Brandon, MB.Careering

Immigration pilot program takes aim at labour shortages in Manitoba

June 9, 2020By
Proven track record of retaining newcomers made Brandon an ideal locale to test out Rural and Northern Immigration Pilot

Sandy Trudel

headshot of authorThe Rural and Northern Immigration Pilot (RNIP) has proven to be a breath of fresh air in the search for a solution to chronic labour shortages in Brandon, Manitoba’s second-largest city. With the federal government entrusting the determination of labour needs to the municipality, the program has been embraced by businesses of all types and sizes.

Like many smaller urban centres across Canada, Brandon faces challenges when competing for a highly mobile labour force. Labour shortages have long been reported by Brandon employers as the greatest barrier to economic growth and prosperity. The competition for labour coupled with an aging population and a growing community mean that many of our local businesses cannot reach their full economic potential. A historically low unemployment rate and a heavy reliance on temporary foreign workers in certain sectors, combined with the community’s proven track record of successfully settling and retaining newcomers, set the stage for Brandon applying to be part of the RNIP.

What is the RNIP?

The Rural and Northern Immigration Pilot is a program introduced by the federal government to extend the benefits of immigration to the workforce and economy to smaller communities. It established a new permanent residency immigration stream that is only accessible to the 11 participating communities, including Brandon. This makes the program highly desirable to those looking to immigrate to Canada as they are competing for a recommendation in one community rather than competing with the large number of people looking to immigrate through existing permanent residence pathways.

The goal of the pilot is simple: to fill chronic job vacancies as identified by the participating community with individuals who have a genuine intent to stay there once they receive permanent residence. For Brandon, the goal is to provide local employers with another tool to meet their labour needs, thus helping them achieve full economic potential.

“Labour shortages have long been reported by Brandon employers as the greatest barrier to economic growth and prosperity.”

The pilot empowers participating communities to determine what jobs are eligible and to recommend individuals for permanent residency based on community-established evaluation criteria. For those familiar with the Provincial Nominee Program, RNIP functions in much the same way, but instead of the province establishing nominee criteria, determining labour market need and administering the program, those decisions now reside with the community. The RNIP has federally established eligibility requirements for the applicant, such as work experience, language requirements and educational requirements. Employers must also meet criteria regarding wages and the provision of full-time work.

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Why Brandon?

With approximately 7,500 newcomers welcomed to Brandon in the past 10 years, the community is familiar and comfortable with using immigration to meet labour needs. A statistically representative survey undertaken each year for the past decade to gauge the community’s reaction to immigration has confirmed that approximately 90% of the community feels that immigration has positively affected or had no impact at all on their quality of life. Newcomers are living in every area of the city, employed in the majority, if not all businesses, and students with English as an additional language are enrolled in all of the local public schools and post-secondary institutions.

Chart of Brandon survey results of community members' sentiment regarding newcomers
Courtesy of City of Brandon

Our grocery stores evolved to offer a wide array of international foods, businesses advertise in languages other than English and service providers have adapted their service delivery methods to keep with the changing community demographics. Newcomers participate in recreational opportunities including sports, dance and theatre. We have many new spiritual organizations and the existing organizations have embraced the newcomer population. It was so exciting the first time a bus bench that had always contained English advertisements displayed a Spanish ad. Though this might seem like a small milestone elsewhere, for Brandon, it was a strong message about how newcomers had been integrated into the community.

The successful integration of thousands of newcomers has not happened by chance. Early on, the community recognized the economic and social benefits of having newcomers move to Brandon and proactively worked to ensure that the community was ready, willing and able to provide an environment that not only attracted newcomers but also retained them. In the early days when language was a problem, we formed an interpretation co-op to ensure quality interpretive services were available community-wide and at a reasonable cost. Westman Immigrant Services, an immigrant-serving organization, now manages interpretive services in the city along with delivering language instruction, settlement services, employment services and newcomer-oriented programs.

How the RNIP works in Brandon

The Brandon RNIP, which formally launched last December, is being administered by Economic Development Brandon (EDB) with the support of our RNIP Recommendation Committee.

Employers interested in the program are screened by EDB to ensure they meet eligibility criteria as a business. In addition, each job is vetted to confirm proof exists of an inability to fill the positions locally, provincially or nationally. Once vetting is complete, approved jobs are posted online on the Brandon RNIP website.

From the applicant side, the process looks like this:

  1. Interested applicants create a profile on the Brandon RNIP site.
  2. They apply for positions through the online job application software.
  3. Relevant applicants are sent to and screened by the employer.
  4. If a job offer is extended and accepted, the applicant must also undergo a video. interview to assess their intention to reside in Brandon.
  5. If they are approved by the RNIP Recommendation Committee, the applicant can apply for permanent residence and for a temporary work permit with Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC).
The impact of the RNIP

Brandon expected a strong response to the program launch but we had no idea what the magnitude would be. In the first four months of operation, 14,086 individuals created candidate profiles and 10,288 job applications were received for the 23 positions posted on the RNIP website. It is only in the past few weeks that we actually caught up on vetting the applications received. Six individuals have received Community Recommendations thus far.

One of the successful applicants fills a position critical to the hiring company’s growth plans that has been vacant for well over two years. Another candidate who recently received a job offer, if successful in receiving a Community Recommendation, will fill a position vacant for over three years. We very recently received notification that an employer who has been trying to hire for two specialized positions for over five years is extending job offers to candidates found through our RNIP job portal. The RNIP appears to be doing what it was intended to and will likely have the most notable positive impact on addressing chronic labour vacancies in our community when compared to any other local workforce initiative undertaken to date.

Sandy Trudel has worked in the field of economic development for 26 years. As Director of Economic Development for the City of Brandon, she is responsible for establishing the strategic direction and goals for economic development in order to achieve economic and population growth.

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Principles in Action: Shattering the career path myth lowers students’ anxiety about the future

June 9, 2020By

Brittany Gilbert

With a goal of bringing greater clarity and consistency to our national conversations about career development, CERIC developed a set of “Guiding Principles of Career Development” that have been enthusiastically embraced across Canada. These eight Guiding Principles are intended as a starting point to inform discussions with clients, employers, funders, policy-makers and families. This is the final article in our series exploring how career professionals are applying each Principle in practice. CERIC has recently released six Action Plans based on the Guiding Principles that provide starter questions, practical interventions and fun exercises to apply with different client groups.

Guiding Principle: Career development means making the most of talent and potential, however you define growth and success – not necessarily linear advancement.

Who better to explore the Guiding Principle of Career Development of “making the most of talent and potential” than our young people?

And young people we have in droves at HIEC Career Lab.

Each academic year, 7,000 students throughout Halton Region in Ontario cross the threshold of our building for an informative, hands-on, research-based experience in career exploration thanks to a partnership between the Halton school boards, many corporate partners, three generations of enthusiastic educators and a very supportive bus line.

While our entire activity bank targets any one or more of the eight Principles of Career Development, there is one activity in particular that best illustrates the importance of making the most of talent and potential, however you define success: The Career Path Myth.

The career path myth 

For this activity, we show the students an illustration representing the Career Path Myth from Cathy Campbell and Peggy Dutton’s book Career Crafting the Decade after High School published by CERIC. It outlines the steps of how many people think career paths are supposed to look:

  1. Finish high school
  2. Choose a post-secondary pathway (ie, apprenticeship, college, university or workplace)
  3. Graduate
  4. Get a job
  5. Work
  6. Retire

And the conversation goes something like this:

“You’re off to high school in about a year and a half. After high school, you are going to choose a post-secondary pathway – all pathways are equally valid. If you choose to do a post-secondary program, you will graduate from that program and get a job right out of the gate. You will work that job for 40 years or roughly 80,000 hours and you are going to retire at 65. Is that pathway familiar to everyone?”

