Aboriginal women offer solution to northern Canada’s skilled worker shortages – by Daniel Bland (Vancouver Sun – August 21, 2013)

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Daniel Bland is lead instructor for the Eeyou Mining Skills Enhancement Program, an initiative of Cree Human Resources Development, in Mistissini, Quebec.

While economists and labour market researchers agree one of Canada’s greatest challenges over the next decade will be how to solve skilled worker shortages, there seems to be no consensus about just how to do that.

The skills shortage will be particularly acute all across northern Canada, where natural resource development and mining projects are projected to grow the northern economy over 90 per cent from 2011 to 2020. Led by northern B.C.’s mining output, which will increase by a whopping 300 per cent, that is more than four times the growth rate forecast for the Canadian economy over that same period.

And while that is good news on many fronts, the fact that many of the largest mining projects are close to remote First Nation communities without particularly well skilled or educated populations, is cause for growing concern. Our work in essential skills assessment and training for mining jobs with the James Bay Cree First Nation in northwestern Quebec has taught us some valuable lessons about what employers can do to maximize human resources in remote aboriginal communities.

For mining companies setting up operations on or near aboriginal land, get to know the people who live in the communities near your mine. They are probably very young — almost half under the age of 25 — and more than half of them probably do not have a high school education. In some remote northern communities, that figure is closer to three-quarters. With high school graduation rates in First Nation schools across the country running at about 35 per cent, these numbers are unlikely to change much during the life of your mine. This group of young men and women is the most important, affordable and accessible source of labour for your mine. How can you make the most of it?

First, target the women. Get women directly involved in recruitment. The belief that mining is a ‘man’s job’ and a mine is a ‘man’s world’ is as commonplace today in the north as it is in the south.

To break down that stereotype, you need women who have proven it false by their own effort and success. In most remote, aboriginal communities, that is not a professional, university educated woman.

For the rest of this column, click here: http://www.vancouversun.com/life/Opinion+Aboriginal+women+offer+solution+northern+Canada+skill+shortage/8817202/story.html