Closing BC and Canada's Skilled Trades Gap

On March 21st Federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty delivered a budget that while focused on deficit reduction, also emphasized infrastructure funding and reallocating funding to boost skills training.

The training initiative proposes a new Canada Job Grant that will provide up to $5,000 per person for job training – an amount that must be matched by provinces or territories and employers for a total of $15,000.  The goal is to match unemployed Canadians with more than 220,000 current job vacancies across Canada and provide more job opportunities for disabled people, youth and aboriginals.

The focus on skills training comes from the Conservative government’s consultations with employers and unions, who identified gaps in training as one of the biggest obstacles to economic growth.  However, this new job grant plan requires that the provinces and territories agree to it, there is also no new money involved.

On February 28, I had a breakfast meeting in Victoria with Ted Menzies who is the Minister of State for Finance and one of the issues he brought up was the disconnect between post secondary institutions and the needs of the job market.  One example he provided was where a company had expressed doubts about building an oil refinery in Alberta in part because of a lack of skilled trades people.

As I have been saying for some time now, my suggestion to him was that if money is allocated to individuals rather than given lump sum to colleges and universities it would force those institutions to be less ivory tower and much more attuned to the needs of the business community and the labour market.  The federal government appears to have listened, it will be interesting to see how the provinces respond.

The Industry Training and Apprenticeship Commission (ITAC) was created in November 1997 as a provincial government-sponsored, industry-driven, arms-length strategic policy board. After receiving some bad advice the Campbell government dismantled ITAC just as the skilled labour shortage was really beginning to hit the construction industry.

As it has done more recently with the Tourism BC, the BC Liberal government did an about face and recreated a similar organisation with a slightly different name, the Industry Training Authority or ITA.  The ITA works with employers, employees, industry, labour, training providers and government to issue credentials, manage apprenticeships, set program standards, and increase opportunities in the trades in B.C.

The ITA has struggled to close the gap between the need for skilled trades and the supply.  Some have blamed the lingering effects of dismantling ITAC, others that contractor associations like MCABC and trade unions don't have the same day to day input into ITA as they did ITAC while others blame demographics as the front wave of the baby boom are now becoming senior citizens.

All of these have been factors, but there has also been a disconnect with our public education system which has put far more value on encouraging English lit majors than encouraging future contractors, project managers, electricians, welders and the like.  School boards that must balance their budgets every year have found it expedient not just to cut funding for music classes but also for those kids who want to take woodworking, metal work and mechanics courses.

Also given the socialist dogma that passes for intelligent discourse within the upper echelons of the BCTF, is there little wonder that our kids learn almost nothing at school when it comes to starting a business or even the importance of compounding interest rates.  If our children were taught more in the way of business fundamentals and skilled trades in high school then we would likely have far fewer unemployed youth and I suspect fewer consumers being fleeced by payday lending companies.

Given the latest polls putting the BC NDP at 51% and the governing BC Liberals at 32% it seems extremely likely that the BC NDP will be elected as the next provincial government in May of this year.  That will make their leader Adrian Dix the next Premier of B.C.

Having met in February with both Adrian Dix and his finance critic Bruce Ralston I can tell you that education and skills training is a top priority for a Dix government.  The challenge will be to ensure that dollars just don't go to academia but to effective skills training that meets employers' needs.

The BC NDP plans to instigate a $100 million grant program to help students obtain post-secondary education.  They also plan to pay for this by reinstating a capital tax on banks.  But unless the dollars are allocated in a way that allows students to direct those dollars to those institutions and entities that are doing the most effective skills trade training then those millions of dollars can easily be wasted.

That is why I sincerely hope that British Columbia, even under a BC NDP government, will be willing to listen to the federal government and be part of a more market driven and market responsive skills training system.  Both employer and employee alike will greatly benefit from such an approach.

Michael Geoghegan is agovernment relations consultant based in Victoria, BC

What is lobbying?

Today I had an interview via Skype with Sun News.  That necessitated going out and buying a new web cam; so in testing it out I decided to do up a quick blurb about lobbying.  That video is posted below and has also been posted on a friend's blog site here.

For further information about lobbying, which in Canada is known as Government Relations, Public Affairs and the Harlem Shuffle, oh wait we're not using that last term, yet, click on my government relations page on my consulting website.

B.C.'s Pipeline Politics

Ever since China's economy started booming British Columbia has been billing itself as Canada's gateway to the Pacific.  Billions of dollars of investment has been made by China into western Canada, especially with regards to resource extraction.  Canada with the odd exception has by and large welcomed this investment in order to make our nation's economy less dependent on that of The United States of America.

