I completed three apprenticeships in my career before I became a teacher, and I think the biggest struggle for me was the fact that I couldn't get any incentives. As an auto mechanic, I couldn't write off my tools. I couldn't do any of those things. Snap-On was nice enough to grant me a loan at 18%. But we need to be able to write off some of the tools. We need to be able to write off some of our expenses, like businesses do, so we can afford to go to school.
The other thing is that when I went through my apprenticeships, I was on unemployment insurance, and that was a big cut-back in my pay cheque. So we need to look at also standardizing the wages to some degree so that companies know what to expect when they hire an apprentice.