Evidence of meeting #66 for Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities in the 41st Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was apprenticeship.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:50 p.m.
Liberal
Rodger Cuzner Liberal Cape Breton—Canso, NS
Your honesty, your insight, and your candour are absolutely appreciated. I want you to know that.
Have I any time left?
12:50 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Ed Komarnicki
Your time is up.
Thank you for your responses. That fellow's suggestion about having the applications go in early and maybe delinking it in some fashion so that you're treated differently from other claimants is a fair point. Getting the service that you might expect is another issue, of course, and we hear you loud and clear on it.
I'll go to Mr. Thorson. Do you have any concluding remarks you'd like to make? If you do, this would be a good time. I don't think we'll open it up to another round of questioning, but we'll give you each an opportunity for some closing remarks.
12:50 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, Skills Canada
I'll pick up on some of the comments that Nathan mentioned around the prestige of the occupations.
Maybe there's some way to look at trade certification, perhaps even giving it a different name. I know people who have been involved in trades for a long time are sometimes not a fan of that idea, but I know that when journeypersons talk about their certification, they talk about their trades ticket or their certificate ticket, their certification.
Some young people may be pursuing university education, some are going to a college in pursuit of a diploma, so they're getting degrees and diplomas, and then you have trade certification. Just some of that terminology immediately puts it at a different level from people who are pursuing a degree and a diploma. If we're talking about trying to raise the awareness, the profile, and the prestige, maybe that is something that we need to look at.
12:50 p.m.
Conservative
12:50 p.m.
Journeyman, Automotive Service Technician Program, Skills Canada
In connection with Skills Canada and what Shaun's saying about the prestige, they work really hard on that. I don't even work in a shop anymore as a mechanic. It says on my business card, “Director of Business Development” at a big company. If anyone asks me where I went to school, I don't even have a diploma; I have a mechanic's licence. That's all I can say: that I have a licence to be an automotive service technician. I don't have a diploma, I don't have a degree, I don't have a ticket—nothing. That's it.
12:55 p.m.
Student, Plumbing, La Cité Collégiale
I think my fellow apprentices, and Shaun and Nathan, pretty much covered everything.
Thanks.
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
12:55 p.m.
Student, Automotive Service Technician (Apprenticeship), Algonquin College
I do have a couple.
My first closing remark would be getting back to how to make things easier for apprentices while they're going through school. I feel apprentice wages have to have some sort of standardization. I can't use myself as an example because I feel I have a somewhat decent salary as an apprentice, and it has been gradually increased as I've been completing levels.
There are two guys in my level 3 right now who have been getting paid $13 an hour since day one. How do you justify a four-year apprenticeship being paid the same rate until they're licensed? If you're straight out of high school and you're still a young kid and you're just starting your life, it's not a huge deal, but if it was a guy like me, someone who left a career to do another career, having to sit through a four-year apprenticeship program making $13 an hour makes things kind of difficult.
The other comment I have is about wages in general in my trade as a technician. One thing I have a hard time wrapping my head around is that if you go back to shop labour rates 10 years ago and compare them to today, they've pretty much almost doubled, but technician wages have barely budged. That's probably something else to consider. Raising the prestige level of the trade means raising its income. If shops are raising their rates that much, there should be some sort of compensation for the technicians. We're the ones doing all the work in the end.
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
12:55 p.m.
Student, Sheet Metal Worker (Apprenticeship), Algonquin College
I have just a couple of things.
One, I think it's a fantastic idea—I forget who brought it up—to separate the training supplement EI from the rest of the intake.
I have guys who are in town from Sudbury. They don't have enough money to go home to see their kids. Algonquin has a very big draw, so only about one-quarter of us are from town; everybody else is from out of town and living in town, so they're living at greater expense. Really, these guys need their money more than I do.
Also, I'm in one of the trades with the highest journeyman-to-apprentice ratios; I believe they are carpentry and sheet metal work. You can have one apprentice and one journeyman. After your first apprentice, it is four journeypersons to one apprentice, so it's the same as what you're saying. To get people through, that's a lot of money. I work in a small shop, and we don't have the money to do that, so I think that needs to be addressed.
Otherwise, I wish you all good luck.
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Ed Komarnicki
Thank you very much for taking the time to come before us. I know many of you have not experienced sharing before a committee or providing testimony. Your testimony has been refreshing, and your frankness and candour have been certainly appreciated. I'm sure the committee members will take all of that into consideration. Thank you very much.
With that, the meeting is adjourned.