Task Force on Future Training & Skills

Alberta exemplifies innovation, inclusivity, and entrepreneurship. It is recognized as the place where Canada’s most talented workers solve the world’s biggest challenges. To flourish in the 21st century, Alberta needs to be an attractive place for everyone to live and work. This means building a reputation for openness and inclusion, and  welcoming boldness in collaboration and innovation.

Key Objectives

• Create retraining opportunities for Alberta’s youth
• Address chronic and future skills gaps in Alberta
• Restore Alberta’s reputation for innovation and dynamism
• Strengthen Alberta’s reputation for diversity and inclusion

3 Bold Recommendations

• The federal government should double existing support payments to the Alberta government under the Canada-Alberta Workforce Development Agreement for 2020 and 2021. Half those additional funds should be directed towards supporting training and work experience programs for Alberta youth. The other half should be earmarked for employer-led training of unemployed Albertans.
• The Alberta business community should work to develop cross-business and cross-industry innovation and collaboration opportunities for seconded employees to work together to solve innovation and technology challenges, using the Canadian Oil Sands Innovation Alliance as a model.
• To foster a more inclusive work environment, Alberta businesses should work with community leaders to address and remove the systemic barriers that underrepresented groups (including culturally diverse individuals, Indigenous persons, and those of all sexual orientations) face in the workplace.

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Alberta has a strong culture of lifelong learning leading to a resilient and highly employable workforce and enabled by a recognized, integrated system of micro-credentialing. Technology is disrupting the nature of work at an accelerating rate. To help Albertans keep pace and maintain a competitive labour force, businesses must provide an enabling environment for continuous improvement, re-skilling, and upskilling.

Key Objectives

• Catalogue and consolidate existing micro-credentialing programs
• Expand micro-credential programs for both technical and soft skills
• Increase access to assessment opportunities

4 Bold Recommendations

• Over the long term, the Government of Alberta should work to assess and harmonize the competencies and outcomes that are required for completing any given education/training program across the province. It should also work with post-secondary institutions to map the competencies that can be micro-credentialed within existing courses or programs.
• The provincial government should use Bow Valley College’s Pivot-Ed program as a model for the development and execution of all micro-credential testing and training procedures across post-secondary institutions in Alberta.
• Alberta businesses should provide the provincial government with input into: which degree/diploma programs or courses are best suited to be broken down into stages that can be micro-credentialed; and the competencies that should be included within each of those stages.
• Alberta businesses should pay for any employee to challenge any micro-credentialing test they wish prior to taking the course, provided the individual can make a reasonable case for why they should be able to pass that test.

100% of Alberta post-secondary students have access to some form of work-integrated learning before they graduate. Education is just one part of the learning process. Real-world work experience is also critical. Evidence shows work-integrated learning opportunities bridge the gap between employer and employee expectations, creating better-prepared, more confident, and more widely skilled workers, while businesses gain exposure to new ideas, approaches, and skills.

Key Objectives

• Collect better data on existing WIL programs in Alberta
• Increase information-sharing on WIL opportunities
• Expand the range of WIL programs available in Alberta
• Incorporate a reverse-mentoring component to WIL placements

3 Bold Recommendations

• To close the information gap on WIL programs in Alberta, the provincial government should work with post-secondary institutions to collect and publish high-quality, timely statistics on work-integrated learning in the province, including: which programs are being offered by which institutions; enrolment, graduation, and placement rates by program and institution; the number of placements available by each program; and an assessment of which programs are oversubscribed and which are undersubscribed.
• To encourage participation in WIL programs, the Alberta government should publish a guide that lays out the processes businesses must follow, suggest best practices, and provide a one-stop access point for existing and future government supports.
• The Alberta business community should work together to identify and develop a list of 10 proposed new WIL occupations/programs to the Alberta government by the end of 2021. This list will include new non-technical occupations and programs that could benefit from incorporating a WIL component.

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