BUILDING THE WORKFORCE FOR THE GOLDEN AGE: ACTION PLAN FOR SUCCESS

Industry Strategies

Industry associations play a central role in building modern talent pipelines by leveraging a digital portal strategy. A sector-wide portal would house labour-market information, worker profiles, and verified skills and experience. Employers could access this shared talent

pipeline directly, improving recruitment efficiencies and visibility across the sector.

Employer size must be considered when designing industry-specific strategies. Large

employers and small/medium employers face different operational realities. Smaller firms typically require more external support to participate effectively in apprenticeship systems.

Peer-to-peer mentoring has proven successful across multiple sectors, enabling

experienced employers to guide newer or smaller firms toward desired outcomes. Large employers, despite having more resources, often lack apprenticeship experience and would also benefit from mentoring and association-based supports.

Industries should expand the use of group sponsorship models to increase apprenticeship spaces and provide broader training exposure for employers that do not cover the full

scope of a trade or occupation. This is where apprenticeship intermediaries become essential — coordinating placements, supporting employers, and ensuring apprentices receive complete training.

Industry also helps remove barriers to both entry and completion. Retention strategies are critical: many organizations do not measure the financial impact of turnover, nor do they

address underemployment caused by external constraints such as childcare. As work patterns move further away from the traditional Monday–Friday, 9–5 model, childcare solutions must adapt. Flexible hours, flexible days, and — for larger employers — on-site childcare strengthen retention. Childcare models must also accommodate seasonal

industries, such as construction, where hours vary significantly throughout the year. Regulators need to modernize childcare rules to support these realities, including solutions for younger school-age children who finish school before their parents’ workday ends.

Government regulators must work with industry to maintain oversight while enabling growth. With rising retirements and increasing pressure to retain talent, regulators should provide flexibility in skills recognition — including foreign credential recognition and

equivalency across training programs where skills overlap. For example, in the skilled trades, if a specific skill is already demonstrated in one trade, it should not need to be repeated simply to satisfy another trade with identical requirements.

Worker Mobility

The global skills gap has been documented for years, but the scale of the problem has now outgrown the term itself. This is no longer a “skills gap” — it is a skills canyon, and it

threatens to erode economic growth, productivity, and competitiveness worldwide. Trillions of dollars in potential output are at risk.

This raises an obvious question: How can such a canyon exist at a time when training tools have never been more advanced? Artificial intelligence, machine learning, immersive learning platforms, and a wide range of in-person, virtual, and interactive training models should be narrowing the divide, not widening it. These innovations should be pouring gold into the canyon.

Yet the shortfall persists — and grows. The explanation lies not in the absence of training technologies, but in how unevenly they are accessed, adopted, and aligned with real

labour-market needs.

The story is straightforward:

• Relying on static, one-size-fits-all testing prevents candidates from demonstrating what they can actually do — and it is fueling today’s widening skills crisis.
• These challenges are not limited to emerging “future skills.” They cut across every sector of the economy.
• Modern economies need assessment systems that measure real achievement and ability, not just test-taking performance.

Without ever having met you, I can say with confidence that you and your

great-great-grandfather took tests the same way: multiple choice, true/false, long answer. At best, the questions have become slightly more sophisticated or moved onto a screen.

But in a world of blended learning, adaptive technologies, and diverse learning speeds and styles, why are we still relying on static, monolithic tests? These methods do not measure skills. And if candidates are never given a meaningful chance to demonstrate their abilities, it should come as no surprise that the skills canyon is as vast as it is.

The scenario

In most job-related training programs, the final assessment is still the traditional test.

Multiple choice, true/false, and the occasional long answer remain popular because they are easy to administer. But they reveal little more than a person’s ability to memorise information under time pressure. This is not a skills assessment — it barely qualifies as a knowledge assessment.

