CredX 2026
Symposium on Micro-credentials, Badges, and Recognition
CredX is an annual convening hosted by VCC Continuing Studies in partnership with BCcampus, now in its third year. CredX 2026 brought together educators, employers, policymakers, Indigenous community leaders, and workforce development practitioners from across BC and beyond to examine the state of micro-credentials, open recognition, and skills badging in Canada. The symposium is deliberately curated: a purposefully selected group of practitioners and decision-makers brought together to do real work. Where previous years built the conversation, 2026 moved it toward systems, infrastructure, and concrete commitments.
Setting the Tone
The symposium opened with a Territorial Acknowledgement from Jessie Williams (Dean, Indigenous Initiatives, VCC), followed by opening remarks from VCC President Ajay Patel and colleagues Adrian Lipsett and Tannis Morgan. Video messages from Minister Bailey and Minister Sumner set the ministerial tone, signalling provincial government commitment to workforce alignment and the role of post-secondary institutions in meeting it. The opening framed CredX’s purpose clearly: two days of structured, practitioner-led momentum-building grounded in the practical work of advancing recognition systems in BC and beyond.
Canada’s Credentialing Crossroads
Jeff Griffiths opened the substantive program with a clarifying challenge: Canada cannot credential its way out of structural economic change. Using hard labour market data on disappearing entry-level jobs and growing youth underemployment, he argued that the problem is not a shortage of credentials — it is a shortage of recognition systems focused on what people can actually do. His Talent Pipeline Management model applies supply-chain principles to align education with real-time industry needs, and has demonstrated strong results in Atlantic Canada including 69% of participating workforce committee members reporting improved regional planning capacity.
- Structural economic change requires structural recognition change. Incremental credential additions are not sufficient.
- Open recognition systems focused on demonstrated capability are the necessary response.
- Alberta’s Talent Pipeline Management model offers a directly transferable employer-led framework for BC.
From the Margins to the Mainstream: Becoming Playmakers for Sectoral Transformation
Jackie Pichette challenged the CredX community to help Canadian post-secondary institutions move transformative change from the margins to the mainstream. She called on educational leaders and changemakers to become “playmakers” for sectoral transformation — shifting from siloed experimentation to bold, data-driven, large-scale reform that meets Canada’s demonstrated skills and workforce needs.
Pichette noted that post-secondary institutions often justify slow change as an effect of structural constraints — but large organizations like RBC evolve in step with the outside world every day, despite their size and scale, often by scaling successes that start small. Opportunities like Competency-Based Education at the degree and diploma level remain largely unexplored in Canada, despite proven success in the US and in non-credit programming domestically. Her session made a direct case for data-driven evaluation and storytelling that measures not just enrollment and graduation, but student demographics, outcomes, and program effectiveness — the evidence base needed to build institutional momentum for wider change.
- Post-secondary institutions can evolve at scale — large organizations do it every day. Structural constraints are real but not the whole story.
- Competency-Based Education at the degree and diploma level is largely unexplored in Canada despite proven success elsewhere. The opportunity is open.
- Data-driven evaluation — measuring demographics, outcomes, and program effectiveness, not just enrollment — is what builds institutional momentum for wider change.
Urban Indigenous Workforce Alignment
Lynn White brought the conversation directly to lived experience, demonstrating how ACCESS works at the intersection of community and labour market for urban Indigenous people in Metro Vancouver. ACCESS delivers employment services, trades training and apprenticeship, youth programming, and the BladeRunners initiative across Vancouver and Surrey. Her session was a grounding moment for the room: recognition systems that do not work for the communities ACCESS serves are not yet doing their job.
Lynn’s session made clear that culturally grounded, outcome-oriented recognition built around community is not aspirational — it is operational, and it is working.
- Community is more important than credentials. Build the system around the learner, not the institution.
- Separating identity from skills recognition is a design failure. The two must be held together.
- ACCESS’s model is proof of concept: culturally grounded training produces measurable labour market outcomes at scale.
Lessons from the Commonwealth of Learning
Dr. Jako Olivier reported on the state of micro-credential frameworks across Commonwealth countries, noting that very few have yet developed robust, coherent frameworks — which underscores the implementation and consistency issues BC is navigating. He highlighted strong emerging models in Malaysia and Mauritius, where quality-assured processes are being implemented across post-secondary institutions and training providers. He also described complex pan-Caribbean work, led by the CARICOM Secretariat, to create a cross-national framework enabling genuine workforce mobility. BC is not starting from zero — it is entering a global conversation with established reference points and willing partners.
- Working micro-credential frameworks already exist across the Commonwealth — BC can learn from and connect to them.
- Malaysia, Mauritius, and the Caribbean offer clear, transferable models for quality assurance and institutional coordination.
