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The Act to Promote Workforce Skills Development and Recognition, also known as the 1% Act or the Skills Act, has been in existence for over 30 years. The Act, passed in 1995, currently requires employers with a total payroll exceeding $2 million to allocate at least one per cent of those funds to training. Its goal, broadly, is to improve the skills and qualifications of the workforce. In this study, the authors analyze training policies in Quebec and other Canadian provinces using recent Statistics Canada data on employment-related training. They examine the Act from a theoretical perspective and discuss what effects the Act has had on Quebec, and what it might mean for the provincial economy in the future. The authors make clear that the 1% Act has had a substantial and positive effect on the likelihood of employers offering more training. They conclude that while the Act has had an influence on the amount of training reported by employers, it remains difficult to truly assess its effectiveness due to a lack of proper data.
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