The environmental sector in Canada is growing. In fact, it grew by five per cent in 2020 alone while other industries shrunk due to the effects of the pandemic. But according to the latest Labour Market Outlook Report from ECO Canada, around 2.8 per cent of that current workforce is set to retire every year for the next five years.

With the demand for green solutions from both industry and consumers growing by the day, and much knowledge leaving the sector with those that retire, the environmental workforce is facing a big challenge – but an even bigger opportunity.

According to the report, which was funded by the Government of Canada’s Sectoral Initiatives Program, there will be more than 100,000 job openings in the environmental sector in the next five years. Fresh green talent is now needed in a plethora of environmental fields, from air quality and natural resource management, to environmental policy and legislation. And as the Government of Canada works towards its goal of net zero emissions by 2050, there needs to be even more activity in the development, manufacturing and commercialization of clean technologies.

There are more green jobs that will open up in the future beyond the current environmental roles we see today. As consumers increasingly move towards making greener choices – from reducing plastic use to purchasing EV vehicles – and the energy, transportation, agriculture, and manufacturing sectors expand their adoption of solutions that decrease their current carbon footprint, skilled workers are needed to help make these solutions possible. In its report, ECO Canada forecasts that there will be critical
shortages in filling roles like:

● Utilities equipment operators and controllers
● Physical and life science professionals
● Construction managers
● Electrical and electronics engineers, and other professional engineers
● Landscape architects, urban and land use planners, and land surveyors
● Forestry technologists, technicians and conservation, and fishery officers
● Legislators and senior management
● Technicians, inspectors, and regulatory officers in public and environmental health and occupational health and safety

President and CEO of ECO Canada, Kevin Nilsen, said: “There is a pressing need for current workers to reskill and upskill to make up for the expertise that the retiring workforce is taking with them. In our recent Trends Report, we found that employers are moving from traditional experience-based hiring to a skills-based hiring process – which says a lot.

“We need to be educating and encouraging more young environmental workers to fill the critical gaps that are coming in the labour market. That’s why we want more people to know about our wage funding and training subsidy programs.”

As the steward for Canada’s environmental workforce, ECO Canada provides wage funding programs which help to close the skills gap by providing young talent the opportunity to build skills on the job while subsidizing training costs to support employers. To date, ECO Canada has distributed over $90M in wage and training subsidies and helped to fill 10,000+ job placements.

“We recognize the hesitation employers may feel when hiring young or inexperienced talent, because of the extensive training and capital required,” said Nilsen. “There are so many young, passionate minds across Canada committed to developing green solutions, and with more and more seasoned professionals starting to retire, we knew we needed to help employers and young professionals alike by bridging the gap.”

The wage funding programs delivered by ECO Canada help employers place students or young professionals in a variety of jobs that fall under the umbrella of environmental work – ranging from science, technology, engineering, and math, and even business and digital skills. Additional funding is also available to help grow the participation of underrepresented groups and fill jobs in northern, rural, or remote areas.

Currently, ECO Canada offers the following wage funding and training subsidy programs for employers and young professionals:

● Student Work Placement, for STEAM or business students in co-op positions, funded by Employment and Social Development Canada
● Science & Technology Internship, for post-secondary graduates age 30 or younger in the natural resources sector, funded by Natural Resources Canada
● Science Horizons Youth Internship, for STEM graduates age 30 or younger, funded by Environment and Climate Change Canada
● Digital Skills For Youth, for digitally skilled youth aged 15-30, funded by Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada

ECO Canada’s wage funding is both helping employers with the capital to further expand their workforce, as well as uplifting young people and enabling them to find meaningful employment in the environmental sector.

But it doesn’t end there. ECO Canada is committed to working with industry, government, and academia to address skill shortages before this young talent starts looking for work. “We must make the right education and training options available to help build a talent pipeline for these roles early on,” said Nilsen.

“With Canada’s strong funding landscape, innovation mindset and highly educated minds out there, there’s no doubt we can build a robust workforce that meets the current and future needs of our environmental sector.”

If your organization provides environmental employment, or you work in an environmental job, you may be eligible for wage funding. For more information, visit the ECO Canada website.

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As businesses look to operate more sustainably, there has been a growing movement to draw on the wealth of Indigenous knowledge that’s intimately connected with the natural world.

