[00:00:05] Russell: As a Contributor's listener, you may know that CAAT stands for the Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology Pension Plan. And while the CAAT Plan now includes employers from various industries across Canada, our team are still huge fans of Ontario's college system. And the impact that system has on helping our economy grow and innovate. That's why I'm so pleased to have Anne Sado on the show today. Anne is a former president of George Brown College, and we'll share some of the ways industry leaders can evolve with our changing world to capture future opportunities. She'll also describe our Canadian colleges like George Brown have created learning pathways that will mitigate the growing skills gap and empower employers to continue to support Canada's future. Enjoy the episode. Thank you so much for being on the show. Derek is a huge fan of yours and was very excited to have you on the show. Can you open with sharing a little bit about your background? 

[00:01:01] Anne: I recently retired as president of George Brown College, which is a position I proudly held for almost 18 years. I started there in January 2004. Prior to that, I had a 25 year career at Bell Canada, which was a company I joined right after graduating from engineering at the University of Toronto. And my career spanned a broad range of technical, operational process, policy and financial issues. 

[00:01:29] Russell: How did you end up moving from Bell Canada to George Brown? 

[00:01:33] Anne: Well, I was actually inspired to think about new challenges in my career after I was chosen for a program run by the International Women's Forum Foundation out of Washington. It introduced me to a dozen other female leaders from around the world. We attended a number of conferences, as well as executive training programs at both Harvard and at Cambridge. I had the good fortune of working with a mentor who was Bobbie Gaunt, and she was the first female president of Ford Motor Company in Canada. And Bobbie really urged me to take time to reflect and really think about what my career aspirations were. And then another friend, also a mentor as she called me about the job at George Brown, and she said they're doing a national search. I think you'd be perfect. 

[00:02:23] Russell: That's amazing. That's a great, great story. And it's a real testament to the power of mentorship. 

[00:02:28] Anne: It is, indeed. 

[00:02:30] Russell: Canadian society would have seen massive changes between when you started at George Brown in 2004, when you retired in 2020, can you can you talk a bit about that? 

[00:02:41] Anne: Sure. I think we all know that the world is changing ever more quickly. But I'll tell you, one of the fundamentals that really appealed to me when I joined the college was that our vision already stated that we were woven into the social, cultural and economic fabric of the city of Toronto that really appealed to me, and I felt that that was something that we could really build on. We did a five year strategy, but then we realized we really had to look at a longer horizon. We made a commitment to developing soft skills in our students, and those are now sometimes called human skills or people skills. And we knew that focus on technical skills would always be part of our foundation, but we had to do more than that. We also started focusing more on partnerships because we knew we couldn't do it alone. And so we as part of that and working more closely with industry, we actually made a commitment to ensure that 100 percent of our programs had experiential learning or work integrated learning component. We really saw that that was a win for our students and a win for industry as well. We also knew that innovation was lagging in Canada and we had to do something about that. And so we started building our applied research capacity at the college. Colleges have a great capability to help industries solve process problems or help them develop new products. By working with industry, we are also developing what we called innovation literacy in our students. And that, in turn, would help them support employers as they went out into the workforce. We started building more of the new programs and capabilities that were in demand in industry. And finally, we started strengthening support for new immigrants, and we did that because we were finding that 100 percent of our labor market growth would come from new immigrants in the future. And we had to find a way of integrating them into Canadian society and into the workforce more quickly. 

[00:04:38] Russell: That's fantastic. Taking kind of step away from George Brown and thinking about Canada overall, how would you describe Canada's education and career pathways? What do you think we're doing well as a country and where do you think we need to improve? 

[00:04:53] Anne: Well, I'll start with education. We still have a lot, a lot of work to do. The reason I say that is that students want to build on their education journey and their pathways and what they can do. So for example, if a student completed a diploma to a college, they often wanted to go on to complete a degree after that. And at the time, in the early 2000s, there weren't very many degree programs at colleges. There are a lot more now, but not in all disciplines. And universities in Canada were not as open to accepting diploma graduates and giving them a lot of credit for the learning that they already had. But that's at a national, in fact, a worldwide level building on credentials. From a career pathways point of view, I'd like to focus on the fact that we still have a lot to do with these internationally educated professionals who come to Canada. We have to find a better way of recognizing and capitalizing on their experience. And I think we've all met the taxi drivers who have advanced degrees from their home countries, but who can't get their credentials recognized for the kind of work that they've done previously. So that's something that I really think we have to work on doing better. 