- International collaboration accelerates what individual jurisdictions cannot achieve alone.
Community-Based Training in Indigenous, Rural, and Remote Communities
Darion Ducharme, founder of Teqare, spoke to the realities of delivering digital literacy, cyber safety, and AI education in communities accessible only by float plane, ice road, or boat. Teqare has delivered programming in over 80 First Nations and hundreds of schools nationwide, reaching thousands of participants. His session surfaced a critical gap in the recognition conversation: next-generation digital threats including AI-powered scams and deepfakes are reaching remote communities faster than education and support. Any recognition framework that assumes consistent connectivity and urban access is incomplete.
- Community-based training must be designed for where learners actually are, not for institutional convenience.
- Digital safety, AI awareness, and financial literacy are critical and underrecognized skills gaps in remote communities.
- Recognition frameworks built without rural and remote contexts in mind will fail the communities that need them most.
Workforce Needs in Emerging BC Industries
This panel connected credentialing frameworks to real workforce needs across BC’s construction, mining, and infrastructure sectors. VRCA represents over 1,000 member companies in an industry accounting for 9.2% of BC’s GDP and 267,400 workers, with growing demand for hybrid skills spanning trades, project management, leadership, and technology. CTEM’s mining sector of 29,000 direct workers faces compounding challenges around the quantity, timing, location, and diversity of training needs. BCIB’s mandate for labour supply, apprenticeship, local hiring, and reconciliation-aligned training on major provincial projects underscored the same message across all three: credential systems are not keeping pace with how industry actually hires and develops talent.
- BC’s construction, mining, and infrastructure sectors need credential systems that reflect how hiring actually works.
- Co-designed pathways between employers and institutions outperform employer-as-advisor models every time.
- Reconciliation-aligned training is not optional in BC’s major project pipeline — it is a mandate.
PSIs and Industry: From Advice to Co-Design
The Invest Talent pilot in Metro Vancouver’s MedTech sector demonstrated what demand-driven, employer-led co-design looks like in practice. The results were striking: 136 learners trained against a target of 68, 87% from equity-deserving groups against a 50% target, and 26% of participants fast-tracked to final recruitment stages with a leading MedTech employer within one month. The model validated the need for a central neutral convenor to aggregate employer demand and coordinate training without placing the logistical burden on any single institution. Invest Talent is now scaling toward a cybersecurity workforce hub in Metro Vancouver, where global job creation in the sector exceeded 37,000 annually by 2024.
- Demand-driven, employer-co-designed training produces results that institution-designed programs do not.
- A neutral convenor aggregating employer demand is the structural key to making co-design work at scale.
- Metro Vancouver’s high-growth sectors require coordinated, region-level talent development strategies.
Women in Leadership and Recognition in Forestry
Joanna Jagger (WORTH Association) described how WORTH Academy — a flexible six-week online leadership program for women in recreation, tourism, and hospitality — addresses gaps that existing systems have largely missed. With 320 Academy participants, 95% reporting improved leadership skills, 40% achieving career advancement, and 20% receiving promotions, WORTH demonstrated that low-barrier, community-led programming drives measurable change. Key insight from Joanna: community matters more than credentials, and learners will help design the curriculum if you let them.
Dan McFaull (North Pacific Metrics) presented a competency-based credentialing pilot for BC’s value-added wood manufacturing sector, developed in partnership with BC Wood. North Pacific Metrics brings 25+ years of workforce competency system development across Early Childhood Education, Career Development, Hairstyling, Shipping, and now forestry — illustrating how observable, behavioural competency frameworks can make workplace skills visible and defensible across sectors.
- Equity-centred, sector-specific design reaches learners that generic systems miss.
- Observable, behavioural competency assessment is transferable across trades and resource sectors.
- Community organizations and small firms are driving credentialing innovation that institutions have not yet scaled.
Day 1 Synthesis
Day 1 closed with a structured synthesis facilitated by BCcampus. Through individual reflection, small-group Conversation Café dialogue, and facilitated wall work, participants generated and organized a collective mapping of trends, opportunities, and challenges using colour-coded sticky notes — yellow for trends and ideas, orange for opportunities, green for challenges — with red dot voting to signal priority. Friends of CredX contributed throughout the day as community of practice contributors, bringing global perspective on badging, open recognition, and skills infrastructure. This synthesis directly shaped Day 2’s agenda and the project proposal process, and is documented in full in the accompanying synthesis materials.
Proof of Concept: What CredX 2025 Produced
Day 2 opened with evidence that CredX produces lasting outcomes. Highlights from CredX 2025 included VCC’s Digital Learning for Innovative Teaching (DLIT) recognition-by-design micro-credential, Royal Roads University’s ECE Leadership Micro-credential, the Commonwealth of Learning’s expanded MC framework, and the continued scale-up of Alberta’s Talent Pipeline Management Initiative. These examples made the case that the proposals generated in this room move forward — and anchored the day’s shift from diagnosis to design.
