Good morning.
As Ali mentioned, one of Mohawk's strengths is in its delivery of technology, skilled trades, and apprenticeship programs. In the year 2000, Mohawk developed and still delivers a two-year technician program, in which we integrated the apprenticeship program so that students, upon graduation, have completed their two-year technician diploma and completed all levels of the apprenticeship program. During their co-op placement we register these students as apprentices, so upon graduation they have completed an additional 16 months towards their apprenticeship certification.
We started working on this program in the late 1990s and launched it in 2000, because industry told us that grade 12 graduates were no longer prepared to handle the new technology they were going to face in the workplace. We heard clearly that the days of hiring grade 12 graduates to start a traditional apprenticeship program were gone, and that the employers in this sector needed people who could hit the ground running, so to speak, with advanced skills that could not be delivered as part of an existing high school program. As part of this pilot, we established a community-based committee made up of employers, union associations, and our college. This committee actually became the sponsoring agent to register the students as apprentices while they were out on their co-op placements.
What a great win-win this is for both the student and the employer. The employer has the opportunity to see the student in a co-op placement before making a full-time job offer, and the graduate has skills far in advance of those of a high school graduate who would be starting a career as an apprentice.
Another advantage to the employer and the apprentice is that once the apprentices are hired full-time, they no longer have to leave the workplace for the traditional eight or ten weeks of block training.
If we are considering other advantages, we can keep in mind that the traditional eight-week blocks of apprenticeship training continue to be supported by the federal government by way of EI payments and other supports for the apprentice while they're in school. In this model, the graduates have completed all the in-school training, so they will not have to leave the workplace to attend further academic training, and therefore EI support for the traditional apprenticeship program is eliminated.
We believe this model can be replicated across the country to help deal with current skills shortages. However, I am suggesting today that we can take this model and extend it to assist those displaced workers and help them re-engage with the workforce and fill some of these high-skilled jobs. We can use existing curriculum from the two-year program and deliver it in an intensive model that might better suit older workers who are seeking rapid re-employment and who may not be in a position to spend over two years in a college setting. We would suggest a compressed 12-month model, without breaks, that would better suit older workers.
At Mohawk, we have a lot of experience dealing with displaced workers. In our experience, if you take some time up front and offer some foundational learning in math and literacy, these students become engaged and high-functioning college graduates. They bring life skills and learning that can be integrated into their learning programs. I believe we can take this community-based committee model to engage employers, market opportunity to displaced workers, and find that match between displaced workers and employers not only in our region and province, but across the country.
Thank you.