The only action that was not judged to be important by a majority of participants was "encourage older workers to continue working for several more years".

Although participants viewed many actions as important in addressing skills needs, there were particular actions that received high levels of endorsement as priorities. Foremost among these is improving coordination across business, labour, government, and the education system. In every Atlantic province, this was the most commonly selected priority action.

Ensuring that young people understand the benefits of working in the skilled trades and encouraging higher education and lifelong learning also received high levels of endorsement in each of the Atlantic provinces, ranking among the top 5 priorities in each province.

While a majority of dialogue participants felt that attracting more immigrants with the job skills we need was important, it was seldom selected as a priority.

8.2 Most Important Economic Problem (Provincial)

In the pre- and post-dialogue questionnaires, participants were most likely to choose "training more skilled workers" as the single most important economic problem requiring the attention of government, business, and labour.

While the pre- and post-dialogue surveys yielded similar results for the participant group as a whole, there were significant shifts in the views of individual participants. Of those participants who answered both questionnaires, 50% had changed their view over the course of the day. One-half of participants who changed their views moved to "training more skilled workers" as the most important problem."