A tiny pterosaur from the age of flying giants is causing a flap among scientists.

The rare reptile, with a wingspan of 'only' 1.5 metres (4.9ft), would have been dwarfed by its cousins from the Late Cretaceous era 77 million years ago.

Some of them were much larger, with wingspans of up to 11 metres (36 feet), making them the size of a small plane.

These new specimen had a wingspan of only 5ft (1.5 metres). Pterosaurs from the Late Cretaceous period were much bigger with wingspans of between four and 11 metres. The fossils of the creature belonged to an azhdarchoid pterosaur. This is a group of short-winged and toothless flying reptiles which dominated the final phase of pterosaur evolution. Previous studies suggest that the Late Cretaceous skies were only occupied by much larger pterosaur species and birds.

But what the new specimen, thought to belong to the azhdarchoid pterosaur family, lacks in size it makes up for in terms of scientific importance.

Before the discovery in Canada, researchers thought small pterosaurs had been unable to compete with early birds in the Late Cretaceous.

Lead scientist Elizabeth Martin-Silverstone, from the University of Southampton, said: 'This new pterosaur is exciting because it suggests that small pterosaurs were present all the way until the end of the Cretaceous, and weren't out-competed by birds.

'The hollow bones of pterosaurs are notoriously poorly preserved, and larger animals seem to be preferentially preserved in similarly aged Late Cretaceous ecosystems of North America.

'This suggests that a small pterosaur would very rarely be preserved, but not necessarily that they didn't exist.'

Fossil fragments from the pterosaur were found on Hornby Island, British Columbia, in 2009.

A detailed study of the fossils has only now been published in the Royal Society journal Open Science.

Pterosaurs - which were not flying dinosaurs - were the earliest vertebrates to develop powered flight, pre-dating birds by millions of years.

For some 140 million years they ruled the skies. Eventually they were replaced by birds, which evolved from bird-like dinosaurs.

Azhdarchoid pterosaurs were a group of short-winged flying reptiles that shared similarities with birds, including a toothless 'beak'.

Co-author Dr Mark Witton, a pterosaur expert from the University of Portsmouth, said: 'The specimen is far from the prettiest or most complete pterosaur fossil you'll ever see, but it's still an exciting and significant find.

'It's rare to find pterosaur fossils at all because their skeletons were lightweight and easily damaged once they died, and the small ones are the rarest of all.

'But luck was on our side and several bones of this animal survived the preservation process.

'Happily, enough of the specimen was recovered to determine the approximate age of the pterosaur at the time of its death.

'By examining its internal bone structure and the fusion of its vertebrae we could see that, despite its small size, the animal was almost fully grown.

'The specimen thus seems to be a genuinely small species, and not just a baby or juvenile of a larger pterosaur type.'</s>The largest flying animal known to soar this Earth was a pterosaur. With a wingspan of more than 32 feet, Quetzalcoatlus northropi dominated the skies at the end of the Late Cretaceous, the last days of the Age of the Dinosaurs.

But the humongous flying beast may have lived alongside a much tinier cousin. A 77-million-year-old fossil unearthed on Hornby Island in British Columbia, Canada, reveals what may have been the smallest pterosaur to soar in the Late Cretaceous skies.

This tiny pterosaur had a wingspan of just under 5 feet, according to the description of the new fossil published Tuesday in the journal Royal Society Open Science.

The new individual would have been dwarfed by most of the other pterosaurs known from the time. The smallest pterosaurs known from the Late Cretaceous had a wingspan of about 8 feet, comparable to those of the largest birds today. But the largest pterosaurs, including Quetzalcoatlus, would have stood as tall as a giraffe.

"We have this small pterosaur, which is in a time when there aren't meant to be any small pterosaurs," study co-author Mark Witton, a paleontologist at the University of Portsmouth in England, tells The Christian Science Monitor.

One of the things scientists ask when they find a surprisingly small animal is whether or not it's a juvenile, Dr. Witton says. So the team probed the microscopic anatomy of the pterosaur's bones to see if it was done growing when it died.

This pterosaur might have had a little bit of growing left to do, Witton says, but it was likely close to its full, adult size. And that means they had their hands on a special specimen.

"Pterosaurs are rare. Pterosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous, where they found their specimen, are even rarer. And smaller pterosaurs, small individuals, are more rare than that," Alexander Kellner, a paleontologist and pterosaur expert at the National Museum of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro who was not part of the study, tells the Monitor.

