Canada could learn valuable lessons from other countries’ programs to transition their workforces during the shift to a net-zero emissions economy, say policy and economics experts.

Those lessons also could help train and deploy local workforces that will be required to build the major projects that the federal government has identified as being in the national interest, they said during a Future Skills webinar on global lessons from place-based skills development.

“These case studies can inform a comprehensive, unique-to-Canada framework for building workforce resilience in the net-zero transition,” said Shaimaa Yassin (photo at right), senior research director at the Institute for Research on Public Policy (IRPP), a national independent think-tank in Montreal.

The four policy and economic experts who participated in the webinar did an international review that included eight case studies of how workforce transitions were being managed in the United States, the United Kingdom, Spain, Denmark, France, Australia and New Zealand.

Their research focused on international approaches in place-based skills development. Place-based policies are tailored to local assets and challenges, and are often co-designed by or co-led with community members.

Each of the case studies was evaluated against 11 criteria, including “relevance to Canada,” barriers to implementation in Canada, and demonstrated impact/measurable outcomes.

Yassin said the researchers paid particular attention to initiatives that addressed key workforce challenges, including workforce displacement, skills mismatches, worker shortages, lack of diversity and inclusion, income insecurity, barriers to geographic mobility, insufficient training capacity, limited sectoral transition pathways, and lack of cross-sector collaboration.

“Through this research, what we found is that place-based approaches to workforce development are highly relevant to Canada’s current situation, due in part to the regional concentration of sectors that are susceptible to workforce disruption in Canada, including those exposed to challenges associated with the net-zero transition as well as trade disruptions,” said Abigail Jackson (photo at right), research associate at IRPP.

Jim Stanford (photo at left), economist and director of the Vancouver-based Centre for Future Work, pointed out that the energy transition isn’t an unexpected disruption, since Canada is committed to shifting away from fossil fuels and has set a timeline to be a net-zero economy by 2050.

“And we shouldn’t just say, ‘Here’s a community that’s vulnerable and let’s wait and see what happens and be ready to jump in,’” he said.

“We should actually be planning that transition so that people have notice, because the notice and certainty about when the transition is going to occur is so important for their decisions individually, to invest in things like a new qualification or to think about moving to another community,” Stanford said.

Planning enables people to know when the transition is going to happen, the timeline is firm, they can prepare individually, and all the supporting mechanisms can be activated, he noted.

But with the exception of Ontario Hydro’s [subsequently Ontario Power Generation] well-planned transition off of coal-fired electricity, “It’s a big failure in Canadian transition planning, for the most part . . . just an inability or an unwillingness to actually set timelines,” Stanford said.

The federal government has a Sustainable Jobs Act and there are “all kinds of consultation and commitment to fairness, but no idea of what is going to happen when,” he said.

“For various reasons, including our federal debates and pressure from the fossil fuel sector, we have been very loath to actually set timelines for when a transition is going to occur. That makes transition planning a bit ethereal,” Stanford said.

The Sustainable Jobs Act requires the federal government to prepare Sustainable Jobs Action Plans every five years, beginning in 2025.

These action plans are to outline the measures the federal government will put in place to facilitate and promote economic growth; advance the creation of sustainable jobs; and support workers and communities in the shift to a net-zero future.

The first Sustainable Job Action Plan was due to be prepared by the end of 2025 and tabled in Parliament. That hasn’t happened.

Key lessons from the eight international case studies

The eight case studies and programs the researchers looked at were:

• Michigan – Community and Worker Economic Transition Office and Michigan Works! system.
• S. Appalachian, Lower Mississippi Delta, Northern Border Regions – Workforce Opportunity for Rural Communities Initiative.
• Spain – 19 regions historically reliant on coal mining and power that implemented the Just Transition Strategy, Just Transition Agreements, Job Banks and Urgent Action Plan.
• K. (Harlow in Essex County): Harlow College’s Electric and Hybrid Vehicle Training Centre.
• Esbjerg, Denmark: Offshore Academy.
• France: Compte personnel de formation.
• Taranaki, New Zealand – Taranaki 2050 Roadmap and 2025/26 Action Plan.
• Australia – Net Zero Economy Authority and Future Made in Australia strategy.

Jackson said the researchers conducted a comparative analysis of the eight case studies. Shared drivers, enablers and contextual factors among the case studies included:

• Decarbonization goals, climate commitments and industrial transition.
• Mitigating socio-economic impacts.
• Local vulnerabilities and regional disparities.
• Government strategies, legislation and dedicated bodies that provided the overarching framework.
• Multi-stakeholder engagement.

