Colleges Ontario

By Barbara Yaffe

Vancouver Sun

March 27, 2010

 

-Liberals, anticipating a federal election as soon as this fall, are betting they can capitalize on key areas of public policy they believe Conservatives are ignoring.

 

Among them:

 

- Educating Canadians for knowledge-based jobs of the future.

 

- Facing up to the challenges of an aging society.

 

- Sustaining a health care system that, fiscally, has already begun squeezing out other areas of public spending.

 

Participants at a Liberal party policy conference in Montreal on Friday were told by labour market consultant Rick Miner that, with an aging population, Canada is facing a prospect of "people without jobs and jobs without people."

 

The president emeritus of Toronto's Seneca College said severe labour shortages will coincide with a surplus of jobs requiring skills and educational attainment that -- without major adaptation -- won't be available in the labour force.

 

By 2031, 80 per cent of all new jobs will require skilled workers (possessed of more than a high school education), up from 65 per cent today.

 

Immigration will not be sufficient to address the imbalance.

 

Jobs that come on line will be ones we cannot even imagine today -- perhaps memory augmentation surgeons, old-age wellness managers, weather-modification police, commercial-space pilots.

 

Beefing up Canada's education and learning network is essential and will require national policies, speakers at the conference agreed.

 

Anticipated "demographic changes [will be] so profound that, if appropriate policy responses are not devised, and quickly, they have the potential to shake the very foundations of our society and our economy," says a report prepared by Miner.

 

University of Montreal economist Pierre Forin warned Liberals that as baby boomers retire, they'll be supported by fewer and fewer workers even as they start incurring major health care costs.

 

"This will put Canada's finances in dire straits. This is not a weather prediction. This is certain."

 

Canada can either incur debt to pay for health care, allow medicare to take over public budgets to the detriment of all other services or change the way health care is delivered.

The country will be under intense pressure to accelerate its economic growth through innovation and productivity increases, he warned.

 

Fortin called health care "the monster in our budget."

 

Liberals are hoping to act on pressing issues like these, developing policies that will help them appear forward looking and cast them as a worthy alternative government to the Conservatives.

 

Liberal mastermind Peter Donolo, chief of staff to Michael Ignatieff, said Friday he thinks an election could come by September because Prime Minister Stephen Harper will want to go to the polls before another auditor-general's report reveals potentially damaging details on government stimulus spending.