Canadian professionals, trades, and labourers will urgently need education and retraining to successfully navigate the transition to a net-zero economy, Royal Bank of Canada economists warned in a report issued last month.
“A failure to get enough Canadians with the right green skills into the labour force could further limit our growth potential,” the report stated. “As early as 2025, the country could be short roughly 27,000 environmental workers, a category that includes those employed by green firms or engaged in green tasks.”
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Engineers and senior managers, among the job sectors most affected, need to shift from a narrow focus on containing short-term capital spending and learn to factor in the added value of investments that minimize life-cycle impacts and costs, said report contributor Mehran Ahmadi, a lecturer at the School of Sustainable Energy Engineering at Simon Fraser University.
