City's employment services office says it can't meet specialized needs of tech, critics urge workers to take charge of their own training When Daniel Beausejour found himself downsized by Nortel last March, he knew he would need to upgrade his certification and skills. The 42-year-old engineer turned to the Ottawa Talent Initiative Action Centre for help. Less than a year later, Mr. Beausejour is working for MTS Allstream, after having obtained two new certificates through OTI. "It was a major plus. I wouldn't have probably got these two (certificates) without them," says Mr. Beausejour. But OTI itself has been left with no recourse but to shut down its Action Centre in March after the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities refused to come through with $350,000 to keep its operations going. The centre has dealt with thousands of clients since its tech wreck inception in 2004 and new people continued to show up for orientation sessions last month, says operations director Linda Last, proving there is still a need. "We had no advertising, just word of mouth," she says. Gary Davis, executive director of OTI, says Ottawa desperately needs high tech retraining services to keep the region competitive as the Canadian dollar continues to flirt with parity. Ottawa has a high number of highly educated people looking for jobs but the rapid pace of technology can quickly make some skills obsolete, he says. "You could be the head of a division at wherever it is you are working right now, but if a new technology appears six months from now they can close down the division entirely," says Mr. Davis. "That is why we are experiencing two seemingly contradictory situations where there are a lot of companies looking for skilled people, and at the same time there are a lot of skilled people looking for work." Mr. Davis says the provincial government should be treating the high-tech sector separately from the rest of the labour market, but concedes such a strategy has yet to be developed anywhere else in the world. The provincial government believes OTI has outlived its usefulness and the city's employment services are just fine, says Kevin Dove, a spokesman for the Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities. He says recent improvements to the province's Information Technology Orientation (ITO) program provides additional help to "displaced" high tech workers. "The minister is ... pretty confident about the employment services delivered in Ottawa," says Mr. Dove. But Mr. Beausejour and Mr. Davis say ITO is too limited in services. "The system that the Ontario government has set up ... isn't really set up to deal with the technology industry," says Mr. Davis. The City of Ottawa also delivers employment services, but admits some needs specific to the high tech sector are too expensive to deliver. Johanne Tallon, employment and community programs manager, says the city used to fund programs targeting the high tech sector, but initiatives failed to yield adequate employment percentages and demand steadily dropped over the years. The city's $5,000 ceiling for individual training is often too low for the highly educated looking to upgrade skills. "If someone in the high-tech sector had the background and education to work in the field we would consider them, but the difficulty is getting something under $5,000 that is relevant," Ms. Tallon says. The city sets aside about $500,000 a year for individual training and $1.4 million for group training. The city approved 130 clients for individual training between January and October of 2007 and 254 people for group training. The city receives 80 per cent of its funding from the provincial government and focuses on group training programs that yield high employment results and will scrap initiatives that fail to deliver. "Anything that falls under 70 per cent, we look into that," says Ms. Tallon. The city has the most success with lower-end jobs that are in the $10 to $20 and hour range, says Ms. Tallon. Not everyone believes targeted high tech training is necessary. Instead, the onus should be on the individual to keep skills updated. With more companies hiring on a contract basis, employees should keep one eye on the end date and another on possible training to fill gaps between jobs, says Greg Lane, director and past president of the Canadian Information Processing Society. "If you are a professional or want to be a professional, you have to take charge of your personal training," says Mr. Lane. Firms are willing to train if potential employees have the right people and decision-making skills. "It's more about how you work and not what you work on that is as important," says Mr. Lane. "It is more of a question of business skills, logic and applying skills in an appropriate and intelligent way." He says the high-tech sector is increasingly becoming a seller's market for jobs. One of the reasons is due to a worrisome enrollment drop in technology-related university programs, says Jeffrey Dale, president and CEO of Ottawa Centre for Research and Innovation. "It is very alarming that students are not enrolling in these courses. "They either believe it is not desirable or they believe there are no jobs in this area," says Mr. Dale, who is also involved with OTI and is working to refocus its mandate on helping companies with human resource planning. "If we don't have the available pool in the marketplace, companies are going to find talent somewhere else if it happens to be in a different city or a different country." By Jorge Barrera Special to the Ottawa Business Journal
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