Northwest Territories Roundtable

Draft Minutes

May 5, 2003 1:00pm – 4:00pm

6th Floor NorthwestTel Tower, Yellowknife

Participants:

Kern van Haguen School Boards Superintendents Association

Elaine Stewart ECE

Krista Rivet EKE

Wendy McPherson ECE

Dan O’Neill Mining Association

Kristen Cook Yellowknife Chamber of Commerce

Felicity Burr Yellowknife Employment Centre

Rose van Schilling Aurora College

Bob Hardwood NWT Workers Union

Catherine Boyd ECE

Lynne Bezanson CCDF

Jean-Philippe Tabet CCIP.

1.  Introduction

Catherine Boyd opened and welcomed everyone to the meeting. She outlined the importance of strengthening relationships between the K-12, adult education, training/education committees from business and labour, career practitioners and different government departments through the career development policy framework.

Participants introduced themselves, saying which organisation they represent and explaining the interests that brought them to this roundtable meeting.

Lynne gave a PowerPoint presentation on the National Symposium: Background, Vision and Future. The Symposium objectives were placed in context with recent Canadian and International initiatives on career development, lifelong learning and workforce development. The presentation will be sent to participants with the minutes of the roundtable.

In working groups, participants were asked to consider the relevancy of the Symposium objectives for the NWT. The discussion led to the following reactions:

§  Questions were raised concerning comparisons with other countries which share such a decentralized system as Canada. The Australian system is the closest one in the OECD Study, to Lynne’s knowledge. They have states similar to provinces which have a great deal of autonomy with respect to education. However, unlike Canada, they do have a centralized Federal Ministry of Education with mandates for country standards. Lynne recommended the Australian Country Note (and the Canada Country Note) as reading for participants. These and all other papers from the OECD Study are available on the OECD website;

§  One of the OECD conclusions from the global study (OECD, EU and World Bank) is that one can find all the elements of a quality career development system in promising practices and policy models and applications dispersed across countries, but to date, no single country has put all the pieces together. The final OECD Report will synthesize the findings and present a template of a comprehensive quality model, based on these elements, for countries to consider. It is hoped that this will be broadly useful and provide a focus for where policy attention is needed most. The focus will of course vary in each country;

§  Hesitation to embrace such an initiative was expressed, wondering what would make this initiative move the status quo when many initiatives to achieve this had been attempted in the past with limited long-range impact and change;

§  A measure of the Symposium’s success will be the degree to which it puts career development on the policy agenda as a “brick and mortar” component of building a lifelong learning system and supporting workforce development;

§  The economic benefits and impacts of career services/career development need to be recognized as a key elements of prosperity within the NWT policy framework supporting workforce development ;

§  It was noted that the territorial roundtable in itself has started a useful process and dialogue in that this group does not have an ongoing mechanism for connecting with each other. This is itself is a fruitful outcome;

§  A key NWT «hot» labour market issue was raised. This relates to the risk to quality career development processes in the current “hot” economy where the demand for workers can readily skew meaningful career choices. Individuals may be encouraged to and/or may elect to simply go where the hot jobs are regardless of interest, motivation or suitability. This concern should be bought to the national symposium table for discussion. It was stressed that the urgent need to find workers in a rapid economic growth period is often followed by a cyclical downturn. Career development services need to be based on holistic approaches which balance the aspirations and talents of the individual worker and labour market opportunities which are in constant change and impossible to predict. A balance must be found between short term workforce needs and long term individual and workforce development;

§  Another key issue for the NWT is related to skilled trades and entry level positions. The K-12 system is perceived as continuing to emphasize the importance of pursuing some form of PSE although 80% of students will, according to current statistics, not immediately pursue PSE options . At the same time, it is becoming increasingly difficult to fill positions at entry levels. This is emerging as a significant challenge in the service and retail sectors. A more integrated approach to meet the needs of both groups is needed, as challenging it may be. More emphasis on applications of the Essential Skills Project (which integrates career development and management skills although this direct connection is not made to the extent needed) might be a way to achieve partially this goal.

§  The last item dealt with the issue of capacity and resources. Without a clear discussion on this, how is change going to really happen on the ground?

§  Each of these issues was recognized as important contributions to a Symposium agenda. While “funding” a NWT Team was recognized as a significant challenge, the overall sense of the roundtable was that if these issues become part of the Symposium dialogue, there will be clear benefit for the NWT from participating.

2.  Building a Provincial Team: Brainstorming Session

Building a representative team to represent the 3 stakeholder groups was presented as “the critical ingredient” to the success of the Symposium. Members of the team ideally should be decision makers themselves or in positions of influence so that they have access to and can provide briefings to senior decision makers in their respective jurisdictions following the Symposium. It was emphasized that the Symposium is not a conference, but a working forum and numbers must be restricted to maintain the working essence. Another critical factor is that funding for the team must come from the province/ territory. There are no funds available to subsidize travel and accommodation although there will be hospitality provided and there is no Symposium fee. The selection of the team will be the responsibility of the province/territory; CCDF will assist wherever possible and desired. It was recognized that for this to be representative and an inclusive process rather than competitive and exclusive is a very important objective and critical to the spirit and the intent of the Symposium. All of these factors present important challenges to be addressed.

The ideal team composition was outlined consisting of representatives from the three stakeholder groups as follows:

§  Policy Developers:

·  Education – K to 12

·  Employment/Career Services

·  Social Services

§  Career Development Practitioners:

·  Academic/Researcher

·  Professional Association

·  Manager of Adult Career Services

§  Workplace/Employers:

·  Sector Council

·  Small and Medium Enterprises

·  Labour/Union

It was emphasized that this is a template only to provide a model from which to develop a NWT Team which reflects the issues and composition of the NWT labour force.

