Executive Summary

This report covers the deliberations and outcomes of the second MIAC meeting held between Government of Canada and marine industry officials on June 18, 2019 in Montreal with takeaways in the following areas of discussion:

Canadian Welding Bureau:

• CWB focusing on opportunities and challenges facing the Canadian marine industry’s shortage of skilled welders
• Welding program success of great interest to members
• CWB is refining its training strategy and would welcome MIAC as well as senior leadership of government and class input
• ACORN program established as a national program with a prime goal of providing world-class training material and support programs in a fully uniform, transparent and accountable fashion
• Automated welding equipment often operated by skilled welders

• Provide MIAC membership contact information to CWB
• MCMO to maintain situational awareness on evolution of CWB program
• CWB to be invited to present update at next MIAC meeting

Halifax Report:

• Minutes are published on Buy-and-Sell, for onward distribution within respective organizations
• ‘Propelling your Business’ placemat was a first foray at assembling the information in one location
• Suggestion that a federal employee who can point to the all the programs offered by the GoC would be useful
• CCC appears to be missing from the placemat

• MCMO to add CCC to the placemat
• MCMO to investigate and highlight the contact person(s) that could best explain the respective programs

  Addressing HR Capacity:

• Demand for skilled labour will be greater than availability
• Need for action to address skilled labour shortage across the six sub-sectors
• Aging and retiring workforce
• Overview of comprehensive labour market survey/analysis/results carried out by ABCMI in BC
• Pathways to action outlined
• Call for Federal Government leadership in developing a HR strategy to address shortages
• MCMO to initiate conversation with marine institutes and academia to initiate dialogue in elevating awareness of marine trades/careers.
• MCMO to map marine trade skill development programs from entry level to advanced programs
• MCMO in cooperation with MIAC members to prepare an approach for a study

CanExport:

• MIAC membership benefitted from market expansion program activities

Underwater hull cleaning:

• Currently the government does not normally perform underwater hull cleaning
• An unfouled hull saves 6-20% on fuel consumption (reduces greenhouse gasses by the same percentage) and decreases vessel operation performance
• No Canadian underwater hull cleaning environmental policy in place, but there is a need to protect and save the environment
• MCMO is seeking best practices within the different market segments
• MCMO is considering issuing an RFI from industry to receive input

Fleet Renewal and Vessel life Extension:

• Prime Minister recently announced over 15.7B dollars for the recapitalization of the fleet for the construction of 18 large vessels
• 2B dollars invested in maintenance, refit and life extension to keep fleet operating

Emerging Issues:

• Marine is not recognized as a market segment, MCMO is working with partners to have marine added to the list in 2021

• Need to ensure that Marine is represented in codes

• Suggested that the creation of a Maritime Strategy would provide a framework around the growth and sustainment of Canada’s maritime sector

• MCMO to conduct a review of strategy documents and extract key themes for situational awareness by MIAC and tabled in November.

  The second MIAC meeting was highly successful thanks to the great participation of industry representatives and partner departments.