National action on skills and learning needed

A recently released report from the Certified General Accountants Association of Canada examines Canada’s most pressing skills and learning challenges and makes a number of recommendations for improvement.

The report is the result of eight regional roundtable meetings and the CGA’s national Summit on Skills and Learning held in Ottawa in May. Participants in these roundtables included government, industry, labour, post-secondary education, youth, and aboriginal and immigrant communities. According to the report, Canada should:

• Review and address access to child care programs, particularly those that allow aboriginal and immigrant women to acquire skills training and jobs;
• Directly confront the issue of latent racism and cultural obstacles in the education system and workforce;
• Consider a national credit transfer system to address the issue of academic mobility and to encourage lifelong learning among a highly mobile population;
• Create incentives and adapt pension-eligibility rules to encourage retirement-aged workers to stay in the workforce longer, even if only on a part-time basis;
• Provide enhanced incentives to employers who offer jobs to skilled immigrants, recognizing the additional costs of training; and
• Create a national workforce database for educational institutions, as well as public and private sector employers.

The full text of the report can be downloaded here in .pdf format.