Welcome to Work and the Future, a podcast about tomorrow with your host, Linda Nazareth. Well, hello, and thank you for joining us today. You've been talking a lot on this podcast about the climate transition and what that means for the future of work. There's just so much to discuss. Today, I'd like to dive into it further
by talking about green skills. Now there's not complete agreement as to what green skills are, but we know that we are moving into this future, which is about clean energy and different industries coming to the fore, and that's gonna mean that we need different skills, different skills for this green future. So we need to think as countries, as organizations, as individuals, how do we develop those skills? I'm really happy that I'm joined on this episode by Hamdulakya.
Now he is senior research associate with the Smart Prosperity Institute, their policy think tank in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. And they've done a lot of work, and Ham has, about what the transition will look like and what that will mean in terms of the people we need, the skills we need, and how we get to the place where we have the people and the skills that will take us forward. I had a really good conversation with him.
We talked about how this is playing out, how many jobs could be created, how many people need to think about reskilling and upskilling, and, you know, what the best practices are around that. As I said, it was fascinating time to talk about it and a fascinating discussion. Please stay with us to hear it. So why do we need workers with green skills? To talk about that, I'm joined by Ham Dholakia. He's senior research associate with the
Smart Prosperity Institute. Ham, thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much for having me, Linda. It's a pleasure to be here. It's such an interesting topic. I always like to ask my guests first, how did they get in how did you get interested in this topic, and how did your career lead you to research about this? So the Smart Prosperity Institute has been working at the intersection of the energy and environment for the last 2 decades.
And as we were looking at our net zero transition, we started realizing that jobs and skills are gonna be extremely important for the transition to be successful. So some of the research that we had actually done found that Canada alone could create up to 300,000 jobs in the next 10 years. And we started thinking about questions such as, you know, where will we find the workers with the right skills to actually fill these jobs?
And what does this mean for workers? You know, are the skills that they require, are they gonna be completely different? Are they gonna be the same? Are there opportunities to upskill and reskill? So these were the questions that sort of led us to this path of inquiry. And over the last 2 years, we've been working in partnership with the Future Skills Center to unpack some of the answers to these
questions. My own my my own background, I have a doctorate in public policy, prior to which I was working in the health care space, because I trained as a physiotherapist, and then I made that transition. Wow. That's a big transition. That's interesting because we talk a lot about careers here and people, changing skills and, finding different things that interest them. I just wanna get back to the number. 300,000 is
pretty big. And just to put that in perspective for people outside Canada, Canada's economy is maybe 1 tenth the size of the United States. So the equivalent would be like saying 3,000,000 jobs in the US. That's kind of optimistic. I mean, that's nice to think about because we often hear about jobs disappearing. Before we even get to that, let's talk about definition. If we're talking about green skills for the green economy, how are you even defining that?
So when we're thinking about green skills, what we're really talking about are the skills that people will need to adapt to a different context or situation. So let me give an example. A couple of days ago, there was this electrician who came to my house to fix the circuit board.
Now it may happen that when I actually end up purchasing my new electric vehicle, I'll have to call the same electrician who actually fit the charger, or I might decide to change from a oil furnace to a electric gas pump for the for heating my home. So, really, it's about having a base or some of those skills already in place and then building on those so that they can be applied in a newer context such that those actions are also helping
reduce emissions as we go along. So that's how we really think about green skills. They they might not be absolutely new, but there are opportunities for people within professions to actually learn and adapt to their social circumstances. It's interesting that you define it that way. I've seen it that way. I've also seen it when you just talk about, say, a green industry. Everybody within that industry is sometimes called somebody
who has a green job. So if they're accounted working in some kind of clean air clean energy company, you say they have a a green job, but you're defining it as actual skills. Yes. That is correct. So we're defining it as actual skills. The industry itself, as you rightly said, will adopt new technologies that will help them become low carbon or transition towards that. The people themselves will have the skills they will need to build on
those. And what we're also seeing is that these are gonna actually differ from region to region because you the regional presence of different industries will actually play a role in the exact skills that get developed. Thus far, I was only really referring to what we think of as technical skills. You know? So, for example, you brought out the example of an accountant who needs to be great with numbers.
But what we're also seeing is that across all clean growth opportunities, people will also need to have some soft skills, problem solving, critical thinking, decision making. And it's important that we focus on these because, you know, these are not really taught in colleges or, universities, but they will become more and more important as we go along. Yeah. That's something I talk about quite a bit on keynote presentations and whatever that empathy. Who even, like, interviews
for that. Right? We don't have a good way, but we're talking about a giant transition. So you need people with those skills to take us through that. Let's talk about some of the get get it out of the way, the negatives part of this. We are looking at some industries disappearing and some skills disappearing. Do you have an idea of the proportions? Like when you say 300,000 or whatever, how many of those are replacement jobs, and how many of those are jobs that are just different?
