really picked out quite successfully, I think because as you say it allows people some flexibility to add additional skills to their tool belt in a way that is accessible and not too strenuous on their jobs at all. I do wanna ask a little bit about the youth in care though, because this is quite a, I think, an achievement for this government to be able to do that, and I think is going to be looked at by many jurisdictions around the world as something that is... It's not a handout, it's a hand-up. And so what was the sort of thinking involved in that initiative?
0:08:36.3 SELINA: So our philosophy as a government, first of all, has always been that these are children in our care, in government care, and as “the parents” of these children that we have a responsibility to make sure that they can launch into adulthood successfully. And those of us who have children or own, we all know very well that when a child turns 19, they aren't suddenly able to manifest the adulting that is required. That for some it takes longer. some can do it successfully at 17, there's no doubt, but others need more time, and we also know that even going to school or do a training program. Also, you're not ready at 19 to do that, you need to explore a little bit, and others sometimes get caught that they go into work, they have an income, they're employed, then they think five years down the road – “Gee, I really wish I could go to school”, but they cant because now they're locked into expenses that cant give them thee flexibility that they needed, so we started this. In fact, I wanna give VIU credit – Vancouver Island University credit, they did this on their own back, I think in 2016, 2017, they were doing this on their own, and as government, we saw that and I said, you know what, government should take this on, it should just be the university taking this on.
0:09:55.3 SELINA: We're gonna make this available up to anyone who is aged out of care up to the 26, because that for us was with a range that we felt was appropriate to help people move into a fully independent... And so all the public post-secondary schools had this plan and we saw the success, it was several thousand, I think things, but just about 1900 had taken government up on the opportunity and we were seeing successes in this, but we were also hearing that there were those who wished they'd had that opportunity when they were younger, and as a result, were now 40 years old, they too had been in care, but they too missed out on the opportunity, and we've just felt it was the right thing to do to make sure that anyone who had been in care, had the opportunity, and we know that there's about 50,000 British Colombians who had at some point then in care would meet the criteria, and so we wanna make it available to do and provide them with the support they need so that they could be the best that they can be and have the skills that they perhaps have never had the chance to acquire and they can more fully participate in the economy.
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BRIDGITTE: Just a great initiative. There is one area I think where the system does need to change, we've all heard the stories of the multitude of people who come to Canada's newcomers and they have credentials from their own country that they've come from, and then they can't... They're not translatable to British Columbia, and so they're stuck in this limbo of trying to get these foreign credentials recognized and then they have to find lower paying jobs to keep them in their families afloat... What can government do to address this issue with foreign credentials and is there a role for industry to play as well? I know what's one of our recommendations in our report to speed up that process.
0:12:21.6 SELINA: Well, we're very much a supportive of speeding up that process, it's why the Minister of State for workforce development Andrew Mercier is tasked with looking at foreign credential recognition, what we need to do, how do we need to support people to get their credentials recognized, and what's the system and making an efficient system one that they can easily identify, that then has a workflow that can help people once they're here, we could gather their credentials and move them through so that they meet our standards, 'cause I think everyone recognizes that there should be a standard but that we have a way to measure that in an efficient way so that people can get to work ealy on... The question about, should they have Canadian experience? Is that really necessary? So what is this... The criteria for that, so that's work that we're undertaking and looking at the regulatory framework that would help make that a much more efficient system.
0:13:16.9 BRIDGITTE: So could that look like... Without trying to get to a solution for government here, but it could it look like that somebody who comes, they could kind of dip in and out of the workforce and learning to be able to use some of their recognised credentials and do some of the job that they would be qualified for or something, or get some training on the job, is there some sort of thinking around that...
0:13:38.5 SELINA: Absolutely, in fact, the vets.. we announced that we double the seats for veterinarians today, the foreign veterinarians, there's a model now where they can come and under the supervision of a Canadian certified veterinarian, they could provide some of the work while they do their exams.
0:13:57.7 BRIDGITTE: Yeah, it's sort of an apprentice model in some ways, isn't it?
0:14:00.8 SELINA: A little bit, and that's one of the things that I hope that you will share with your members, it is how important an apprenticeship model is, a co-op model, the practical model that we need all sectors to, I'll say step up and open up the opportunities for learners that, that sometimes can bog down people getting certified or getting or graduating is that they need to do a practicum placement of some kind, and finding that placement that is really is critical to them finishing... And so they need to be supervised, and that means employers providing the opportunity to supervise the work, and we see that in our skill trades, we see that with LPNs and others in the nursing profession and a medical profession. I was a family therapist, and so in my masters, we had to have practicum placements in order to be supervised to our work as we were going to school, but they were the hardest part of the degree was finding your practicum placement.
