DATE/DATE:
December 4, 2013, 12:30 p.m.
LOCATION/ENDROIT:
Main Entrance, Willis College of Business, Health and Technology,
85 O’Connor Street, Ottawa, Ontario
SUBJECT/SUJET:
Minister of Employment and Social Development and Minister for Multiculturalism Jason Kenney will participate in an event to recognize a significant private-sector investment in career college training.
Hon. Jason Kenney: Thank you very much, Rima. Thank you so much Serge and Rima and Michael and everyone here for your warm welcome to Willis College, an historic Canadian educational institution—the oldest Canadian career college, and what a wonderful success story. Founded in 1995, more than 100 000 students have received relevant skills training here at Willis College over the past century. The entire time, right here in downtown, right adjacent to our nation’s capital.
So I’m excited to see that you’re moving forward into new frontiers that are really relevant to the economy of the future, thanks in part to Fortinet and the investment that they are announcing today. I’m really pleased to receive this invitation to participate from the National Association of Career Colleges, a key partner in addressing the labour shortages of the future, the skills gap of the future.
You know, the private career colleges in Canada are unsung heroes in our educational system. They typically don’t get any public support. If they do not provide programs that are relevant to bright young people like this, and to employers who actually create jobs, they go out of business. It’s just that simple. There’s no guaranteed subsidy or paycheck for anyone in the private career college sector. Institutions like Willis College have to adapt and innovate and provide relevant programs that lead students to real jobs, as Rima said, and that is exactly what we need to do in our economy, because everywhere I go, I hear from employers that the number-one challenge they are facing now and will certainly face in the future is that of skills shortage or a mismatch of skills.
The worry, the main concern of the employers I meet is a shortage of skills for our economies and thus, it requires everyone, all the players—the federal, the provincial and our entire education system—to work together to better prepare Canadians for the jobs of the future, and I cannot think of a better example of the jobs of the future than those that are being created by Fortinet, because as Michael has told us, there is a very dynamic and growing demand for Internet security services, for IT security services, that Fortinet is addressing. And Michael, I hear what you just said, that you can’t hire people fast enough. I hear that from employers in all sorts of businesses right across Canada, but I think that’s a good problem to have.
We just want to make sure that you have a solution to the good problem, and that solution I think you’re finding through your remarkable partnership here at Willis College. I’ll tell you, when you’re in government, you hear a lot about problems, and some of them you can’t easily resolve. It’s so fantastic to see a private-sector partnership between a cutting-edge employer and a successful private career college, solving problems, taking Canadians who are unemployed or underemployed, providing them with relevant skills training in a timely way that leads directly to a first-rate job. That, I think, is just about as good as it gets.
So let me thank Fortinet. Let me thank Michael for your investment that you’re launching here today in the expanded program for cyber security jobs through Willis College, Ottawa Campus. Rima, let me thank Willis for being so open to these kinds of private-sector partnerships. The Government of Canada is proud to support students at Willis through the Canada Student Loans Program, and we hope that with the launch of the Canada Job Grant, we can do even more.
The whole idea about the Job Grant, Rima, is precisely to support partnerships like this, where you have an employer who has a special skillset they need people trained for, who are willing to hire graduates from such a program and who is investing in the training. We want to help match that. We want to facilitate that. We want to see a lot more success stories like this. We want to see fewer young Canadians or new Canadians or Aboriginal or disabled Canadians at the margins of the labour market, unemployed or underemployed. We want to see more of those people realizing their God-given potential and creating wealth and prosperity for themselves and our economy. And the way to do that is not through the government-knows-best kind of approach of the past, where governments would pick winners and losers for grants or subsidies or higher education funding, but rather where we empower the employers. These are the folks who actually take the risks. They actually create the jobs. They pay the payroll. They know better than anyone else. They know better than any big government bureaucracy who has the aptitude to work and who needs what skillset and which institution can best deliver those skills.
That’s what we see here with today’s announcement. That’s exactly what the Job Grant wants to do. So hopefully, we’ll get this thing launched. I’ll be meeting with my provincial counterparts on Friday in Toronto, and I hope that we can come shortly to an agreement to deliver a concept like this Job Grant—an employer-led training program where the employers have real skin in the game, where they are making real investments in skills development like Fortinet is here today, where specific skill development programs are being supported by employers and by governments to leverage relevant training for the labour market. So thank you, thank you so much for your initiative, for your extraordinary example that I plan to share with all of Canada with a great deal of enthusiasm because what you are doing here today is, frankly, the best solution to the main economic challenge of the future, namely, the shortage of labour.
So thank you very much for welcoming us, Rima. Thank you to Michael and Fortinet for your generosity. Let’s be honest, it’s not generosity out of a sense of philanthropy or charity, it’s a smart commercial decision for you to develop highly educated people who can fuel your company’s growth. And to all of the students here, thank you for making the investment in your own skills development and education. You’re making the right choice, and we’re proud of you and wish you every success. Thank you very much.
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