Thursday
(October 25)
DINNER SPEAKER
Thank you Margaret.
Good evening ladies and gentlemen.
Thank you for inviting me. I have been hearing positive things about the Alberta Congress Board and it is a pleasure to speak to you tonight on a topic that fits well within my responsibility as Minister of Alberta Human Resources and Employment.
Alberta’s workplaces are at the very heart of what Alberta Human Resources and Employment does. This conference is an excellent opportunity for employers of diverse sectors to discuss the opportunities and common challenges facing Alberta’s workplaces.
Alberta’s economy is very strong and our economic growth is expected to be double the rate of the rest of Canada by the end of 2001.
Our unemployment rate is the lowest it has been in 20 years.
And more Albertans are working than ever before – our workforce grew by 51,500 people between August 2000 and August 2001.
But the rapid pace of our economic growth has placed great demands on our labour force, creating challenges for Alberta.
We have so many jobs that our labour force is struggling to keep up with the demand.
In fact, with unemployment rates of less than three per cent – 25 of 53 occupational groups, including management and construction trades, are experiencing skill shortages.
We need more skilled workers.
And because of the tremendous need for new workers, many positions are being filled by new or inexperienced workers.
Having said all of this, the future of Alberta’s economy depends on the strength of our labour force. And the strength of our labour force depends on the number of workers we have, their skill level and their health and well being.
Since the future can be unpredictable, we must also be proactive – ready and able to deal with any change that comes our way.
I am here to talk about Alberta’s plan to tackle our labour market issues – now and in the future.
To help create strategies to deal with our labour market issues, the Government of Alberta created the Labour Force Planning Committee. Led by Alberta Human Resources and Employment, the committee reflects a collaboration of 10 departments - including Economic Development, Learning and Health and Wellness.
Today I’m pleased to release Prepared for Growth: Building Alberta’s Labour Supply, the Government of Alberta’s strategy to ensure we have enough skilled workers to meet industry demand, which is essential to Alberta’s growth and prosperity.
We have taken a three-prong approach.
First and foremost – we need to increase the skill and knowledge levels of all Albertans.
Second, we must help to increase the mobility of labour in Canada.
And we also need to increase the number of skilled immigrants to Alberta.
Increasing the skill and knowledge level of Albertans is essential - because - as recent projections predict…. almost 60 per cent of all new jobs created between 2000 and 2005 will require some form of learning beyond high school…
We currently have a wide variety of programs and services to help Albertans increase their skill levels. Examples of these are the Alberta Youth Employment Strategy, which includes the successful Youth Connections program and Alberta Learning’s Access Fund, which creates more post-secondary spaces in high demand areas such as apprenticeship.
The Alberta Government is working to tap into the skills of groups underrepresented in the workforce, including youth, older workers, persons with disabilities, Aboriginal people and immigrants.
Examples include the Minister’s Employability Council, which influences disability programming, the Aboriginal Policy Initiative and the Cross-Ministry Seniors Policy Initiative.
The Alberta Government is working on a publication to help employers prepare for and manage a diversified workforce.
Greater emphasis is also being placed on occupational training programs for Employment Insurance clients under the Labour Market Development Agreement.
Population growth is expected to slow down in the decades ahead. To help offset this, Alberta will work to continue to attract workers from other regions in Canada and beyond.
To help build our labour force, we must make it easier for workers from other provinces to come to Alberta.
Along with other provinces, Alberta has helped to expand the Interprovincial Standards (Red Seal) program to 44 trades. This enables greater mobility of journeymen in Canada by allowing qualified persons to practice anywhere their trade is designated as a Red Seal Trade.
We will also be encouraging stronger efforts of government and provincial and national regulatory bodies, to ensure compliance with the labour mobility chapter of the Agreement on Internal Trade.
Our third strategy is to increase the number of skilled immigrants to Alberta. Traditionally, immigrants coming to Alberta are highly skilled – 40 per cent of working age immigrants arriving last year held a university degree.
Attracting workers from other countries requires cooperation with the federal government. It also requires promoting the Alberta Advantage to workers in other countries and a way of recognizing their qualifications.
To help ensure a smooth process, we will ensure our partners know about programs such as the temporary foreign worker program, and that they know what steps need to be taken prior to making an application.
The Alberta Government is also currently negotiating the Provincial Nominee Program with Citizenship and Immigration Canada. This pilot program will work to fill occupations experiencing shortages.
How will we know if we have been successful in meeting Alberta’s labour force needs?
We have set targets to ensure our programs meet expectations. Progress toward the targets and the indicators we use to measure them will be reviewed annually.
In the meantime, we will continue to partner with our stakeholders to the meet the needs of Alberta’s labour market.
And the Labour Force Planning Committee will continue in their work, monitoring and examining the needs of our dynamic labour market.
It is clear that to build our labour force, we need to increase the
numbers of skilled workers.
One of the advantages as Alberta Human Resources and Employment is
that we get the opportunity to examine workplace issues from a number of
different angles.