In Canada’s rapidly evolving environmental sector, Indigenous Peoples can benefit from the increase in environmentally oriented jobs. That’s the objective of ECO Canada’s BEAHR training program, which builds capacity among Indigenous youth and membership to engage in meaningful environmental careers. BEAHR provides customizable environmental training programs for Indigenous communities that braid Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) with Western science.

Progress in the growing environmental sector is not possible without collaboration with Indigenous communities; their vast knowledge is crucial in informing business practices and decision-making throughout Canada. This is especially important for companies that operate in the natural resources sectors, where nearby Indigenous communities can provide a breadth of land knowledge as well as a workforce. As more businesses look to partner with First Nations, Inuit and Métis communities, it’s critical that Indigenous Peoples participate equitably in, and benefit from, the socioeconomic opportunities available.

“For thousands of years, Indigenous Peoples have had a sustainable way of living, understanding that they are an integral component of a healthy functioning ecosystem. They have a depth of knowledge on all issues, from biodiversity to traditional medicine and conservation. By using their knowledge, coupled with Western science, we can bring forward a strengthened approach to environmental practice, for enhanced harmony and sustainable growth,” says Yogendra Chaudhry, vice-president of professional services at ECO Canada.

The BEAHR program, which is partially funded by the Government of Canada, is available to First Nations, Inuit and Métis people across Canada, helps communities develop local environmental champions to pursue green careers. Each program is developed with input from traditional Knowledge Holders and Elders, academic institutions and local industry and can be adapted to local community needs. Training is usually field-based, and students take away a renewed connection with their land, as well as technical skills suited for local environmental jobs or further education.

While current environmental work relies heavily on Western science, Chaudhry says BEAHR takes a different approach. “We try to make sure there is a good balance of Western science and Indigenous knowledge in every program.”

Employers looking to attract Indigenous environmental professionals must recognize that a relationship with Indigenous Peoples needs to be founded in respect for their distinct cultures and history. The BEAHR program, which has a nearly 80% employment rate for its 3,700 graduates, is committed to collaborating with Indigenous Peoples to build long-term, mutually beneficial relationships based on values of honesty and inclusion. BEAHR graduates have been employed by various organizations in utilities, natural resources, engineering, and environmental consulting. Some choose to stay on as technicians or land guardians on their own traditional territories. Many of them have also attended higher forms of education at a post-secondary institution to further pursue a meaningful environmental career.

The program has also evolved with the growing needs of the environmental sector. Prior to COVID-19, all BEAHR programs were delivered in-person. ECO Canada has since shifted to a blended model where parts of the course are virtual-led, without compromising either the quality of the course or the interactions between students. The Tsuut’ina Nation is one of the partner communities where ECO Canada recently delivered a successful 17-week hybrid model program.

“The BEAHR program is a great initiative,” says Samantha Whitney, program coordinator with Tsuut’ina Nation Career & Employment Resource Centre. “The program is important for the youth to learn about the environment, take information they’ve learned, and translate it into working in the environmental sector.”

Whitney notes the importance of including Elders, as a way of bringing Indigenous youth closer to their culture and heritage: “It brings an awareness to the land, and Elders are able to share what they know, because they are shedding light on things that have happened, are happening, or will happen. The program teaches the youth to bring the two [Indigenous Knowledge and Western science] together so they can have a better life for themselves while also helping the country.”

Indigenous Knowledge and Western science have much to offer to the environmental sector. While both knowledge systems bring a unique approach to environmental practice, Indigenous youth trained in both can help guide Canadian companies on the path to operating in harmony with the land.

For more information on ECO Canada and the BEAHR program, visit eco.ca/beahr/ or email beahr@eco.ca.

ECO Canada is the steward for the Canadian environmental workforce. From job creation and wage funding to training and labour-market research, we champion the end-to-end career of an environmental professional. Our aim is to promote and drive responsible, sustainable economic growth within industry while ensuring that environmental care and best practice is a priority. Over the past 30 years, we have forged the academic partnerships, tools and research to not only train and certify environmental job-seekers, but to help fill the labour market.