[00:06:09] Russell: Absolutely. And it's funny how often that's come up on Contributors. I think that's an area in which we all know as Canadians. The status quo is not good enough. 

[00:06:18] Anne: That's right. 

[00:06:19] Russell: You retired in 2020, and so much of the stories you told are stories of kind of pivoting to market forces to innovation. Are you sorry that you're missing the current pivot? Because I can only imagine that the college system is pivoting as it never has before over the last two years. 

[00:06:40] Anne: After working for as many years as I did, I'm not missing of the stress of yet another pivot. And I'm still very involved in a lot of things with my board work and my volunteer work, and staying connected with the college and with a number of young people, et cetera. I don't think I'm missing the pivot. I'm just thinking I'm contributing to it in different ways. 

[00:07:02] Russell: Thinking about Canada overall, from your perspective, what are the skills that were lacking as a country and some of the factors that have led to that skills gap? 

[00:07:14] Anne: Well, maybe I'll just confirm that we do indeed have a skills gap and this isn't new. Actually, one of my former colleagues, Dr. Rick Miner, who was at Seneca College, coined the phrase, people without jobs and jobs without people. And he coined that phrase back in 2010. So 12 years ago, and so many people have used that phrase since. I've heard it in speeches over and over again to really describe what we're facing. And another way of saying it is that we have a mismatch. So we have people, but they don't actually have the skills that are required in the economy right now. And I'd like to talk for a minute about some of the reasons that I see for that mismatch. First is there's a lack of good information about labor market needs, so we just don't have good labor market data. And if these needs were better understood, I think it would help inform students about some of the choices that they might want to make. I still think that there's a bias against some of the technology and specifically trades, and I think that's one area where we really have a huge skills shortage. And I also think again that we're not capitalizing on the skills and competencies of new immigrants. There just seem to be too many roadblocks for them to overcome. And so all of those factors, I think, are contributing to the skills shortage we have right now. 

[00:08:31] Russell: Why do you think that there is a shortage of skilled trade workers specifically? 

[00:08:37] Anne: That's another topic that calls for a lot of discussion these days, but one of the fundamental reasons, I think is that of aging demographics. The people who are employed in the skilled trades right now are starting to retire. And the reality is that the pipeline hasn't been replenished. And I think there's a lot of reasons for that. I think there's a lack of understanding of the opportunities in the trades. I think there are biases against careers in the trade. I think there is difficulty getting access for people who want to pursue training through an apprenticeship because each person who wants to get apprenticeship training needs an employer sponsor. And a lot of young people especially don't have the networks or the connections to help them get that initial job. And we also have some limits. If you want to train as an apprentice, you have to have so many skilled apprentices to mentor you as you learn. And there's ratios. There's different ratios for all of the different trades, and that sometimes makes it difficult for enough people to enter training. So I think all of those factors together have contributed to some of the shortages that we're seeing right now. But one of the biggest among them is that bias I feel towards the trade. 

[00:09:54] Russell: Let's talk a bit more about that bias. What do you think we can do as Canadians to reduce that bias, to reduce the stigma that seems to exist around skilled trades? 