The eight case studies employed four main policy pillars:

• Strategic, community-led economic development.
• Proactive, coordinated skills development.
• Responsive, community-wide social supports.
• Targeted, empowering place-based industrial policy.

Common policy strategies among the eight case studies included:

• Employment supports and local job creation.
• Direct local provision of skills development and training, at the local level.
• Economic diversification of local economies, including targeted investment incentives.
• Targeted support for vulnerable groups.
• Financial safeguards for affected workers.

Jackson said there were notable variations in how the interventions were delivered and governed. This ranged from “Centralized” – through a national program, an independent federal body, national ministries, federal oversight and funds with regional authorities and local partners – to “Community-led,” including partnerships at the municipal level, a county-level initiative governed through community-level partnerships, and community-led and co-designed initiatives.

“When taken together, these lessons from our international case studies offer concrete steps that policymakers in Canada can take to build a continuum of workforce supports, from rapid response to long-term renewal that is practical, place-based and community-led,” Jackson said.

Researchers developed a list of 10 “place-based lessons” for designing and implementing a workforce transition in a community disrupted by the energy transition. These lessons also could be applied to communities impacted by trade tariffs and other kinds of disruptions. The lessons are:

1. Consensus building between government, industry and labour unions.
2. Community involvement to build essential local buy-in.
3. Viable local replacement industries before replacing existing industries.
4. Transferable skills.
5. Targeted social supports to mitigate risks for workers.
6. Participation of Indigenous Peoples and communities is essential throughout the entire process.
7. Stabilization of rural populations, including additional targeted support.
8. Continuous assessment and plan adaptation.
9. Harmonizing workforce training with broader economic development plans.
10. Capacity building in technical, financial and administrative support.

How do other countries’ workforce transitions compare with Canada’s?

Michigan’s workforce transition model is more pro-active and responsive than approaches currently used in Canada, said Jennifer Robson (photo at right), associate professor of political management at Carleton University.

“They’ve identified these key communities in transition, and they’ve basically said, ‘If there are 50 jobs or more that are expected to be lost in these particular kinds of sectors, as a result of the net-zero transition between now and 2040, we’re going to be more proactive in terms of our approach and intervention,’” she said.

“If they know that a major wave of layoffs is happening, they mobilize all of those different parts,” including the Community and Worker Economic Transition Office and Michigan Works! (the statewide workforce development system),” she added.  

Funded by state and federal dollars, Michigan Works! is a network of local offices providing free job seeker and employer services, including resume help, career counseling, training funding, and business recruitment assistance, all aimed at connecting people with jobs and supporting economic growth.

“That’s something that in Canada that we’re only just starting to do,” Robson noted.

Michigan also has done regional consultation with communities and put together a Community Transition Playbook, essentially a guide to building capacity for the transition at the local level.

“They’ve got funding to do a pilot initiative with 10 different communities that is going to be about how can we leverage data assets, but also provide coaching and consultants to help communities develop their own plans,” Robson said.

Communities often have assets and strengths, such as local training providers that can help with a workforce transition, she noted. “But sometimes they need external help to have the data on that and come up with a plan, how are we going to diversify the local economy.”

Stanford worked on a case study that examined the Net Zero Economy Authority (NZEA), implemented in late 2024 in Australia.

NZEA is currently tailored to apply to instances where a coal-fired electricity generation plant is decommissioned or stops producing. The program is aimed at managing the transition for the power plant itself as well as any kind of associated coal mining that feeds the power plant.

“They’re very explicit in saying that this is a test to show that this whole approach could apply to other transition-related employment events,” Stanford said.

NZEA was  given the authority to define when a transition event is  occurring and the region impacted by this transition.

NZEA also has the power to consult with employers, not just those shedding workers but those potentially hiring, as a result of the transition, Stanford said.

“I think it’s a very innovative way to try to connect the dots between the displacements and the positive things in a transition,” he said.

The federal government in Australia has got more spending power and regulatory authority to implement this kind of approach than is the case in Canada, Stanford pointed out.

In addition, Australia’s labour regime, the Fair Work Commission, is very active and flexible, he added.

“It has got the ability to do more than what we expect from a labour board in Canada, including in this case to set orders for a workplace, even if there’s no union or union contract in place, for some of the standards and criteria around the transition event.”

This includes providing advanced notice and affirmative action or preferential hiring for displaced workers from a coal facility to go into one of the new places that’s being built, or hiring.

“They’re not just kind of leaving it to the labour market to figure this out,” Stanford said. “They’re actually getting in there with that planning authority to try and make it happen deliberately.”

International case studies involved deliberate, proactive and long-term planning

Yassin said the researchers were struck, across all eight case studies, by how deliberate, proactive and long-term the planning is in many of the communities.