The real problem is the disconnect between what we call “successful training” and what we call “successful skills development.” Training methods have evolved, but assessment methods have barely changed. Innovation has been limited to more elaborate questions and an endless series of surveys.

The outcome is predictable: we are producing workers who excel at clicking circle-shaped buttons, not workers whose skills match the needs of modern employers.

The problems

Despite overwhelming evidence that people learn, and demonstrate learning in different ways, we continue to assess competency and skills in the same traditional manner. We have modernized training through dynamic, blended-learning models, yet assessment remains static. Pairing innovative learning with outdated testing has failed — it creates

barriers, limits achievement, and undermines genuine skills development. We prioritise the administrative convenience of standardized tests at the expense of meaningful evaluation.

If a candidate struggles with American English, is a newcomer, lives with dyslexia or

another neurodivergence, or is simply a poor test-taker, years of training can be reduced to a single high-stakes exam — one they were never positioned to succeed in.

A paradigm shift is needed.

The implications

In a 2020 report, Accenture revealed that G20 countries risk forgoing up to $11.5 trillion in GDP growth over the next 10 years if they are unable to adapt the supply of skills to meet the needs of the new technological era. In the same year, McKinsey revealed that nearly 9 out of 10 executives surveyed are imminently facing skills gaps, and in 2021 the Future

Skills Centre in Canada in partnership with Ryerson University and Microsoft expounded that only 1% of nearly 300 Canadian executives surveyed confidently believed that their new hires and recruits had the skills to perform the jobs for which they were hired.

Loss in GDP growth if countries are unable to adapt supply of skills to meet needs of the new technological era. Image: Accenture

But these skills challenges are not limited to technological “skills of the future”. This problem is pervasive across society and the entire economy:

1.  Healthcare

In its 2020 “Jobs of Tomorrow” report, the World Economic Forum surmised that 40% of all new jobs in the next three years would be in the care sector. The COVID-19 pandemic

unveiled scandals and criticisms that have made commonplace words like negligence and malpractice in describing long-term care homes. A greater, competence-based skills framework could have been effective in this regard.

2.  Literacy

In Canada, 42% of the workforce has literacy skills below those needed to be fully effective for the position they hold. Notwithstanding the “hard skills” gap, the soft skills gap is paralysing economies. What’s most astounding is that a mere 1% gain in literacy abilities could lead to a 5% gain in productivity, worth the equivalent of $54 billion a year in Canada, alone.

3.  Immigration

In the US, it is estimated that $39 Billion in wages – and $10 Billion in income tax revenue – is lost every year due to college-educated immigrants being mired in low-skilled jobs or

unemployment lines. In Canada, more than half of all full-time taxi and ride-share drivers are immigrants, of which a majority hold degrees and advanced skills-based diplomas that render them overqualified for their driving jobs.

4.  Military and defence

Every year, hundreds of thousands of military personnel require skills training to reintegrate into the workforce. VALID-8, a patented platform leveraging video assessments, was used with the British Army in over 130 countries to assess transferrable skills of military personnel reintegrating into the economy, giving members of the military a greater opportunity to effectively compete for civilian jobs.

Supporting Entrepreneurship and SME’s: A Post-Pandemic Skills and Training Agenda Image: Future Skills Centre, Ryerson University Diversity Institute

Part of The Solution

In 2020, Vametric and its partners worked with Utah legislators to pass reforms removing hours-based requirements and traditional exams as the primary thresholds for

advancement in apprenticeship programs. Instead, Utah will evaluate progression through demonstrated mastery. This shift toward assessing actual ability and competence is a meaningful step forward.

The economy needs assessment systems that validate achievement and real-world capability. Continuing to rely exclusively on traditional testing only reinforces a broken model — one that perpetuates race, gender, language, and ableist inequities that modern economies cannot afford to sustain.