[00:10:05] Anne: Well, I think one of the first thing that we can do is that we can let people know about the opportunities in the trades, that there are well-paying jobs and that they are in high demand. I found when I was at the college that we are often told that the influencers for students are parents and guidance counselors. So we've been spending a lot of time educating guidance counselors about the opportunities in the trades and making sure that they understand that these are respected professions to pursue. The other thing that we have to do, I think, is remove those barriers to entry, you know, those the fact that you have to have an employer to start your training, the fact that there's only so many trainees that can come in because of the ratios that they need. So if we have different pathways again to do this, so I'll give you one example in the college system. We started introducing programs that actually offer students a college credential. They get the equivalent of their level one so that they have the base skills to be able to write their level one exams. Often they get hired by employers because they already have a base level of skills that makes them useful to employers. So all of a sudden, we're bridging that gap between them being able to get an employer sponsor or not and move on in their training. Another thing I'd like to mention is that together with Mohawk and Algonquin Colleges, George Brown recently created a baccalaureate degree in trades management. So now someone who's been working in the trades can come in an online format in time, you know, time that allows them to to work, but actually get a trades degree, a degree in trades management. So now all of a sudden there's a pathway and they can see an opportunity beyond working as a skilled trades person if they aspire to something different over time. And finally, another way we can encourage this and reduce the stigma, there's something called the Ontario Youth Apprenticeship Program. I don't know if you've heard of it, but it's offered to Grade 11 and 12 students at a co-op education model. They get introduced to a variety of apprenticeship based careers, and it also gives those students a really nice a leg up in terms of the hours they need towards their apprenticeship. 

[00:12:27] Russell: I think that's fantastic. I have a plumber that has been our family's plumber for decades and now is somebody who helps me out of my house, and I was chatting with him about some of these issues. And he said one of the biggest misunderstandings about the skilled trades, plumbers, electricians, whatever, whatever you might have in mind is that people don't understand that fundamentally, he is an entrepreneur. He's running a small business. He's doing marketing. He's doing accounting. He's doing business development. He's doing a whole variety of tasks that have nothing to do with plumbing. It makes the job more complex than people might think, but also more rewarding. 

[00:13:09] Anne: Exactly. And I think that's the type of information we have to get out and how we have to educate parents and guidance counselors about those kinds of realities. These are complex and potentially very rewarding careers to pursue. 

[00:13:23] Russell: Absolutely. Let's talk a little bit about the great resignation. What's your take on the great resignation and why do you think so many people are feeling burned out? 

[00:13:33] Anne: Well, I think the pandemic resulted in lots of time for people to think about lots of things and to develop new and different perspectives. So I think many people have changed their personal priorities. It's just, like I said at the beginning, taking time to reflect. Maybe people actually had that because they weren't going out as often. They had a more isolated lifestyle, perhaps. But if you're thinking about things, you say, hey, what's my passion? What am I really passionate about? What do I want to do? How do I want to spend my time? Maybe they also ask themselves if they were happy with how they were being treated by their employers or the kinds of opportunities that they have. If you could not do your work remotely and had to physically go in, and a lot of those were the most difficult jobs, be they in health care or in retail and food shops, et cetera, those people had a very stressful time coping with the pandemic. And those who worked virtually often had to juggle work and family in ways that they never had to before. 

[00:14:36] Russell: And how has the pandemic shifted our education and career pathways systems? 

[00:14:42] Anne: Oh, I think one of the things that the pandemic has really reinforced is the need for lifelong learning. I think it also reinforced that this learning has to be faster and more focused. I think already post-secondary institutions were introducing shorter credentials like micro-credentials and shows or digital digital certificates because the economy was changing so quickly. We also had to develop a lot of programing in new areas. I'm thinking of things like blockchain or artificial intelligence or data analytics, cybersecurity, all of those things are realities and changing. And I think the education system had to respond or has to figure out how to respond to those and employers realize that things have to change. And talking about the great resignation, I think employers are also realizing there's more and more of a war for talent and they have to do things to change, maybe offer their employees more room for development. And so I really think that the demand for that type of training that employers need to keep their employees engaged in and current and in the knowledge that they have to have. And finally, I think we really learned that education can be delivered in different ways. We've had online learning for a long time, but I think we learned new ways of delivering virtually and using things like augmented and virtual reality a lot more often. But I also think we've now learned a new hybrid way of offering training and education so that maybe the theoretical can be done online and then maybe the practical has to be done in person to reinforce the theoretical. But I think all of that will forever change education. And I'll tell you one final thing that I'm thinking about along a lot as a recent educator is the last three years have been hugely disrupted for those students in JK to Grade 12, and especially when you think of those more senior high school students who are going to be entering perhaps post-secondary education. Are there any social and academic gaps that will need to be addressed as they transition from high school to college or university? And I think that educators are going to have to think about that and be prepared to respond. 

