Human Resources Development Canada (HRDC)
PRE-SYMPOSIUM PAPER
November 2003
1. Briefly describe the profile of career development services in your jurisdiction
(i.e. history, overall approach, position relative to other human resources services)
The Canadian career development system is multi-faceted and highly de-centralized. In
policy terms, it reflects the division of responsibilities between federal,
provincial/territorial and municipal governments in the areas of education, training and
labour market matters.
Within HRDC, several branches are responsible for career development. These are
mainly:
 Human Investment Programs Branch (Human Resources Partnerships, Canada
Student Loans Program)
 Employment Programs Branch (Labour Market, Youth, Aboriginal Relations Office)
 Strategic Policy (Applied Research, Learning, Labour Market Policy)
Five main areas of programs and services will be described:
 Service delivery
 Production and Dissemination of LMI and Career Information
 Strengthening Career Development Community Capacity
 Human Resources Management
 Research
Service delivery
Human Resources Development Canada plays a significant role in labour market matters,
in particular through its responsibilities for Employment Insurance and a National
Employment System. In recent years, funding and responsibilities for some employment
programs have been devolved to the provinces and territories through Labour Market
Development Agreements (LMDAs): seven (Alberta, Manitoba, New Brunswick, North
West Territories, Nunavut, Quebec and Saskatchewan) have taken on the design and
delivery of career development and other services (with a few exceptions); a further five
(British Columbia, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and
Yukon) jointly plan with HRDC, which continues to deliver the services; only in Ontario
are career development services still both planned and delivered by HRDC.
Production and Dissemination of LMI and Career Information
The collection and analysis of labour market information (LMI) represents a major area
of activity in the public employment services in Canada, and an area where HRDC has
maintained a clear leadership role based upon its legal responsibilities in this respect.
This includes responsibility for information on jobs, occupations, career paths and
learning opportunities, as well as national, regional and local labour market trends. For
example, HRDC coordinates the development and dissemination of local labour market
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information by Labour Market Information Analysts (LMIAs) who work in regional and
local offices. This information is used by career development practitioners and job
seekers.
In the area of occupational and career awareness information, HRDC, through shared
funding with its partners, makes career-related products, services and information
available to all Canadians. These partnerships help to ensure that skills information and
human resource issues are addressed across Canada. For example:
 the Canada Career Consortium (CCC), which is an advisory board consisting of youth
and equity groups, career information producers, professional associations, sector
councils, private and voluntary sector organizations, and representatives of the
federal, provincial and territorial governments. Their main activities include the
facilitation of a co-ordinated strategy for the dissemination of career information, the
management of several national career information projects, and the identification of
career and labour market issues that warrant further study. Some popular examples
are Canada Prospects, Career Directions, Destination 2020, The Work Handbook,
NATCON, and Canada Career Week support material.
 the Canadian Career Information Partnership (CCIP), which is a national network that
provides meaningful career and labour market information for all Canadians by
sharing ideas and information. They provide a direct link to provincial and territorial
Ministries of Education.
 The Canadian Alliance of Education and Training Organizations (CAETO is an
alliance of 9 national associations in the education and training sector. CAETO
provides a common meeting place for education and training providers to facilitate
information sharing, networking and collaborative activities. CAETO addresses
regulatory and operational issues, such as the equitable access, articulation and prior
learning assessment and recognition projects.
 CanLearn, which provides interactive tools and information for individuals to make
informed decisions in the selection and financing of post-secondary education. Within
the site, CanLearn Pro acts as a forum for the learning and career development
community to participate in the ongoing evolution of the information, resources and
tools provided by CanLearn. It also provides Internet-based guidance and counselling
services through qualified on-line counsellors.
 The Jobs Workers Training and Careers (JWTC) site of Government on Line provides
easy access through the Internet to a wide variety of information of use to those
planning careers and making job search decisions.
Strengthening Career Development Community Capacity
HRDC has a long tradition of support, through shared funding, activities aiming to
develop career development as a professional field. For example:
 The National Standards and Guidelines for Career Development Practitioners, which
spell out the competencies that career development practitioners need in order to offer
the highest quality of services to their clients. These competencies represent the
composite of knowledge, skills, and attitudes that practitioners have identified as
important to be effective.
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Blueprint for Life/Work Designs, which maps out the life/work competencies
Canadians need to master in order to pro-actively and self-reliantly manage their
career-building process from K-Adult. It provides administrators and practitioners a
systematic process of developing, implementing, evaluating and marketing career
development programs or redesigning and enhancing existing programs.
The annual national conference in career development (NATCON) which attracts
over 1000 practitioners from across Canada every year.
Activities designed to bridge the gap between the career development field and public
policy, such as two international symposia organized in Ottawa (1999) and in
Vancouver (2001), and an OECD meeting held in Toronto (October 2003) on career
development services involving 28 countries.
