Apprenticeship ad’s claim of skilled trades shortfall open to question – Politics – CBC News

Embarrassing lack of due diligence:

The government pointed CBC News to “a combination of industry estimates,” several of which were written by Rick Miner, the president of Miner & Miner Ltd., a management consulting firm specializing in labour market issues.

Miner concluded that Canada will face a “major problem” with skilled worker shortages if nothing changes over the next 16 years.

But he told CBC News his projections are for overall labour and for skilled labour, not specific to the trades.

“I think you’d have a tough time finding somebody who is going to back that unless they have a real broad definition of both the trades and a broad definition of what they define as shortage,” Miner said.

“If somebody said … right now there’s a shortage of a million workers in the trades in Canada, I’d say that’s an inflated number. That’s not true.”

Asked if he could point to labour data showing Canada would face a shortage of “one million skilled trades” workers over the next decade, Miner said he could not.

The government also pointed to a 2013 estimate by the Canadian Chamber of Commerce. But Sarah Anson-Cartwright, the chamber’s director of skills policy, told CBC News those forecasts originated from Miner’s older reports, which are not specific to the trades and have since been reviewed.

“The Canadian chamber does not cite the forecasts from Miner’s 2010 and 2012 reports since they are out-dated now.”

Apprenticeship ad’s claim of skilled trades shortfall open to question – Politics – CBC News.