So when we talk about the numbers 300,000, that's in many ways a best case scenario. And and there is a huge range there. So we have some scenarios where there might be a lot of conflict globally. There might be disruptions. There might be, say, a new pandemic. And in those case, we will still have a positive impact on jobs, but they may be much lower. So it could be as low as, say, 30,000 new jobs. So when we actually talk about jobs, we are talking about new jobs that are gonna get created.
And as you rightly pointed out, there will be some industries which might see a decline or a transition. And the opportunity there really is to help these people transition into these new clean energy industries given some of the skills that they already possess. So just to give you an example, you know, something that comes up often is the oil and gas sector. So there, they have a lot of skills which could be repurposed for
things such as hydrogen. They might have a good sense of working with, say, mechanics. And so there might be certain positions or with certain upskilling or reskilling. Maybe we can think about getting them, say, into the automotive industry. So I think this this sort of, one is to one mapping, still needs to be done. But I definitely believe that, there are opportunities there, and we have reason to be optimistic.
So would you approach this on an industry basis, organization basis, or is this sort of a country basis to develop these skills? So the way that we approached this entire exercise was to take a regional approach, a place based approach, and we specifically studied 3 opportunities within Canada. So one was 0 emissions vehicles in Ontario. The second was plant based proteins in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, and the third was mass timber in British Columbia.
And we picked these because these are actually linked to key economic sectors. So, for example, mass timber is linked to housing and construction. Plant based proteins are linked to the food industry. And, of course, 0 emissions vehicles are linked to transportation and mobility of people.
So having looked at these, what we feel is that we need to think about this as an entire ecosystem of actors who need to come together primarily because of the point that you brought out that the scale is so immense. We just can't leave it to individuals to say that, you know, here is a course. You need to go upskill and find the right job.
And so when we think about the ecosystem, we really need politicians, policymakers to come together and, you know, they could support the ecosystem by funding, by getting in the right policies. We could have educational institutions along with industry come together to bring those work integrated learning opportunities to the forefront for learners. We could have unions run different kinds of training programs.
So when we do this together, when they collaborate, when they coordinate, that will be the way really to make that transition at scale. And what we are sort of proposing is when you take this regional approach, it could be really a bottom up approach where the stakeholders come together. They decide what is best for their region, come up with the solutions. And then a lot of the provincial and federal policymakers act as enablers so that this group can implement those solutions.
So that's how we're sort of thinking about the big picture. I know you've written about the bottlenecks to letting this happen. One was the aging workforce. Correct? Yes. So in some industries, for example, plant based proteins and even the automotive industry, we did see that, there were people who are you know, the median age was about 54, 55, and over. And so there is this strong possibility that in the next 5 to 7 years, we might experience a large wave of retirements.
So as that happens, there will be the need to bring in new workers into those industries. Having said that, I think that even if people choose to retire, there will be a lot of different opportunities for them maybe to come back as educators to train the younger people. So it's, you know, it's not like, what it used to be maybe 50 years ago where someone gets a degree. They work in a single institution for 50 years, retire,
and then that's the end of that. What we are seeing is a more dynamic sort of process where people actually are exploring the careers that they want. Then finally, they choose what it is that they would like to pursue.
And then after they reach the career peak and they sort of stabilize and they are thinking of transitioning away from the career, there might still be opportunities for them to come back, do some part time work, but more importantly, mentor those who want to get into the workforce. So that's something that we are, seeing across the lifespan of people. Now you mentioned that a lot of these jobs are trades jobs. Is that a positive or a negative when we try to get people into them?
The way that we're seeing is that there is this opportunity, for people to get into trade jobs. Yes. There are certain apprehensions that are associated with them, but there is also a lot of work that is happening to break those barriers, and encourage youth and encourage people into those.
And we feel that by working with, you know, youth, helping them get those exposure, the opportunities, they might not there might be some people who might naturally realize that they were actually meant for the trades. And, you know, that would be one of the ways where we can help the trades flourish going forward. Are you concerned at all that some of the trades occupations will be taken
over by technology? It's a hard one to answer, but, I mean, it is what people ask now when they get into anything. When we look at the different clusters that we look, what we are seeing is that technology has
already come in. So, for example, if you take mass timber, today, there are people who are working on these computer numerical machines to actually cut the wood to down to the exact millimeter and then actually make them into panels that will then go on to a construction site and that get assembled into a 12 or 18 storey condo building. Similarly, you know, in the automotive sector, you're already seeing the robotics come in. Agriculture, which is, you know, has had technology
innovation for almost the last 70 years. So I think that technology has become part and parcel of everything that we are doing. And even within the skills trades, there are gonna be lots of technology that will act as enablers helping people do their jobs better. The question is, you know, will we see will people be out of, a job just because there is technology? That that's the real apprehension. For sure.
