talent

Talent

Atlantic Canada lacks the concentration of resources and population found elsewhere in the world.

Our workforce is leaving for other parts of Canada.

Atlantic Canada generates, as a proportion of the population, one of the richest talent pools in the world, spawned by high-calibre universities and colleges which draw students from outside and inside. Yet the region bleeds talented young people in staggering numbers, as they search for meaningful employment elsewhere – often despite a passion to remain in the region.

The Important Issues

To make it exponentially worse, we desperately lack new immigrants to fill these gaps and enrich our talent pool.

We are not attracting our share of economic immigrants, in 2001, Atlantic Canada took in 4,878 economic immigrants, 0.21% of the population. This is very low when compared to the national average of 0.45%.

The Important Issues

2011 Economic Immigration as a Percentage of Population

Source: Citizenship and Immigration Canada

Nova Scotia 0.15%New Brunswick 0.20%PEI, Newfoundland & Labrador 0.30%Total Atlantic Canada 0.21%Total Canada 0.45%

Economic immigrants are people selected for their skills and ability to contribute to Canada's economy, including skilled workers, business people and provincial nominees.

The heavy out-migration and weak immigration has triggered an average net loss of 6,400 people a year since the early 1990s – and that has led to population atrophy. More people lived in Atlantic Canada 20 years ago than today.

Our labour force has only grown at a compound annual growth rate of 0.55%, over the last 10 years, less than half the Canadian average which itself is slowing.

Atlantic Canada reports much higher than average unemployment, particularly at the younger and older ends of the workforce. Meanwhile, employers are starved for specific job skills. We have people without jobs and jobs without people.

The Important Issues (continued)

20 year 10 year 3 year

Canada 1.39% 1.32% 0.99%

Atlantic Canada 0.71% 0.55% 0.46%

Newfoundland 0.39% 0.57% 1.54%

PEI 1.15% 1.11% 1.74%

Nova Scotia 0.83% 0.68% 0.22%

New Brunswick 0.70% 0.28% -0.19%

Labour Force Compound Annual Growth Rates

Source: Statistics Canada

Our provinces are aging, with an alarming decline in the younger demographic cohort—Atlantic Canada is the oldest cohort in the country.


Atlantic Canada boasts fewer university graduates and a higher percentage of people without a high school diploma than most other provinces. YET: a higher percentage of population holds a post secondary certificate or college diploma – which suggests a capacity for training that can be built upon.

We see a cycle of poor health: Our population has a higher than average rate of diabetes, smoking and obesity and lower than average income in the region.


What’s Needed

In this new world where talent and ideas are the wealth of nations, we need to take a uniquely aggressive approach to talent retention and

development, attract our share of new immigrants and build policies and programs that better match our people with opportunities through the region.

In this new world where talent and ideas are the wealth of nations, we need to take a uniquely aggressive approach to talent retention and

development, attract our share of new immigrants and build policies and programs that better match our people with opportunities through the region.

Create a “K-to-Work approach” where the focus is on what it will take to prepare students for the workforce of tomorrow and where a link between schooling from K-12 to colleges and universities to the workforce is established.

– Integrate the “customers of education” with the “suppliers of education” and form partnership between employers, post-secondary institutions and middle schools/high schools on specific programs to increase awareness of potential career paths.

– Gather information on workforce supply and demand from industry and provide to educational institutions, students and parents through an Atlantic Canadian online tool.

– Post-secondary institutions should provide short-duration, industry-specific training to enable recent graduates to meet workforce needs where gaps exist. (e.g., Business Boot camp at the Ivey School of Business, McCain Institute’s Our Top Talent model.)

Our “Big Ideas”

Experiential learning should play a larger role in our students’ education. Work experience is a key building block to a more productive labour force.

– Employers need to commit themselves to co-op, and apprentice opportunities for students and entry-level internship programs for new graduates and immigrants.

– Governments need to provide income support programs for apprentice and internship programs and incentives for employers providing these placements.

Our retired employees are a deep well of potentially powerful expertise that can be tapped. Companies need to find ways to leverage the experience of their own retirees to train or mentor new entrants to the workforce.

Our “Big Ideas” (continued)

Our educational system should consider what online learning technology could mean for our core K-12 courses.

– Inspired, engaging online teaching could get many more students through high school graduation and into the college and university system much better prepared to learn.

– Imagine if we took the best teachers and used interactive technologies to make French, Math and English lessons available to all online.

– We should further explore the concept of “flipped classrooms” with students learning on their own time and asking questions in the classroom, allowing them to learn relevant material at their own speed with the best possible content as the driver.

Curriculum and courses must adapt to our changing requirements.

– Languages should become more of a focus. This will allow our students to converse with suppliers and customers from around the world.

– Course content from middle school to post-secondary should become more horizontal—more and more, the best programs will provide integrated learning, connecting technology with the arts and humanities.


We need dramatically higher levels of economic immigrants to increase our labour force growth, expand our capabilities and stimulate more entrepreneurship. We must advocate policies to encourage students and immigrants to adopt Atlantic Canada as their home.

– There needs to be coordination by employers, universities and the immigration departments of the four Atlantic Provinces to lobby the federal government for significantly higher immigration quotas.

– Business, government and training institutions must also work together to establish target numbers and profiles of immigrants that we would like to attract to the region over a stated period.

– We need a private-sector led Atlantic coalition to help recent university graduates (including domestic and international students) remain in the region for two-three years after graduation.


Social development is an important underpinning of a successful talent strategy. We need to improve the lives of people, and the vitality of their communities, so that they active participants in the economy and valuable contributors to the society.

– Our employers should adopt targeted initiatives in their communities, providing employees with time to volunteer in tutoring, mentoring and enriching lives.

– Improve health and physical fitness of the workforce by providing health eating options, smoking cessation programs, and by encouraging lunch time exercise.


The big ideas outlined are appropriately ambitious, hopefully exciting, but they are not “blue-sky impossible” – far from it.

They will flow from the collective product of thousands of personal actions taken by committed, passionate individuals like us who want Atlantic Canada to succeed in the changing and challenging world arena.

On the following slides is a list of some things you can do, as a business leader in our region, to help create a better Atlantic Canada.

What You Can Do

Commit to hiring at least one full-time paid intern or apprentice for a one year term each year until 2017—Larger companies can do more!

Leverage current government programs and community resources. (e.g., One-Job Pledge initiative administered by the New Brunswick Department of Post-Secondary Education, YMCA settlement services).

Communicate requirements for skills/labour to universities and community colleges.

Volunteer to guest lecture at a university, community college or high school about your career or company.

Offer “orientation tours” of your workplace to students.

Mentor a new immigrant or new entrant to workforce.

What You Can Do

Look at the community around you. Can you implement a volunteer program to tutor, train or help nourish the people who need your help?

Provide your employees time to volunteer in the community.

Consider the possibility of implementing a health & wellness program at your workplace.

Consider working with a local institution to set up a low cost MBA for your firm.

What You Can Do (continued)

Thank you for your help with this important

initiative