Despite the dogged persistence of its supporters, the Ottawa Talent Initiative's Action Centre will sing its swan song at the end of this year and the city will be the poorer for it. After months of uncertainty, the Ontario government has seen fit to cut the Action Centre off. Jobseekers in tech have been left with some program offered through the Youth Employment Services bureau that offers a three-day workshop "designed to present current Ottawa labour market information to individuals who are in the process of developing or implementing a return-to-work action plan." That's interesting, considering one of the complaints I have heard most often in Ottawa is that there isn't any current labour market information, at least nothing that's up to date and comprehensive enough in terms of identifying available tech talent and finding matches with available tech jobs. It's the void that the OTI under the stewardship of Gary Davis and his team have struggled to provide from their location in the North Kanata tech park. The irony is that the Action Centre lies in the shadow of Alcatel-Lucent, the last major telecom player in Ottawa from whom we expect significant layoffs, and across the street from the Barley Mow Pub, at which many a sorrow has no doubt been drowned in a glass. I can't believe Alcatel-Lucent so stubbornly clings to the position that no job cuts have been ordained for any particular outpost of the company. Last month, we published a story on our online edition citing sources close to Alcatel-Lucent who said that a handful of local staff have been cut every week since mid-summer and upwards of 500 staff could be gone in the new year. That number could very well be exaggerated, but Alcatel-Lucent's reaction to that story would suggest no job cuts are pending at all. Excuse me? The company has announced two separate staff reductions intended to chop its global workforce by about 16,500, or roughly 20 per cent. We're to believe that kind of bloodletting will not impact the Ottawa operation in any significant away? Nortel is singing the same song, refusing to provide a local breakdown of the 2,600 job cuts it announced for its global workforce earlier this year. As long as that kind of nonsense is afoot, there will always be a place for a non-profit resource such as the Action Centre. It's regretful that it was forced to go begging for cash from government when the tech community itself should have seen the value of supporting it for its own self-interest. The Action Centre isn't just about getting jobs for the unemployed and underemployed. It has the potential to be the central resource for growing companies in need of skilled people as talent becomes harder and harder to find and employers realize they must repurpose older workers with "dated" skills to remain competitive. Instead, what are we left with? This entity called the Information Technology Orientation (ITO) organization that offers a three-day orientation course. I'm sure it's an excellent course, but to my mind, a three-day course is a launch point in the quest to find gainful employment, nothing more. This isn't an issue that's going to fade away. In fact it will only become more pressing as time goes on. This week, Mr. Davis, Procom's Keith Carter and Adobe's Walter Pranke will join me for a panel discussion on labour issues in the tech sector. The program will be presented as a webcast that will be available next week from OttawaBusinessJournal.com
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