The Human Capital Side of Sovereignty

Several years ago, I teamed up on a project with COVE, focused on helping Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) veterans transition into careers in Nova Scotia’s growing ocean technology sector. The project involved mapping military occupations against in-demand civilian roles, identifying transferable skills, and determining where targeted training could reasonably close gaps.

While in many ways this was a fairly standard workforce development project, it raised a much broader question: how good are we, as a country, at recognizing the skills, experience and capabilities people already have, and applying them where they are needed most?

This project took place in 2023. Canada’s economic and geopolitical context has changed considerably since then. Today, we are trying to expand defence and advanced manufacturing capacity, build major infrastructure, spearhead large energy projects, strengthen domestic technology capabilities, course-correct years of lagging productivity, and diversify our trade relationships. At the same time, what can only be described as extreme geopolitical uncertainty has highlighted the topic of Canadian sovereignty, and especially the economic dependencies that come from relying on other countries for critical technologies, materials, infrastructure, supply chains and production capacity. I would argue that talent needs to be part of that conversation too.

From “jobs” to capabilities

The veterans project created a bit of a lightbulb moment for me. It added tangible footing to something I had thought about before, but in a much more abstract way: jobs are not synonymous to skills, and skills are not the same as capabilities.

Military and civilian occupations are structured and progressed through very differently. Someone leaving the CAF may have spent years developing extensive technical and operational skills, completing specialized training, leading people, and achieving certifications along the way. The veterans that participated in that project had experience in areas including aviation, marine systems, IoT, logistics, cybersecurity, and software development. Yet, that experience—and the training and certifications behind it—did not necessarily translate neatly into civilian job postings, or the criteria used to screen applicants.

There is evidence that this “crosswalk” remains riddled with gaps. Veterans Affairs Canada’s National Veterans Employment Strategy identified it via a multi-fold challenge: veterans do not always recognize how their military experience translates into civilian roles, and employers do not fully understand the nature and depth of military jobs, including the skills and responsibilities associated with them.[1] In VAC’s 2022 “Let’s Talk Veterans” consultation, nearly half of participants mentioned that their military occupation or trade did not have a recognized civilian equivalent. The issue, then, is not necessarily a lack of relevant skills, but a failure to translate them into terms civilian employers recognize and value.

I will never forget one focus group participant in that project, an aircraft mechanic who described struggling to find work despite extensive training and demand for his skills. Frustrated by a job search that was yielding few interviews, let alone offers, he said something along the lines of, “I just want someone to give me a chance to show them what I can do.” That comment stuck with me, not because it was particularly profound, but because it captured the simplicity of the barrier he faced: he had skills the labour market needed; what was missing was an effective way to translate their value from one context to another.

Our existing labour market systems are generally decent at categorizing things. We can track which occupations are growing or declining, the industries they are associated with, the educational credentials that typically lead to them and, in some cases, the experience needs behind them. It is not surprising that employers rely on many of the same variables when assessing candidates.

But, as the experience of that aircraft mechanic highlights, those categories can obscure what is actually important: capabilities. There is a meaningful difference between asking whether someone has held a particular job before and asking what skills they developed throughout that work, or how those may translate to another role. At a broader level, we also need to understand how skill requirements are changing, where relevant or adjacent capabilities already exist in the labour market, where genuine gaps persist, and whether those gaps can realistically be addressed through targeted training. These distinctions all matter because Canada cannot meet its future labour needs simply by producing “more workers.”

Beyond technical skills

There is good reason for employers and workforce systems to focus on skills gaps. An Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) analysis using a Statistics Canada’s survey engaging over than 9,300 private-sector businesses, found that more than half reported having employees with skills gaps; 26% said at least one-fifth of their workforce had skills that needed improvement.[2]

The nature of those gaps is particularly interesting: 57% identified technical, practical or job-specific gaps, while 49% identified gaps in problem solving; another 36% identified gaps critical thinking.[3] In other words, employers don’t just struggle with shortages of specific technical skills.

