OPINION: A band-aid. Not a solution.
When I saw the announcement of new financial support for apprentices, my first thought was: good.
My second was: but this doesn’t fix the problem.
Money matters. Anyone who has gone through an apprenticeship knows that. Going to trade school can mean weeks away from your regular paycheque while your rent, groceries, car payment and every other bill continue as usual. Additional financial support can absolutely make that period easier.
But money alone isn’t going to fix apprenticeship.
We have spent years talking about the skilled labour shortage and how desperately we need to bring more people into the trades. We have recruitment campaigns, grants, incentives and programs encouraging people to start apprenticeships.
Getting people in the door has never been the whole problem.
Keeping them there is.
An apprentice can have financial support and still struggle to find an employer willing to actually train them. They can spend years doing the same repetitive tasks without being exposed to the skills they need to progress. They can deal with poor mentorship, inconsistent ratios, layoffs, long waits for trade school and a system that can be incredibly difficult to navigate.
And when someone leaves the trades because of those experiences, another recruitment campaign doesn’t solve that.
I’m glad we’re talking about making apprenticeship more financially accessible. We should be. Losing income to attend mandatory training is a legitimate barrier, and reducing that burden will help people.
But I worry that announcements like this make it easy to point to a dollar amount and say, “Look, we’re investing in apprentices”.
Investment has to go beyond money.
It means making sure apprentices receive quality training on the job. It means holding employers accountable for developing the people they take on. It means creating healthier workplaces, improving access to technical training and actually listening when apprentices tell us where the system is failing them.
If Canada needs more skilled tradespeople, the goal cannot simply be to register more apprentices.
The goal has-to-be getting them successfully through an apprenticeship and giving them a reason to stay in the industry afterward.
The new funding helps. I don’t want to minimize that.
But it’s a Band-Aid.
And eventually, we have to start treating the wound.
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