The Workplace Partners Panel (WPP) is a national initiative created by the Canadian Labour and Business Centre, with support from the federal government, specifically to bring business and labour leaders together to examine different labour market challenges facing Canada. While these are pan-Canadian challenges, the WPP recognizes that long-term solutions must reflect local and regional realities. This is why the WPP's first major initiative was designed to draw out provincial/regional "Best Thinking" on the critical issue of skills needs in the context of an aging workforce, and involved the creation of regional task forces.

The WPP Atlantic Provinces Task Force (APTF) is comprised of senior labour and business leaders from each of the Atlantic provinces. The mandate of the APTF was to:

• Demonstrate, through its leadership, the power of dialogue and collaboration between business and labour;
• Help identify and articulate provincial and regional "Best Thinking" on the issue of skills needs in the context of an aging workforce;
• Ensure that the topics explored during the provincial dialogues and online consultation reflect provincial/regional realities;
• Be the "face of the WPP" in their province and in the region (e.g., by hosting their provincial dialogue and presenting a report of their findings to the national WPP board).

To this end, the APTF was provided with a number of different data sources or inputs to help inform its deliberations. These included:

1. The WPP Atlantic Handbook
2. The WPP Viewpoints Survey
3. The WPP General Population Survey
4. The WPP Online Dialogue
5. The WPP Provincial Dialogues

Note: The contents and purpose of each of these inputs are described in further detail in Appendix 1.