But had this animal lived earlier, it might not have stood out as much. Similarly sized pterosaurs soared through most of the Mesozoic era, Witton says. "It's just at the Late Cretaceous where things get a bit weird."

Why don't paleontologists see the smaller pterosaurs continuing along in the fossil record alongside their larger cousins into the Late Cretaceous?

"One option is that they genuinely weren't there," Witton says.

"People have said that maybe the rise of birds is the problem here. Birds appear in the Jurassic period, they diversify, and they become a very successful group in their own right," he explains. "There's an idea that pterosaurs may have been out-competed by small birds."

In other words, birds ousted small-bodied pterosaurs from the ecological niche for small, flying animals.

But neither Witton nor Dr. Kellner buy it.

Instead, both scientists agree that there is probably just a preservation bias at work. Small-bodied pterosaurs may not have preserved well in the Late Cretaceous fossil record, for whatever reason, says Witton.

"We think that there's good evidence for this because we're not finding juveniles," he adds. Even the largest pterosaurs must have been small-bodied at one point in their lifespans, and they probably didn't all survive to adulthood, so these smaller pterosaur bones may simply preserve poorly.

And this new discovery supports the idea that small-bodied pterosaurs were indeed around during the Late Cretaceous, Witton says. So perhaps "the Late Cretaceous was not as unusual as we've been thinking it may have been."

This fossil doesn't reveal much more about pterosaurs, Witton says. It's not a complete skeleton. "You don't look at this thing and go, wow, that's the nicest thing you've ever seen," he says. "It really looks like it's been chewed up," and some of Witton's colleagues joked that it looked like a piece of rubble.

The research team has studied the scraps they have to try to place this individual pterosaur in a clade.

"We think that it's an Azhdarchoid pterosaur," Witton says. "These are things with big heads and relatively short wings. They were probably generalist feeders that spent much of their time walking around on the ground, basically eating whatever they could."

That would make it a particularly close cousin to the humongous Quetzalcoatlus northropi. But Kellner isn't convinced by that placement on the pterosaur family tree.

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"The material they have is just very incomplete," he says. "I just don't think that they have enough material to be able to make a solid identification as to which pterosaur group those bones belong."

Regardless of where the new fossil falls phylogenetically, he says, "they undoubtedly have a small pterosaur species."</s>Scientists have discovered a new species of 200-million-year-old pterosaur from the Patagonia region of South America.

Remarkably, the brain case of the flying reptile was well preserved, offering scientists a new look at the pterosaur's brain anatomy.

The researchers have named this new species 'Allkauren koi' from the native Tehuelche word 'all' for 'brain', and 'karuen' for 'ancient'.

Pterosaurs are an extinct group of flying reptiles that lived during most of the Mesozoic Era.

This group had an extraordinary adaptation to flight, including pneumatic bones to lighten its weight, and an elongated digit supporting the wings.

But the pterosaur skull is known from only a few three dimensionally preserved remains and, until now, there was no information on the intermediate forms.

This study provides new information on the origin and type of evolution in this particular group of flying reptiles.

The braincase found in this study was only a few dozen millimeters long, suggesting that it was from a small pterosaur species, the researchers said.

The fossil of Allkaruen koi was found in northern central Chubut Province, Patagonia Argentina.

In order to study the skull anatomy, researchers used computed tomography to observe, in three dimensions, the cranial endocast and the inner ear.

'Allkaruen, from the middle lower Jurassic limit, shows an intermediate state in the brain evolution of pterosaurs and their adaptations to the aerial environment', said Dr Diego Pol, who is part of the research team.

'As a result, this research makes an important contribution to the understanding of the evolution of all of pterosaurs.'</s>The study, published in the journal PeerJ, provides new information on the origin, tempo and mode of evolution in this particular group of flying reptiles.

Scientists have discovered a new species of pterosaur - an extinct group of flying reptiles - from the early Jurassic period in the Patagonia region of South America.

The cranial remains were in an excellent state of preservation, said the researchers who have named this new species ‘Allkauren koi’ from the native Tehuelche word ‘all’ for ‘brain’, and ‘karuen’ for ‘ancient’

Pterosaurs had an extraordinary adaptation to flight, including pneumatic bones to lighten their weight, and an elongated digit supporting a wing membrane.