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Kevin Nilsen, president and CEO of ECO Canada, is on a mission. While recent research shows that Canada ranks first worldwide in cleantech R&D and innovation, it lags behind – at 16th on the list – in commercialization and revenue generation. Nilsen wants to make sure Canada isn’t known just for its good ideas, but for getting those ideas to market.

Corporate Knights recently sat down with Nilsen to talk about the work ECO Canada is doing in developing a deep workforce for the cleantech space and why that encompasses not only new talent, but also experienced mid-career professionals keen to transition or upskill.

A History Of Great Innovators

Canadians have been losing out on the revenue-generating potential of commercializing good ideas all the way back to the inception of electricity. Thomas Edison may be credited with inventing the lightbulb, but Nilsen points out that it was in fact two Canadians that invented and developed it, but sold the patent to Edison.

“Canada is great at generating ideas and developing them into promising technologies, but we’re behind other countries in getting those ideas to market. We need to flip this if we want to make the most of this global clean innovation opportunity,” Nilsen says. ECO Canada, known as a steward for the Canadian environmental workforce, recently released its own industry report which revealed the cleantech industry was expected to more than double from $1.2 trillion to $2.5 trillion by 2022 – a figure it’s still expected to hit despite the economic implications of the COVID-19 pandemic.

For close to 30 years, ECO Canada has worked to help grow and support Canada’s environmental workforce by providing insight just like this. And gaps like those identified in the report are where ECO Canada steps in. “We are working hard to influence the sector, government funding, and investors to ensure Canadian innovations are capitalized on here, and not bought or copied elsewhere. With the talent, educational facilities, government support, and major resource-related projects across the country, we have potential to become a market leader,” says Nilsen.

Helping Talent = Helping Industries

The goal of cleantech solutions is to find ways to do things more sustainably using fewer resources, whether that means reducing operational costs or being more energy efficient. And cleantech in action can take many forms: sustainable natural resource management, green building development, sustainable transportation solutions, oil and gas extraction, and waste reduction/lifecycle management, to name a few.

Approximately 282,000 jobs were attributable to environmental and clean technology activity in 2017, according to Statistics Canada’s Environmental and Clean Technology Products Economic Account, representing 1.6% of overall employment in Canada.

These are promising figures, but Nilsen notes a new challenge: employers are already struggling to fill a number of cleantech positions. From designers to business and marketing professionals to environmental technicians, drivers and machine operators, there’s an obvious knowledge and skills gap that must be closed, he says. “First on the list for us is to develop training solutions and career resources to ensure qualified workers are available to support the sector’s growth and build the world’s leading cleantech workforce, whether that be young graduates or mid- to senior-level workers who need to upskill.”

It’s not just technical skills that are required, either. Mastering so-called soft skills like managing budgets, writing technical reports, managing projects and developing competent marketing teams is just as important, Nilsen says. “We know we’ve got a competent workforce capable of innovative thinking, but are they revenue hungry? Do they know how to sell and market a product? That’s what we need to work on. Recruiting new talent and training existing workers to understand the journey from research and idea generation to a profitable product, ready for commercialization in the global market – that’s the task at hand.”

Jacques Benoit is Vice President of Strategy and Business Development at WSP, a company that works with ECO Canada to maximize opportunities for their environmental professionals through ECO Canada’s Employment Program. He says research like the cleantech report is not just eye-opening – it’s encouraging, too.

“Insights like these further cement the tremendous opportunity cleantech presents for employment, business opportunities and wealth that could be generated right here in Canada. As a company committed to weaving sustainability practices into our operations and projects across the world, WSP is encouraged by the work ECO Canada is doing to ensure the continued growth and prosperity of the cleantech sector in this country,” he says.

What’s Next

Looking ahead, it’s about keeping up the work ECO Canada is already doing, says Nilsen. “By continuing to study, monitor and report on the cleantech labour market, we can improve industry access and career advancement opportunities for new graduates, as well as experienced practitioners.”

“The government’s 2017 budget included more than $2.3 billion to boost growth in Canada’s cleantech space. We must make the most of this opportunity and train our workforce to shift their thinking from idea generation alone to innovation and commercialization as a pair. My hope is that one day, we see Canada move from 16th place to holding the joint number-one spot for innovation and revenue generation. It’s more than possible,” he says.

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