Commission on the Reform of Ontario's Public Services

Chapter 9: Employment and Training Services
Chapter 9: Employment and Training Services
Why Provide Employment and Training Services?
A highly educated and skilled workforce is a key determinant of healthy and sustainable
long-term economic growth. With the rise of the knowledge economy and rapid technological
change, there is growing demand for highly skilled, adaptable workers. The government plays
an important role in helping meet this demand. Studies have demonstrated the need for, and
benefits from, government investment in education and training. For example, Riddell argues
that government intervention in human capital development is justified on both equity and
efficiency grounds. 1 Equity arguments for government intervention include the promotion
of equal opportunity, social mobility and more equal distribution of economic rewards.
Efficiency arguments for government intervention are based on three tenets:
� It ensures that benefits to society are captured when valuing education or training;
� It helps to overcome failures in credit markets; and
� It mitigates the challenges of judging the quality of education and training programs.
Ontario’s aging population, slower labour-force growth and increasing global competition,
among other forces, have made skills development, workplace training and lifelong learning
more important. For example, literacy needs have evolved and increased over time as a result
of fundamental changes in the economy. In addition to reading and writing, many people today
require analytical skills, numeracy, and technological and computer literacy to do increasingly
complex work.
Employment and training programs are important tools to ensure that workers have skills that
are relevant for available jobs and to facilitate job matching. Effective government training
programs help reduce the skills gap for many of these displaced workers and can increase
their re-employment earnings.
1 W.C. Riddell, “Investing in Human Capital: Policy Priorities for Canada,” in J. Leonard, C. Ragan and F. St-Hilaire (eds.), A Canadian
Priorities Agenda: Policy Choices to Improve Economic and Social Well-Being, 2008, Institute for Research on Public Policy, pp. 13–55.
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