However, pterosaur neuroanatomy is known from only a few three dimensionally preserved remains and, until now, there was no information on the intermediate forms.

This study, published in the journal PeerJ, therefore provides new information on the origin, tempo and mode of evolution in this particular group of flying reptiles.

“Allkaruen, from the middle lower Jurassic limit, shows an intermediate state in the brain evolution of pterosaurs and their adaptations to the aerial environment,” said one of the researchers Diego Pol from the Museum of Paleontology Egidio Feruglio in Trelew city, Argentina.

“As a result, this research makes an important contribution to the understanding of the evolution of all pterosaurs,” Pol noted.

The fossil of Allkaruen koi was found in northern central Chubut Province in Argentina and the remains included a superbly preserved and uncrushed braincase.

In order to study the neurocranial anatomy, the researchers used computed tomography to observe, in three dimensions, the cranial endocast and the inner ear.

Subsequently, a comprehensive phylogenetic analysis of the group was performed, including these cranial data and other anatomical features.</s>A tiny pterosaur from the age of flying giants is causing a flap among scientists. 

 The rare reptile, with a wingspan of "only" 1.5 metres (4.9ft), would have been dwarfed by its cousins from the Late Cretaceous era 77 million years ago. 

 Some of them were much larger, with wingspans of up to 11 metres (36 feet), making them the size of a small plane. 

 But what the new specimen, thought to belong to the azhdarchoid pterosaur family, lacks in size it makes up for in terms of scientific importance. 

 Before the discovery in Canada, researchers thought small pterosaurs had been unable to compete with early birds in the Late Cretaceous.

First dodo skeleton in 100 years to be sold at auction 354 years after bird went extinct



 Lead scientist Elizabeth Martin-Silverstone, from the University of Southampton, said: "This new pterosaur is exciting because it suggests that small pterosaurs were present all the way until the end of the Cretaceous, and weren't out-competed by birds. 

 "The hollow bones of pterosaurs are notoriously poorly preserved, and larger animals seem to be preferentially preserved in similarly aged Late Cretaceous ecosystems of North America. This suggests that a small pterosaur would very rarely be preserved, but not necessarily that they didn't exist."



 Fossil fragments from the pterosaur were found on Hornby Island, British Columbia, in 2009. A detailed study of the fossils has only now been published in the Royal Society journal Open Science. 

 Pterosaurs - which were not flying dinosaurs - were the earliest vertebrates to develop powered flight, pre-dating birds by millions of years. 

 For some 140 million years they ruled the skies. Eventually they were replaced by birds, which evolved from bird-like dinosaurs. 

 Azhdarchoid pterosaurs were a group of short-winged flying reptiles that shared similarities with birds, including a toothless "beak".

Co-author Dr Mark Witton, a pterosaur expert from the University of Portsmouth, said: "The specimen is far from the prettiest or most complete pterosaur fossil you'll ever see, but it's still an exciting and significant find. 

 "It's rare to find pterosaur fossils at all because their skeletons were lightweight and easily damaged once they died, and the small ones are the rarest of all. But luck was on our side and several bones of this animal survived the preservation process.

Giant 4 foot long Tyrannosaurus Rex skull unearthed by museum is 66 million years old



 "Happily, enough of the specimen was recovered to determine the approximate age of the pterosaur at the time of its death. By examining its internal bone structure and the fusion of its vertebrae we could see that, despite its small size, the animal was almost fully grown. 

 "The specimen thus seems to be a genuinely small species, and not just a baby or juvenile of a larger pterosaur type."</s>HSBC and TD Securities priced the Rp5bn ($74.7m) 144a/Reg S 6.6% January 2020 to yield 6.62%, at the tight end of guidance of 6.65% plus or minus 3bp.

British Columbia could tighten pricing as the demand was stronger than predicted. After setting out to raise Rp5bn, the order ...</s>A TINY pterosaur from the age of flying giants is causing a flap among Portsmouth experts.

The rare reptile, with a wingspan of 1.5 metres, would have been dwarfed by its cousins from the Late Cretaceous era 77 million years ago.

Some of them were much larger, with wingspans of up to 11 metres (36 feet), making them the size of a small plane.

But what the new specimen, thought to belong to the azhdarchoid pterosaur family, lacks in size it makes up for in terms of scientific importance.