Canada’s Skills Landscape: What the Research Reveals
Dr. Tricia Williams grounded Day 2 in national data on Canada’s evolving skills landscape. The headline: mid-career workers aged 35 to 54 are the most vulnerable to labour market disruption and the most underserved by current training and recognition systems.
Williams called for a workforce development ecosystem that is collaborative, responsive, and adaptable — informed by strong labour market data, supported by high-quality training, and not burdened by administrative friction. Her research made clear that systems designed for labour market entry are failing the workers who need them most: those already in the workforce, facing disruption, with no clear pathway to recognition of what they already know.
- Mid-career workers are the most exposed to disruption and the most underserved by current training systems.
- Only 27% of adults used career development services in the past five years — a systemic failure to reach people in transition.
- Recognition systems must be designed for mid-career transitions, not just initial labour market entry.
Scaled, LMI-Linked Credential Infrastructure
Robert Luke demonstrated what scaled, labour market intelligence-linked credential infrastructure looks like in practice. Ontario’s journey from the province’s first micro-credential portal in 2021 to the national Skills for Jobs Canada platform in September 2025 offered a clear blueprint for BC.
The platform now integrates with the Canada Job Bank — reaching 10% of Canadian workers monthly. Luke’s message for BC was direct: the technology and the models exist. Shared digital infrastructure, institutional collaboration, and deliberate LMI integration are the levers that move credential ecosystems from fragmented experiments to province-wide systems. The question is whether BC institutions are willing to co-build rather than each build their own.
- Scaled, LMI-linked credential infrastructure is not theoretical — Ontario built it, and BC can adapt it.
- The Canada Job Bank integration reaching 10% of Canadian workers monthly shows what shared infrastructure multiplies.
- Investment in shared platforms produces returns no single institution can generate working alone.
Re-envisioning Existing Assets
Greg Stone took stock of what the province already has. BC’s college network — with its geographic reach, sectoral expertise, and deep community relationships — represents infrastructure for skills recognition and micro-credentialing at scale that is currently underutilized. Stone challenged institutions and policymakers to re-envision and re-purpose what is already there rather than reaching for new solutions, and identified specific opportunities within the college network to act on the themes emerging across both days of CredX 2026.
- BC’s college network is an underutilized infrastructure asset for skills recognition at scale.
- Re-purposing existing institutions is faster and more equitable than building new systems from scratch.
- Institutional leaders must proactively identify where their assets can serve broader system goals.
Data Standards, Governance, and Interoperability
This panel pulled back the curtain on the infrastructure most people never see but everyone depends on. Nan Travers brought the Credential As You Go framework and its practical tools for incremental credentialing and recognition of prior learning. Susan Forseille shared TRU’s work to decolonize and Indigenize PLAR methodologies, and the measurable impact this has on Indigenous learners’ self-worth, identity, and educational participation — demonstrating that recognition-centred practice is not just an equity imperative but a pedagogical one. Margo Griffiths focused on the interoperability layer: open, machine-readable credential data standards, governance frameworks, and the technical infrastructure that makes portable recognition work across institutions and borders.
Together they made the case for fewer bespoke projects and more shared language, common infrastructure, and agreed standards. Their message: interoperability is not a technical problem waiting for a technical fix. It is a governance and coordination challenge that requires institutions, vendors, and governments to make deliberate choices to work together.
- Decolonizing PLAR is not just an equity imperative — it produces measurable outcomes for Indigenous learners’ identity and participation.
- Interoperability requires shared governance and data standards, not just compatible technology.
- Fewer bespoke projects and more common infrastructure is the path toward learner agency and portability.
- Fragmentation is the core structural problem; common infrastructure built collaboratively is the solution.
The Invisible System: Validating What Institutions Cannot See
Jeremy McQuigge brought a front-line perspective on the limits of pre-designed programs and the institutional blind spots that leave capable people unrecognized. His core argument: the most valuable learning system we have is autonomous and largely invisible to the infrastructure we have built to educate. Designing the credential pathway before knowing the person, and building credit-hour walls before understanding the learner, creates institutional blindness with real costs for real workers.
His dual-engine institution model offered a practical reframe: post-secondary institutions can run both a programmatic engine (designed pathways to credentials) and a contribution engine (continuing education and corporate training as the exchange floor for validating and brokering learning). The system is ready, McQuigge argued. The question is whether institutions are ready to activate the second engine and make it visible — especially for the learners it would serve most.
