Last week-end we had the opportunity to have a round table discussion with the Minister of Employment and Social Development and Minister for Multiculturalism of Canada, the Honourable Jason Kenney. The meeting was organized by Winston Chan and CYBF (Canadian Youth business Foundation).

Context

Lately on the western countries (Europe -except Germany- & North America) a curios phenomenon has been taking place: unemployment is relatively high (including youth), on the contrary, there are many jobs offers being left open (I.e not attended). So, what’g going on?

With that, Mr. Kenney started a candid discussion to get some input from us, so we can -together- try to figure it out what are the causes of this situation.

All of us shared our views on the matter, since three of us were from the tech world, the conversation geared towards that subject, however the tech world it’s clearly not the only one suffering from this. As a matter of fact, skilled trade careers like Heavy Equipment Operators -for example- are also being affected. Meaning, it’s not only STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) careers being affected.

During the talk, we mentioned that Canada has a very good system for financing starting up a business, however for growing it after a certain level (say above 1$ million), financing options has to be looked elsewhere (i.e. USA). By our side, we pointed that one of the reasons of the skilled labor shortage might be the highly specialization lived on the tech industry, copped with a constant change of technologies. On top of that, fellow participants mentioned the high cost of local labor, which is not a complain, but a big factor for a cash strapped start-up (obviously the same can be said for any business line).

Conclusions

In the end we agreed that a big part of the problem is a social one. We push ourselves and our kids to continue their studies to the Universities and beyond. However the job market it’s not producing those employments. Mr. Kenney mentioned that we (Canada) might take an example from Germany, a society on which, youngsters don’t need to immediately go to the University after finishing high school. Take a look at the below video:

Granted, to implement such a change in Canadian society means a cultural shift, because it means that youngsters (with their families) have to seriously consider the benefit of these types of programs, instead of pushing their kids directly to the university, such a change is not done overnight.

It was a great honor to have such a discussion with the fellow entrepreneurs, the minister’s staff and -of course- Mr. Kenney himself. We hope to have other opportunities like these.