0:15:06.1 BRIDGITTE: It's such a good point. Minister, as part of the process of us creating and producing our Labour Report, we held a number of focus groups and sort of roundtable discussions, and one group that we spent some time with was a group that was either just finishing university or had just graduated, you know those younger people really get their thoughts, and that is exactly what they said they needed more skills that they could get on the job. They also though said they needed more practical skills that they could get while at university or college, is this something a conversation that's happening with post-secondary, and it was a great example. One of the students was in a science program, but said, well, I'm gonna go and take these skills that I'm learning theoretically at school, but I'm gonna be working in a business environment. I would love to learn how to read a budget, and I would love to learn some of those business skills, but I couldn't take that unless I stepped outside of my stream and took it as an elective, and so I think it's just a such a great point is that kids can be learning about sociology or about philosophy, but they want some real practical skills too.
0:16:15.6 SELINA: And that speaks to sort of the way in which we are constructing programs now... So the other day, I was just in Okanogan and we announced the Centre for Food, Wine and Tourism.
BRIDGITTE: That would be a good program
SELINA: Outside of Okanagan College - Well, it brings together with their business school, 'cause they have a business school, it brings together all of these things, right, so you're talking about the Okanogan, where they have agriculture right there, where they have a fabulous culinary arts program and beverage arts program, where they have wineries and series and where they have tourism and a business school. And so how do you put all these things together? So if you wanna be over a restaurant, you need to not just to have a culinary expertise, but how do you manage your HR piece, how do you develop a budget how do you develop a business plan? It's done in collaboration with the business school, so we're seeing more and more of this in the post-secondary sector where there's just more collaboration across different schools, different philosophies and across the different kinds of institutions. So that's been my philosophy as the minister for post-secondary education, future skills, as we need better collaboration between our different post-secondaries because the colleges can do everything from soup to nuts, they're pretty spectacular, they can design...
0:17:41.3 SELINA: And our universities have, so the research component and helping them come together so that they could create these programs that share the latest on the research side and then teach it to the students who might be at the college side, and how these sorts of relationships is really part of what I'm been trying to facilitate so that we get the best opportunities for people to learn, and that gives us the strongest talent that we need, and that's what Future Ready is really all about is how do we maximize what we already have so that we could accelerate and develop a talent pool that is the best on the planet.
0:18:18.4 BRIDGITTE: Without giving away anything that you're going to announce in the plan in the coming weeks, the other thing that we heard from the youngest of workers to the most senior of workers and to employers right across all of the consultation we did our in report was the need for digital skills, and that B.C. had an opportunity to really lead the country in this area so it does future-ready plan, talk about those kinds of skills that are needed for now in the future.
0:18:45.5 SELINA: For sure, and thousands of more seats, we call them texch seats, and that means digital skills, when we say tech seats, it's not necessarily the folks who are gonna be developing games in the tech sector is that we recognize that there's technology in building, there's the companies...
BRIDGITTE: Every company is a tech company, right?
SELINA: Exactly, right. And so whether it's front-end or back-end, we know that people need to be trained in the latest technology, and so that's why we've been announcing thousands of seats we've already announced out of this budget thousand smart tech set, so it's... We're continuing to grow and maximize the opportunities, and we have great institutions who understand what needs to be delivered, and I will give a shout out to BC IT and to some of the work that they've been doing and recognizing the tech talent and working together with industry and I wanna give a shout out to the institutions that really have made a tremendous effort to be responsive to industry and BCIT is one of the fabulous ones where I've had the opportunity to have a tour and see how they're not just connecting with industry and technology industry in particular, but they're inviting them in inviting industry and to work directly with the students to solve real life problems, but that to me is really where we're going to elevate our talent pool and develop the future skills that we're gonna be needing.
0:20:13.0 SELINA: I think about what's happening around climate change, and so making sure that we are working... So in my world, we call cross-ministry, but in the world of post-secondary, you're working across different parts of the university, different parts of a college, coming together to solve real life problems, 'cause that's really where we can take that learning, apply it right away and make sure that we can continue growing and developing our workforce that way.