- Work-based learning is where most learning occurs — and it remains systemically invisible to credential infrastructure.
- The dual-engine institution model — programmatic and contribution — offers a practical path to activating CE and corporate training as recognition infrastructure.
- Institutional blind spots are design problems, not learner problems. Fixing them requires institutions to look outside their own frameworks.
Degrees, Micro-credentials, and Trust: What a Healthy Ecosystem Looks Like
Jodi Tavares called on the sector to stop competing and start co-building. The infrastructure already exists: MyCreds is live, free for learners, mobile-wallet-compatible, and accepting credit and non-credit micro-credentials, verifiable credentials, digital badges, and all digitized learning documents. A learner profile can be mapped to any skills or competency framework. Portability, verifiability, and shareability are built in. What is missing is not technology but institutional commitment to province-wide adoption.
Jodi’s call to action was direct: push your vendors for interoperability. The future of recognition depends on cooperation, governance, and robust shared infrastructure — not on each institution building its own solution and deepening the fragmentation everyone in the room spent two days diagnosing.
- Portable, free, verifiable credential infrastructure already exists — MyCreds is ready for provincial adoption now.
- The sector’s challenge is not technical. It is institutional will and coordination.
- Competing with shared infrastructure makes every institution’s fragmentation problem worse.
Government and Regional Innovation in BC
Sonia Hall illustrated BC government’s active role through WorkBC’s network of 102 employment service locations serving over 100,000 job seekers annually. WorkBC’s client base reflects BC’s demographic complexity: 42% newcomers, 31% youth, 21% people with disabilities, 9% Indigenous Peoples, and 15% older workers. Funded sector training projects in construction, bioscience, Early Childhood Education, and Indigenous community development — including a Ditidaht First Nation partnership combining work experience with micro-credentialing in chainsaw training and construction — illustrated what place-based, targeted credential programming looks like at scale. Hall’s session grounded the day’s more systemic conversations in the practical policy levers the provincial government is already pulling.
- WorkBC’s 102 locations represent existing government infrastructure that can be leveraged for credential ecosystems.
- Targeted sector training projects are producing scalable, replicable models worth building on across BC.
- Government is an active partner in BC’s credentialing ecosystem — not just a funder or regulator.
Credentials Struggling to Keep Pace with AI Skills Development
Rob Goehring examined the growing gap between fast-moving AI skills development and the credentialing systems struggling to keep pace. AI adoption across BC’s economy is uneven and accelerating; the skills required to work effectively alongside AI tools are evolving faster than any formal curriculum can track. Goehring’s session focused on how micro-credentials, badges, and modular learning can serve as the connective tissue between emerging AI-adjacent skills and the employer confidence needed to act on them — making the case that the credentialing sector must move quickly or risk being permanently behind on AI workforce readiness.
- AI skills are evolving faster than any formal credential system can currently track.
- Micro-credentials and modular learning are the most viable bridge between AI skill development and employer recognition.
- Uneven AI adoption means credentialing systems must serve both advanced adopters and those just beginning the transition.
The Adaptive Imperative: From Static Credentials to Dynamic Human Potential
Mark Patterson closed the speaker program with a challenge to the room’s foundational assumptions. Traditional credentialing models are built on static snapshots of learning at a point in time — and as technology and economic change accelerate, that model is fundamentally mismatched to what workers and employers actually need. Patterson introduced Adaptive Human Potential: a future-oriented framework that emphasizes continuous learning, real-world performance, and recognizing human capability as dynamic rather than fixed.
His session connected directly to everything the room had been building across two days: the problem is not that we lack credentials. The problem is that our recognition systems are still designed to take a photograph of a person’s learning at one moment in time — when what workers, employers, and communities actually need is a living record of demonstrated capability that grows as they do.
- Static credential models are structurally mismatched to the pace of technological and economic change.
- Adaptive Human Potential — continuous learning, real-world performance, dynamic recognition — is the necessary frame for what comes next.
- The future of credentialing is better recognition of demonstrated capability over time, not accumulation of more snapshots.
Day 2 Synthesis: From Conversation to Proposals
Day 2 closed with a structured critical friends gallery in which participant-generated project proposals were stress-tested through three rounds of rotating peer feedback. Each proposal was challenged on risks, ownership, potential partnerships, and concrete next steps. By the end of the session, a set of refined, actionable one-page proposals had been produced — documented in the accompanying CredX 2026 Projects and Initiatives summary.
Proposals span shared infrastructure, employer engagement, learner mobility, Indigenous skills pathways, digital credentialing systems, and system governance. They are ready for partnership and funding conversations. Project leads are being connected to each other. The work continues beyond this room.
Key Themes
The participant synthesis activities across both days produced a consistent set of themes. These are the room’s themes, not the organizers’.