[00:17:02] Russell: We have a babysitter that we we've used for years and she's just finishing up high school, and she's talked to us a lot about that and the idea that one of the big challenges that she foresees is there are a group of students that may not have learned everything that they were supposed to learn as they finish up high school and they're going to enter into the college system and there's going to be a need for remedial training. 

[00:17:26] Anne: That's right. Just bridging that gap because we know that people will have learned differently and absorbed differently and sort of how do you sort of take them from where they are to where they need to go? And in a way, and this is where I said before that education has to be highly personalized. 

[00:17:42] Russell: You mentioned blockchain and I was going to say to you, I have no idea what blockchain is. Can they Ontario College System help me understand this? 

[00:17:50] Anne: Absolutely. I think we have a very quick certificate at George Brown. And I actually Don Tapscott, I don't know if you know that name. He's actually written a couple of books about it. And I actually read an article that he wrote it might have been in The Atlantic or The Economist or whatever. And I remember I met him once and he said, well, if you really understand it, because a few years ago, I wouldn't have been able to explain any of it. I don't know if I could now. But he said, read that article and give you the basics of what it is. So there you go. Find an article by Don Tapscott that'll give you a start and then you could take your college program. 

[00:18:23] Russell: Let's talk a bit about experiential learning. Can you tell us how you feel like experiential learning can help us better prepared today's youth? 

[00:18:33] Anne: Sure. Another topic I'm rather passionate about. I'll first say that experiential learning is an umbrella term that includes practical work experience during studies, and it can take on many forms. Like if you're a nursing student and you have to do clinical placement that could be considered experiential learning. Or a traditional co-op type model, which we've heard about for years. Or it could be students working on applied research projects directly with an employer or working on a project to help solve an employer challenge. But the point is that they're getting real experience on a real problem working with an employer during their education. And I really think it's important because it helps round out the theoretical learning that they receive in school with the practical experience. Being placed in a real situation not only helps you develop your technical skills, but it actually rounds out your people skills as well. And it's really a win win, I think for employers and students. With the war for talent, employers have a short period of time. They can help assess a future employee. They can introduce that potential future employee to their company. The student gets to test run the company to see whether or not it would be a good fit for them, both technically and and culturally. And when students in experiential learning situation work with an employer, they bring all sorts of new ideas and new ways of thinking about things. So I think it really helps move industry forward in terms of what's happening and how people are thinking. 

[00:20:01] Russell: Yeah, I completely agree. I can remember when I finished school and went into my first full time job, my boss, who is is still a mentor of mine and had asked me to pay the PST. And I didn't know how to pay the businesses PST. And she said, but you went to business school. How do you not know how to pay the PST? And I said, well, that's not what they teach business school. And of course, he answered that's what they should teach you. 

[00:20:29] Anne: And that's why you're here and you're going to learn it right now on the job. 

[00:20:32] Russell: Absolutely. We at CAAT have a co-op program where we get to, you know, have the opportunity to bring in students often from the Ontario college system to work with us. And it's exactly what you said. They bring great new ideas. They bring great energy. We've recently hired one full time, so couldn't, couldn't agree more with what you're saying. 

[00:20:55] Anne: Yeah, now that's great to know. It's great, the more employers that we have who support experiential learning opportunities, I think the better off we'll be. 

[00:21:05] Russell: During her 16 years at George Brown and led three significant strategy shifts, all to support the growing needs of society and to bridge the increasing gap across workplace skills. By preparing students with soft skills like teamwork and communications, graduates would be better able to adapt when out in the world of work. At the same time, there was a need for experiential learning and shares that graduates who have actually applied their learning in the field or at a significant advantage. Finally, and believes the candidate can do better at creating pathways for people who want to upskill and transition their credentials into more advanced employment opportunities. You've talked a bit about the importance of better integrating new immigrants into our workforce, and really, I think that that has the potential of opening up so many possibilities for Canada. What are some specific ways that we can do that and some specific ways that you think post-secondary institutions can help with that? 

