EDITORIAL PAGE Attracting mining’s future leaders

The list of individuals inducted into the Canadian Mining Hall of Fame gives some idea of the diversity of people who built our mining industry into a world leader. But their accomplishments are not enough to maintain that position. For Canadian mining to prosper in years to come, another generation of innovative people have to be attracted at all levels.

Over the years the industry has made initiatives with various degrees of success. For example, bursaries and scholarships from professional associations and corporations have helped steer keen students into mining-related vocations.

While those efforts should continue, we wholeheartedly support a new program to assess the industry’s human resources requirements because it tries to channel industry’s energy into a coherent national policy in collaboration with labor and government.

While such sectoral studies have been conducted in other industries since 1984, this is the first such effort since the creation of the Canadian Labour Force Development Board. As such, it will be the first study that will assist the board in coming to grips with problems facing Canadian industry and finding possible solutions.

But there’s more to this strategy than simply measuring trends and adapting policies to respond to them. This is an attempt to shape a new perspective of the industry — how others see us and how we see ourselves. Young people seeking a career need to be aware of just how dynamic and challenging a career in mining can be. They should not be discouraged by the myth of dead-end jobs with a single requirement — brute strength.

The federal government is trying to change the way we see job training and the pursuit of a career, not just in mining but in all industries. “Life-long learning,” in the words of Prime Minister Mulroney. That requires addressing the way we raise children and educate them, our attitudes to work, how we attract young people to a career, train them, develop them and promote them.

With the contribution of industry and labor, this program has a good chance of tackling a serious problem facing our competitive position — the shortage of skilled people.