In addition to basic employability skills, employers need workers with a broad range of abilities. To function effectively in a flexible workplace, workers must be able to perform a host of tasks. Many occupations will also require workers to learn new processes to complement their existing set of skills. For example, an architectural technologist no longer works at a drafting board, but must acquire skills involving computer technology, such as computer assisted design (CAD).

Public education system

The public education and training systems will play a major role in determining Canada's future economic success. For the business community, the challenge is to ensure that the performance of the systems will benefit all Canadians.

Compared with other industrialized countries, Canada's commitment to education is impressive. As a percentage of gross domestic product, Canada's public expenditures rank among the top Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries and first among the seven industrialized countries. Regardless of these statistics, the results (in terms of the quality of output) are not encouraging: the high-school drop-out rate is around 19% (high by the standards of the industrialized world); student performance on international tests is ordinary; a high proportion of the adult population is functionally illiterate and finding it difficult to upgrade their knowledge because the education system is not geared to their needs; and a large number of students complete secondary school without assimilating basic employability skills and do not go on to post-secondary schooling. Most of these students enter the labour market with no marketable skills and eventually become part of the growing youth unemployment problem.

Employers have little influence over the methods that the public education system uses to prepare new entrants to the workplace and should not have to take on the responsibility of providing these new entrants with generic skills. Many business leaders believe that the public education system lacks the ability to integrate graduates effectively into the workplace. Some of the issues and concerns identified include the following.

• Enrollment in the sciences, computing, engineering, and other technical disciplines is decreasing as these areas become more critical in the so-called knowledge-based economy. This problem is even more pronounced in view of the fact that Canadian students have fewer instructional classroom days than students in other countries; Canadian students spend approximately 180 days in school per year, compared with about 240 days in Japan and Germany.