The Timmins Economic Development Corporation (TEDC), in partnership with the Timmins Local Immigration Partnership (TLIP), has initiated an Employer Ambassador Program which is leading the way to the development of an Employers Council to address current and future labour shortages. The Employer Council will bring local employers together to collectively develop employer-driven strategies designed to reduce barriers, create understanding, and build capacity to address workforce trends.
Citizenship and Immigration Canada projects that by 2025 Canada will face a skilled labour force deficit of 1.2 million people. Northern Ontario, particularly, Timmins is facing increasing economic and demographic challenges. Locally, organizations are already experiencing the effects of an aging workforce, declining birth rates, and youth out-migration. Employers are beginning to realize the critical role that immigration will play as they move forward in developing modernized human resource strategies to attract talent to fill vacant or new positions within their organizations.
The Conference Board of Canada estimates that Canada will have to attract 375,000 new immigrants annually in order to stabilize the nation’s workforce to ensure economic growth. The TEDC is working to engage employers and key stakeholders to assist in the development of comprehensive, relevant solutions to the imminent labour shortage and promote the integration of skilled newcomers into the local labour market.
The Employer Council is intended to create an environment of collaboration and support the delivery of effective and innovative labour market integration programs. The initiative will be lead by a TEDC staff member who will coordinate activities and work directly with the Employer Council to develop tools, resources and disseminate information that will assist employers in the attraction, recruitment and retention of skilled newcomers.
Comprised of human resource and management representatives from various sectors, the Employer Council’s efforts will be focused on identifying existing employment opportunities and skills gaps, programs and training opportunities to assist employers, and implementing programs that facilitate the matching of newcomers and employment opportunities to the benefit of the applicant, the employer and the community.
To sit on the Employers Council or for additional information, please contact Crystal Bresson, Employer Council Coordinator at (705) 360-2600 ext. 7008 or email crystal.bresson@timmins.ca
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Backgrounder: TEDC Employer Council
The TEDC has implemented a number of initiatives over the past five years in relation to immigration in our community. Many of the initiatives undertaken have focused solely on the marketing of our community and creating an awareness of the need for immigration. These efforts have worked to assist the community at large, however, a need has become evident for the development of a more focused approach when it comes to employers and immigration.
Employers are now starting to realize the important role that immigration will play as they move forward in the attraction and retention of skilled workers to fill vacant or new positions within their organizations. According to Statistics Canada, research suggests that by 2016, all of Canada’s net labour force growth will come from immigration and newcomers will account for all net population growth by 2031. In Timmins, the labour force has already seen the effects of an aging workforce and youth out migration to larger centres.
In 2010, the TEDC led a Local Immigration Partnerships (LIP) initiative which allowed the community to hire a consultant to facilitate focus group sessions with key stakeholders in the community. Feedback from the “employers” session was quite focused and directed towards the need for a more structured body that could work to address concerns with the shortfalls in our current labour market and who could assist in better positioning employers in the attraction of skilled newcomers to their organizations. The end result was a recommendation to implement an Employers Council which would allow employers to work together and develop a strategy to address their current and future workforce requirements.
Attracting and retaining an appropriate workforce has been a challenge worldwide. The Manpower’s Global Talents Shortage Survey completed in 2009 indicated that 30 per cent of employers, worldwide, are having difficulty fulfilling positions due to the lack of suitable talent available in their markets. The Atlantic Institute for AIMS, further confirms the need for employers to look to immigration for a suitable labour force as their study “The Developing Workforce Problem: Confronting Canadian Labour Shortages in the Coming Decades” indicates that by 2026, it is anticipated that one in every eight job openings will go unfilled.
Employers are now seeking the assistance of TEDC staff in regards to immigration processes and have required assistance in attracting and retaining an appropriate labour force, showing the need for a more directed employer immigration approach. A shift or change in the current local labour market is becoming evident as employers in the area are becoming more open to hiring and seeking out foreign trained individuals to fill labour force gaps. The TEDC continues to work with employers to ensure they are prepared to begin addressing their current and future labour force shortages.
The immigrationtimmins.ca website has recently been updated to include and “Employers Tools” section of the website and currently hosts the HireImmigrants.ca employer’s roadmap. This tool is a good start; however, there is still much work that can be done to assist employers. Initiatives such as the “Employers Ambassador Program” will assist in enhancing the immigrationtimmins.ca website as recommendations for new tools and information will be provided directly from the employers themselves.
Intensive marketing and awareness campaigns are currently underway, targeting employers and newcomers to Canada. A pan northern employer “Hard Fact” campaign has been undertaken to provide employers with the predictions and assumptions regarding the impending labour shortages. A campaign targeting francophone immigrants in the Quebec region has been implemented to build on the strong francophone community that currently exists in Timmins. The larger centres of Northeastern Ontario are working together to promote the region to newcomers at conventions, such as Metropolis in Vancouver and the Internationally Educated Professional Conference in Toronto. The Employer Ambassador Program will allow our employers and key stakeholders to continue to build on these marketing initiatives, which have been positive for both our community and region.
In addition, the Far Northeast Training Board has worked to establish a common and comprehensive baseline of local labour market information to assist communities in identifying their own challenges in support of developing locally-based solutions. The FNETB’s Local Labour Market Forecast 2010-2020 forecasts occupations in which shortages in supply of workers are imminent over the next ten years, based on custom Statistics Canada data. Visit www.www.fnetb.com for more information.
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Media Contact:
Crystal Bresson
Employer Council Coordinator
Timmins Economic Development Corporation
Crystal.bresson@timmins.ca
(705)360-2600 ext. 7008
(705)262-8778
Brenda Camirand
Community Development Consultant
Timmins Economic Development Corporation
Brenda.camirand@timmins.ca
(705) 266-0481
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Our municipality owes its existence to the initiative and efforts of prospectors by the names of Harry Preston, Sandy McIntyre and Benny Hollinger, who in the early 1900′s discovered gold. Financiers Noah and Henry Timmins were responsible for the development of the Hollinger Mine and, thus, the name Timmins came to the forefront and has been our proud designation ever since. 