Some of this investment has included access to Alberta's oil sands.  Having purchased a portion of this resource, China is anxious to get the oil that is produced to its country by the shortest route possible.  That means transporting it from Alberta across northern B.C. to a terminal in Kitimat and from there by supertanker to China.

In 2010 Enbridge submitted a proposal to build a twin pipeline to the National Energy Board.  The proposed project consists of two parallel pipelines running between Bruderheim, Alberta, and a marine terminal near Kitimat.  The two pipelines would be 1,177 kilometers (731 miles) in length.  One pipeline would pump Crude oil from Alberta to BC while natural gas condensate would move in the opposite direction. Condensate would be used to dilute the heavy crude oil and make it easier to transport by pipeline.

The crude oil pipeline would have a diameter of 36 inches (910 mm) and a capacity of 525 thousand barrels per day. The condensate pipeline would have a diameter of 20 inches (510 mm) with a capacity of 193 thousand barrels per day. The project, including a marine terminal in Kitimat, is projected to cost $5.5 billion and would be up and running by 2015 at the earliest if it is approved.  Given the political climate in B.C. that is a very big if.

The first problem the project faces is competition.  Kinder Morgan Energy operates the 1,150-kilometre (710 mile) long Trans Mountain pipeline system from Edmonton, Alberta to terminals and refineries in central British Columbia, Vancouver and the Puget Sound region in Washington State.  Kinder Morgan would like to increase their pipeline's capacity by twelve times, up to 600,000 barrels per day.   They believe their project is more cost efficient and by building along an existing pipeline route they hope to avoid the controversy that the Enbridge Project has suffered from.

Another competing project is TransCanada's Keystone XL pipeline which US President Barack Obama is expected to soon give approval to.  This project would  transport synthetic crude oil from Alberta's oil sands to refineries in Illinois, the Cushing oil distribution hub in Oklahoma and then finally connect to refineries along the Gulf Coast of Texas.

The problem for China is for both strategic and practical reasons, they don't want the oil they have purchased from Alberta flowing through the US and they don't want the extra cost and expense of shipping it by tanker from the Gulf of Mexico through the Panama Canal and then diagonally across the Pacific to China.

That brings us back to the Enbridge proposal.  BC NDP leader Adrian Dix has promised to pull B.C. out of the federal review process if he’s elected Premier in the upcoming May election.  Prior to recently being elected a federal MP for Victoria, B.C., Dix had hired constitutional lawyer Murray Rankin to consider a legal challenge on who has jurisdiction over pipeline approvals in B.C.

Rankin has argued that B.C. should withdraw from the federal government’s Pipelines review process and set up a made-in-B.C. environmental assessment process.  Adrian Dix meanwhile has stated that within a week of forming government he will withdraw B.C. from the 2010 agreement that left the environmental review of the project under federal government control.

Meanwhile the current Premier of B.C. Christy Clark has squabbled with Alberta Premier Alison Redford over concerns that BC will receive only a $6.1 billion share of the pipeline project that is expected to earn $81 billion in government revenues over 30 years, while having a majority of the environmental risk.

Last but not least many First Nations and Aboriginal Groups located along the proposed pipeline route have expressed their opposition to the Enbridge Project while there have been public opinion polls showing significant concern about increased tanker traffic along B.C.'s northern coastal waters.

All this has made getting Enbridge's Northern Gateway Pipeline Project approved all the more unlikely.  It is worth keeping in mind that this $5 billion to $6 billion project would be the largest private sector investment in British Columbia's history.  In addition to over $200 million per year in tax revenues for B.C., Enbridge's pipeline project would create 3000 jobs during the construction phase and 560 long term jobs.

There is one final point that few in the media have commented on.  Although pipelines are the most efficient ways to transport oil they are not the only means.  A more expensive option in terms of shipping costs, would be transport the oil by tanker cars on both the CN and CP rail tracks that go from Alberta to Kitimat.  From there the oil could still be loaded onto supertankers for shipment to China.

One thing is certain, having purchased a sizeable stake in Alberta's oil sands, China will get its oil shipped home.  The only question is whether or not the supertankers carrying that oil will be docking in Kitimat, Vancouver or the Gulf of Mexico.

Michael Geoghegan is a government relations consultant based in Victoria, BC

The GoP needs to dump the crazies

The GoP needs to dump the crazies. After alienating 100% of blacks about 75% of Latinos and scaring the crap out of women and offending more than a few Libertarians like myself the GoP managed to lose this election. Now the crazies think that the solution is to give America more of what it hates, and my big fear now is that a GoP dominated congress will ensure that America defaults just to screw over the Obama administration. They don't understand the dire fiscal situation America is in, it's all just Greek to them (pun intended). That is why our own Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said that the biggest threat to Canada's continued economic growth is the United States.

