Overview

The Canadian Printing Industries Sector Council (CPISC) is a non-profit organization that provides a national forum for collaboration on human resource and workforce development issues within the printing and graphic communications industry. CPISC was incorporated in April 2006 through the Sectoral Partnerships Initiative of Human Resources and Social Development Canada.

CPISC collaborates with printing and graphic communications industry employers, employees, educators, suppliers and representatives of governments to create and implement innovative strategies for skills development and progressive HR management practices. In doing so, CPISC enables all key players in the printing and graphic communications industry to work together in partnership to improve the quality of the industry’s current and future workforce.

Through the completion of its national Skill Standards and three watershed reports—the Skills and Technology Roadmap, Charting Our Course; the HR Study, An Industry Redefined; and the Training Needs Assessment,Bridging the Gaps—CPISC has built a solid foundation and understanding of what the industry needs.

Moving forward, the Council is building on those findings and evolving from a research-based organization into one that also offers services, tools, programs and resources to maximize the career potential of every employee and support the industry’s prosperity.

CPISC has identified four key long-term objectives in its 2010-2013 Strategic Plan that describe the behaviours that the Council would like to influence and see exhibited by the industry in the coming years. These outcomes are that the industry:

  • has skilled workers with transferable skills
  • retains existing workers and recruits new workers
  • adopts strategic HR management and best practice
  • takes coordinated action on common HR issues


To achieve these objectives, CPISC is focusing on goals and activities in four areas: skills, training, career pathways and HR management which includes the provision of timely and informative data on the industry.