Human Resources Management
 The Workplace Skills Strategy positions HRDC to take concerted and coherent action
in addressing the issue of skills development in and for the workplace. This strategy
recognizes that the workplace is an important venue where both employers and
workers experience firsthand the pressure of skills and labour shortages associated
with the rapid technological and demographic changes which are transforming the
Canadian economy. The major components of this strategy are:
o Sectoral Partnerships Initiative (SPI), which supports sector councils and the
work they do in helping address human resource and skills issues in certain
sectors of Canada's labour market. SPI primarily supports research and
project-activity proposed by sector councils. The Initiative also supports the
establishment and development of new councils in sectors of the economy that
are experiencing difficulties with human resource and skills issues.
o Working with all partners and stakeholders to revitalize support for
apprenticeship:
o Essential Skills/Workplace Literacy Initiative to enhance the skills levels of
Canadians who are entering or already in the workforce.
o Foreign Credential Recognition by working in partnership with governments,
regulatory bodies and employers to facilitate foreign credential assessment
and recognition.
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HRDC is also working with provincial and territorial governments, training
institutions, educators, business, labour and equity groups to eliminate interprovincial barriers for trades and regulated occupations and improve labour mobility
in Canada.
The Human Resources Management (HRM) site of Government on Line is designed
to help small- to medium- sized businesses save time and money by providing
government and non-government information that is local to national in scope to help
these businesses manage human resources on a day-by-day basis.
Research on National Tools and Frameworks
Finally, HRDC has supported research projects for many years in the field of career
development. For example:
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Essential skills: As part of this research effort, HRDC launched the Essential Skills
and Workplace Literacy Initiative. Essential skills are defined as generic,
transferable, enabling skills that help people perform the tasks required by their
occupation and other activities of their daily lives. These skills also improve an
individual’s capacity to learn other skills including technical or management skills.
The Department has conducted extensive research on essential skills to examine how
these skills are used in different ways and at difference levels of complexity in
different occupations.
National Occupational Classification (NOC): A widely recognized, comprehensive
system that describes and organizes occupations in the Canadian economy. It
represents a classification structure done in partnership with Statistics Canada with
descriptions of the 520 occupational unit groups - covering more than 30,000 job
titles that constitute the Canadian labour market. The Career Handbook is the
counseling component of the NOC, designed primarily for career counsellors,
vocational rehabilitation specialists and educators.
National Occupational and Skills Standards: These human resources tools describe
the skills and knowledge needed to perform competently in the workplace.
Occupational skills standards are an essential starting point to help educators and
trainers give learners the skills and abilities that an industry requires as well as
helping workers and employers determine their unique training needs.
Job Futures: this is a comprehensive career tool to help counsellors for their clients
and/or users plan for themselves. It provides useful background, skills, credential,
labour market trends information about 226 occupational groups and describes the
work experiences of recent graduates from 155 programs of study.
2. What are the career development services in your jurisdiction?
In addition to the production and dissemination of career and occupational related
information described in the previous question, HRDC provides direct labour exchange
services through the following two mechanisms:
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The Job Bank, which is an electronic listing of jobs, work or business opportunities
provided by employers from across Canada.
The Electronic Labour Exchange which matches work to people and people to work.
HRDC ensures career development services are provided to different clientele through
the following three main mechanisms:
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Employment Assistance Services (EAS)
Under this program, HRDC provides the services outlined below through contribution
agreements with community agencies and organizations. In jurisdictions with fully
devolved LMDAs, HRDC provides funding to the province/territory for design and
delivery of these services.
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EAS Program Objectives
o To assist individuals to prepare for, obtain and maintain employment
o To provide unemployed individuals with services to help them find and keep
jobs. Services may include: counselling, job search skills, job placement
services and labour market information.
There are four (4) basic types of Employment Assistance Services (EAS) sponsored
projects:
o Information Resource Centres
o Assessment (needs assessment)
o Counselling Centres,
o A combination of all three of the above.
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Aboriginal Human Resource Development Agreements
Another important source of funding for community based employment services is
the Aboriginal Human Resource Development Agreement (AHRDA). Through the
AHRDAs, funding is provided to Aboriginal groups under five components:
o capacity building: to improve the administrative and management capacity of
aboriginal organizations that deliver services and programs under the
agreement.
o labour market programs: the same types of services offered through regular
Labour Market Programs, only tailored to meet the needs of aboriginal people.
o child care: with better access to child care, First Nations and Inuit parents are
better able to work or take training to improve the financial prospects of their
families. It also leads to early child development and health.
o youth: this funding enables Aboriginal organizations to deliver a host of youth
programs for summer employment, community service, entrepreneurship and
internships. Aboriginal groups may decide to design youth programs that are
unique to their communities or simply adopt HRDC's youth programs as a
model.
o disabled: this funding has been set aside to ensure that access to training and
employment opportunities is increased for Aboriginal people with disabilities;
e.g. the National Aboriginal Clearing House)
There are currently 79 separate AHRDAs, designed to be all-inclusive, meaning that
they serve Métis, Inuit and First Nations groups both on- and off-reserve (including
urban clients). Each AHRDA holder is given the authority to design and deliver
labour market programs that meet their own needs. A component of some AHRDAs
is collection of LMI specific to their particular group.
