The Frontier Has No Gatekeepers
Looking at why there are no jobs available.
Reading Dean Blundell’s piece (linked here), entitled Why the World Wants to Work in Canada, it gives me pride that Canada is the number one country for people looking for careers. We have experienced such a brain drain in Canada, due to poaching from the US that we need to build up our brain force again.
All through the 80s and 90s we lost so much talent to higher salaries in the US and the lure of “low taxes” that many tech and science companies were gutted.
We need to build our brain trust back up, and we need to keep them here. The orange idiot south of us is helping now, because no one wants to be there. Let’s face it, who wants to study, research, or live in a country where your visa may be revoked at any moment.
Not even the word of Elon saying the US needs to import talent because it doesn’t exist inside the country, is helping that happen.
But we can and do bring in talent from other countries. Canada being the number one country on the list of many people looking for careers, is nice. The reason according to Blundell is “Canada's job market isn't just open to immigrants — it actively welcomes them. In 2023, the employment rate among landed immigrants hit 82.6%, a steady rise since 2020 and a testament to the effectiveness of Canada's pro-immigration economic policies.
Programs like Express Entry and the Global Talent Stream give skilled workers a clear, fast-track path to permanent residency and meaningful work.”
That causes another effect: we’re experiencing it politically. All those 20-40 year old Canadian men who are angry because they think ‘immigrants’ are stealing their jobs.
They aren’t. I know this. Immigrants are filling jobs in areas where there is no local talent available.
But it’s that issue that is lighting the fire under that demographic for conservatism.
I’m meandering a bit here, sorry. But the point is, if Canada is no longer training enough Brains to fulfill the needs of tech, science, and energy development, what are we doing?
The most sought-after degree in Canada is an MBA. Everybody wants to get a Masters degree in Business Administration. Why? Has that become some sort of “pre-requisite” degree like a BA used to be? There is so much more to life! And not everyone can be in business administration, there aren’t that many middle-management positions available.
So why aren’t students being funneled or at least encouraged to go into tech and sciences? What about geography, physics, or archeology? There are lots of exciting things to do with lots of ground-breaking technology happening in just about every walk of life.
These are the top eight degree programs:
Computer Science. Canada's booming tech industry employs over 900,000 people and contributes more than CAD 100 billion to the national economy.
Business Administration (MBA)
Engineering.
Data Science.
Public Health.
Finance.
International Business.
Artificial Intelligence.
What happened to medicine or law? Funny how things become less popular. We have a serious shortage of medical professionals in this country. But those programs struggle to get graduates that stay in Canada.
This is why immigrants are welcome. They fill the holes with skill sets that Canadians don’t want, aren’t studying for, or are not interested in. Such as trades.
So what are those men 30-40 educated in? According to AI, the answer to that is surprising: “The most common profession for men aged 30-40 is not a single job title, but rather a broad category encompassing roles like retail salespersons, truck drivers, and managers. Specifically, data from Statistics Canada indicates that in 2006, retail salespeople and clerks were the most prevalent occupation for men, followed by truck drivers and then retail trade managers. In more recent times, other common occupations for men in this age range include roles in construction, production, and various managerial positions.”
No wonder they believe there are no opportunities! It’s interesting that StatsCan says that 61% of men 25-35 have a University-level education. What’s happening? If they are going through University and then not getting a job in that field, there has to be a disconnect.
So where is the disconnect?
Today, just as 40 years, we’re told get a degree and you’ll have a career. Back in my day, it was a Bachelor of something. It proved you could finish something. That’s the only reason employers looked at people with degrees. Rarely, did someone get a degree in the job they actually found worked.
Today, it’s not a Bachelor they want but a Masters. So people are spending an extra three years in school, with the associated costs, and still it means nothing.
Degrees are Cultural Fossils
It’s tragic that we’re still selling young men and women from high school on the same outdated promise: Go to school. Get a degree. Find a job. You’ll be fine. They won’t be fine, especially if the degree is useless. No wonder they feel cheated. They’re in debt, their parents sacrificed for the tuition, and the degree didn’t lead to a stable income.
It’s frustrating, humiliating, and leaves them exposed and fertile to extreme ideas.
People have to learn something I did back in the late 1970s.
When everyone of my classmates were at McGill, Concordia, or Queen’s getting Bachelor degrees, I was learning the “new” technology. I was inhaling the trend that was coming — computers. I was fortunate, my boss saw my curiosity, and fed it. That led to a career before it was even a thing.
Ever since WWII parents have told their children that success comes with a degree, a desk, and a corporate ladder. Today, in 2025, the economy no longer guarantees that path. MBAs have flooded an already oversaturated market. Office jobs are evaporating in the wake of automation. Middle management is shrinking. And manufacturing has been shipped out of country for many sectors. Hard labour like the trades have long been thought of as a “low man’s job” in spite of demand and wages.
The only jobs hiring are in places no one told them to look.
Out there—beyond the traditional institutions—exists a frontier. It’s made up of drone-based surveying, AI integration, geothermal tech, carbon removal startups, marine robotics, and vertical farming. These are the jobs of the future, but they don’t come with a university handbook or a pension. They come with risk, experimentation, and freedom. They come with the need for adaptability—not pedigree.
And here's the truth: the frontier has no gatekeepers.
No one is stopping young people from entering these fields. But no one is showing them the door either. That’s the silent tragedy. The map has changed, but the guidance hasn’t.
This isn’t about laziness or entitlement. It’s about direction. Many young men are floundering not because they lack ambition, but because they were given outdated tools for a world that no longer works the same way. When you teach a generation to climb a ladder, and then pull out the ladder, the result is confusion, resentment—and for some, radicalization.
But it doesn't have to stay that way.
In an age of open-source learning, maker spaces, remote prototyping, and AI-enhanced discovery, the cost of entry into these frontier fields is lower than ever. What’s missing is cultural permission. The permission to skip the formal path. To build. To fail. To try something no one has a name for yet.
What young people need isn’t more credentials. They need explorers' instincts. They need mentors who can say: “You don’t need to wait. There’s no gate. You can go now.”
This is a generation that grew up online, learned through YouTube, solved problems in real time, and debugged the household router before they hit puberty. They’re not the problem. They’re the solution—we need to let them step off the path and start carving a new one.
The jobs of the future aren’t in the degree pipeline—they’re on the frontier.