Skills for Competitiveness: Country Report for Canada

To be successful in today’s knowledge economy, communities need to boost not only the skills of local people but also the utilisation and deployment of these skills by employers. By ensuring that skills are utilised effectively, local economies can become more competitive and host better quality and better paid jobs, while simultaneously improving living standards and stimulating innovation. The OECD LEED Skills for Competitiveness project has reviewed the tools and governance mechanisms which policy makers are putting in place to tackle this policy area in three LEED member countries, Canada, the United Kingdom and Italy, with information on a wider set of policies and measurement tools being collected through an international literature review. This country report for Canada sets out data findings on the supply and demand for skills at the level of Employment Insurance (EI) regions before exploring local policy responses in the Niagara and Kitchener-Waterloo-Cambridge-Guelph regions in Ontario. The report concludes with policy considerations for federal, provincial, and local levels of government in Canada.