As the program instructor, I am met with a sea of smiling, nodding faces.

Time to lay down the gauntlet.

“What if I told you that your career path doesn’t start when you finish high school, but instead you’ve already begun?”

Deadpan faces.

“What if I told you that your career pathway is very unlikely to look much like what is on the screen at all?”

One eye brow on each face rises towards the roof.

Of course, these responses are unsurprising. This is the formula that our young people have been taught by their parents and/or possibly their grandparents – “That pathway worked for them, so why wouldn’t it work for me?”

Most youth want the answer – now!

Much of this has to do with the anxiety that our young people feel when they think about their futures. There are a multitude of pathways, a plethora of job titles and endless decisions to make.

Ultimately, they don’t feel in control of their lives because they haven’t been able to make any decisions for themselves at their age. We aim to alleviate a lot of those anxieties in the rich dialogue that follows, which explores a number of non-threatening actions that students are already doing or could be doing in order to make them feel just a little bit more in control of their futures.

Don’t miss our past Principles in Action articles:

The career path truth 

First, we have to inform the students of why the traditional, linear pathway simply doesn’t exist for most today. It is based on the assumption that young peoples’ career paths only begin once they graduate high school. This suggests students have no power to start developing the skills or making the decisions they need to be successful in adulthood until they have their high school diploma. We know this is inaccurate and detrimental to the professional development and emotional well-being of young people.

Second, the linear career path model appears to be a race to the finish line – retirement – as opposed to an ongoing winding path of building skills and improving talent and potential.

Finally, this model can create a dangerous culture of competition, which could result in a number of people feeling as though they are failing in the “game of life.” “Why did I wait so long to choose a post-secondary program – all my peers are already working full time?” 

This can create a low sense of self-worth in individuals, therefore negatively affecting their motivation to increase their talent and potential and contribute positively to the economy.

Having sufficiently satisfied most of the young peoples’ doubts at this point, I show them a new illustration of a pathway that looks nothing like the model with which they are familiar. This career path is more like a web and is disruptive to say the least – the kids are excited by it!

In this model, we’ve included components that better illustrate how the things students are already doing contribute significantly to their career paths. We also stress the fact that this model is flexible, adaptable and forever changing.

“What if I told you that your career path doesn’t start when you finish high school, but instead you’ve already begun?”

A rich dialogue begins to unravel and students start to understand the real value of the following:

  • Part-time work:

    Some of our young people are already getting paid work for things like babysitting or pet sitting. While they think it’s just something to do for pocket money, we help them understand that they are optimizing their talent and potential through building useful skills such as problem solving, communication, relationship building and self-reliance.

  • Volunteer opportunities:

    Our young people know that volunteering is an important part of being a global citizen, but we help them recognize how the act of volunteering benefits their career by further maximizing their talent and potential through building skills such as strength and stamina, co-ordination and, in some cases, technical/mechanical skills.

  • Apprenticeship/co-op:

    We also highlight some opportunities that students can partake in as they move forward through their academic career in order to support their full potential.

Through this conversation, we see students recognize that their career journey has indeed already begun because they are building on the key skills they need to make the most of their talent and potential in the early stages of their lives, and they begin to understand that this adventure is ongoing and lifelong.

After 30 years of talking to students about career development, it never fails that the conversation on the way back to the bus signifies a clear change in students’ perspectives about their career journey from when they arrived – a decreased level of anxiety around the unknown and an excitement in the air of student ownership around their own career paths.

Brittany Gilbert has a BA in English Literature and Theatre from the University of Ottawa and a BEd from Queen’s University. She is currently the School Program Coordinator at Halton Industry Education Council (HIEC) in Burlington, ON, where she offers Career Awareness Programming to Grade 7 students from all across Halton.

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A view from the Mont Sutton chair-lift in Autumn.Careering

Public, private, and civil society sector collaboration: Essential components of Canada’s future prosperity

June 9, 2020By
A tale of one community’s life-changing adaptation through innovation and co-operation

Kirsten Hathaway

Among the many observations and lessons learned through the COVID-19 crisis, the most effective responses on a global scale have been those that have equally engaged public, private and civil society sectors to collaborate and find innovative solutions to the acute challenges being faced by governments, communities, institutions, businesses and citizens.

This tripartite model, at first glance, makes common sense. Why wouldn’t all three sectors aim to work together to identify solutions to common challenges? It must be happening all the time for our society to function properly.

The fact is, it rarely happens, and no formal, easily replicable model exists. The Community Economic Development and Employability Corporation (CEDEC), based in Quebec, is actively working to bridge the three sectors by building a model that integrates all three equally and confers the benefits to all accordingly. This type of tripartite collaboration organized around an opportunity can generate sustainable economic benefits that balance the needs of the whole community, especially in rural areas that tend to feel the impact of external economic forces more severely.

A current working example, as outlined in this article, highlights how this type of collaboration model can affect a community, particularly when its creation and execution pivot on the essential role of a central facilitator, such as CEDEC.

Learning and earning at Mont Sutton

Mont Sutton is a key economic driver in its namesake Quebec town, drawing tourists during the winter and summer seasons, and generating secondary business activity related to hospitality. Like many businesses across sectors, the province and the country, Mont Sutton faced a critical labour shortage that affected its ability to operate at full capacity for several consecutive seasons. Since the mountain serves a bilingual customer base, the business also required a certain number of bilingual employees in key roles, adding an additional challenge given the small labour pool.

A CEDEC-led action plan rapidly aligned Mont Sutton, the Eastern Townships School Board and Services Quebec around an integrated workforce training model. The region’s first “Earn as You Learn” francization program targeted English speakers and provincial newcomers and was designed to help both existing and potential Mont Sutton employees develop business-specific, French-language customer service skills that would enable them to work at Mont Sutton during the 2019-2020 winter season.

“It took some time to bring the three sectors around the table but when everybody was on board with the same vision, we had to find innovative ways of then moving [the program] forward,” recalled Nina Kim, CEDEC Project Manager.

“This type of tripartite collaboration organized around an opportunity can generate sustainable economic benefits that balance the needs of the whole community.”

Equally creative strategies would be needed to ensure success. So, during the off-season, the partners developed a plan to integrate program candidates into Mont Sutton’s workforce through pre-season essential skills training, with jobs ready and waiting for them before the ski centre’s peak period.

All partners recognized the innovative nature of the endeavour. “Francization is already offered through the school board,” said program teacher Marie-France Argouin, “but adapting it on such a level for a [specific] workplace as such was really new … real innovation.”

For Mont Sutton, which had the added value of having the training onsite, the benefits were clear, as their HR Co-ordinator, Veronique Dumont pointed out: “As soon as the season starts our employees are already qualified, trained; they know the jargon, they know the mountain, because the whole program was developed around our operations.”

Eleven participants completed the first cohort of the remunerated 10-week/300-hour francization and training program in November 2019. Graduates, in turn, became ideal ambassadors and coaches for onboarding new recruits to the program, as well as prime candidates for continuing their Mont Sutton employment experience in the summer tourism season ahead. The ski centre is now looking forward to a mutually rewarding second phase.

Perhaps the experience is best summed up by program graduate Arley Guzman [translated from French]: “For me, this training was like a door opening. Once we enter, we can do anything we want in life,” adding that his enhanced French language skills have opened him up to Quebec culture outside of work as well.

But CEDEC’s work, like the project itself, was just beginning. While CEDEC is considering how the model can be adapted to other sectors, Sutton partners are exploring how the program can be adapted to meet the tourism sector’s needs year-round.

