| Young professionals
127,00 employees, with 34 core occupations making up the sector. As Chapeskie explains, 43% of these are occupations such as human resources, finance, accounting or – as he calls them – corporate services professionals. And then there’s the core electricity occupations which account for 57% of the workforce. These include: ● Skilled trades – 27% (such as electrical mechanics, power line technicians, welders etc).
● Engineers, technicians and technologists – 15%. ● Managers and supervisors – 9% (who often come up from skilled trades).
● Information and communications technology (ICT) – 6%.
Speaking a little more about ICT, Chapeskie explains that these roles require unique competency or skill sets to work in the electricity industry. “When we look at the interplay between information
technology and the operational technology requirements of the industry, we really see where some of those competencies come out,” he says. “There are very unique aspects to the electricity industry. The hardware we work with makes information technology a little more difficult to work with as well.” EHRC has also previously carried out research into
the role of AI in the industry on a per occupation basis. It looked at exposure of the role to AI and then how AI is complementary to that role. The research highlighted lower to mid-level exposure across various roles with the ability to leverage AI to maximise productivity and efficiency. But, as Chapeskie adds: “We don’t typically see a lot of downsizing in our future as a result of AI”.
A cautionary tale At the root of the workforce challenges currently facing
the Canadian power sector, is an ageing workforce is “I think this is a bit of a cautionary tale for us,” Chapeskie warns. When looking at age distribution across the industry, the electricity sector’s workforce is on average older than that of the overall economy. For every young employee (aged 15-24 years old) there are more than three mature employees (55+ and heading towards retirement). The issue is particularly acute among managers and supervisors, as well as ICT workers. Effectively this means there is 5% of the electricity
sector in the 15-24 age group, ie people coming into industry. There’s 78% aged between 25-54 years, and 17% post 55. “This means we have a 3:1 ratio of people retiring
to young people coming in. If we look specifically at engineers, it’s a 2:1 ratio. But then if we look at ICT professionals, this is the one that’s a little scarier. It’s about 10:1,” Chapeskie says. “So the total number of people looking to exit versus entering the industry is very, very high. We have a lot of work to do on the front end of recruitment to ensure we are filling the seats of the earlier years, so they’re not left empty as people continue to exit.” According to Chapeskie, the Covid 19 pandemic had a bit of a delayed effect on industry losses and stalled retirements. People who would have retired waited but then within about 18 months to two years after Covid, they started to leave. It’s a situation that employers across the industry have witnessed consistently.
Female workforce Looking more closely at workers within the Canadian
industry, women only make up 27% of the workforce.
This is at a time when estimates suggest the Canadian labour market as a whole is very close to gender parity, with 48% being women. “Our 27% is skewed towards corporate services
professionals. We’re under-represented in engineering and the skilled trades in particular. So we have a lot of work to do in gender representation in the industry,” Chapeskie admits. “Ten years ago we were at 25% of women in the electricity industry. So at this rate it will be 115 years before we achieve gender parity. We have our work cut out for us there.” “It’s quite disappointing to see the percentage of women hasn’t really changed, particularly in those engineering roles,” WaterPower Canada’s President Lorena Patterson adds. “We’re hearing from universities that there are more women going into that field, but it seems as though it hasn’t really translated into more engineers on the other end.”
Although 30% of students on engineering
programmes in Canada are women, Chapeskie says this is “both a good news and bad news story”. “I would like to see us further long on that particular
journey from an education system perspective,” he says.. “At the end of the day employers can’t move any faster than the education system will allow from total participation in the sector. And if only 30% of our new recruits are women, we will never be bigger than 30% in our industry.” Referring to this as “a talent lock”, Chapeskie admits that “we’re effectively stuck” but employers can do more work though.
“It’s called Leadershift and looking at why women don’t enter, don’t advance or don’t stay at companies. Unfortunately I have to say there is still a ‘bro culture’ in some organisations where this attitude of boys will be boys and that sort of thing still exists – particularly on the front lines. Sometimes there’s disparity between what’s occurring in the proverbial locker room and the corporate head office. That needs to be addressed,” Chapeskie says “but unfortunately it’s still a challenge.” Looking at the skilled trades, which is only at 7% of female participation, Chapeskie admits there is even more work to do on the participation perspective here. “In some provinces there is a single woman power line technician in the entire province. That can’t be something that we continue,” he says.
Talent supply under strain Continuing to look at the composition of the Canadian
electricity industry’s work force, indigenous peoples account for 5%, which is labour market parity. “In our industry indigenous peoples are
disproportionately skewed into skilled trade roles,” Chapeskie explained. “There are various reasons for this such as historical barriers to indigenous participation in post-secondary education. Once again, we have more work to do here too.” Radicalised groups account for 22% of the workforce, persons with disabilities are 1% (reduced from 3% a couple of years ago), and gender diverse people 2%. And at 19%, a large section of the workforce comprises internationally trained workers, with 61% of these coming into the industry as engineers.
“Immigration is one of our biggest single areas of talent supply in Canada,” Chapeskie states. “From 2023-4 we saw significant immigration in this country. It changed significantly into 2025 and heading into 2026 due to
www.waterpowermagazine.com | June 2026 | 15
Lorena Patterson, President, WaterPower Canada
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