At a conference of Information Technology industry leaders, skilled workers, and educational institutions, a consensus was made clear: Canada’s IT needs more immigration to meet labour demands.

The inaugural TechCanada Roundtable recently brought together a number of individuals in leadership positions in the industry with representatives from government and academic institutions. In a broad discussion on the future shape of the industry, the talk centered on Canada’s emerging technical skills shortage. The presentation by Josh Blair, who is both an engineer and a VP of Human Resources for the large telecommunications firm Telus Corp. showed that 80% of his company’s workforce was 45 years or older, meaning in five or ten years they could find a rash of retirements without the personnel to fill the roles. Other executives present echoed the same concerns about their workforces.

In particular, conference participants stressed the importance of skilled workers of a variety of backgrounds.

With Canadian students eschewing technical training at Colleges at a growing rate in favour of university degree, the industry is facing shortages of technologists and technicians. With such a strong need for their services technicians and technologists have options to come to Canada more quickly throughProvincial Nominee Programs or asTemporary Foreign Workers With the labour shortage unlikely to subside in the near future, Canada will continue to look to increased immigration to meet human resource demand in the IT industry.