Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
My name is Peter Pilarski. l'm vice-president for southern Alberta with Merit Contractors Association.
Merit members across the country banked over 100 million man hours last year with over 55,000 construction workers in our hour bank benefit plan and 7,000 people in our office supervisory plan. Merit Alberta's single largest expense item is our tuition refund program, which provides full apprenticeship tuition refunds to any person who works for a Merit member company. This year, we will pay out approximately $2 million in refunds to over 2,400 apprentices.
Merit Alberta is second only to the Alberta government in our support for CTS students with the Merit Contractors CTS award, which is given to the top grade 12 CTS construction students in more than 120 high schools across Alberta.
Merit Alberta also provides 80 $750 post-secondary scholarships to the children of Merit member company employees to pursue post-secondary education, including apprenticeship training. Additionally, Merit Alberta provides annual awards to the top apprentices of our Merit member companies, as well as an award for a Merit member company that demonstrates a commitment to a training philosophy and culture within their organization.
Merit Alberta also runs the Merit College of Construction, which has provided an industry-leading supervisor training program and leadership development for supervisors program to thousands of construction workers over the years.
We have partnered with Careers: The Next Generation in Alberta to help place hundreds of high school RAP students; Women Building Futures, to connect women to construction employment opportunities; and Trade Up, an industry initiative aimed at helping young people to understand construction employment opportunities.
We have run construction boot camps, which provide young people with a basic exposure to construction, as well as the safety training programs they need before they can begin working on a construction site. Our boot camp graduates all get placements with our member companies for their first construction job.
Despite all these efforts throughout the years, the construction industry continues to face challenges in attracting enough young people. Our challenge is to determine why. A 2013 Canadian Apprenticeship Forum study found that compared to a baseline in 2004, youth between the ages of 15 and 17 were more likely to consider a career in the trades; viewed a career in the skilled trades as better than a career in law, business, or accounting; were more aware of available career options; reported a better understanding of the apprenticeship process; and were able to find information about the trades, if they were looking for it.
However, the most troubling finding in the report is that the same proportion of youth reported that parents, guidance counsellors, and friends have not encouraged them to consider a career in the trades. Unless we as a country directly address the societal biases that exist against working in the skilled trades, no government program or industry initiative will have the impact we need to meet our labour market demand for these occupations.
Students are told that a career in the trades is for the students who are not as smart and that university is better than a trade ticket. This is wrong. The skilled trades are becoming more technical and academically challenging, and our industry needs students to come out of high school with strong language and communications skills as well as strong math and science skills. Initiatives over the years to bring more aboriginal youth into the construction workforce have often struggled because those youth have often lacked the academic prerequisites needed to be successful in an apprenticeship program.
The Canada job grant program should be used for pre-apprenticeship training and for bridging programs to help those students who did not get the prerequisite skills they need to be successful in an apprenticeship program.
Most of Merit's board members started on the front lines of our industry and many of them now run successful companies that employ hundreds or thousands of people. This is the introduction that youth need to our industry and the type of message that needs to be coming from their parents, teachers, and guidance counsellors. The challenge is that the teachers, guidance counsellors, and many parents have gone through university and that is the route they know and advise. Industry and government could work together to help to change the image of the skilled trades, and that focus should be on educating adults as well as youth.
Merit is currently developing a program called learning about trades and technology education, or LATTE, which will give teachers and guidance counsellors an opportunity to spend a day on a construction site so they can get a real-life understanding about working in the trades. We would welcome government as a partner in this type of initiative.
Another challenge for construction is the way K-to-12 education is funded. In Alberta, principals get per student funding, which they use to run their school and hire teachers. Construction equipment, materials, and labs are expensive compared to the facilities needed to run an arts or drama program. There is little to no incentive for a principal to offer a construction program, which is relatively cost prohibitive. Dedicated federal funding on top of provincial education funding specifically for the space, materials, and equipment needed to provide construction education could be a way to ensure that construction is taught at the junior and senior high school levels.
Thank you very much for your time, and I'll take any questions.