When it comes to investing in the long-term growth and future of good jobs, Ontario is doing a lot of things right.
Let’s take its foresight in building the first small modular reactors (SMRs) in the G7. The four SMRs will not only produce affordable, reliable, and clean electricity to meet ramping demand, their construction will create as many as 18,000 new jobs, 4,000 of which will endure for the next 65+ years. Ontario’s world-class reputation in the battery sector helped it land the new Siemens Global AI Manufacturing Technologies R&D Centre in Oakville, which comes with $150 million in investment and 90 new high-skilled jobs. Meanwhile, its determination to grow a made-in-Ontario critical minerals supply chain helped close a deal with Frontier Lithium to build a “first of its kind” lithium refinery project in Thunder Bay, projected to create hundreds of new full-time jobs.
This is what it looks like to leverage the opportunities of a maturing, global clean economy. You see where the demand and investment is going and you get there fast. You take some calculated risks and not everything pans out exactly when you hope it will. But, on the whole, when opportunity meets preparation, there you are — at the front of line.
It’s a smart strategy and a review of Ontario’s 2025 budget shows the province is sticking with it. That includes investing $4.7 billion in clean electricity generation, boosting Ontario’s electricity grid with emerging resources like hydrogen and RNG, launching a $500-million mineral processing fund, building out “the largest expansion of public transit in North America,” and standing behind agreements to invest into the electric vehicle and battery auto pact (which has secured over $46 billion in investment and created thousands of jobs to date). Ontario’s newly released plan “Energy for Generations” also confirms major builds will be required to meet the electricity needs of the future, resulting in thousands of jobs.
All of this bodes great for Ontario’s long-term employment opportunities. The province already has the highest number of job postings in the country for people with clean economy skills and we’re likely to see upwards of 300,000 jobs created in Canada in response to technological advancements and market demand over the next five years. But before we hang a giant “We’re Hiring” sign off the top of the CN Tower, we need to ask ourselves: are there enough skilled Ontarians prepared to take those jobs?
The answer is probably: no, not yet. I say “probably” because, as far as New Economy Canada and our members are aware, no one has done the work to actually model what jobs we need, the evolving skills they require, and the quantity of people necessary to fill them. What we do know is that 700,000 skilled trade people in Canada are expected to retire in the next three years (in Ontario, one third of trade workers are 55 or older). Meanwhile, 25 percent of the country’s tradespeople need to update their skills. Does Ontario have enough construction workers who can build high-efficiency buildings? No. What about power line technicians? Project developers? Certified energy managers?
Someone could argue that this kind of gap — however large it may be — is expected and unavoidable. There will always be a lag between an embrace of new standards and technologies and the readiness of a workforce to deliver on them. While that might be true, the pace at which we want and need to “Build Ontario” leaves little room to play catch-up. And it is precisely those sectors that Ontario is most focused on unleashing that require an investment in clean economy training and upskilling. For example, up to 16 per cent of job postings in the mining sector require new skills to meet evolving regulatory requirements and to respond to increasing market demand. Further, many jobs in electricity generation, transmission, and distribution increasingly require new knowledge related to renewable energy sources and storage.
To its credit, Ontario is making some significant investments in workforce development: $20 million to retrain laid-off workers; $1 billion added to the Skills Development Fund to help respond to labour shortages. These are strong defensive moves, but we need is an equally aggressive offense: a People Powering the Economy Labour program. That looks like a proactive effort to assess the specific new skills and abilities we need and in what quantities across all sectors to build the Ontario we want. Then implementing a plan to aggressively recruit, train, and reskill Ontarians to fill those positions.
Getting shovels in the ground takes more than a greenlit project. It takes a well-trained worker to hold the shovel. Let’s put the power to get things built in Ontarians’ hands.
Merran Smith is president of New Economy Canada, non-partisan initiative uniting over 60 companies, industrial sector associations, as well as labour and Indigenous organizations, all committed to accelerating investment in Canada’s clean economy.