Meanwhile, back in town

As the Town of Sutton witnessed this early exciting win with a key economic player in the region, officials were eager to engage in public-private-civil society collaboration, too. With the ultimate goal of increasing the town’s tax base to provide community services, conversations always come back to the imminent need of workers to fill labour gaps, affordable housing for those workers, and a high quality of life to attract and retain them. CEDEC delivered an objective, evidence-based economic portrait of Sutton to help inform dialogue between the municipality and stakeholders.

The partners are continuing their exploration of opportunities both in and beyond the original three focal areas (workforce development, agri-foods and affordable housing). Subsequent meetings with local entrepreneurs have moved projects forward. In particular, this has mobilized stakeholders around agri-food opportunities through the creation of a local food transformation “hub.”

While the COVID-19 pandemic has created challenges, the use of video conferencing technology combined with the collective goodwill and motivation of the partners to forge on has mitigated the loss of momentum.

Mont Sutton, after gearing up its staff for the winter season, suffered dearly due to its forced closure early on in Quebec’s response to COVID-19. However, through ongoing engagement in the partnership, it is already mobilizing to rehire employee/trainees for the summer season both at the hill and in partnership with a nearby summer hospitality tourism business.

“Our tripartite partnership with CEDEC, the school board and the provincial government has remained strong during the COVID-19 crisis due to our consistent communication and the solid relationship we’ve developed over the last year. This relationship has enabled us to get through the pandemic with our feet on the ground while planning ahead for the start of Phase II in June,” said Dumont.

Sutton’s success story demonstrates the many positive outcomes of public, private and civil society collaboration: this model has generated greater worker mobility within Mont Sutton; increased the capacity of the local tourism sector due to increased bilingualism and customer service skills; and it is giving one of the region’s major employers (350 employees) a fighting chance to recover in the “new normal” post COVID-19.

Kirsten Hathaway has led the CEDEC communications department since 2004 and is committed to the organization’s evolution as it mobilizes public, private and civil society sector collaboration around economic growth opportunities and generates tangible benefits for communities and individuals. To learn more about the model and other collaborations such as in Mont Sutton, consider attending the Creating Inclusive Economies: Building Bridges Between Public, Private and Civil Society Sectors Conference, co-hosted by CEDEC and the Canadian Rural Revitalization Foundation (CRRF) planned for Fall 2021 in Rimouski, Quebec.

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The future of agriculture in the United States

June 9, 2020By
Exploring labour shortages in US agriculture and potential solutions for the future

Melissa A. Messer

This article was also published in the Summer 2020 issue of the National Career Development Association’s Career Developments magazine.

author headshotAs we enter summer, many of our favourite foods will soon be ripe and ready to be harvested. However, what may not be ready is a workforce that is available when crops are.

Current labour shortages

The American Farm Bureau Federation indicates that US agriculture needs 1.5 to 2 million hired workers (Economic Impact of Immigration, 2020). These challenging, often seasonal positions are essential to food production – but few US citizens are willing to fill them. A California Farm Bureau Federation survey found that 56% of California farmers have been unable to find all the workers they need over the past five years (Survey: California farms face continuing employee shortages, 2019).

Given this chronic labour shortage, immigrants – mostly from Mexico – play an increasingly crucial role in our food system. Foreign-born workers can legally come to the United States to perform short-term farm labour under the H-2A Temporary Agricultural Worker Program, often referred to as the H-2A visa program.

Rules are in place so that the H-2A program does not take jobs from domestic workers or lower the average wage. Before hiring H-2A workers, farm employers must demonstrate to the DOL that they are unable to recruit US citizens for their open positions. They are also required to pay a state-specific minimum wage that may not be lower than the average wage for crop and livestock workers in their region during the prior year, known as the Adverse Effect Wage Rate.

Once approved, H-2A visa holders are allowed to work in the US temporarily. The visa can be re-approved annually for up to three years. A worker loses their H-2A status if they leave their job. After a worker has three years of H-2A status, they are required to leave the United States for at least three months before applying to receive a H-2A visa again. The H-2A visa does not apply to a worker’s family members and does not give workers a way to gain permanent legal status. Unlike the H-2B program, there is no cap set on the total number of H-2A visas that can be granted each year.

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The future of farming

“By the year 2050, US growers will need to reach an impressive level of food production to help feed a growing world population. Fewer in number, they will operate multifaceted businesses with stunning new technology to increase efficiency on farms.” (The Future of Farming, 2020)

There are several predictions as to what the future of farming will look like and what additional labor demands will be:

  • Food demand increases – Farmers will be expected to increase their food production by 70% in order to meet the needs compared to 2007
  • Consolidation acceleration – The 2012 census data revealed the significant number of older farmers (65 and older) who will soon be exiting the workforce with fewer younger growers to replace them.
  • High-tech solutions – In order to deal with the lack of labour, it is likely that more tech solutions will be used including drones, robots, increased use of data in farm management, gene editing and other emerging agriculture technology.
Resources for career counsellors and professionals
  • National FFA and Discovery Education have joined forces to create a robust, comprehensive career resource called Ag Explorer to help you explore the broad range of careers within the industry of agriculture.
  • AgHires is a recruiting, job-posting website and HR company for the Agriculture and Food Production industries. AgHires helps agribusinesses, farms, grain operations, specialty crops, food processors, livestock, biotechnology and other relatable businesses hire employees.
  • The year 2050 is a key moment in time – the world’s population will be a projected 10 billion. Food production needs are expected to rise by 60-70% and changing agronomic conditions will put pressure on agricultural yields. Journey 2050 is a free agriculture education program that challenges participants to answer the question “How will we sustainably feed 9 billion people by the year 2050?”

Melissa A. Messer, MHS, is the Director of Product Development for Psychological Assessment Resources, Inc. She oversees all new product acquisitions and development and manages a team of project directors and quality control specialists. Messer is the author of several assessments, including the Academic Achievement Battery (AAB) series, the Working Styles Assessment (WSA), and the Work Values Inventory (WVI). She has been the Editor of NCDA’s Career Developments Magazine since 2015.

References

Economic Impact of Immigration. (2020, May, 11). Retrieved from fb.org/issues/immigration-reform/agriculture-labor-reform/economic-impact-of-immigration

Gasiorowski-Denis, E. (2017). The future of farming. iso.org/news/Ref2183.htm

Survey: California farms face continuing employee shortages. (2019). cfbf.com/news/survey-california-farms-face-continuing-employee-shortages/

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North American rural workforce development: Poised for growth

June 9, 2020By
Efforts must be made to attract new industries and build skills-training pathways in rural communities

Rebecca Merlenbach and Sarah Patterson-Mills

This article was also published in the Summer 2020 issue of the National Career Development Association’s Career Developments magazine.

Workforce development, a relatively recent term and concept that has developed over the past two decades, describes a wide range of activities and public policies related to learning and skill building for entry into the world of work. A 2019 Federal Reserve National Brief, Investing in America’s Workforce, outlined several rural workforce development priorities based on a series of dialogues between the Atlanta, Chicago and Minneapolis Federal Reserve and community leaders, policy-makers and higher-education institutions. These areas were:

  • Education and technology training opportunities to expand skill development
  • Economic diversification
  • Improving the quality of jobs available
  • Enhanced infrastructure that allows for access to technology
  • Partnerships across non-for-profit, public and private sectors to facilitate economic regional growth (Bozarth & Strifler, 2019, p. 2)

Historically, rural employment opportunities have consisted largely of blue-collar and unskilled jobs including agriculture and reliance on natural resources. As discussed in the list above, in order for workforce development in rural areas to be successful, public policy efforts must widen the scope in order to attract new industries and grow rural populations, which in turn strengthens the economy.

