Canada’s skills training to be enhanced

At a conference of university students, administrators and educators Dominic Barton, managing director of global consulting giant McKinsey & Co, said due to technological automation of work, there is a fear that over the coming decade 40 percent of existing Canadian jobs will vanish, CTVNews reports said.

Barton said that Canadian government should decide what to do with older and vulnerable workers with outdated skills.

There is also an apprehension that Canadians who were not on the leading edge of technological changes could be left behind leading to widening of gap between rich and poor

Longstanding social contracts which Canadians had been enjoying could also fall apart if universities and governments failed to upgrade the skills of the workers, warned Barton.

Likewise, said Barton the government should also think in advance of innovative ways of helping the students constantly upgrade their skills during their careers as skills which they learnt in school quickly become obsolete.

"Are our institutions ready to deal with that disruption? Because it's always easy if you're highly educated, and you're on the leading edge of the technology, it's a wonderful world, actually, it's an increasing returns-to-talent world -- which means you're going to see much more income inequality," said Barton, CTVNews reports said.

Hours after Barton delivered morning speech to a universities conference outlining the changing economic and technological landscape, government's growth council released a report highlighting measures to increase and maintain labour market participation in the coming years.

(Reported by Asha Bajaj)

(Image of Dominic Barton: Wikipedia)