Industry committee  You are absolutely correct. That's exactly what we're looking for. For Community Benefits we must have targets and a baseline understanding of where we're at, a target for where we want to go, and a continuous intention process to actually get there. This needs to be in the contr

Industry committee  Absolutely, that is the idea, to ensure that, in the procurement itself, when the government sends out the requests for proposal, there is specific language that the industry understands, a blueprint of sorts, that lets them know that this is a requirement when they're submitting

Industry committee  I'll allow my colleague, Kumsa Baker, to speak, but in general, absolutely, regarding the federal budget, we received it very well because of the investment that government planned to make. There was a lot of focus on Black and racialized communities for support and financial inv

Industry committee  Thank you, Madam Chair. Good morning, honourable members of Parliament and members of the industry, science and technology standing committee. My name is Rosemarie Powell, and I am joined by my colleague Kumsa Baker, representing the TCBN. The Toronto Community Benefits Networ

Human Resources committee  That's exactly what I was going to say as well. We support newcomers. We want to see the opportunities open up and that we bring these small businesses into the regular economy so they get to register their apprentices officially with the Ontario College of Trades and take advant

Human Resources committee  Right.

Human Resources committee  They have to eat.

Human Resources committee  As I said, Ahmed, the gentleman that I spoke to, was also a newcomer and wasn't eligible. He had issues with his immigration situation, but we were able to help him, and he is on a path to citizenship. He was able to secure himself and get a job in the trades. He's doing pretty w

Human Resources committee  I would suggest that supporting more pre-apprenticeship training programs would be highly essential, as would ensuring that everyone has access to the pre-apprenticeship training programs regardless of eligibility criteria. If you want to get skilled workers into the program, for

Human Resources committee  That's right.

Human Resources committee  Could I add one little thing to that?

Human Resources committee  Thank you very much. Notice in my presentation that I said 1.2% of racialized people are registered in the Ontario College of Trades. The term there is “registered”. There's a whole heap of people right here in Toronto and Hamilton who are actually working in the underground,

Human Resources committee  You're talking about Building Up.

Human Resources committee  In addition to the consultation that we did, we also, through funding from the Ontario government, underwent a process of research and development to look into the issues that under-represented groups are facing, not only in terms of getting access to the trades, but also once th

Human Resources committee  Absolutely, and we've been working with the unions to do that. We just got started. We have 35 mentees in the program and we have over 25 mentors, journeypersons from the different unions, who've already expressed interest and registered for the program, and we expect it to grow.