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In the US and Canada, 70 years ago, over 70% of workers lived in remote areas while today the inverse is true, with 66% of workers living in urban areas (Leeson, 2018). In the US, rural counties have experienced a 3% population growth rate since 2000, which can be attributed to gains in rural communities on the edges of metropolitan areas, while more remote counties continued to lose population. In Canada today, 81.4% of the population lives in urban and suburban areas (Plecher, 2019). Thus, in the US and Canada, the lack of available workers adversely affects rural economies, which stymies population growth, eroding stability in these areas.

To ensure American and Canadian career practitioners are able to effectively serve those in rural communities, access issues may need to be considered and resolved. Internet and other technological tools to reach our clients may be less available, for instance. Cost for counselling services may be an additional consideration and practitioners may consider sliding or reduced fee scales to make services affordable for those who are earning less per capita. In addition to providing affordable and accessible sessions to rural clients, access to more training programs is essential. Students and employees who are looking for a sustainable future may need different training programs such as those in agriculture or other non-traditional post-secondary pathways. Career counsellors are encouraged to advocate for social justice and advocate for these types of accessibility.

Education and technology training opportunities to expand skill development

Once barriers are overcome, there are many strengths that a rural workforce provides for the entire economy of a country such as food supply for export and domestic consumption. There appears to be a rural population shift in Canada and the US with increased immigrant populations settling in them (Ajilore & Willingham, 2019). As career practitioners and social justice advocates, we can help our clients recognize and develop their own social capital through a review of interests, abilities and values they hold. Government funding can go a long way to growing workforce opportunities in rural areas. Land is cheaper and larger distribution centres and manufacturing may be more profitable in these areas. In addition, natural resources and community social capitol bolster the threads in these communities, and with government subsidies, institutions of higher education can also contribute to the growth of these communities.

As new industries and technologies are introduced, higher-education institutions can support these efforts by adding programs that provide skills training to rural employees. Since 2017, partnerships between governing bodies and community colleges in the United States have increased focus on legislation to provide more equitable access to education for adult learners, especially in states largely composed of rural populations. These actions are removing barriers and providing funding to support short-term programs that meet the local industry needs (NCLS, 2018). Short-term skills-training programs offered by community colleges and job-training centres have wrap-around benefits for the economy and must be better equipped to “nimbly” respond to current rural workforce demands (Dews, 2013). These programs benefit the employee by increasing their skills and abilities, making them more valuable, and thus – hopefully –increasing their wages. Employers benefit from partnerships with these programs, as they can provide a pipeline to human capital for companies that are experiencing worker shortage.

Rural areas across the US and Canada are home to different cultures, people, businesses and infrastructure, and are far from geographically or economically homogenous. Rural areas are less densely populated and less connected to major centres of employment and thus face unique challenges affecting job growth and advanced work skills training. It is our responsibility to the profession to ensure we provide services that are accessible to all, are inclusive and social-justice minded, and honour the diversity within and between communities.

Sarah Patterson-Mills, PhD, LPC is the Program Chair for School Counseling at Lindenwood University for the Illinois and Missouri Campuses. She has worked in developing college career centers and directing them over five years.

Robyn Gunn is pursuing a Master’s of Arts at Lindenwood University and has a BA in Psychology (cum laude) with concentration in special education. In her final year of Master’s in Counseling Program-School Counseling at Lindenwood University, she also works as a Graduate Assistant in the Counseling Department.

References

Ajilore, O. & Willingham, Z. (2019, October 21) Adversity and assets: identifying rural opportunities. Center for American Progress. americanprogress.org/issues/economy/reports/2019/10/21/476097/adversity-assets-identifying-rural-opportunities/

Bozarth, A. & Strifler, W. M. (2019). Strengthening workforce development in rural areas. The 2019 Federal Reserve System Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. Retrieved from: investinwork.org/-/media/Files/reports/strengthening-workforce-development-rural-areas.pdf

Dews. F. (2013). Closing the Skills Gap through Workforce Development Policy. BROOKINGS.

Leeson, G. W. (2018). The growth, ageing and urbanisation of our world. Journal of Population Ageing, 11(2), 107-115. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12062-018-9225-7

National Career Development Association (2015).  Code of Ethics.  ncda.org/aws/NCDA/asset_manager/get_file/3395

National Conference of State Legislatures (2018). Higher education legislation in 2017. ncsl.org/research/education/higher-education-legislation-in-2017.aspx

Opinko, D. (2019, October 3). Canada’s population grows by more than 500,000 in one year. Lethbridge News. lethbridgenewsnow.com/2019/10/03/canadas-population-grows-by-more-than-500000-in-one-year/

Plecher, H.(2019, December 11). Urbanization in Canada 2018. Retrieved on 2/25/2019 from: statista.com/statistics/271208/urbanization-in-canada/

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Evening sun shines the municipal building of Collingwood, Ontario.Careering

Context matters in rural workforce development: 7 important facts

June 9, 2020By
While each rural community is unique, common challenges and opportunities exist, including labour shortages and rising senior care needs

Ray Bollman

author headshotThe defining challenge of rural workforce development derives from the size of the community and the distance to a large centre. This differentiates rural workforce development from generic workforce development. However, rural is not the same everywhere – as they say, “When you see one rural community, you have seen one rural community.”

This article addresses the implications of rurality and specific influences on workforce development in rural Canada, such as labour shortages and the growing Indigenous population.

1. The degree of rurality matters

Every rural workforce policy or program must first consider the two dimensions of rurality:

  • What is the size of your community? and
  • What is the distance to a larger community? (Reimer and Bollman (2010), Bollman and Reimer (2018), Bollman and Reimer (2019) (See Figure 1).

The policy and practice of workforce development will differ depending on these rurality dimensions. While people living in rural areas understand the advantages and disadvantages of these characteristics, workforce policy analysts may not intuitively appreciate the implications.

In the upper panel of Figure 2, we show the target clientele for rural workforce development in terms of the number of communities at each intersection of the dimensions of rural (ie, size of community and distance to a large community). The lower panel shows the target clientele in terms of the number of residents in each type of community for rural workforce development efforts across the rurality dimensions.

What is rurality?

We identify two spatial dimensions of rurality:

  1. Density (population size of a locality); and
  2. Distance-to-density

These are the two spatial dimensions shown in Figure 1 where any given locality could be located at any combination of “density” and “distance-to-density.” The location of a community in the grid of Figure 1 determines the spatial constraints (and advantages) of the given community. [See Reimer and Bollman (2010), Bollman and Reimer (2018) and Bollman and Reimer (2019)]

1. The degree of rurality matters

Every rural workforce policy or program must first consider the two dimensions of rurality:

  • What is the size of your community? and
  • What is the distance to a larger community? (Reimer and Bollman (2010), Bollman and Reimer (2018), Bollman and Reimer (2019) (See Figure 1).

The policy and practice of workforce development will differ depending on these rurality dimensions. While people living in rural areas understand the advantages and disadvantages of these characteristics, workforce policy analysts may not intuitively appreciate the implications.

In the upper panel of Figure 2, we show the target clientele for rural workforce development in terms of the number of communities at each intersection of the dimensions of rural (ie, size of community and distance to a large community). The lower panel shows the target clientele in terms of the number of residents in each type of community for rural workforce development efforts across the rurality dimensions.

Figure 1: The two dimensions of rurality: density and distance to density
Figure 1

Figure 2: Distribution of communities by density and distance to density
Figure 2

2. Rural Canada is growing

The fact that rural Canada is growing is important to our understanding of rural workforce development  (Mendelson and Bollman (1998); Bollman and Clemenson (2008); Bollman (2012); Bollman (2017) (Figure 3). However, it is not growing as fast as urban Canada and thus the share of the population residing in rural areas is declining. Also, rural Canada is not growing everywhere – specifically, the rural population is growing near cities, in cottage country and in the North due to higher fertility rates among Indigenous women (Figure 4).