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The Youth Employment Strategy
The Youth Employment Strategy (YES) is the Government of Canada’s commitment
to help young people, particularly those facing barriers to employment, get the
information and gain the skills, work experience and abilities they need to make a
successful transition to the workplace. The Youth Employment Strategy is a key
element of the Government of Canada’s Innovation and Learning Strategy.
Designed for youth between the ages of 15 and 30, legally entitled to work in Canada,
who are: out of school and facing barriers to employment; secondary or postsecondary students returning to full-time studies; post-secondary graduates; and not in
receipt of Employment Insurance (EI) benefits.
YES is administered by businesses, organizations (including not-for-profit,
professional, employer and labour associations), public health and educational
institutions, band/tribal councils and municipal governments which receive
contribution agreements from HRDC.
Fourteen Government of Canada departments and agencies work in partnership with
all levels of government, the private sector and community organizations to help
youth in finding employment.
The Youth Employment Strategy, which was realigned as of April 2003, includes
three programs:
o Skills Link provides funding for community organizations to help youth
facing barriers to employment—such as single parents, Aboriginal youth,
young persons with disabilities, recent immigrants, youth living in rural and
remote areas and high school dropouts—develop the skills, knowledge and
work experience they need to participate in the job market.
o Career Focus provides funding for employers to help post-secondary
graduates get career-related work experience and develop advanced skills.
o Summer Work Experience provides wage subsidies that create summer
employment opportunities for secondary and post-secondary students, and
support the operation of summer employment offices. This program is
delivered in partnership with various private, public and not for profit groups.
3. What are the lifelong learning challenges in your jurisdiction to which career
development services could respond? How could career development services
respond to these challenges?
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In order to make informed choices, end users need to have access to information on
career, learning and employment. Through different initiatives, it has been identified
that, from an information point of view, we need to address these two challenges:
o Better coordination of the distribution and integration of the career
information for the end users, counsellors, teachers, students, adults in career
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transition. Several pan-Canadian organizations are already in place. Could we
build more on the work they are doing?
o More emphasis could be put on assistance to the user to interpret the
information for decision making.
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Workers do not have enough opportunities to ‘learn while they earn’.
o A possible response would be to identify and facilitate the accessibility of
worker training programs. The CanLearn Website could be one way to
disseminate information on development of this type.
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Motivation: Many adults report an awareness of the importance of learning and the
need for more training. Few, however, follow through and actually undertake
learning. Despite the traditional focus on barriers to learning, it appears that
motivation and commitment are at least as important in removing barriers. Groups
and individuals for whom learning is a priority and who are highly motivated do
better in formal learning settings than others. Management literature and anecdotal
evidence underscore the importance of motivation to successful change and learning.
o At the moment, a research agenda is being developed within HRDC to
examine motivation and learning. The role of career development and career
development policy will comprise this research.
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It is estimated that the learning recognition gap costs $4.6 billion in income annually;
the skills and experience of Canada’s workforce are going unrecognized and are
under-utilized.
o Development and wide implementation of prior learning assessment and
recognition (PLAR) processes would help individuals complete degrees and
have their qualifications recognized in the workplace.
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Small firms face special barriers: Difficult to achieve economies of scale. Knowledge
and information about training and training providers can be difficult. Retention of
trained employees can also be a problem.
o Through the development of industry specific information and programming,
Sector Councils could help smaller firms in their sector with training
decisions.
o The Human Resources Management (HRM) site of Government on Line is
designed to help small- to medium- sized businesses manage human resources
on a day-by-day basis.
4. What are the workforce development challenges in your province/territory to
which career development services could respond; and how could career
development services respond to these challenges?
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The need in the Knowledge Based Economy for adult workers to continually maintain
and enhance skills as demands evolve and increase.
o This is an area where labour market information and career development
services can play a role in guiding workers.
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Along with a declining workforce, employers are placing an increasingly higher
premium on skilled workers. Between 2002 and 2007, occupations that require less
than high school education are expected to account for less than six per cent of new
jobs, whereas more than 70 per cent of new jobs will require at least some postsecondary education. In addition to these trends, youth are recognizing the need to get
an education that prepares them for success in the labour market.
o Career planning, resume writing, teamwork and personal development
activities prepare youth for entering the workforce. A flexible mix of program
instruments i.e. career development services enables the Youth Employment
Strategy to respond to differing needs at different points in the economic cycle
and to different regional conditions and types of employment barriers.