Fossil fragments from the pterosaur were found on Hornby Island, British Columbia, in 2009. A detailed study of the fossils has only now been published in the Royal Society journal Open Science.

Pterosaurs – which were not flying dinosaurs – were the earliest vertebrates to develop powered flight, pre-dating birds by millions of years.

Co-author Dr Mark Witton, a pterosaur expert from the University of Portsmouth, said: ‘The specimen is far from the prettiest or most complete pterosaur fossil you’ll ever see, but it’s still an exciting and significant find.

‘It’s rare to find pterosaur fossils at all because their skeletons were lightweight and easily damaged once they died, and the small ones are the rarest of all. But luck was on our side and several bones of this animal survived the preservation process.

‘Happily, enough of the specimen was recovered to determine the approximate age of the pterosaur at the time of its death. By examining its internal bone structure and the fusion of its vertebrae we could see that, despite its small size, the animal was almost fully grown.

‘The specimen thus seems to be a genuinely small species, and not just a baby or juvenile of a larger pterosaur type.’</s>BEIJING – Canada is keen to get involved with a new international infrastructure bank in China, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau indicated Tuesday – a move that would help the east Asian country’s economic credibility around the world.

China founded the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank late last year to provide other countries in the region access to capital for investments in things such as transportation, power and telecommunications projects.

The bank has already invested more than US$500 million in Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan and Tajikistan, and Chinese officials have said it plans to loan out US$10-15 billion over the next five years.

“My government believes very, very much in the importance of investing in infrastructure,” Trudeau said Tuesday during a roundtable discussion with business leaders.

“That’s one of the reasons why we’re looking very favourably at the possibility of joining the AIIB).”

Should Canada announce Wednesday that it’s joining, it would be among 57 other member countries, including Australia, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and South Korea, which signed on last year in the face of opposition from the U.S.

In order to join, countries agree to contribute funds in the form of shares. Australia agreed to contribute $930 million over five years, which the Australian Broadcasting Corp. has said would make that country the sixth-largest shareholder.

American officials warned that the new bank would provide loans to developing countries without requiring any caveats about the environment, labour rights or anti-corruption reforms, as are typically included in loans from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

Former Canadian diplomat Charles Burton of Brock University in St. Catharines, Ont., said a Canadian decision to join the bank would signal that Canada is prepared to see China take a seat at the table in terms of having input on the global economic landscape.

“Certainly we’re trying to show that we are prepared to see China take an important in the global economy,” he said.

“And by supporting this institution that’s primarily initiated by China indicates that we’re trying to build trust that China will use this institution for the greater good in a liberal, internationalist way and not simply as a device to expand its geopolitical reach.”

There is still some wariness in official Ottawa about supporting China’s global influence, particularly with its recent actions the South China Sea, said Paul Evans of the University of British Columbia’s Institute for Asian Research. But he said most officials feel Canada made a mistake by not joining the bank last year.

The four projects approved earlier this year addressed many of the concerns western countries had about the new bank, he said, including that China would use it to advance its own strategic and commercial interests.

Evans said the Liberal government’s decision to sign on would be symbolically important in terms of Canada-China relations.

While the cost – which he estimated will be as much as $1 billion – is high, he said Canadian companies could benefit from the billions of dollars in projects the bank will finance.

With files from Lee Berthiaume in Ottawa</s>On a recent February evening, Karl Eve received an emergency call from a restaurant owner in Canmore, Alta. The busy eatery had suddenly found itself with no hot water, even though the basement hot water tanks appeared to be working fine. A plumber with 10 years’ experience, Eve eventually traced the problem to a malfunctioning dishwasher and got the hot water flowing again—much to the owner’s relief.

It’s the sort of detective work Eve says he loves about his job. He also likes that his plumbing business, which he runs with his wife in nearby Exshaw, provides his family with a comfortable middle-class lifestyle. But it was a career he very nearly missed. Never a fan of textbooks, Eve ended up toiling in a southern Ontario gypsum mine after high school. It was only after moving to Alberta years later that he considered a career in the trades. A chance meeting at a church potluck led to a ride-along with a local plumber and, ultimately, an apprenticeship. “I discovered there was a lot to learn, especially when it came to math,” Eve says of his four years of training, which included eight weeks a year in a classroom. “The amount of education was very surprising to me, but in a positive way. I grasped it with both hands, so to speak.”