Chart: Canada's population in non-metro census divisions
Figure 3

Map: Number of census periods with population growth
Figure 4

3. Labour market shortages are everywhere

Rural workforce development has recently entered an era where there are fewer potential labour market entrants than potential retirees from the labour market. In the early 1970s, there were 250 potential entrants per 100 potential retirees across urban and rural areas (Figure 5). Now, in rural Canada, we see about 70 potential entrants for every 100 potential retirees (compared to 85 potential entrants in the urban labour market) (Figure 6). This implies labour shortages everywhere. As noted on the cover page of Bollman (2014), the rural development objective has switched from “create jobs” to “create people.”

Thus, individuals pursuing policy and programs may have a different personal experience of entering the labour market compared to the current entrants to the (rural) workforce. Understanding the data – rather than relying on personal experience – can help ensure workforce development initiatives are relevant for today.

Chart: Potential labour market shortage up to 2029
Figure 5

Graph: Demographic replacement of the working-age population
Figure 6

4. Immigrants are the source for growing the rural workforce

A quick review of demographic data show that:

  1. In rural Canada, the number of births barely outpace the number of deaths (Figure 7) and in many parts of rural Canada, there are more deaths than births in each year;
  2. Migration into rural Canada from elsewhere in Canada has been negative but is now a small positive contribution to rural population growth (Figure 8); and
  3. International immigration into rural Canada is now a small positive contribution to population growth (Figure 9).

Given the fact that deaths are outpacing births and that attracting a Canadian citizen to move to your community is a loss for another area, immigration can be a powerful source to grow the rural workforce.

Natural balance (births minus deaths)
Figure 7

Migration contributing to population growth
Figure 8

International immigration and population growth
Figure 9

5. Indigenous young adults represent an increasing share of potential rural workforce entrants

Another feature of the rural workforce is that Indigenous people represent an increasing share of entrants to the rural workforce. At present, about 16% of potential rural labour market entrants in Canada report an Aboriginal Identity (Figure 10). This varies considerably across rural Canada. For instance, in rural Manitoba, about 40% of potential labour market entrants report an Aboriginal identity (Figure 11). Manitoba’s rural workforce will decline without the participation of Indigenous peoples. Successful Indigenous workforce development initiatives will define successful rural development in Manitoba, and other areas, going forward. 

Canadians under 15 reporting an Aboriginal identity
Figure 10

Non-metro residents of Manitoba reporting an Aboriginal identity
Figure 11

6. High-school non-completion rates

It is often assumed that high school drop-out rates are higher in rural areas. However, for non-Indigenous youth, high school non-completion rates are the same across the urban-rural spectrum (Figure 12). For Indigenous students, non-completion rates are higher in urban areas compared with non-Indigenous students, and much higher in rural areas. Thus, the “common knowledge” that high-school completion rates are higher in rural areas is due to a higher share of Indigenous students in rural areas and higher high school non-completion rates among Indigenous students. The same situation existed 15 years ago (Figure 13).

Dropout rates in rural Canada
Figure 12

Both the federal and the provincial educational systems have failed Indigenous youth (Angus, 2017). In my opinion, the (potential) entry of Indigenous youth into the rural labour market represents the major challenge for policy development and program delivery for rural workforce development for two reasons:

  • Their demographic impact represents the sole source for maintaining the size of the rural market (in many jurisdictions); and
  • Their lower high-school completion rates may be expected to constrain their options in the labour market.
Comparing dropout rates between aboriginal and non-aboriginal youth
Figure 13

7. Senior care needs are rising

Finally, one occupation with an expanding demand in rural and urban communities is senior care. In Canada, the number of individuals ages 80-89 and ages 90+ is expected to double over the next 20 years (Figures 14 and 15). Individuals in the latter age group will require a higher level of residential care. Rural communities have an opportunity to build residences for seniors, both for local seniors and for seniors outside of their community. Workforce development needs to actively engage in this opportunity.

Projected population 80-89 for Canada to 2036
Figure 14

Projected population 90+ for Canada to 2036
Figure 15

To conclude

Rural is not all the same. Understanding the distinct features of rural communities will inform successful policy development and program delivery in rural workforce development. The rurality dimensions of community size and the distance of the community to a large centre defines the specific constraints (and opportunities) for workforce development in any given locality. What is the role of immigration, Indigenous workforce inclusion or demographic shifts? Rural workforce development must recognize the impact of these trends and others to develop solutions that resonate in the local context. 

Ray Bollman has retired from Statistics Canada, where he was the founding editor of Statistics Canada’s Rural and Small Town Canada Analysis Bulletins. Since retiring, he has been writing the series of bulletins titled Focus on Rural Ontario for the Rural Ontario Institute and has authored a report for the Federation of Canada Municipalities titled Rural Canada 2013: An Update – A statement of the current structure and trends in Rural Canada. Presently, he is a Research Affiliate with the Rural Development Institute, Brandon University and a Research Affiliate with The Leslie Harris Centre of Regional Policy and Development, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

References

Alasia, Alessandro. (2004) “Mapping the Socio-economic Diversity of Rural Canada.” Rural and Small Town Canada Analysis Bulletin Vol. 5, No. 2 (Ottawa: Statistics Canada, Catalogue no. 21-006-XIE). (http://www5.statcan.gc.ca/olc-cel/olc.action?objId=21-006-X&objType=2&lang=en&limit=0).

Alasia, Alessandro, Ray D. Bollman, John Parkins and Bill Reimer. (2008) An Index of Community Vulnerability: Conceptual Framework and an Application to Population and Employment Change. (Ottawa: Statistics Canada, Agriculture and Rural Working Paper no. 88, Catalogue no. 21-601-MIE) (www.statcan.ca/cgi-bin/downpub/listpub.cgi?catno=21-601-MIE).

Alasia, Alessandro. (2010) “Population Change Across Canadian Communities: The Role of Sector Restructuring, Agglomeration, Diversification and Human Capital.” Rural and Small Town Canada Analysis Bulletin Vol. 8, No. 4 (Ottawa: Statistics Canada, Catalogue no. 21-006-XIE). (http://www.statcan.gc.ca/bsolc/olc-cel/olc-cel?catno=21-006-X&CHROPG=1&lang=eng)

Angus, Charlie (2017) Children of the Broken Treaty (Regina: University of Regina Press, second edition).

Bernard, André. (2008) “Immigrants in the hinterlands.” Perspectives on labour and income. (Ottawa: Statistics Canada, Catalogue no. 75-0001, January), pp. 5 to 14.

Beshiri, Roland and Emily Alfred. (2002) “Immigrants in Rural Canada.” Rural and Small Town Canada Analysis Bulletin Vol. 4, No. 2 (Ottawa: Statistics Canada, Catalogue no. 21-006-XIE) (http://www.statcan.gc.ca/bsolc/olc-cel/olc-cel?catno=21-006-X&CHROPG=1&lang=eng).

Beshiri, Roland. (2004) “Immigrants in Rural Canada: 2001 Update.” Rural and Small Town Canada Analysis Bulletin Vol. 5, No. 4 (Ottawa: Statistics Canada, Catalogue no. 21-006-XIE) (http://www.statcan.gc.ca/bsolc/olc-cel/olc-cel?catno=21-006-X&CHROPG=1&lang=eng).

Beshiri, Roland and Ray D. Bollman. (2005) Immigrants in Rural Canada. Presentation to the 2005 Canadian Rural Revitalization Foundation – Rural Development Institute National Rural Think Tank (https://www.brandonu.ca/rdi/wp-content/blogs.dir/116/files/2015/09/Immigrants_in_Rural_Canada.pdf).