The under-representation of Designated Employment Equity Groups in certain trades
and professions in the workforce.
o An element of response to this issue, would be a successful use of labour
market information and research to improve labour market efficiency; helping
adults, particularly disadvantaged groups, to better participate in the labour
market through comprehensive career development and employment
programs.
While the majority of Canadian youth are making a successful transition to the labour
market, some continue to face severe challenges. In 2001, approximately one-in-ten
young Canadians remained out of work and out of school and continued to experience
poor employment outcomes. Although the number of out-of-school/out-of-work
youth has declined in the past two decades, the labour market prospects of this group
are deteriorating in today’s skills-oriented labour market and these youth are at risk of
long-term exclusion from the labour market. Among these at-risk cohorts, Aboriginal
youth are among the fastest growing segment of Canada’s youth population.
o Career development services could respond to these challenges by better
targeting youth facing barriers to employment and addressing the specific
barriers that young individuals face. Partnerships with provincial/territorial
governments and community-based service providers could also help in being
better equipped to contribute to a sustainable network of supports that could
help these young people at various times in their lives.
Changing demographics of workforce – Successful and timely integration of skilled
and highly educated immigrants.
o Facilitate the recognition of prior learning and foreign credentials; provide
support for individuals to undertake career-work improvement initiatives;
literacy and language training programs with a labour market focus.
Equipping the working poor and unemployed with adequate technical literacy and
access to technology.
o Provide assessment tools, resources, and research mechanisms for career
development services, to enhance the ‘Essential Skills’ of Canadians.
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5. How can providers of career development services (researchers, developers,
educators and practitioners), employers and policy makers be more effective
sources of expertise and support for each others?
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Maintain fora for consultation and feedback between the major stakeholders.
A workshop of researchers could be convened to articulate an applied research
agenda in the career development field; this might lead to an applied research
programme on career development, to include research on key policy-related issues
and evidence-based results
The realigned Youth Employment Strategy has adjusted from a project-based
approach to a client-centred approach founded on individual assessment, case
management and tailored interventions which will rely on collaboration and support
through partnerships. Building on existing partnerships and community collaboration
will allow for a broader mix of supports, particularly to youth facing barriers. The key
lies in working with appropriate partners to deliver programs effectively.
There could be a need for more coordination among the large numbers of
stakeholders in the area of career planning and lifelong learning. There is a
federal/provincial territorial working group on LMI under the auspices of the Forum
of Labour Market Ministers, which is involved in coordinating some of the activities
of the LMI community. It sponsors an LMI Forum to which some career services
stakeholders are invited.
The involvement of the community, employers, clients and other stakeholders could
be a priority for a planning process to identify needs, community assets and
resources. The result of involving the employers and the community in a planning
process, particularly those agencies that work with clients, could improve
coordination of service delivery, decrease duplication, in building on individual
agency strengths and the creation of new partnerships, thus enriching and tailoring the
services network to meet the needs of the clientele in the community.
In the longer term, whatever arrangements are made for strategic leadership in
relation to lifelong learning, they could embrace leadership in relation to career
development.
6. Incorporating the perspectives of policy, practice and employer stakeholders,
what are the most important elements (3-5) of career development services that need
to be addressed in your province/territory?
Key elements in delivering LMI and career awareness could be:
 improved partnerships to develop and deliver client-targeted LMI products;
 increased client involvement in the development of LMI products;
 ensure career awareness and labour market information actually reaches
Canadians through intermediaries such as counsellors, parents, teachers,
workplace, etc.;
 stronger emphasis on presenting national, regional and local perspectives in
client-targeted LMI products;
 a more focused use of multi-media for delivery of information to clients;
 increase the accessibility, particularly for client with barriers to employment
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Main references:
Public documents describing the range of programs and services provided by HRDC, this
document is supported by some major documents published in the last 2 years:
Government of Canada, 2002, Knowledge Matters: Skills and Learning for Canadians.
(http://www.innovationstrategy.gc.ca)
Government of Canada, 2002, National Summit on Innovation and Learning.
(http://www.innovationstrategy.gc.ca)
Human Resources Development Canada – OECD Reference Group, 2002. Canada
Response to the OECD questionnaire: a federal perspective – Policies for Information,
Guidance and Counselling Services.
(http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/53/35/2500575.pdf)
Human Resources Development Canada (2002). Job Futures: World of Work. Hull.
Human Resources Development Canada (2000). National Youth at Risk Discussion
Group: Employment Mentorship, Engagement, Ottawa.
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