ICTC’s Submission to Canada’s Pre-Budget Consultations for Budget 2025

In July 2024, the unemployment rate for Canadian youth aged 15 to 24 reached 14.2%, the highest rate since September 2012 (outside of 2020-2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic).  

At the same time, Canada’s workforce is undergoing a profound transformation. Canadian organizations face mounting pressure to digitalize, innovate, and become more sustainable, generating new demand for a generation of digital-green skills, and the knowledge and skills required to compete in an increasingly autonomous workforce.

As the world of work rapidly evolves, youth and students aren’t gaining access to the digital work experiences they need to transition to Canada’s future-ready workforce. And Canada’s labour market information isn’t providing the timely, accessible, granular and skills-based data youth need to make decisions about their futures.

Work-integrated learning and innovative approaches to labour market information are at the heart of the solution.

ICTC’s written submission to Canada’s pre-budget consultations in advance of the upcoming federal budget outlines two important recommendations to support students, youth, and the resilience of Canada’s future workforce. 

Recommendation 1: That the government provide $207.6 million per year on an ongoing basis, starting in 2025-26, to Employment and Social Development Canada to establish permanent funding for the Student Work Placement Program and continue supporting work-integrated learning opportunities for Canadian students.

Key takeaways:

• Ensuring that students are workforce-ready is a complex task. 
• Few solutions bridge the disjuncture between higher education and industry as efficiently as work-integrated learning (WIL). 
  The Government of Canada’s Student Work Placement Program (SWPP) is one of Canada’s largest and most impactful WIL programs. 
• The SWPP provides a clear, tangible, and robust return on investment for Canada. It generates immediate economic value for employers and enables students to earn a higher salary over their careers, increasing federal tax revenues and contributions to the Canadian Pension Plan (CPP) and Employment Insurance (EI) premiums. 
• To ensure Canadian organizations can continue to provide work placements to students and to reduce the impact of Canada’s current economic climate on students and new graduates, Budget 2025 should establish permanent funding for Employment and Social Development Canada to deliver the Student Work Placement Program.

Recommendation 2: That the government invest in digital innovation for labour market information and novel primary research methods to achieve dynamic forecasting, real-time analysis, and solutions that can respond to rapid economic and technological changes in Canada.

Key takeaways:

• Canada needs timely, accessible, granular, and skills-based labour market information to support a strong digital economy talent supply. 
• Canada’s LMI requires investment and innovation. 
• New digital advancements and Canadian-led innovation can fill the country’s LMI and economic forecasting gaps. 
• ICTC is at the forefront of developing innovative and advanced approaches to economic forecasting using methods like web scraping and AI to collect targeted LMI on skills changes within occupations, developing robust forecasting models for skills demand and supply, novel primary research methods, and is establishing best practices in this space.
• If Canada invests in leading-edge approaches to LMI and economic forecasting, the country, economy, and workforce will benefit from data-led policy decisions on immigration, interprovincial mobility, reskilling, upskilling, and youth training, as well as increased global competitiveness.