Beshiri, Roland and Jiaosheng He. (2009) “Immigrants in Rural Canada: 2006.” Rural and Small Town Canada Analysis Bulletin Vol. 8, No. 2 (Ottawa: Statistics Canada, Catalogue no. 21-006-XIE) (http://www.statcan.gc.ca/bsolc/olc-cel/olc-cel?catno=21-006-X&CHROPG=1&lang=eng).

Bollman, Ray D., Roland Beshiri and Heather Clemenson. (2007) “Immigrants in Rural Canada.” In Bill Reimer (ed.) Our Diverse Cities No. 3 (Summer), pp. 9 – 15.

Bollman, Ray D. and Heather A. Clemenson (2008) Structure and Change in Canada’s Rural Demography: An Update to 2006 with Provincial Detail (Ottawa: Statistics Canada, Agriculture and Rural Working Paper No. 90, Catalogue no. 21-601-MIE) (http://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2008/statcan/21-601-M/21-601-m2008090-eng.pdf).

Bollman, Ray D. (2012) Canada’s rural population is growing: A rural demography update to 2011 (Guelph: Rural Ontario Institute) (http://www.ruralontarioinstitute.ca/file.aspx?id=231b5f1a-a7ca-4ddf-b69e-4034a35de640).

Bollman, Ray D. (2013) “Factsheet: Location of Immigrant Arrivals in 2012.” Pathways to Prosperity Bulletin (London, Ontario: University of Western Ontario, Pan-Canadian Project on “Pathways to Prosperity: Promoting Welcoming Communities in Canada”, May, pp. 2-4). (http://p2pcanada.ca/library/factsheet-location-of-immigrant-arrivals-in-2012).

Bollman, Ray D. (2013) “Factsheet: Immigrants – Where are They Living Now?” Pathways to Prosperity Bulletin (London, Ontario: University of Western Ontario, Pan-Canadian Project on “Pathways to Prosperity: Promoting Welcoming Communities in Canada”, October, pp. 6-9).(http://p2pcanada.ca/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/eBulletin-October-2013.pdf)

Bollman, Ray D. (2013) “Immigrant arrivals in 2012.” Focus on Rural Ontario (Vol. 1, No. 6, July) (http://www.ruralontarioinstitute.ca/uploads/userfiles/files/Focus%20on%20Rural%20Ontario%20-%20Overview%20of%20rural%20ON%20geography.pdf

Bollman, Ray D. (2013) “Where are immigrants residing now?” Focus on Rural Ontario (Vol. 1, No. 7, July) (http://www.ruralontarioinstitute.ca/uploads/userfiles/files/Focus%20on%20Rural%20Ontario%20-%20Overview%20of%20rural%20ON%20geography.pdf

Bollman, Ray D. (2013) “Aboriginal identity population.” Focus on Rural Ontario (Vol. 1, No. 9, July) (http://www.ruralontarioinstitute.ca/uploads/userfiles/files/Focus%20on%20Rural%20Ontario%20-%20Overview%20of%20rural%20ON%20geography.pdf).

Bollman, Ray D. (2013) Canada’s rural labour market and the role of immigrants. Presentation to the Annual Rural Policy Conference of the Canadian Rural Revitalisation Foundation, October 24 to 26, Thunder Bay, Ontario. Available at http://www.crrf.ca/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/B3-Rural-Immigration-Migration-Presenter-Ray-Bollman.pdf.

Bollman, Ray D. and William Ashton. (2014) Aboriginal Population (Brandon: Brandon University, Rural Development Institute FactSheet) FactSheets at (http://www.brandonu.ca/rdi/25th/).

Bollman, Ray D. and William Ashton. (2014) Immigrant Arrivals (Brandon: Brandon University, Rural Development Institute FactSheet) FactSheets at (http://www.brandonu.ca/rdi/25th/).

Bollman, Ray D. (2014) “Factsheet: Location of Immigrant Arrivals in 2013.” Pathways to Prosperity Bulletin (London, Ontario: University of Western Ontario, Pan-Canadian Project on “Pathways to Prosperity: Promoting Welcoming Communities in Canada”, May, pp. 8-12). (http://p2pcanada.ca/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/05/eBulletin-May-2014.pdf)

Bollman, Ray D. (2014) Rural Canada 2013: An Update — A statement of the current structure and trends in Rural Canada. Paper prepared for the Federation of Canadian Municipalities. (http://crrf.ca/rural-canada-2013-an-update/)

Bollman, Ray D. (2015) “Factsheet: Hot Spots of Recent Immigrant Arrivals at the Community Level in Canada.” Pathways to Prosperity Bulletin (London, Ontario: University of Western Ontario, Pan-Canadian Project on “Pathways to Prosperity: Promoting Welcoming Communities in Canada”, January, pp.10-12). (http://p2pcanada.ca/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/01/eBulletin-January-2015.pdf).

Bollman, Ray D. (2016) Maps of sub-provincial demographic levels and trends annually to 2015 (http://www.ruralontarioinstitute.ca/uploads/userfiles/files/Maps%20of%20Sub-provincial%20Demography%20to%20July%202015%20-%20Updated%20Feb%202016%20-%201.pdf)

Bollman, Ray D. (2017) Rural Demographic Update: 2016 (Guelph: Rural Ontario Institute) (http://www.ruralontarioinstitute.ca/file.aspx?id=26acac18-6d6e-4fc5-8be6-c16d326305fe).

Bollman, Ray D. and Bill Reimer. (2018) The dimensions of rurality: Implications for classifying inhabitants as ‘rural’, implications for rural policy and implications for rural indicators. Paper presented to the 30th International Conference of Agricultural Economists, July 28 to August 2, Vancouver (https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/277251/files/1467.pdf).

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Reimagining tomorrow’s agriculture to attract and retain youth

June 9, 2020By
Canada’s farming sector needs an image shift to halt the exodus of young people

 Abdul-Rahim Abdulai

What led you into farming? This question anchored my research to understand what motivates people to farm in Newfoundland (Abdulai, 2018). “Agriculture was always in the blood, a family tradition many folks embraced,” said one farmer while lamenting the demise of farming in Newfoundland. “My parents owned a garden centre when I was a child, and I grew up in that sort of business,” said another vegetable farmer. For many, entering farming was all about “growing up to farm the family land.”

The experiences from Newfoundland are not unique; agriculture historically benefitted from a consistent supply of labour from within “family farm” units. In 2011, family farms constituted over 92% of Canada’s farms (Statistics Canada, 2013). These farms are not managed by a commune, co-operative or a non-family corporation, and are more likely to be passed from generation to generation (Knezevic, Bronson & Clément, 2020). The farm family always was a “factory” ready to produce the next generation of agriculture enthusiasts – people who will end up in farming or agriculture-related careers (Cummins, 2009). However, my research in Newfoundland points to a decline in this vital survival trait of agriculture.

Farm population exodus: The tale of two farmers

I found that our social environment motivates and shapes individual decisions, including our career paths (Dodd, 2011; Hamill, 2012). Early life experiences and socialization influence our personal decisions and choices, ultimately guiding our professional trajectories. Notably, personal ties, advice (from parents and friends) and the beliefs one is exposed to about different professions influence the career decisions of young people. Agriculture is no exception to this. My research, however, revealed some nuances in how the family can affect career pathways in farm families:

Farmer 1: “I am a farmer. I discourage my children [from farming]. I have two kids; my daughter is a physiotherapist, and my son works in a consultant company. I did everything to discourage them from this way of life [on the farm]. I can’t imagine what I would have done, why I would have encouraged them.”

Farmer 2: “So, I was a firm believer that when I had kids, and I had a farm, they will stay. Once they became old enough, everybody pulled away, everybody moved … But you know, they didn’t want – once they graduated with some college or whatever – they didn’t come back to the farm or something like that.”