BC NDP win still likely in 2013

There has finally been a bit of good news for Premier Christy Clark and the BC Liberals.  In the latest opinion polls they have gained three points while the BC NDP have lost three points.  The bad news is that still leaves the Liberals at 25% and the New Democrats at 46%.

Meanwhile the BC Conservatives who are holding steady at 19% have recently engaged in some in fighting over their leader John Cummins.  MLA John van Dongen I expect would like to be the one leading the party into the next provincial election which is scheduled for May 2013.  Whether or not that will happen will depend entirely upon a leadership review vote for Cummins that is currently happening by mail in ballot.

Adrian Dix, leader of the BC NDP is currently the most popular opposition leader in Canada with an approval rating of 53% while Premier Christy Clark’s approval rating is at 28%.  Interestingly enough the least popular Premier in Canada is Darrel Dexter the NDP Premier of Nova Scotia at 26%, while Canada’s most popular Premier is Saskatchewan’s free market conservative Premier Brad Wall whose approval rating is a resounding 65%

Unless she delays the election, which would serve only to give the BC Conservatives more time to get their act together and paint her as afraid to face the electorate, Premier Clark only has about seven months to turn things around.  It is likely that the spring budget will contain a number of election goodies.  In fact it is likely that a decision to put wooing the public ahead of fiscal restraint was in part responsible for the abrupt resignation of Finance Minister Kevin Falcon.

Clearly there are areas where the government can and should take action to reign in spending.  There has been a spate of stories regarding the growth in number and salaries of executives at ICBC.  Less well known is the fact that this fiscal year the BC Ministry of Health and its health authorities will spend $1.4 Billion on administration, an astounding annual increase of $303 Million since 2009/10.

In British Columbia, on average, there is one administrator for every two hospital inpatients. And BC compares poorly to other provinces in Canada. On a per capita basis, BC spends 20% more than Alberta and 24% more than Ontario on health administration. As a whole, Canada has ten times as many health administrators as some European countries. In Canada, we have one health care bureaucrat for every 1,400 citizens. In Germany, they have one for every 15,000.

Thus in British Columbia we have the farcical situation where in some hospitals like St. Paul’s there are now more administrators than patients while elsewhere new hospital rooms sit idle due to lack of funding for additional anesthesiologists, surgical nurses and the like.

Health care is an area where British Columbians are paying more than enough money to receive first rate services, but not seeing the results due to the percentage of funds that are being gobbled up by administration.  That is why surgical wait lists have continued to grow even as health care funding and the number of new hospital operating rooms has continued to increase.

In order to increase her popularity, Christy Clark is going to have to move aggressively and quickly to start dealing with these problems.  Taxpayers want to know that their hard earned tax dollars are being used wisely.  That means the new Minister of Health and former head of the BCMA Hon Dr. Margaret MacDiarmid is going to have to get serious about administrative cut backs and re-directing those dollars towards opening up the dozens of operating rooms in BC that are currently sitting idle due to lack of staff and specialists.  By doing that Premier Clark can restore her credibility as a Premier who can govern and not just as a politician who can campaign.

The last week of September will see the gathering of municipal and provincial politicians at the Union of BC Municipalities annual general meeting in Victoria, B.C.  This will be the last such gathering before a provincial election that is scheduled for May of 2013.  As such it is expected to be well attended as government MLAs hope to reclaim lost support while opposition MLAs attempt to demonstrate they are ready to govern.

It is also an opportunity for municipal governments to push for funding assistance on a variety of issues, the most important of which are infrastructure spending.  At a time when housing prices are no longer soaring, it is much more difficult for municipal governments to hide the ever larger tax bite they have been taking out of homeowners’ pockets.

Although bike lanes may be the topic de jour, the core issues of maintaining and upgrading sewer, water and road infrastructure remain critical to the day to day livability and economic success of any community.

That is why participation of all three levels of government in funding such infrastructure is so critical and why UBCM’s AGM remains British Columbia’s most important yearly political gathering.

Michael Geoghegan is a government relations consultant based in Victoria, BC

True Lies and 9/11

I watched True Lies the 1996 movie with Arnold Schwarznegger and Jamie Lee Curtis the other night. It was such an innocent time, it portrayed a United States of America where the intelligence community was mostly on top of terrorist plots,

 where if serious trouble arose jet fighters were but a few minutes away and where even with the detonation of a nuclear bomb on US soil Americans remained unafraid. Sadly five years later all this would be proven to be completely wrong in the aftermath of 9/11. Jet fighters took 90 minutes to appear, the intelligence community was caught with its pants down and in the face of hysteria Americans heartily embraced giving up their freedoms for the illusion of increased security.

