Native Notes

The Canadian Electricity Association (CEA) released its annual North American policy paper today in Washington. Entitled  “Providing Reliable Energy in a Time of Constraints: A North American Concern”, the paper presents the Canadian industry’s views on opportunities for cooperation between Canada and the United States on challenges facing the electricity sector.

·        Constraints in Supply Generation

·        Transmission Constraints

·        Labor Constraints

The last item, Labor Constraints, was discussed in some detail at the International Institute for Indigenous Resource Management’s March 2008 Third Annual Tribal Energy Policy Roundtable.

The CEA policy paper cites the challenges an aging workforce and pending retirements could have on an industry already challenged by increasing demand and technology change, but what was most intriguing, from an indigenous peoples perspective, was some of the actions the Canadians have taken to address the labor constraints.

The policy paper suggests increasing participation of under-represented groups and expanding and improving skills training and apprenticeship funding as steps that could be taken to develop a skilled, educated and adaptable workforce and cites as examples, the Hydro Northern Training and Employment initiative that was launched as a result of two proposed Manitoba Hydro hydroelectric projects in Northern Manitoba. This initiative is training and preparing over 1,000 Aboriginal residents for 800 Manitoba Hydro construction and related employment opportunities. Another example of a pro-active industry-Aboriginal partnership is BC Hydro’s Aboriginal Employment and Education Strategy, established as a long term approach to building internal awareness and conducting recruitment outreach with Aboriginal communities in British Columbia.

Methinks a site visit by tribal workforce development planners to Manitoba and British Columbia may be in order.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 6th, 2008 at 3:34 pm and is filed under Energy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.