These quotes describe tales of two farm families: One farmer who had a passion for keeping the farm in the family, and another who encouraged his children to pursue careers outside agriculture. Yet, the outcomes of both tales were the same: the departure of the young from the farm. For both families,  their inability to retain their children in the sector was down to perceptions of farming being hard work, stressful and less profitable.

The exodus of young people partly defines the declining farming population in Newfoundland and Canada and contributes to persistent labour challenges in the industry. According to Statistics Canada, Newfoundland’s and Canada’s farmer populations are aging. Concurrently, the number of farmers who are under 35 years old in Canada has declined by over 70% since 1991 (Qualman, Akram-Lodhi, Desmarais & Srinivasan, 2018). Likewise, the number of farm operators declined by about 35% between 2001 and 2016 (Statistics Canada, 2017). What drives the exodus may vary, but the image of farming as a challenging, unprofitable profession discourages even those who grew up around agriculture. The industry suffers from an image issue, which drives young people away.

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Re-discovering agriculture to motivate the younger generation

While farming is hard work, there is more to the agriculture industry than what is known to most youth.

Technological changes are reshaping farm work and career opportunities. Last year, RBC released the Farmer 4.0 report (RBC, 2019), which described the farmers of tomorrow as innovative, highly skilled, data-driven and diverse. These transformations are very much on the way, and the farm community can help bolster the talent pipeline by shifting the image of the industry to be more forward-looking. Sharing the diverse opportunities available in farming can counter misconceptions that farming is a dated or old profession. This may attract new people to the agricultural industry while also encouraging young people to consider the future of the farm.

Likewise, school and agricultural institutions must swiftly develop and/or alter programs to reflect new skill demands. Courses that incorporate new farming skills and needs would allow youth to understand the diverse opportunities the sector can offer and how they can shape the future of agriculture.

Finally, youth, especially those from agricultural households, could play a pivotal role. Since they have opportunities to experience and experiment in the sector, leveraging the power of the digital world to explore new experiences of farming could help them learn skills that they are excited to bring to the industry. More internal youth engagement will attract outsiders to help overcome current labour and skill challenges in Canadian agriculture.

Abdul-Rahim Abdulai is a PhD candidate at the Department of Geography, Environment and Geomatics at the University of Guelph, and affiliated with the Arrell Food Institute. Abdulai’s interest is in the future of agriculture, through workforce development and digital technological advancements. His research asks questions on the motivational dimensions of attracting and retaining people in agricultural workforce, as well as how to respond to changing skill requirements triggered by emerging digital agricultural technologies.

References

 Abdulai, A. (2018). Motivating the future farmers? Understanding farmer attraction and retention policy interventions in Newfoundland and Labrador’s agriculture. (Master’s thesis, Memorial University). research.library.mun.ca/13375/

Cummins, H. (2009). Rural children’s perceptions of life on the land in Southwestern Ontario. The Canadian Geographer, 53(1), 63–83.

Dodd, J. (2011). Sustaining agriculture in NSW high schools-an assessment of the use of examples from alternative agriculture and investigation into the role of high school agriculture in meeting the future needs of the industry. Charles Sturt University. permaculturenews.org/files/JDoddDissertation.pdf

Hamill, W. G. (2012). The factors that contribute to young people’s attraction to, and retention in agricultural careers. (Master’s thesis, RMIT University). researchbank.rmit.edu.au/view/rmit:160392

Knezevic, I. Bronson, K. and Clément, C. (2020). What is (not) a family farm? fledgeresearch.ca/resources-results/food-growing-and-harvesting/what-is-not-a-family-farm/

Qualman, D., Akram-Lodhi, A. H., Desmarais, A. A., & Srinivasan, S. (2018). Forever young? The crisis of generational renewal on Canada’s farms. Canadian Food Studies/La Revue canadienne des études sur l’alimentation, 5(3), 100-127.

RBC (2019). Farmer 4.0. How the coming skills revolution can transform agriculture rbc.com/economics/economic-reports/pdf/other-reports/Farmer4_aug2019.pdf

Statistics Canada (2013). Chapter 1. https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/95-640-x/2011001/p1/p1-01-eng.htm#I

Statistics Canada (2013). Number of families on unincorporated farms, classified by family type, major source of operator income and income classes in the year prior to the census. https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=3210019401

Statistics Canada. (2017). Total number of farms and farm operators. https://doi.org/10.25318/3210044001-eng

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Client Side: I had my career mapped out – until a new experience opened my eyes

June 9, 2020By
Faith Jensen had long planned to be a small-animal vet, but classes and work-integrated learning exposed exciting alternative pathways

Faith Jensen

In this Careering feature, jobseekers reflect on successes and struggles in their career development.

Growing up, I always knew I wanted to become a veterinarian. I never had to worry about choosing what I wanted to do in life during high school, unlike most of my peers. I told my friends, my teachers, my family and anyone who would listen that I wanted to be a veterinarian. It was a privilege that I never had anxiety or uncertainty about my passion. However, this certainty also left me closed off from considering other opportunities or possibilities for my future.

New possibilities

I grew up in the city with two dogs, so I always thought that I would become a small-animal veterinarian. To ensure that this was the right path for me, I volunteered at a small-animal pet clinic during high school. Through this experience, I cemented my belief that I would one day have my own small-animal pet clinic. I applied to the University of Alberta’s Faculty of Agricultural, Life and Environmental Sciences for a Bachelor of Science in Animal Health with a major in Companion and Performance Animals. I believed this would take me one step closer toward applying to veterinary school with an interest in small animals. Little did I know that was about to change.

During my first year of university, I was exposed to my first class of interest: Introduction to Animal Health Science. This class opened my eyes to other areas of veterinary medicine that I had never considered before. Suddenly I was learning about different diseases affecting cattle and horses – and finding myself surprisingly interested. In fact, I found myself more interested in livestock animal health than companion animal health for the first time in my life. Living in an urban setting, my only experience interacting with livestock was at a petting zoo as a child. This class would be the first of many to open me up to a new possibility: becoming a livestock veterinarian.

Over the course of four years, I began to learn more about the livestock industry and the many people and animals who are a part of it. In one of my favourite classes, we did a project where we had to “create” a pig farm operation as part of a group presentation. Working on this project, I learned about what it takes to run a farm and the importance of veterinarians in having a successful operation with healthy animals. In another class, I got to learn about the physiology of cattle and was surprised to learn how much it had sparked my interest. Slowly, I began to narrow down my career path to the possibility of being a cattle veterinarian. My only question was: Would I be able to handle it having never worked with cattle in my life?

Check out some of our past Client Side articles:

Charting my course

 Through my program, I learned about a unique opportunity to gain hands-on experience with livestock – the Animal Science Mini-Internship Program run by one of my professors. This is a three-day work experience program held over fall and winter reading break that places students with various hosts throughout Alberta to gain more hands-on experience in the livestock industry. Applicants have to complete an online form expressing their interest and motivation to join the program and attend an interview to share which areas of the livestock industry in which they would like to gain more experience. Faculty members and Career Centre staff organize an orientation to prepare students for their placements in regard to interacting with their host, safety guidelines and any other questions students may have. Once students have completed the program, there is a reflection dinner where they can discuss their experiences, express areas of interest and talk about possible career paths the program has opened their eyes to.

In my first mini-internship, I worked at a horse boarding facility, where I soon learned that with proper instruction and practice I could learn how to interact with large animals safely and effectively. I gained confidence from this experience, realizing that I would be able to learn how to interact with livestock as a large-animal veterinarian. I proceeded to complete four more internships to further my experience. In one of my favourite internship experiences, I worked with a beef cattle veterinarian and was able to directly see what my career could look like. I was no longer afraid to chart this new career path; I was excited. This gave me confidence to open my mind to other career paths I would not have considered before.