0:20:41.8 BRIDGITTE: So knowing that the Future Ready plan is coming up later this spring, if you were to sit back in a couple of years from now, or even five years from now, how would you measure success on this.
0:20:53.0 SELINA: That's a great question because I've been talking with my staff about that, that we need to be able to... And one of the very first things, in fact, we're putting all the various pieces as it's quite comprehensive, there's many different pieces, there's no one thing that government or industry or any post-secondary institution or training college is gonna do that's gonna fix this. This is a lot, pieces that need to be brought together, and I was really clear with my staff, I said, so what I want people to say is, I'm able to find trained people.
BRIDGITTE: For ouur members, that would be music to their ears.
SELINA: Future Ready is not a static plan, it's a plan that will be altered as the landscape alters. We have seen how covid changed things for us in so many ways and how we all need to adapt, and this plan will need to adapt. So it will be a living document where we get the labor market outlook every year, and it's gonna be able to tell us where we need to anticipate and go and address the shortages - the skill trades, because I think if we can’t build things, if we can't build housing, we won't be able to find people to work in our tech sector.
0:22:10.2 SELINA: So this is one of those places where I think it's really important that we talk about how important building things is - working with your hands. How important that is? As I was trying, whether it was College and just Okanagan College, I got to see women in trades, they have classes now for women in trades, and they said, I'd like to learn with other women 'cause I don't feel so intimidated.
BRIDGITTE: And that's a big thing in the trades for women, for sure.
SELINA: For sure, but you know what else is a barrier for women in the trades is the bathrooms on site or work site are disgusting.
0:22:51.8 BRIDGITTE: Or there isn't a specific washroom for the women, it's just all one... Those kinds of obstacles can really hold individuals back from fully participating.
0:23:01.9 SELINA: And so employers have a role to play here. I guess that's what I'm trying to say is the employers have a role to play, that if you're having a hard time retaining talent, really try to find out what the barriers are, because I think it's really important to understand what would keep these women in the workplace so the another thing that's really important, just talking to our kids about a skill trades and what it means to become a carpenter, electrician, and that that has value and that has respect, and that has longevity, and that means they can go anywhere and work, especially if they're rent-sealed, for sure. And so we need to make working with your hands sexy again and attractive again, because…
0:23:37.4 BRIDGITTE: I fully agree, there's not one path forward for any one individual, there's lots and lots of opportunities, and what is good for one person might not be a fit for another, and it really all comes back to the principle of maximizing workforce participation and removing barriers, doesn't it?
0:24:01.5 SELINA: It... It does. And giving every occupation the respect it deserves. And so we have a lot of work to do, I would say, in the K-12 sector as well, and we're talking there around how do we support young people to find skill trades attractive, and how do we help them identify early on. There are some really interesting programs now where people... And I met again, some young people just recently in Victoria who are just finishing up their grade 12, but they're finishing up at the college because they are going to be sheet metal workers and so they are taking courses and they're gonna work right away.
0:24:41.2 BRIDGITTE: And that can be applied to other occupations as well, I think is... One of the things that employers are telling us is that flexibility and innovation, and it sounds like the future ready plan is heading in that direction. So really looking forward to seeing that. And you say later this spring...
0:25:01.4 SELINA: Later the spring. We'll have more to say about it. You'll see the full thing. And again, I appreciate Greater Vancouver Board of trade doing your report because it helps inform us as government about... We met with 850 folks as part of our consortium of putting together this plan, but you talk with other folks, and so seeing that, that there's... You'll see repetitive stuff in a plan that youth identified because we're hearing the same things, and that's just really for me, comforting to know that we are seeing the same things, we're on the right path, but we need to keep at it and we need to keep listening and we need to keep feeding back into what it is that we're doing so that we can be as responsive and as flexible and as adaptive and resilient as possible.
BRIDGITTE: Yeah, and as you say, Minister, it's not just the responsibility of government or post-secondary or industry, it really is all of us working together and to ensure that we have the workforce we need now, and we're building the one that we're gonna need in 20 and 50 years from now.
SELINA: That's exactly it. It's really about us all coming together.
0:26:09.6 BRIDGITTE: Minister, thank you so much for joining us today, I really appreciate your time.
0:26:13.0 SELINA: Thank you for having me.
0:26:14.4 BRIDGITTE: Our labour series is sponsored by the British Columbia Institute of Technology. Education for a complex world.