Canadian HR Reporter

CANADIAN HR REPORTER CANADIAN HR REPORTER April 7, 2014 April 7, 2014 NEWS NEWS 9 Canada's prestigious fourth annual health and safety awards have launched a new category to recognize employers for best practices and leading initiatives in workplace mental health. To nominate your organization visit www.safestemployers.com for details. Nominations close June 2, 2014 Mental health problems will cost businesses $198 billion in lost productivity over the next 30 years, predicts The Mental Health Commission of Canada. To recognize employers that are leaders in addressing psychological issues in the workplace, Canadian Occupational Safety has launched the Canada's Safest Employers Psychological Safety Award. Centre for Mental Health in the Workplace Great-West Life www.workplacestrategiesformentalhealth.com Presented by National Founding Sponsor & Title Sponsor Psychological Safety Sponsor Is your organization a leader in workplace mental health? " ere is actually export of the labour from Alberta, and it's in the form of expertise," said Bishop. "So it's not all people coming into Alberta — there's actually ex- pertise going the other way. And there's quite a lot of exporting of expertise from Alberta into other parts of the world." Provincial variations Step away from Alberta and the job numbers tell a very diff erent story. British Columbia faced a decline in employment of about 10,000 in February and saw very little change over the past year, said Ferrao. B.C. has been struggling to achieve net employment gains for some time, according to An- gella MacEwen, senior economist at the Canadian Labour Congress in Ottawa. "It's quite surprising (how) the number of jobs in B.C. just haven't come back… there doesn't seem to be anything that's driving growth there," she said. Ontario has been struggling with a tough manufacturing sec- tor, seeing only marginal growth in employment over the last year. "Where there are real troubles with manufacturing, then services are having trouble picking up the slack. In southwestern Ontario, there are a lot of plant closures and when you have really hard- hit communities, it goes beyond just where the plant closes. It can be broadly felt in depressed areas," said MacEwen. Quebec saw a signifi cant de- cline in February, losing 26,000 jobs. But previously the province had seen a slight upward trend. "One month of jobs data — it's always hard to draw any conclu- sions from that," said Kavcic. "But the bigger picture is that the (Quebec) economy has been consistently under-performing for a couple of years now, and the labour market is refl ecting that. So the jobless rate is (above) the national average, job growth is running quite a bit softer." e massive government ship- building contract in Nova Scotia and oil activity in Newfoundland and Labrador have provided some hope for the Maritime provinces, but there are still a lot of workers moving from Atlantic Canada to Alberta, said Bishop. Saskatchewan perhaps stands out from the rest in terms of its economic strength over the past few years, said Kavcic. "It's still strong historically — the jobless rate is actually a touch lower than in Alberta. Job growth, though, has slowed a little bit… Momentum has slowed a little bit, part of it because there is some uncertainty in the potash sector, which had been a strong sup- port for economic growth. Some uncertainty over pricing in the potash sector has cooled activity there." Labour mobility These dramatic differences among labour markets leads to a lot of workers moving between provinces. But what sort of impact does that have on demographics? "When you separate out the oil- producing provinces and you look at the rest of Canada… two things pop out," said MacEwen. "(One is) the age of people who are working. So if you look at the job growth in Alberta and Saskatch- ewan, a lot of that job growth has been people between 25 and 44, and then if you look at the rest of Canada, it's people between the age of 44 and 64." at can create additional chal- lenges for the provinces that are losing a good chunk of the young workforce. "What happens is communities lose their tax base, so there are fewer people that own properties to pay municipal taxes. e prov- inces are losing people who are at kind of that core age who pay taxes and who volunteer to coach hockey teams and all of those kinds of things, so the community loses out a lot," said MacEwen. If the fl ows are signifi cant, they typically leave behind an older population, said Kavcic. "In areas like public fi nance, for example, you have fewer prime- age workers supporting the health-care burden of a relatively older population now. So it has a pretty signifi cant eff ect from that perspective." It can also be frustrating from a recruitment perspective since employers may have a hard time fi nding the best talent as people leave to pursue higher-paying jobs in other provinces, said MacEwen. "It can be diffi cult and frustrat- ing for them because they do see talented people leaving for higher- paying jobs," she said. "But it can also be an opportunity for them to invest in the community and to fi nd the talent that is staying and that wants to stay, and to develop that." Of course, workers need to go where the work is and labour mo- bility will always be a reality, said Bishop. But employers need to think strategically about how the workforce is changing over the long term. "Everybody's quite good at planning for the short term but there are strategic changes in (how), and where, people are working in Canada," he said. "Alberta can't absorb all of the labour," said MacEwen. "So it's great that Alberta and Saskatch- ewan are making jobs, but they're not absorbing all of the slack la- bour for the rest of Canada. So we still need to think creatively about what is going to be the en- gine of growth for Ontario going forward, or for Atlantic Canada going forward, and should we be investing in certain types of infra- structure to make that happen?" UNEMPLOYMENT Employment stats from coast to coast Here's how each province clocked in for the month of February 2014, according to the most recent Labour Market Survey from Statistics Canada. PROVINCE UNEMPLOYMENT RATE PARTICIPATION RATE British Columbia 6.4% 63.5% Alberta 4.3% 73.1% Saskatchewan 3.9% 69.4% Manitoba 5.3% 67.9% Ontario 7.5% 66% Quebec 7.8% 65.1% N.L. 11.8% 61.4% New Brunswick 9.8% 63.1% Nova Scotia 8.9% 63.3% Prince Edward Island 11.5% 69.6% B.C., Quebec still struggling B.C., Quebec still struggling ALBERTA < pg. 1

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