In my last internship, I worked with a cow-calf producer and learned about the importance of cattle nutrition for the health of the animals in beef production. The producer I worked with helped create a software program called “CowBytes” that helps producers develop a nutritionally balanced diet for their cattle using the feed they have available. Through speaking with this producer, I realized I could have just as large an impact on cattle health as a nutritionist as I could as a veterinarian. Although I would still love to be a veterinarian, this experience exposed me to a new career path I never thought possible.

The rewards of pushing boundaries

 The biggest piece of advice I could give to anyone choosing a career path would be to put yourself in a position where you can be exposed to new opportunities as much as possible. By trying new classes and participating in programs such as the Animal Science Mini-Internship, I ventured on a journey to discovering my interests in cattle veterinary medicine and nutrition. Without pushing my comfort zone and exposing myself to these opportunities, I would not be where I am today. I encourage anyone to get out there and try new things in your career; you may never know what opportunity lies around the corner.

Faith Jensen is a fourth-year student at the University of Alberta taking a Bachelor of Science in Animal Health and dreaming of going to veterinary school at the University of Calgary. She works at a small-animal veterinary clinic and has two dogs at home, Bandit and Blue. When she is not at school or working, she spends her time volunteering with organizations such as WILDNorth and VIDA Volunteer.

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Cannabis legalization demands creative career services response in BC Interior

June 9, 2020By
In the ‘champagne region’ of marijuana cultivation, legal changes present opportunity for career professionals to connect with resilient but reticent jobseekers

Phil Sarsons

Rural and remote areas are anything but barren. They have a lot to offer, and they also face unique challenges. Though the natural beauty is often abundant, formal year-round employment is generally not. Some locations even retain a sense of being frontier-like, where the pace of life and the pressures of urbanization collide.

The Kootenay region, which comprises a significant portion of the Interior of British Columbia, certainly fits this mold. The geography is very diverse, and so are its peoples and their histories. This region is both rugged and quaint, inviting and rustic, yet not without affluence. It boasts about 120,000 residents (Work BC, n.d.), many of whom have developed resilience, resourcefulness and humility in an area that is off the beaten path and facing economic challenges.

In the West Kootenay, both clients’ resilience and the need for career practitioners to meet local needs were highlighted as the region started adapting to one of its latest challenges: cannabis legalization.

The times, they still are a changin’

The West Kootenay is home to many historically “exiled” cultures: the interned Japanese, Vietnam War draft dodgers and the Russian Doukhobors, as well as people seeking ways of life outside of the Canadian norm. With the comparatively recent addition of cannabis growers (residents refer to West Kootenay as the “champagne region” of Canadian cannabis) the regional culture continues to carry a non-conformist sentiment. As a result, delivering government-sponsored services in this remote and rural region has had its challenges.

This tension became very apparent as the new cannabis regulations prompted reactions ranging from dejection to fear to fierce optimism. Amid such transitions, populations that may have otherwise been reticent to engage with government-sponsored services found their way into my office.

I experienced an uptick of clients who had been cultivating marijuana prior to legalization disclosing their concerns about how legalization would affect their futures. Would their work survive this transition? Could their farms afford to align with the incoming standards and building codes required by regulation? Many clients expressed concerns that having cultivated cannabis would by default leave them behind on accessing EI-funded employment services, because they had not paid into it previously. While clients’ resilience and self-sufficiency had been serving them rather well prior to legalization, regulations have made various long-standing culture gaps very pronounced. In inadvertently being barred from accessing EI supports, long-time cannabis growers are emblematic of an isolation often experienced in this region – of being in a world they may otherwise feel too vulnerable to participate in, and of the feeling that capitulation into the status quo is not necessarily a feasible or reasonable thing to do.

Young smiling woman in a cannabis field checking plants and flowers, agriculture and nature concept
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Client vulnerabilities great and small

Giving assurance of their privacy (as outlined in FOIPPA, BC’s Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act) was key in gaining their alliance. All the classic tools for career counselling then naturally came to the fore, beginning with conversations around values, and then skills and interests. The area does not lack for passionately minded individuals, and so an appeal to that energy helped establish trust. By recognizing the value of clients’ self-esteem, resilience and courage, we made our services more welcoming to them, giving clients the opportunity to assert their creativity within a dynamically changing landscape. Even the primary task of developing a resume and naming their skills helped clients understand how assertive and directed an individual can be while job searching.

It was not surprising that many of these clients expressed a desire for autonomy in their work. Developing avenues of self-employment that leveraged their abundance of creative energy and knowledge of various aspects of horticulture seemed key to their successes and survival.

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Conversations also revolved around how to best refocus their abilities toward different avenues of work – whether this would be in agriculture or if they would need to embark on an entirely new career path, or relocate to a larger urban centre. Though the intent of legalization has a welcoming feel around it, much of the net effect has been a kind of displacement. Many people have been unable to compete with the “big money” that has entered the space. Given that the employment landscape was comparably bleak to begin with, and because legalization has thus far interrupted an otherwise-thriving cannabis agricultural industry, WorkBC Services has been compelled to engage pro-actively to help improve outcomes of these jobseekers in the community by diversifying services.

“By recognizing the value of clients’ self-esteem, resilience and courage, we made our services more welcoming to them, giving clients the opportunity to assert their creativity within a dynamically changing landscape.”

Addressing the cultural barrier in remote settings

Our organization developed Liaison roles to further catalyze our work in the region to address situational and systemic barriers, and I saw an opportunity to give agency to these populations. The situation demanded a robust and creative response, and shifting toward liaison work was exactly what was needed. Liaisons are granted time to research their chosen area of specialty and leverage the banner of employment services to address systemic barriers. “Multi-Barrier Liaison – Rural Focus” was added to my title of Employment Counsellor, which helped me engage more deeply with residents in need to determine what employment services can do for them in the long term.

Career practitioners should not only embrace the frontier-like feeling of rural areas, but recognize the immense opportunity presented in becoming an advocate for remote and rural populations. In this instance, the West Kootenay holds an immense invitation to tune in to the unique value propositions of the clientele, and to support an industry of global significance. The West Kootenay never presents a dull moment in this regard, and in the years to come, the local cannabis industry may well present itself as responsive and as resilient as ever.

Phil Sarsons is an Employment Counsellor at the Nelson WorkBC office, Kootenay Career Development Society. He holds a Liaison position for rural and remote clients, with a focus on agriculture, and he has a BFA in acting, having retired from the professional theatre many years ago.

References

Work BC. (n.d.). Kootenay. workbc.ca/Labour-Market-Information/Regional-Profiles/Kootenay

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student doing workCareering

Infographic: COVID-19 and Canada’s post-secondary students

June 9, 2020By

View PDF here: COVID-19 and Canada’s post-secondary students

Plain text below image.

COVID-19 and Canada’s post-secondary students

Statistics Canada surveyed students in spring 2020, finding:

  • 75% of students had all of their courses moved online.
  • 26% had some courses postponed or delayed.
  • 11% were unable to complete a credential as planned.
  • Over one-third of students had a work placement cancelled or delayed. Students studying healthcare and services were more likely to report this.

Student employment changes:

  • 49% lost job prospects
  • 48% lost job or laid off
  • 26% had hours reduced

Proportion of respondents who are “very” or “extremely” concerned about:

  • 67% having no job prospects in the near future
  • 63% effect of pandemic on grades
  • 58% loss of jobs in the future
  • 54% having to take on more student debt
  • 51% difficulty paying tuition next term
  • 505 paying for accommodations next term

Sources

Statistics Canada. (2020). COVID-19 Pandemic: Academic impacts on postsecondary students in Canada. https://bit.ly/2XJKkEW

Statistics Canada. (2020). COVID-19 pandemic: Impacts on the work placements of postsecondary students in Canada. https://bit.ly/3etLafO

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