The Roundtable was asked to address the following questions:

v  What changes to the template are needed to be representative of the issues in the NWT?

v  Where are these representatives structurally located in the province?

The participants worked in plenary and presented their ideas. The discussion led to the identification of the following organisations/groups/existing bodies that would need to be included:

u  Policy:

·  Education, Culture, and Employment (K-12, PSE, Adult, Income Support)

·  School Boards (8), NWT Superintendents Association

·  Aurora College (industry connections and adult education)

·  Private Sector Education institutes

·  Resources, Wildlife, and Economic Development

u  Career Practitioners:

·  Career centre manager (ECE)

·  Territorial statistician (LMI)

·  Aurora college (CD certificate)

·  Community services board (Dogrib, Rae-Edso)

·  Aboriginal HR development agreement holders (AHRDA)

u  Industry:

·  Mining

·  Chamber of Commerce

·  Hospitality industry

·  Skills Canada

·  Construction

·  NWT Federation of Labour

In moving forward to put a team in place, the responsibilities and desired qualities of members will need to be clear in order to attract the right people. The following were presented as guides:

The responsibilities and desired qualities of those who will be on the team:

§  Openness to innovation

§  Readiness to review communications pieces

§  Willingness to invest some time preparing and/or reviewing the pre-Symposium Paper requested of all teams

§  Attendance at the Symposium

§  Commitment to brief senior officials and/or constituency post-Symposium

§  Willingness to initiate and support follow-up actions

§  The team should be a good representation of the challenges in the labour market and in career development in the province

Following the plenary, participants were asked to answer the following questions:

v  What process needs to be put in place to identify and select the individuals who will be member of the Newfoundland Team?

v  Who, in the province, will play a key role to make this happen?

v  What role, if any, would CCDF need to play to support this process?

The following action steps were identified:

u  Symposium.

i.  Action plan

Action / Responsible
Ongoing liaison Contact with CCDF / Catherine
Briefing: ADM-DM / Catherine
Briefing: Campus Director-Aurora College / Rose
Briefing: Chamber of Commerce / Kristen
Briefing: NWTSA / Kern
Briefing: Federation of Labour / Bob
Put names to the “dream team”; invite their participation at a follow up meeting / Catherine
Follow up meeting / June 2; 1:15 pm; same place
Providing communication tools (i.e. letters, announcement, templates, and minutes.) / Lynne

3.  National Symposium Themes Draft Paper

There was no time to discuss the Themes Paper. This paper is a work in progress. It has been revised following the previous roundtables and participants were given the revised version for comments. CCDF will welcome any comments from participants. The two questions the group was asked to address in their feedback were as follows:

v  If these issues were the agenda of the National Symposium, how relevant would they be for the NWT?

v  What would the Symposium need to achieve in order for the NWT to conclude that it was a worthwhile investment?

CCDF would welcome any responses to these questions which will assist in the ongoing work to arrive at an agenda which is based on the input from the Roundtables across the country.

4.  Communication Strategy

The list of proposed papers was briefly presented to participants to inform them on what will be coming out in the coming months. The roundtable was invited to contribute to the communication strategy. Examples discussed included specific projects outlined in the labour force NWT document, specifically:

·  The study on Youth Transitions completed in 2002

·  The pilot of a career counselling on-line system

·  The Career Development Policy itself (no other province/territory has this model of comprehensive policy spanning education, employment and social services)

·  Career Development in a“hot” economy – advantages and challenges

·  Career Development in remote communities with limited wage structures. What models of career and community development have been attempted in the NWT?

·  K-12 Career Development Learning Framework –adaptation of the blueprint for the NWT – outline of the model – what changes/adaptations, why and how.

It was emphasized that there is a great deal of creative work happening in the NWT which would be of interest well beyond NWT borders. The planned publication of the Symposium was described - papers contributed by Roundtable Groups; provincial/territorial responses to the 5 question (planned) paper to be prepared in advance of the symposium; the proceedings themselves and follow-up actions. It is hoped this will prove to be a valuable resource resulting from the Symposium initiative. NWT was strongly encouraged to make its promising practices known!

5.  Advisory Committee

Catherine Boyd agreed to be the interim member of the National Advisory Committee until an NWT team is in place and a representative from the team identified to sit on the National Advisory Committee. She will ensure liaison with CCDF until then. This is very much appreciated.

6.  Closure

Participants stressed the fact that the Symposium will be meaningful as long as it is building on what is already happening in the NWT. The challenge will be to get support from senior management and find appropriate funding for participation at the Symposium.

From the perspective of CCDF, the meeting was very stimulating and enlightened the thinking around the objectives and the outcomes of the Symposium.

It is recognized that putting together a territorial Team and finding resources to attend will be challenging but worth trying to achieve. The concept of ‘stewardship” was discussed as well whereby individuals who end up as members of the team represent a constituency of interest and have a responsibility to include their constituency in the preparation for and results of the Symposium and the follow-up actions. If the stewardship model is truly embraced, a smaller team actually attending could have very positive results and thus make financing more viable. The idea of a territorial Symposium at some point to engage the larger community was briefly discussed. Alberta already ahs a model for this and this may be a route to pursue for the NWT.

CCDF offered again to be of whatever assistance it is able to provide to support the territory in moving this initiative forward. The meeting was very much appreciated. CCDF looks forward to working with the NWT Roundtable and the NWT Team in the coming months.

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