[00:22:09] Anne: Sure. Well, I'll give you some, I'll start with some examples of things that are happening already. And I think those some of these ideas are ones that started one way and that we've built on through experience. But for example, colleges specifically have something called occupations specific language training available. And it's actually funded by the federal government. So it's no cost to the students, but it gives new immigrants the ability to master the language associated with their profession, especially if you're learning a new language. You know that technical words are often the most difficult to learn, and you might be able to speak day the day in a different language. But if you're working in a language, you often need a different vocabulary. And it also teaches students about the Canadian social and cultural expectations of different industries. So that's it's a fundamental it's a start, but it really helps sometimes new immigrants get a leg up. We often also found that students who were really struggling to pass their licensing exams if they were in a licensed profession. And they'll use the example of nursing where I think prior to introducing a program that helps them prepare for their exams, I think we were getting like a 50 percent or less success rate for those internationally educated nurses doing their licensing exams. So we developed a short, relatively short program, I think at six to nine months helps prepare them for their licensing exams. We find they have all the knowledge, but they just maybe have to apply it in a different context. And we found that the success rates greatly improved since they did that. 

[00:23:48] Russell: I think so many we talked earlier about the great resignation and so many employers out there are experiencing that. And they're trying to win, you know what people call the war for talent or the race for talent. Do you have any ideas for Canadian employers on how do you go out in terms of recruiting to to win that race? Do you have any specific suggestions? 

[00:24:12] Anne: Well, I'm going to go back to the specific suggestion of experiential learning. Make experiential learning opportunities available for students because that's a great final for potential employees that you can hire in the future. And I think it can go a long way to supporting their needs. I think employers also have to focus more on their existing workforce, maybe to stem the tide of that great resignation. And I think they should focus on really identifying the skills that they need as specifically as they can. And in doing so, they can then work with others post-secondary institutions, for example, to ensure that there's the right courses or programs or pathways developed to support those students. 

[00:24:59] Russell: Thinking about Canadian employers, I believe this has gotten better, but there is still the occasional stigma that you get around. If we're going to hire people, we need to hire people who who have gone to university. Can you talk a little bit about that? 

[00:25:13] Anne: That's most unfortunate. 

[00:25:14] Russell: It is. 

[00:25:15] Anne: And it's another bias, right? That that if you don't have a university degree, you can't, you know, you're not going to be the candidate of choice. Well, you know, I think that, first of all, reminding employers that colleges have a great number of baccalaureate degrees and they are of the same quality or better, especially because they are available in so many different applied disciplines. I think employers really have to open their eyes to that. Think again if employers did open their minds more to colleges as for work integrated learning or experiential learning opportunities, they'd also get to know that pool of talent. I remember when I was working with the Business + Higher Education Roundtable, which was a partnership between industry and academia, universities and colleges to create those opportunities for more work integrated learning. Was Dave Mckay of Royal Bank, who said they were bringing in groups of students from all sorts of different disciplines and having them work together as teams to really solve what what he called wicked problems. And he was absolutely amazed at the richness of bringing college and university students together, bringing students from different disciplines. And it was the richness of those different points of view and different knowledge basis that really helped them come up with some incredible solutions. And in fact, he also I often heard him talk about the number of patents that they were already filing from some of the work that had been done by those groups of students. So you have to open your minds to that. But we also have to tell the stories of those kinds of opportunities and try and erase some of that bias through experience. 

[00:27:01] Russell: What are some of the changes that you hope to see in Canada over the next 10 years in terms of education and also workforce development? 

