The Labour Relations Symposium

On June 23^rd, Electricity Canada hosted its annual Labour Relations Symposium to bring together leaders from across the electricity sector, labour organizations, academia, government, and industry to explore one of the most pressing issues facing our sector: building the workforce needed to power Canada's future. Electricity Canada’s Manager, Safety and HR Program, Natasha Honey, takes us through the day and lessons learned.

Hi Natasha, thanks for joining us! The theme for the Labour Relations Symposium was Addressing Future Workforce Challenges. What are the future workforce challenges we need to address?

The electricity sector is in a period of unprecedented growth. Electricity demand is increasing, we're modernizing and expanding the grid, we’re integrating new technologies and supporting Canada's broader electrification goals. At the same time, many utilities are experiencing an aging workforce, growing competition for skilled trades and technical talent, and rapidly evolving skills requirements.

When we talk about future workforce challenges, we're talking about how we ensure we have the people, the skills, and the leadership needed to build, operate, and maintain Canada's electricity system over the coming decades. It’s not about filling vacancies. It's about strategic workforce planning, knowledge transfer, attracting the next generation of workers, embracing new technologies like AI, creating more inclusive pathways into the sector, and making sure that the workforce strategy evolves alongside our infrastructure strategy.

There was a mixture of speakers from the electricity sector and beyond. What inspired you to bring in experts from other industries?

One of the things that we recognized very early in planning the symposium was that these challenges are not unique to electricity. Healthcare, construction, transportation, and other critical infrastructure sectors are all asking very similar questions, like how do we attract skilled workers? How do we retain institutional knowledge? How do we prepare people for jobs that are changing rapidly because of technology? Rather than staying within our own sector, we really wanted to learn from organizations that are tackling similar issues in different ways.

Some of the best ideas come from outside your own industry and bringing together those perspectives created a much richer conversation, overall.

What session inspired you the most?

That is a hard question because I feel like every session kind of built on the one before it. I'd probably point to the cross-sector critical infrastructure sector panel with Daniel Sterescu representing Bird Construction, Honorata Bittner of the Ottawa Hospital and Deborah Antenore from Hydro One. The panel represented leaders from construction, healthcare and electricity, and again, what really stood out to me was how similar the challenges are across sector - whether you're building transmission lines, hospitals or major infrastructure. Everyone is competing for the same skilled workers and grappling with many of the same demographic pressures. It reinforced that workforce challenges aren't just an electricity issue. It’s a national issue, and that means there's tremendous value in sharing ideas and learning from one another and collaborating across sectors and to solve these challenges independently.

On a scale of 1-10, 10 being the most serious, how concerned are you that the electricity sector might face serious constraints in achieving their goals because of labour shortages?

If I had to say a real number… I’d probably say an 8. The challenges are very real, and the timelines are tight, however, there is a very encouraging part in that the sector isn’t starting from scratch.

Utilities across the country are already doing such great work, like investing in apprenticeships. They have great partnerships with educational institutions, Indigenous workforce initiatives, they're building out technology, leadership development, and very innovative approaches to recruitment and retention.

The question isn’t whether I think we can solve the challenges. I definitely think we can! I think it’s more of a rephrase to whether we can move quickly enough and work collaboratively enough to meet the scale of what's ahead.

What do you want people to have come away thinking about after attending this symposium?

I hope people left thinking differently about workforce planning. For a long time, workforce planning has kind of been treated as something that happens after a major business decision has already been made. But increasingly, we're saying that it really needs to happen at the very beginning. If we're planning major transmission projects, new generation, grid modernization, or electrification initiatives, we really need to be asking at the forefront, do we have the workforce to deliver them? Do we have the skills of the future?

I think that shift in thinking is really what I hope people took away from the day. Workforce planning is not just a human resources issue. It’s really a very strategic piece to the overall puzzle.

Give us a sneak peak on Electricity Canada’s new report.

I’d love to! The report is called Building Canada's Electricity Workforce, Aligning Policy Investment and Talent for Growth, and we’re developing it in partnership with Positive Energy at the University of Ottawa. The report starts from a simple premise: that workforce capacity should be treated as enabling infrastructure.

When we plan major electricity projects, we naturally think about financing, regulation, permitting, and engineering. But increasingly, another question deserves equal attention, which is do we have the people needed to deliver these projects?

The report explores how workforce considerations can be better integrated into infrastructure planning, policy development, and investment decisions, and how governments, industry, regulators, educators, and labour organizations can all work together to ensure Canada has the workforce needed to support electrification and long-term economic growth.

In one sentence, the report is about moving workforce planning from the sidelines to the centre of the conversation.

When can we expect to read it?

Coming soon in fall 2026!