Also impressive, she said. was “how consistently they tended to focus on people and place. People and place were really at the very heart of the decision-making process.”

Workers were viewed more as members of families and bigger communities, rather than as just units in a typical labour market model, Yassin said.

In Taranaki, New Zealand, for instance, a national decision to phase out offshore oil and gas prompted the establishment, in collaboration with local community partners, of a 2050 roadmap and an action plan.

“They covered not only jobs and skills, but also the social aspects of things, including health, culture and the local economy, Yassin said. “They’re also in the process of diversifying into sectors like food and fibre, like tourism, while oil and gas is still operating.”

The key to making the transition is the level of advanced long-term planning and thinking, she said. “It’s not something that we quite see yet systematically in Canada.

“We were struck by how many of these initiatives were explicitly co-governed with local partners. I think that’s the essence of the place-based term,” Yassin noted.

The Spain case study involved a Just Transition Strategy, using national resources and working through locally negotiated just transition agreements.

Unions, employers, municipalities, and the national government, through the Just Transition Institute, would sit together and design from the beginning packages that would include the training, job banks, and investment incentives tailored to each locality or region, Yassin said.

Similarly, Denmark’s Offshore Academy initiative involved the transition of workers from offshore oil and gas to offshore wind energy, focusing on the skills congruencies between those two sectors.

“It provided a very good example of using the local comparative advantage instead of just assuming that workers will just uproot to find new jobs in one way or another,” Yassin said.

Across the eight case studies, “it’s the degree to which social supports and equity are built into the design of those initiatives in general,” she said.

In Denmark, the national system provides two years of unemployment coverage, but also pays time for training so people can actually afford to go and retrain and think about their long-term careers.

The U.S. Workforce Opportunity for Rural Communities Initiatives in the U.S. wasn’t just focused on training, but offered wraparound assistance, childcare, transportation and counselling, so that the lower-income, the rural, and the racialized workers can participate.

“These are all design choices that go beyond just offering training or a course,” Yassin said.

“We need to think that when those sorts of disruptions occur, they do not just impact the affected workers and the affected employers, but they also ripple through the entire community.”

Canada needs better local data and integration between skills training and industrial policy

Stanford pointed out that Australia’s Net Zero Economy Authority (NZEA) cooperated with the state-level vocational colleges and workforce training streams.

NZEA also worked with companies in any region where a transition event was occurring, to identify what the skills requirements were going to be.

“The integration between skills training and the industrial policy initiatives to create those jobs in the first place is quite close,” Stanford said. “And the cooperation between the federal and state levels is also quite positive.”

“I think Canada could learn on both of those counts,” he said.

Yassin said in the Denmark case study, the local employers were heavily involved with the local institutions and other local partners in forecasting their workforce needs.

“They had reached the extent to where they were working with oil and gas workers to transition, but also they were in need of further workers from elsewhere, so they were even working on their immigration policies, for instance, to bring in workers from other places and seeking how to attract talent from elsewhere to make the community thrive further and grow further.”

However, such initiatives require accurate, standardized, up-to-date information on local labour markets, Robson pointed out.

“As a regular use of Statistics Canada data, we have a real challenge in getting accurate, small-area information in terms of our labour market, even just tracking what’s going on in employment or unemployment, but also doing those labour force projections,” she said.

“It’s a real challenge. I do worry that we are sometimes stuck in the cycle here in Canada of essentially relying, when it comes to projected demand, on individual employer projections.”

Local, granular and usable data aren’t readily accessible in Canada, Yassin agreed. “So we definitely need to do a better job on that front.”

Robson said if she had to pick one area for the federal government to focus on, it would be the Major Projects Office and its major projects list.

Some of those projects, especially those at an early stage, are going to need a local workforce strategy to look at the local training assets, options for distance training and skills development options, and also be able to do local outreach to workers who are going to need skills mapping and skills transition support, she said.

However, Canada is in a situation right now where some parts of the country’s postsecondary sector – such as colleges – “are trying to keep the lights on,” she said. “So they’re not really in a position on their own right now to be thinking how do we stand up a local workforce transition to go hand-in-hand with these new major projects in our backyard.”

Robson said she has talked about the need to have a Major Social Projects Office to complement the Major Projects Office.

Yassin said if she could pick one tool for policymakers to use, it would be the Sustainable Jobs Action Plan.

It could be used to create a dedicated place-based stream that could co-fund transformation agreements with the local communities that are most susceptible to disruptions, she said. Such partnerships could combine not only the skills development component but the social supports and the place-based industrial components, she said.

“That would really ensure that those sorts of major projects or any disruptions happening would really bring in the maximum benefits possible for a local community.”

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