[00:27:11] Anne: I'll say that I really hope to see more and better labor market information. I think that understanding the needs of the labor market will help institutions have the right programs and will help inform the community about where there is high demand and where opportunities will be plentiful. I think we also need more flexibility in the post-secondary education sector so that we can provide timely and rapid responses to industry and labor market needs, and we need to be fast. We need to focus on accessible, lifelong learning and upskilling opportunities that are available to workers of all ages and all stages. And finally, I think we have to do more to attract new immigrants and give them streamlined opportunities to fully utilize their skills in their new country. 

[00:28:01] Russell: Great answer. One of the questions that I love to ask is is what we call our secret sauce question. And often what this means is I'll reach out to people that know our guests and I'll say, what is this person's secret sauce? So I did that on you. What I was told is that your secret sauce is your belief in experiential learning and the way that you were able to shift not just George Brown's perspective on that, but the perspective Ontario's perspective on that across the college system. How did you do that? 

[00:28:38] Anne: I think you have to have a fundamental belief that what you're advocating for really does make a difference. And I think one of the ways of changing people's minds and moving forward is telling stories. And if we have examples of what we do and we can tell the stories of how that's made a difference, I think you start changing the mindset and the future. People see a different future if they can identify with. And stories are just a great way of of helping people. You know, you're not giving them facts. You're not giving, you're telling them stories of real people and and showing what a difference it can make. So I think that that's really been the secret sauce, and it was part of what led us to the Business + Higher Education Roundtable, that partnership between academia and industry. And you know, we set what they said was an audacious. You know, the big, hairy, audacious goal that 100 percent of our students will have access to an experiential learning opportunity before they graduate. So again, you know, you have to set that milestone out there that's something to strive for. It's not that it's easy to do, but you start doing it. You start telling it the stories, you start getting people, more people on side, and all of a sudden you start seeing things changing and things happening. 

[00:29:57] Russell: How can our listeners learn more about Canada's colleges. 

[00:30:02] Anne: Well, they can learn through, you know, the website. So we have a couple of associations that represent colleges. There's Colleges Ontario, which has a lot of information and a lot of research papers information about all of the different institutions. We have Colleges and Institutes Canada, which represents all colleges nationally. As well as Polytechnics Canada, which represents the largest urban research and degree oriented colleges in the system. People can also learn more about the different opportunities for experiential learning through the Business + Higher Education Roundtable, which has a website and lots of papers. There's also an organization called CEWIL, which stands for a Co-op Education and Work Integrated Learning in Canada. The other issues I talked about apprenticeship and immigration through the Canadian Apprenticeship Forum. So again, there's great web resources or immigration. There is something called TRIEC, the Toronto Region Immigrant Education Council, and there are so many resources available. 

[00:31:07] Russell: My conversation with Anne has reminded me how valuable are college and universities are to the prosperity of Canadian society. I look back fondly on my years at Ryerson and how those experiences led to the career I have today. But Anne also brought to light the need for Canadian colleges and universities to keep evolving in multiple ways, to support the needs of the future workforce and to ensure that the growing skills gap is mitigated. For example, students will need a high level of innovation literacy, but Canadian companies can continue to solve our problems and create new products to contribute to society. Anne also shared a mission that employers should aim to achieve, which is explore alternative skills when recruiting for talent. As she put it the richness of those different points of view and different knowledge bases has helped organizations identify some pretty incredible solutions. Finally, there's a growing need for flexibility and much of this is relevant in the conversation today. From education to career paths to workplace arrangements, we need to be more flexible and open to adapting to the changing needs of our industries and our country overall. Thanks for joining us in Contributors. Don't forget to subscribe, rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts. And before you go, I wanted to take a minute to share a few details about our upcoming CAAT Pension Plan Annual Webinar. If you've been listening to our episodes and finding yourself more curious about CAAT DBplus and how offering lifetime retirement income in the workplace can have such a tremendous impact on your organization and your employee's well-being, then I encourage you to register for our webinar session. We host this every year and aim to offer insights into our plan, but more so spend time with an engaging panel discussion to discuss trends in the pension industry, how employers are transforming their workplaces through retirement savings plans, and other key questions for both employers and employees. If you're interested, visit PowerPlus.ca. The webinar is taking place May 5th at 11:00 a.m. Eastern Time. See you soon!