Eve’s story is more rare than it should be in Canada. Many consider the trades to be low-paying, go-nowhere jobs, if they consider them at all. But it’s a perception not grounded in reality, as Eve’s healthy hourly rate of $90 to $135 suggests. Nor is it one Canada can afford to maintain. Numerous studies warn Canada is facing a massive shortage of skilled workers over the next few decades as millions of baby boomers hit retirement age and exit the workforce.

At the same time, the nature of work itself is changing as the country transitions to a so-called knowledge economy that relies on a well-trained and highly educated workforce to produce value-added products and services. Those without the necessary skills could soon find themselves unemployable. The Canadian Chamber of Commerce estimates there will be 550,000 unskilled workers who won’t be able to find work by 2016. By 2021, it says, the number could be well over a million. At the same time, it’s estimated there will be 1.5 million skilled job vacancies in 2016, and 2.6 million by 2021.

Economists call it a skills “mismatch.” The country is in dire need of engineers, health workers and skilled tradespeople. Yet tens of thousands of students continue to pursue degrees in the arts and humanities. The result is an unemployment rate that refuses to fall below seven per cent (about 13.5 per cent among youth), while employers increasingly complain about vacant jobs that promise good wages—particularly in Western Canada, where the oil, gas and mining industries are booming. “The new phenomenon here is that we’re going to be seeing pockets of persistent high unemployment existing right alongside serious worker shortages in particular industries,” says Perrin Beatty, a former member of Parliament and the chamber’s CEO.

Hence, Canada not only needs to encourage more people to enter the workforce, but to ensure everyone will be productive once they get there. That’s a tall order in a country where, incredibly, nearly half of all adults don’t have the necessary literacy and numeracy skills to participate in a modern economy. As a result, experts say a dramatic rethink of how our post-secondary system works is in order. Though Canada’s universities are among the best in the world, critics argue for a much greater focus on colleges and polytechnic universities, since the latter are better plugged into the business community. Others say the country needs to do a better job of informing young people about the breadth of high-paying career opportunities in a modern economy.

The trend toward “people without jobs, jobs without people” poses the single biggest long-term threat to Canadian economic growth, exacerbating Canada’s already lagging productivity and innovation, according to one recent report. But attempts to head off calamity are so far being met with the usual obstacles. Companies complain about the additional cost of training employees; unions are wary about foreign workers taking local jobs; and parents continue to try and steer their children into a few prestigious professions. Something has to give. “We have a skills problem well on its way to becoming a crisis,” Beatty says. “And you need only look at the demographic wedge that we’re confronting to see that the problem is only going to get worse.”

A recent report by the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce suggested as much as one-fifth of Canada’s labour market already suffers from too few qualified workers, particularly in the health care, mining, business services and advanced manufacturing sectors. The average unemployment rate for those jobs is just one per cent, while workers in those positions are seeing wage gains of nearly four per cent annually, more than double that of the broader economy—a telltale sign of a labour shortage.

At the same time, the CIBC report noted a surplus of employees in occupations such as food services, clerical work, sales and recreational guiding—a group that collectively accounts for about 16 per cent of the workforce. Another study, released last week by the C.D. Howe Institute, noted that the mismatch is especially problematic in the Western provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and British Columbia.

Evidence of the shortage is already popping up in day-to-day life. In Alberta, the booming oil sands have sucked workers away from dozens of other occupations, some of which—like policing—were already experiencing shortages. As a result, Calgarians who get pulled over by the police are just as likely to be questioned in a British or Scottish accent following a U.K recruitment drive several years ago. Other provinces, meanwhile, are preying on foreign countries that are still recovering from the 2009 global crisis. Saskatchewan is targeting Ireland, which required a bailout from the European Union and International Monetary Fund, for a fresh supply of heavy duty mechanics, welders, engineers and machinists.

But such cross-border shopping for talent threatens to become a problem in its own right. A survey of 38,000 companies in 41 countries last year by Milwaukee’s ManpowerGroup found that one-third were unable to find enough workers with the right skills, suggesting a global shortage is emerging. One country’s gain can quickly become another’s loss. “Highly skilled people are extremely mobile,” explains Beatty, adding that it creates disincentives for employers and government to pour money into training programs, lest all those newly skilled workers get poached.