Yes, Alberta has great employment opportunities. But we must not
only guarantee workers can get a good job, we must ensure they remain healthy
enough to enjoy it.
Because of the aging workforce and skill shortages, experience and safety knowledge are at a premium.
The lack of veteran workers creates another labour market challenge, since a quarter of all lost time claims involve workers with less than 6 months experience on a job site and 40% involve workers with less than one-year experience. These two statistics alone show the importance of training for new workers. The overall lost time claim rate actually rose in Alberta last year and we know that at least part of this is attributable to inexperienced workers.
Not only are less experienced workers being hired - but in the rush to fill positions, employers sometimes overlook safety training.
We know this to be true since, over the course of thousands of inspections, Workplace Health and Safety officers have found patterns of variance with the Occupational Health and Safety Act.
To keep our labour force strong, the Alberta Government is responsible for setting standards and ensuring they are met. However, care must be exercised all the time, everywhere – to keep all workers healthy and safe.
To help prevent unsafe work places, the number of inspections carried out by Workplace Health and Safety last year was double the number in 1999. The average fine for a violation of the Occupational Health and Safety Act has increased for the last few years – reflecting a need to address growing safety issues.
We are taking steps to reverse this trend. Through partnerships and ensuring compliance we intend to make sure that workplaces will maintain high safety standards.
In keeping with this philosophy, I will be
taking a new Occupational Health and Safety Regulation forward next year.
The new regulation will update, simplify
and condense the previous regulations, which were broken into twelve separate
pieces.
The new regulation comes as a result of hard work from a dedicated team made up of representatives from industry associations, labour organizations and government.
The consultation process involved 84 industry and worker association representatives who volunteered hundreds of hours over a period of two and a half years.
The new Occupational Health and Safety Regulation has been reorganized and made “user-friendly”. All requirements are contained in a single, plain language document.
New regulatory requirements have been added for employers to control safety hazards that have become prevalent over the last 15 years - like biological substances, and issues related to robotics and healthcare workplaces.
Outdated provisions in the old regulation have been repealed or revised, and standards and practices have been amended to reflect changes in technology and improved knowledge about the health effects of hazardous materials and agents.
And in response to the increasing numbers of young workers in Alberta’s labour market, AHRE will release a new youth focused “Extreme Safety” campaign – due out early next month.
And recently we made it easier for our partners to find health and safety information.
We added a toll free call centre to help answer questions and take accident reports.
We also created a workplace health and safety website, www.whs.gov.ab.ca that includes safety legislation and best practice information and provides an opportunity to ask questions and lodge complaints.
And finally, a few words about “Charting a New Course for Workers’ Compensation” in Alberta. This initiative began close to two years ago with the appointment of two separate committees to review WCB service delivery and the appeals system. Along the way, we have involved employers, unions, injured workers, advocates and interested third parties.
We have listened to their comments and revisited and revised our strategies based on the points they made. In fact at each juncture in the process of responding to the recommendations made by the Doerksen and Friedman committees, I have made it a priority to consult with all affected parties. I know that the only way to effect change successfully is to make the process inclusive.
I am keeping my frame of reference clearly focused on our end goal – greater confidence, clarity and accountability throughout the workers compensation system.
This is one of those projects that has people lining up on all sides of the issue to tell us we are either moving too fast, or not moving fast enough… that we are going too far, or not going far enough … that we should move the WCB closer to government or that we need to be less intrusive.
This is one of the reasons I was so pleased with the results of the symposium we held in September to discuss changes in eight key areas. With 96 representatives of business, labour, injured workers and interested third parties meeting to discuss how to move ahead, frankly I wondered what the result would be.
When the participants gathered for the closing plenary session, they spoke with one voice on a number of key initiatives. Of course, there are areas in which some agreed to disagree. But for the most part, the discussions were productive and the results give us what we need to move forward.
What comes next? We are convening a series of roundtable discussions next month to give key stakeholders an opportunity to develop an accountability framework for the WCB and the Appeals Commission.
Before the end of the month, I am expecting to receive the report and recommendations of the Tribunal Task Force on the process and criteria to review long standing, contentious WCB claims. And just as a reminder, this is only the first step – I will review their task force recommendations and then decide how best to move forward.
And, Alberta Human Resources and Employment, the WCB and the Appeals Commission are working as we speak to take the results of the symposium and develop concrete actions that we will act upon over the next few months. The legislative changes we need to make will be introduced in the next spring session of the Legislature.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I would like to conclude by once again emphasizing that we are in a prosperous time, filled with opportunity.
We have opportunity to build our labour force and we have the opportunity to be proactive.
But it is also a time of challenge.
As the events of the past months have made clear, economic and labour market conditions can be affected by unpredictable events…there is a need for Alberta to be flexible and proactive – to help keep our economy strong and our workers safe.
But we won’t accomplish this on our own.
Through teamwork - with industry, government and other stakeholders, the Alberta Government will continue to face challenges head-on.
And as a team, we will build an even stronger workforce. A workforce capable of maintaining the Alberta Advantage, helping to protect the future for all Albertans.