BC Liberals losing voters to both NDP and Conservatives

It was September of 2011 that I wrote how the rise of the BC Conservatives made the election of the NDP almost certain in 2013. However the two recent provincial by-elections in Port Moody-Coquitlam and Chilliwack-Hope show that the BC Liberals are losing support to both the BC NDP and the BC Conservatives.

Much attention has been focused on Chilliwack Hope where the combined vote of the Liberals and Conservatives was greater than that of the NDP. But what some pundits are missing is the fact that between the 2009 general election and 2012 by election the percentage of people willing to vote Liberal in that riding plummeted from 53.28% to only 31.39% The BC Conservatives meanwhile increased their share of the vote from 7.10% to 25.32%

The fact the BC Liberals are losing voters both left and right is clearly made by the results in Port Moody Coquitlam. In 2009 the BC Liberals took 52.15% of the vote while in 2012 only 30.24% Meanwhile the BC NDP went from 39.8% in 2009 to 54.36% in 2012. In other words the NDP would have won this by-election regardless of whether or not the Conservatives had fielded a candidate. The BC Conservatives increased their vote from 6.59% to 15.40% showing most lost Liberal votes went NDP and not Conservative.

Besides lack of volunteers and money another thing that may have hurt the BC Conservatives in the Port Moody by-election was the name of their candidate Christine Clark. Christine is no relation to Premier Christy Clark but from 1996 to 2005 Christy was the MLA for Port Moody.

I have known both Premier Christy Clark and opposition leader Adrian Dix since we were all 18 and young politicos active in student politics. The two leaders’ styles could not be more different. Dix is a policy wonk who despite growing up in Point Grey became enamored of the NDP and worked first for Ian Waddell when he was an MP and then a young political upstart named Glen Clark; serving first as his Ministerial Assistant and the Political Chief of Staff during Glen Clark’s term as Premier.

Christy Clark is a campaigner who has always worn her political ambition on her sleeve. She grew up in a staunch Liberal household and when Gordon Wilson resurrected the BC Liberals Christy was quickly on board as a lowly research officer. She then went on in 1996 to become an opposition MLA and then from 2001 to 2005 she served in various cabinet portfolios\ including as Minister of Education.

Where Dix was loyal to a fault as Glen Clark’s political right hand man, even going so far as to forge a memo to file to help protect his boss; Christy chaffed under the leadership of BC Liberal Premier Gordon Campbell.

Christy eventually quit the BC Legislature for a failed bid to become Mayor of Vancouver and then landed on her feet as a talk show host at CKNW. Campbell after providing solid economic leadership to the province, for the better part of a decade, became tainted by the BC Rail scandal. He was finally done in by his own hubris when right after the 2009 election he imposed an HST without any consultation with the people of BC.

The fatal mistake Campbell made was in forgetting that BC had recall and referendum legislation that allowed the voters to force a referendum on the issue. So in the political backlash that ensued both Campbell and the HST were doomed.

Cue the return of Christy. She was very much an outsider who had the support of only one sitting MLA (Harry Bloy) when she was elected leader of the BC Liberals and thus Premier of BC. She even ran in Vancouver Point Grey (Campbell’s old riding) in securing her return to the BC legislature.

She was confident that her new style and new team would help BC Liberal fortunes rebound. The problem was that in restructuring her government’s political staff she made the mistake of booting out too many long time federal Conservatives and replacing them with too many federal Liberals. It was after this that the coalition began to fray in earnest.

The other mistake Christy made was in spending too much time on photo ops and media announcements and not enough time on solid governance issues. Her plan was to swoop in as the new leader of the party, quickly call a provincial general election and win a solid mandate from the people. The problem was her popularity after a brief blip upwards began to fall to the point where both the NDP and the upstart BC Conservatives are attracting voters at the expense of the BC Liberals.

Unless things change dramatically, May 2013 will see the election of a BC NDP government with the BC Liberals as the official opposition and the BC Conservatives as the loyal opposition (i.e. third place). As government the NDP will have to demonstrate that they have finally learned from past mistakes if they hope to avoid being more than another one term wonder. Significant tax increases and government regulations will merely cause moderate voters to abandon them and accelerate the rebuilding of the right wing coalition. That coalition will not be rebuilt under the name BC Liberal. Instead they will use the name BC Conservative or even an entirely new name.

It is for that reason that BC Conservative leader John Cummins is very much hoping that his party can surpass the BC Liberals in 2013 and become the official opposition. If that happens then he knows we will more than likely see the election in 2017 of the first BC Conservative majority government since 1928.


Michael Geoghegan is a government relations consultant based in Victoria, BC you can follow me on twitter @BCLobbyist