During a recent visit to the Atlantic Veterinary College (AVC) on the campus of the University of Prince Edward Island in Charlottetown, AVC dean Dr. Tim Ogilvie talked about “vet camps”—summer camps for kids that are held at the college. The camps are exclusively for children in Grades 7, 8, and 9, and the reason behind that choice is that many young people are making career choices during those three years.
It's a simple but smart move on the part of the management of the region's only veterinary college. It's also a serious lesson for those of us in the business community. As we know, entrepreneurs are those extraordinary characters who, with their vision and determination, create businesses where none existed before. That's the genesis of wealth creation.

Entrepreneurs must conceive of a product or service, recruit others to help them make it happen, and then work on growing the business. That's how companies get off the ground. Management comes along, along with new employees, suppliers, and customers. Without business there would be no employees, no taxes, and no government. The question is, at what stage do our schools begin the process of identifying and training potential young entrepreneurs?

The unfortunate reality is that our schools don't identify young company builders and therefore they never start to train them. Who is to blame? All of us: premiers, cabinets, Department of Education ministers and staff, school boards, education consultants, principals, teachers, teachers' unions—the list is endless.

The biggest offender is the business community itself, and we should know better because we know the kind of people who will make solid entrepreneurs. We know that our economy will grow only if we start grooming trained, motivated entrepreneurs during their early school years. Right now in many schools, choosing business as a career is viewed as a last resort. At some high schools across the region, when young people have little or no chance of graduating and have zero prospect of getting into university, they're placed in the “non-credit entrepreneurial class.”

This is preposterous, and yet we're not doing anything to improve the situation. I've known about this for four years and, besides talking about it in a few speeches, I've done nothing to change things. But I've decided that it's time for all of us to start getting involved in the development of our young entrepreneurs.
Rory Francis, the executive director of the PEI BioAlliance, recently said, “The next generation's natural resources must be knowledge industries.” If we don't start educating our children properly and give them the tools to start, run, and grow the companies in those industries, we won't have any of them in the future. As the AVC has shown, it's easy to make an investment in our young people and nudge them in the right direction. It has great results, and it's vital to our economic future. What can your business do to help?