This resonates with something I have heard repeatedly through labour market research across sectors: employers tend to be willing—and often expect—to train people on specific technologies, tools, processes and internal systems. They tend to be considerably less open to training for “soft skills”. This showed up in research I conducted to support the EDGE UP program, which helped displaced oil and gas professionals transition into technology roles in Calgary; employers were generally willing to train for technical gaps but expected candidates to already demonstrate soft skills at intermediate or advanced levels.[4]

More recent research I led on Nova Scotia’s digital economy further solidified this finding; over 62% said verbal communication, critical thinking and problem solving were needed at an “expert level”, and for teamwork and collaboration and self-motivation, that figure rose to 75%.[5]

If employers are explicitly asking for these capabilities, it raises an important question about how we define “skilled” talent and, in turn, who gets screened in or out. A hiring process that heavily weights previous job titles, direct sector experience and an exact list of technical requirements can screen out candidates for gaps that could reasonably be addressed through training, while overlooking other experiences that may be much harder to develop. This is one reason I am reluctant to use AI to screen candidates for the jobs I post. Some of the best people I have hired or worked with would not necessarily have been the highest-scoring keyword matches against a job description. Instead, they brought experiences that might initially appear unrelated: living and working abroad, competing seriously in sports, changing careers, working in frontline customer-facing environments, or simply taking a less conventional route in their career.

One of the best consultants I ever worked with, for example, started her career working in a pharmacy. On paper, that had little to do with research or policy analysis, but in practice, the skills she developed dealing with people in a busy, often sensitive environment proved exceptionally valuable in stakeholder engagement, navigating conflict, and managing complex projects. The experience may not have been directly relevant to the job, but the capabilities she developed through it were.

The point is not that technical skills do not matter; they clearly do. However, my experience leads me to believe that Canada has a deep pool of skilled talent whose capabilities may be underrecognized, underutilized, or both. As a nation, we need greater clarity on which gaps genuinely prevent someone from performing a role, which can reasonably be bridged through training, and which valuable capabilities may be hiding behind experience that does not initially look like an obvious match.

Talent as a piece of the sovereignty pie

This is also where the talent question intersects more directly with the current conversation about Canadian sovereignty. While much of that discussion has focused on data and technology sovereignty, critical infrastructure, intellectual property, domestic manufacturing and supply chain resilience, we also need to think seriously about the people and capabilities needed to build, operate and sustain them. Canada’s ability to strengthen its economic sovereignty will ultimately depend not just on what we develop or control domestically, but on whether we have the right talent to deliver and maintain it.

Yes, we have real labour shortages, and there are certainly numerous occupations where the supply of qualified workers is insufficient to meet demand. In my recent work on Nova Scotia’s digital economy, for example, employers noted particularly acute shortages of experienced mid- and senior-level talent. Beyond making recruitment difficult, employers described these shortages as actively constraining their ability to scale, commercialize products and expand into new markets. In other words, what started as a workforce problem quickly became an economic constraint.

Addressing these shortages will mean taking multiple approaches; Canada will need to educate and train more people, continue attracting skilled international talent, expanding apprenticeships and work-integrated learning opportunities, improving credential recognition, and making strategic investments in priority sectors. However, we also need to focus on how effectively people can move through the economy once they have developed skills and experience, and simultaneously, whether those capabilities can be readily applied where demand is highest.

The veterans career transition project essentially asked a relatively narrow version of that question: if we stop comparing job titles and focus on underlying skills and capabilities, where are there matches, where are the genuine gaps, and what will it take to close them?

Today, that question persists, but it is both broader and more pressing. If Canada wants to build greater capacity at home, we need to understand not only what infrastructure, technology and industrial assets we have or need to build, but what capabilities exist within and across our workforce, where they can be applied, how they need to evolve, and what actually prevents people from moving to where th

[1] Veterans Affairs Canada. (2024). National Veterans Employment Strategy. Government of Canada, https://www.veterans.gc.ca/en/about-vac/our-values/national-veterans-employment-strategy/national-veterans-employment-strategy#02-1

[2] Ogilvie, Andrew. (2026). Skill Gaps and the Strategies Used by Employers to Mitigate Their Effects: Report Summary. Employment and Social Development Canada, Strategic and Service Policy Branch, Economic Policy Directorate. Government of Canada, https://www.canada.ca/content/dam/esdc-edsc/images/corporate/reports/research/summaries/PDF%20Research%20Report_Skill%20Gaps_EN.pdf

[3] Ibid

[4] Cutean, Alexandra. (2023). The Digital Talent Imperative: Calgary’s Economic Edge. Ottawa, ON: Information and Communications Technology Council (ICTC), https://ictc-ctic.ca/reports/the-digital-talent-imperative

[5] Cutean, Alexandra. (2026). Nova Scotia’s Digital Economy: Growth, Talent, & Transformation. Digital Nova Scotia, https://digitalnovascotia.com/digital-economy-report/