Northern workforce development calls for region-wide collaborative approach.

Workforce development, a trained and skilled workforce, unemployment rates and participation rates, knowledge-based economy, etc.; the names conjure up a complex and ever-changing labour force landscape. As the global economy shifts, it sends tremors over the world's economic landscape and like it or not, we all feel it.

The impact of demographic and technological changes has been bearing down heavily on the economy of Northern Ontario, and, while urban centres have been struggling to cope with too much growth and the resulting problems, like grid-lock and urban chaos, the northern economies have seen a different kind of workforce dislocation.

Such changes have been with us for a few years now, and to a large extent we are adapting reasonably well. At times, we are even proud and quite smug about our place in the northwestern sun and can clearly envision that famous billboard on highway 401, which read, "You could be home by now if you lived in the great northwestern Ontario."

Actually, I do not think there ever was such a billboard on the 401, but I recall such advertisements by some Upper Midwest States in Silicon Valley a few years ago, during the high-tech boom and the shortage of highly skilled tech labour in the northern U.S. States.

How quickly things change. The whiz kids of yesterday, who could become millionaires on an idea as long as it had a dotcom attached to it are now looking for jobs, and as the baby boomers get ready for retirement, the economists and labour market analysts are predicting shortages of labour, especially those in the skilled trades. In northwestern Ontario such predictions seem to be a paradox, since we are also facing relatively high unemployment.

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To make matters even more difficult for us in the North, we are also facing issues of adjustments for older workers who get laid off when a mine shuts down or when companies restructure to remain competitive in the global market.

The cyclical nature of the resource industries does not help, either, so we also need to deal with the ups and down of commodities prices in the world markets, and changing political ideologies from our largest customer down south that can throw a whole industry into chaos, just by imposing countervailing duties.

It is within such dynamics that, on Oct. 22, the North Superior Training Board joined forces with its counterpart in the west, the Northwest Training and Adjustment Board, and brought together an array of industry experts and practitioners in a unique forum. That forum tried to shed some light on the changing nature of work, and the ensuing issues of the impact of technology on jobs and innovative strategies to deal with it. The benefits of full participation of Aboriginal people in our region's labour market and building an inclusive workforce that allows persons with disabilities opportunities for meaningful work were addressed.

New times call for new strategies and here in northwestern Ontario the call is an urgent one, and one that must be answered together. Addressing the region's workforce issue is not for any one agency or organization or level of government to resolve on its own, but rather, a problem that calls for a region-wide collaborative approach.

As a great hockey player once said, "To win in this game, you have to be where the pack is going to be." So let us work together in planning for the future, not reacting to it, because failing to plan is planning to fail.

Frank Pullia is principal of Pullia Accounting & Consulting and a former counciller. He can be reached by e-mail to [e-mail]