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No Skills, No Jobs

Wednesday, 20 November 2013 15:05

Canadian Chamber President Perrin Beatty talks to Woodstock about the shortage of skilled labour

No skills, no job.

That was one of the messages of the President of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Perrin Beatty.

Beatty spoke to a Woodstock Chamber of Commerce crowd this afternoon, saying Canada is not doing a good enough job at developing skills in our young people.  "I think we have to be very clear with young Canadians: stay in school.  Make sure that you have those basic skills.  Today, even for the most rudimentary jobs, you have to be able to read a manual, you have to be able to program a machine.  If you don't have those, even at the same time as employers are crying out for good new workers, you won't get a job."

Conversely, Beatty also urged businesses to be more creative to try and include seniors in their workforce.  "We're a population that's greying, people are living longer than ever before, they are having to support themselves, and they're anxious to stay involved.  It's a tremendous resource and reservoir of experience that's available for businesses to tap into if we're a bit creative in terms of how we organize ourselves."

Beatty, a former Cabinet Minister, has roots in Oxford County comes from a manufacturing family that made furnaces in Woodstock at Beatty Brothers Ltd.

In coming back to the area today, he marvelled at the local economy as "an oasis of prosperity" in the region.  "If you take a look at what's happened to the Ontario economy, and particularly southwestern Ontario since the recession in 2008, it's simply stunning to see the progress that's been made in Oxford County. If we could replicate this in the rest of Ontario and the rest of Canada it would be a wonderful thing."

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