Closing Canada’s Tech Skills Gap: Teach Youth to Code

220,000 workers needed: That’s how vast Canada’s tech skills gap could be by 2020, according to Canadian government and industry experts.

If that gap isn’t closed, many tech companies will be forced to look for opportunities outside the country, Waveform CEO Kirk Simpson recently told CBC News.

“If we can find the talent somewhere else, we might open a second location in the U.S. market or in a European market,” he said. “And those jobs will not go to Canadians.”

What a Skills Gap Means

A skills gap is the difference between the number of people employers need with a particular skill and the number actually available to hire. In tech, it shows up as roles that sit open for months, rising salaries for the people who do have the skills, and companies building teams wherever they can find them.

That last point is what makes the gap a national issue rather than just an HR problem. Software work can be done almost anywhere, so a company that can’t hire in Canada doesn’t have to wait. It can simply grow somewhere else.

Starting Young

Teaching young people to code and harness the power of cognitive computing could be the solution. Cognitive is, “beyond doubt,” our future, says Tanmay Bakshi, a 13-year-old developer, coding advocate and IBM Cloud champion.

“If we can get the youth involved in this technology, we’ll be creating more job opportunities for them. They’ll have (a better) chance of getting a better job in the AI field.”

13-year-old #dev and honourary @IBMcloud advisor @TajyMany on what excites him about #cognitive tech cc: @IBMCloudCA #BCTech #BCTECHSummit pic.twitter.com/k1xj1FlYrO

— TechPortfolio (@TechPortfolio) March 17, 2017

A Young Developer Leading by Example

Bakshi is certainly doing his part.

He hopes to personally assist 100,000 aspiring coders through keynotes speeches, his YouTube channel and his new book Hello Swift: iOS Programming for Kids and Other Beginners.

What Happened Next

Bakshi’s book did arrive. Manning published Hello Swift! in April 2019, a 400-page guide that teaches iOS app programming through games, puzzles and small apps. Manning’s author note says Bakshi had his first app on the App Store at age nine and describes him as the youngest IBM Champion.

The skills gap didn’t shrink, either. In November 2019, the Information and Communications Technology Council (ICTC) projected that demand for digitally skilled talent would reach 305,000 people by 2023, with total employment in Canada’s digital economy topping two million workers. Its report named full-stack developers, data scientists and DevOps engineers among the 15 digital jobs most needed in Canada, and noted that digital economy employment had grown almost twice as fast as the overall economy.

The federal government also put money behind the idea of teaching kids to code. In June 2017, it launched CanCode with $50 million from Budget 2017, and later added $60 million in Budget 2019 and $80 million over three years in Budget 2021. An evaluation by Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada found that between 2017-18 and 2023-24, the program reached more than 7.6 million student participants and over 405,000 teachers across all its phases, beating its targets. The evaluation concluded that CanCode met a demonstrated need for digital skills training among youth and teachers, including in rural, remote and Indigenous communities.

What It Means for Parents and Educators

Teaching coding early won’t close a skills gap on its own. Today’s grade-school coders are a decade or more away from the job market, and employers also need experienced people right now. But early exposure does something important: it shows young people, including those who might never have considered it, that building technology is something they can do.

For parents and teachers, the practical steps are simple. Start with playful, visual tools, build small projects that a child cares about, and connect coding to real problems. As Bakshi’s own story suggests, a first app at nine can lead a long way.