The flip side of Canada’s skills mismatch—all those bartenders and baristas with expensive university degrees—is also troubling. Not only are underemployed Canadians contributing below their full potential, they’re creating a domino effect by taking jobs away from those without skills who can’t find work. The economic impact is potentially huge. At a time when the Bank of Canada is trying to juice business activity with continued record-low interest rates, CIBC chief economist Avery Shenfeld argues that Canada’s “labour market mismatch is big enough not only to reduce the effectiveness of monetary policy, but also to limit the growth potential of the labour market and the economy as a whole.”

In a recent speech, Diane Finley, the minister of human resources and skills development, compared the situation to a man listening for an oncoming train by putting his ear to the tracks. “Well, folks, it’s time to stop listening for the train, because it’s bearing down on us,” she said, citing a PricewaterhouseCoopers survey that found two-thirds of CEOs ranked the lack of key skills as the biggest threat to their growth prospects. “Canada’s economy is changing, the workplace is changing and we all have to change with it.”

Nor is the problem simply constrained economic growth. Although there’s some debate about when the full force of the baby-boomer retirement wave will hit—many Canadians are working past the age of 65 and the lingering effects of the 2009 recession have caused many businesses to hold off on hiring—some experts are forecasting a profound shift in the way the entire economy works. As Canadians get older, on average, they’re expected to spend less money while putting a greater strain on health care, pensions and old-age security. Those services, in turn, will be supported by a declining number of working-age Canadians. “We’re going to be in a hell of a problem unless we find ways to increase the size of the workforce and encourage higher participation rates,” says Rick Miner, the president of Toronto consulting firm Miner & Miner, which published a report on Canada’s labour challenges last year. “We’re not going to have the resources to provide ourselves with the services we’ve come to think of as normal, whether it’s health care or anything else.”

Ottawa is taking the threat seriously, and one of the biggest weapons in its arsenal is the country’s immigration system. The federal government has already announced changes, to take effect this spring, that would place a greater emphasis on younger workers and speed up the process employers must go through to hire new Canadians in occupations where there are immediate labour shortages.

But immigration alone won’t be a panacea. Many new immigrants tend to settle in big cities like Toronto and Vancouver, where there are big ethnic communities and established social networks. By contrast, many of the most acute labour shortages are in the country’s hinterlands, where oil and mining companies’ operations are based. There are also problems with the recognition of foreign credentials and language skills, which has traditionally led to a much lower workforce participation rate for first-generation immigrants. Whereas roughly 82 per cent of Canadians between the age of 25 to 54 have historically participated in the labour force, the corresponding number for recent immigrants is just 63 per cent, according to Statistics Canada. It remains to be seen whether policy changes that target workers with high-demand skills will be able to dramatically narrow this gap.

Individual industries face their own problems with foreign workers. Beatty, for example, notes that the trucking industry is suffering a critical shortage of drivers, which could have an outsized impact on the economy, given the importance of truck transport to North American supply chains. “Increasingly, we’re having to look at new immigrants to fill those jobs,” he says. “But that poses a problem because security requirements at the border limit the countries drivers can come from if they want admission to the United States.” There’s also the risk of a backlash if foreign workers are perceived to be favoured for jobs that might otherwise go to Canadians. In B.C., a mining company recently found itself the target of a union lawsuit after it hired about 200 foreign temporary workers from China. They’ve since been sent home.

Finding more workers is only one side of the equation. “We also need to look at the educational side,” says Miner. “That’s where the real payoff is.” Despite Canada’s solid public schools and high-quality post-secondary institutions, 48 per cent of adults lack sufficient literacy skills “to function well at work and in daily living,” according to Human Resources and Skills Development Canada. While Canada actually scores relatively high—about fifth out of 20 developed countries— on basic reading, or “prose” literacy, it falls to the middle of the pack on “document” or “quantitive” literacy skills, which involve things like reading charts and graphs or balancing a chequebook. All of which suggests that many Canadians are increasingly ineligible for the occupations of today, let alone the jobs of tomorrow.

High-tech skills are becoming a prerequisite for many jobs. “Everything we do is heavily laden with technology—even down to drywall installation,” says James Knight, the president of the Association of Canadian Community Colleges. “I don’t know if you’ve watched this recently, but it’s all done with lasers bouncing around the room.” He estimates nearly 75 per cent of jobs now being created in Ontario require a post-secondary education, but that only about 58 per cent of the population has one. “The people we need require a much more sophisticated level of education,” he says. “And we’re simply not there yet.”

