CALGARY — Keeping older employees in the workforce longer is a critical challenge for businesses as they struggle with a growing labour shortage, Canada's top central banker said Thursday.

Bank of Canada governor David Dodge said companies need to become more flexible to keep staff past the standard retirement age of sixty-five.

"The real challenge for us is to find ways that we can use people more flexibly - whether that's numbers of hours per week, number of weeks per year - as they get older," Dodge said following a speech to Calgary's Chamber of Commerce.

"And it means that we as employers have got to put more effort into upgrading skills and increasing our openness to hiring mature workers."

Keeping older employees in the workforce also requires removing "any barriers to their continued participation," such as more flexible work schedules.

And he said conventional pension schemes should be redesigned to meet the needs of those who stay on past 65.

Dodge used his speech in Canada's booming energy capital to hammer home the need for more flexibility within the national economy - not only in the workforce but also in areas like securities reform, provincial trade and dealing with climate change concerns.

The Bank of Canada governor, who faces his own retirement decisions in June after six years controlling Canada's interest rate policy, said older employees need to be encouraged to stay on and help teach younger workers.

More emphasis needs to be put on mentoring programs between the different generations of workers, "ensuring that intellectual capital is not lost," he said.

In the same vein of encouraging flexibility, Dodge once again urged the adoption of uniform securities regulations for its public markets, in place of the present patchwork of provincial and territorial commissions.

And he said Alberta, which has been opposed to a single national regulator for years, has a vested interest in taking a leadership role in securities reform.

He said Calgary, as home to Canada's junior TSX Venture Exchange, could become an international financial nerve centre, but the lack of a Canada-wide regulatory regime makes that unlikely at the moment.

"If you think of Calgary's role in that, in terms of junior oil and gas and mining, as well as some areas of technology, there's a real opportunity here," he said.

"But it's not going to come about without a global recognition that we have a set of rules in this country that are reasonable, good and enforced."

Venturing into the home turf of Canada's energy companies, Dodge also tiptoed around the contentious area of emissions reductions, especially in the northern Alberta oilsands, one of the biggest polluters of greenhouse gases.

He said Alberta is well-positioned to take advantage of a growing demand around the world for products and technologies that reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Dodge admitted that the uncertainly surrounding potential federal and provincial environmental regulations was causing distress to the energy sector.

"I think the one thing that is safe to say around the world, that business knows that in one way or another, putting carbon into the air is going to be more expensive."