Integrated Systems

A fully integrated digital portal would give users, regulators, and governments the ability to monitor, grow, and strengthen a modern apprenticeship system. This all-access platform could include national, state, and local labour-market information; predictive human-analytics tools for jobseekers and students exploring apprenticeship pathways; and “day-in-the-life” videos to help prospective apprentices understand the realities of

each occupation.

A digital logbook — with third-party verification and optional regulatory approval — would allow apprentices to demonstrate skills using a show it, prove it, defend it model. This structure supports micro-credentials, continuing-education tracking, and credit

recognition. It also enables industry to build a national, sector-based skills registry capable of mobilizing the workforce quickly when major projects move into operation.

The portal can be secured using current authentication technologies and user-verification protocols, ensuring integrity, privacy, and trust across the system.

Accountability

Employers must be accountable for the progress of their apprentices. One of the most effective mechanisms to ensure apprentices advance through their training pathway is the use of employer tax credits tied to measurable milestones. Government and

apprenticeship regulators can define both the milestones and the value of the credit.

Tax credits are far more accessible than grants for small and medium-sized employers. Many lack the administrative capacity to navigate grant applications, but nearly all rely on accounting firms to manage their tax filings. Embedding apprenticeship incentives directly into the tax system removes administrative barriers and expands participation. For

accountants, applying a tax credit is a simple ledger adjustment — a fraction of the effort required to complete grant paperwork.

A milestone-based tax credit also reinforces accountability. Employers who actively move apprentices through their training receive the credit; those who do not are ineligible. This ensures public funds support successful training outcomes rather than subsidizing stagnation.

The proposed digital platform includes a progress-tracking feature that shows how far an apprentice has advanced relative to the training standard. This data can be linked to

individual employer sponsors, providing a transparent view of training quality and

apprentice progression. It also gives regulators a reliable, real-time mechanism to validate eligibility for tax credits and monitor overall system performance.

Flexibility and Innovation

The registered apprenticeship model must allow flexibility in how competence is

demonstrated. Apprentices should be able to provide different forms of evidence to show they have mastered a skill. This evidence can be uploaded into a digital logbook, verified by a third party, and, where required, confirmed by the regulator.

Modern identity-verification technologies can ensure that the individual submitting the evidence is the rightful owner of the profile, maintaining integrity and trust across the system.

Return on Investment

Governments invest in education in many forms, but apprenticeship must be viewed as an education system — not simply a job program. When evaluating where to invest,

apprenticeship stands out as one of the few post-secondary pathways that delivers a return on investment almost immediately.

A typical apprenticeship begins generating returns for government within months through

income-tax contributions, even while the apprentice is still learning. By contrast, traditional post-secondary programs often take years before any direct return on that investment is

realized.

Recommendations

The Administration can accelerate progress in registered apprenticeships by focusing on three core actions:

1. Adopt a skills-based apprenticeship model with continuous assessment Shift from hours-based progression to a model grounded in demonstrated competence. Continuous skills assessments — verified by the apprentice’s sponsor and, where required, approved by the regulator — would allow apprentices to advance at an accelerated pace. Completion would be based on 100% mastery of the training standard, similar to graduated driver licensing. Because skills are validated throughout the journey, a final written exam would no longer be necessary.
2. Enable and expand group sponsorship models Create an environment where group sponsors — clusters of employers jointly sponsoring apprentices — can thrive. This approach uses existing industry resources to increase apprenticeship opportunities while supporting employers who may not be able to train alone due to limited scope of practice or inconsistent work volume. Group sponsorship also improves labour mobility and ensures apprentices receive diverse, well-rounded training. Mentoring is essential in this model. Small and medium-sized employers benefit from peer guidance on navigating apprenticeship requirements and integrating apprentices into their business. Apprentices benefit from exposure to multiple employers and broader learning experiences.
3. Provide financial resources to sectors that meet development targets Targeted financial support should be directed to sectors that demonstrate progress in apprenticeship development and workforce outcomes. This ensures public investment is tied to measurable results and encourages continuous improvement across industries.