Also key is making sure Canadians receive the right training. Miner, for one, argues that government efforts to encourage innovation by pumping billions into university research over the past 30 years may have actually exacerbated the country’s labour woes. While all that money has resulted in exciting discoveries and publications in elite journals, it hasn’t necessarily done a great job in preparing graduates for the workforce. “You have parents that desperately want to make the right decision for their kids. And you can’t fault them if they want their kids to go to university,” Miner says. “But what parents don’t realize is that you can get a great career through college, and better earning potential. But the status just isn’t there.” Universities, on the other hand, cite stats that show graduates have filled 1.3 million of the 1.5 million new professional and management positions created over the past two decades.

Knight says it’s ultimately a question of finding the right balance. He argues that colleges are particularly well-suited to bridging the divide between academics and training because they already work closely with industry to develop their programs. He cites a four-year degree at B.C.’s Selkirk College that focuses on geographic information systems, including GPS applications used heavily by the forestry and mining industries. “Where in a university calendar would you find anything about GPS?” he says. “At a time when the principal constraint on economic growth in this country is a shortage of human capital, we really have to think about what we’re emphasizing and where we put our resources.” He adds that the post-secondary system would benefit immensely if students could move more seamlessly between colleges and universities, noting that as many as 20 per cent of college applicants already have a university degree. “Obviously, it’s not efficient to spend six years in post-secondary education when considerably less might have done the job,” he says.

Another limitation of the current system, according to a recent study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, is that Canadian university research, though top-notch, has a poor track record of finding its way into the commercial sphere. In contrast, colleges are developing a niche for themselves by having faculty and students work closely with smaller companies to develop new products and services—applied research that can be immediately implemented in the marketplace. Nobina Robinson, the CEO of Polytechnics Canada, which represents 11 colleges and institutes of technology, says the trend not only promises to boost Canada’s innovation across a variety of sectors, but will equip future employees with skills that employers need to be successful. “The knowledge economy is always saying we need more M.B.A.s and Ph.D.s,” Robinson says. “But to come up with big discoveries and innovative breakthroughs, you actually need people who can make, design and build things, too.”

Among the recommendations Polytechnics Canada has put forward to Ottawa: more government support for applied research and commercialization programs; more focus on apprenticeship and pre-apprenticeship programs; and a requirement that bidders on government contracts create apprenticeship positions as a condition of their bids. Fewer than half of Canadians who register as apprentices every year actually go on to become certified. The reasons are many and vary across provinces and industries, but Robinson cites a general unwillingness among many employers to take on apprentices—possibly because they fear rivals will steal their newly trained workers. A study last year by the Conference Board of Canada showed that investment in employee training among Canadian companies has fallen nearly 40 per cent since 1993. “We need to reward employers through the tax code who invest in training,” Robinson says. She adds that governments could also do a much better job of making the apprenticeship process more attractive. “The philosophical issue is that when you pay an apprentice through [Employment Insurance] to do their in-class portion of their study, they’re being treated as an employee, not a learner,” she says. “If we want more skilled tradespeople, we’ve got to change.”

Back in Exshaw, Karl Eve’s wife, Michelle, a former teacher who, incidentally, has two university degrees, says Canadians who believe that university education is the only path to prosperity are selling themselves short. She recalls her own initial feelings when her husband announced he wanted to become a plumber. “I just had that sense, which we’re all a bit guilty of, I think, that the more capable people go to university and the less capable people end up in technical schools,” she says. “But when I saw what Karl was doing, the level of mathematics really impressed me. It’s stuff that most people just don’t know.” And unless more people make a similar discovery, Canada is going to have a lot more to worry about than leaky pipes.

Where are all the jobs?

Despite persistent high unemployment in Canada, many occupations are expected to face serious shortages of qualified workers over the next decade. The following shows the percentage of job openings that are forecast to go unfilled in each occupation, with more vacancies than actual job seekers.

Mine service workers and operators in oil and gas drilling 36%

Beware: jobs expected to have too many workers in the next 10 years:
The fossil of a new species of pterosaur is discovered on Hornby Island, British Columbia in Canada.