So for our, based on our research, we feel that at least in the medium term, which is the next 20 to 30 years, we really don't see that happening. We see technology just as an enabler for people to be more productive. Well, that that's a very optimistic thought. I mean, it's nice to hear that because I've heard all views on this on this podcast, and you've done a lot of research into this. Okay. Let's talk about the policy side of this again.
If you want to make sure if a country, whether it's Canada, the US, UK, whatever, wants to make sure that they're ahead of the the pack on in terms of green skills. What are the policies they should be putting in place? So when it comes to the policies that we should be putting in place, I think we're already seeing some being implemented. So, for example, in the last budget we have, we had about $99,000,000 being allocated to the Sustainable Jobs Training Fund.
So having the funding is is one necessary piece of the puzzle. We need to also have policies where we're ensuring that people from vulnerable sections of society or even those from different equity deserving groups actually get the opportunity to enter the labor force. Given the sheer number of jobs that we're going to create, we are actually going to need all hands on deck.
And, by giving them those opportunities, by giving Canadians those opportunities, what we will ensure is that we are actually building the human capital that we need to attract further investment. Of course, there are some specific policies related to the clusters that we did see, but a lot of it is around also around social policy. So, for example, if there are opportunities which are emerging in rural areas, how do we ensure that people will have affordable housing?
They have access to transport. They have child care and support. So these are some of the criteria based on which people might make career decisions. So creating those enabling factors, by having policy is is really what would help to move the needle forward on a successful transition. What about from the educational sector? Where does it start? High school? Or Yes. So some of it starts in high school and some of it, starts in colleges.
So what we see is that within colleges, given that they are often most, most of them are community facing, They have the potential to be most responsive to the needs of the community. And by collaborating with industry, they can actually design their programs and their curriculum in such a way that people graduating from those colleges actually have the skills that the industry needs.
Because very often, there is this, feeling that industry feels that there are people with degrees, but they don't have the right skills to work in that particular sector. And sometimes educational colleges are trying to understand what are the kinds of courses that they need to design so that that's valuable for industry. So we've seen in some of the conversations we've had that this sort of gap exists. And so we feel that bringing both of them together and having this conversation will help.
Something that we heard a lot of were flexible online courses Mhmm. Which will help in upskilling. And and, you know, that that makes a lot of sense because, people may have commitments with respect to childcare. They may have other commitments with respect to family or travel and so on and so forth. So by offering flexibility in the way that people learn is, something that they truly value.
And what we've seen is that when it actually comes to upskilling and reskilling, a lot of these skills can be taught within a reasonably short amount of time. So for example, if there is someone who is adept at carpentry and now they want to go and work on a mass timber construction site, then, you know, through about a 4 to 6 month training program that includes online lectures as well as as well as some hands on, they can actually get that skill set that they will need to go and work on a
mass timber construction site. So we're seeing this happen. We're also seeing a lot of programs emerging in this space. So for example, the Canada Machining and Tooling Association has this collaboration with industry where they subsidize 50% of the wages for, all all the people who are taken in as apprentices by the industry. And so it works out well because the industry can actually train them with the core with the skills that they require.
They benefit, and even the learners themselves benefit because now they're ready to get a full time job once they complete the work integrated learning programs. Really interesting times. Hem, thank you so much for talking to me today. Thank you so much, Linda. It's been an absolute pleasure. Hem Dholakia is senior research associate with the Smart Prosperity Institute. Well, that's it for today. If you'd like to know more about him and his work, take a look at
our show notes. You'll find them on relentlesseconomics.com, and you can see some links to things and how to contact him. If you'd like to connect with me, you can do that through that website as well, or you can also follow me on Twitter at relentlesseco. Now, if you do like these conversations about the future of work and you wanna see more of this, please take a moment, leave a rating or a review wherever you
get your podcasts. It'll really help people to find us, and it will help us keep these conversations going. Thank you so much for listening, and thanks as always to Stokley Audio for audio production. To learn more about Work and the Future and to see show notes, go to the work and the future podcast.com. You can also contact us at comments at the work and the future podcast.com. The Work and the Future podcast with Linda Nazareth is a relentless economics production.