The Decibel - Filling Canada’s trades labour shortage with high school students

Episode Date: March 1, 2024

There are increasing shortages in the skilled trades in Canada, and provinces and territories are desperate to get people to fill them – so, they’re turning to young people. There are programs across the country to get high school students engaged in the trades, but Ontario has proposed the most radical solution yet – allowing students to leave high school early.Today, The Globe’s education reporter Caroline Alphonso explains how provinces are trying to encourage young people into the trades, and why we might need to rethink the approach to what happens after high school.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail]

Across Canada, job vacancies in the skilled trades are growing rapidly. Provinces and territories are desperate to get more people into the trades, in part to build the homes we so badly need. Some provinces are hoping to fill the labour gap with young people. There are programs across the country for students to learn the trades while still in high school. But Ontario is proposing the most radical solution yet, allowing students to leave high school early to join the trades. Caroline Alfonso is the Globe's education reporter. Today, she explains how provinces are trying to encourage young people into the trades

and why we might need to rethink the approach to what happens after high school. I'm Menaka Raman-Wilms, and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail. Caroline, thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having me, Menaka. Let's just start with the labor shortages that we're seeing in the trades. What exactly is going on there? So a report from Statistics Canada showed that Canada leads among the G7 nations for the number of working-age people with university and college credentials. But when it comes to the trades,

we're really far behind. We can't keep up with the number of people who are retiring. And there's huge vacancies that we're seeing in some of the skilled trades. For example, according to StatsCan, the number of vacancies in the construction trade was about 81,000 vacant positions in the first quarter of 2022. And that's up from the previous quarter in the previous year, but it's also double the number of vacancies from the first quarter in 2020, which was two years prior. And we're seeing these vacancies not only in the construction trade, but we're seeing them in many other trades, including manufacturing and retail as well.

Okay. And so maybe we should talk about, I guess, the range of things here. So when we say the trades, Caroline, what exactly do we mean? What does that include? I think when we think of the trades, most of us just think sort of construction trades, you know, the people who build our buildings and our houses and our businesses. But trades is a wide variety of things. So we're looking at your plumbers, your electricians, your construction trades, your welders, your roofers, but you're also looking at your chefs and your bakers and your cooks and your carpenters and your hairstylists. There's over 100 trades to choose from out there.

Okay. And so it sounds like part of this issue is a lot of people are retiring from trades, so we need more people to kind of fill those positions. Has it been difficult to get young people interested in the trades? It has been. I think, you know, we have been, as a country, we have been very focused on university and college, post-secondary institution, with good reason. We want, you know, a skilled knowledge economy. We want people to develop those skills. But I think what has happened as a result is we've forgotten or we're less focused

on another pathway, which is the skill trades. And as a result, we're seeing sort of, you know, more students applying to universities and colleges, and perhaps fewer students thinking of that, I would say a third pathway. Okay. And so is there, it sounds like, you know, there's kind of this, you know, push towards the knowledge economy, which is a good thing, we need people there. But I guess, is there a perception around these jobs that is not as positive or something? There has been for a long time, there has been a stigma around the skilled trades or around the trades in general, that it's mostly dirty work, which means very hard backbreaking labor. And for many trades, that is true. I mean, you know, you are in condo buildings building them up. So it is backbreaking work. It is hard labor. But, you know, many of the trades over the years have become more technical, more computerized.

I was speaking with the dean of Lethbridge College, a trade school, and he was an auto mechanic by trade or he is an auto mechanic by trade. And he was saying to me, you know, now more so than ever, the first tool for many auto mechanics is a laptop. A lot of stuff is run by technology and they have to check for diagnostic codes and things like that to make sure our car is running. So many trades are now computerized. They require a lot of technology. So there's a lot of skill involved in it. And trades are well-paying. You can make really good money.

You can earn a pension. You can have benefits in the trades as well. So they are in many ways as good as what you would do with a university degree. Do we have a sense, Caroline, of how many students are going into the trades, like graduating high school? How many go to university, college, the trades? Do we have a sense of that? It's really hard to come by national stats. And it should be easier, but we're not very good as a country in putting it together. One thing I did find is I was looking at post-secondary outcomes, and I turned to the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario that put out a report recently looking at TDSB outcomes. This is the Toronto District School Board outcomes. And what they found is that 50% of students, graduating students confirmed a university entrance,

20% confirmed college, another 10% applied to post-secondary, but had not confirmed. That left 20%, 20% who did not apply. So that's a lot of students. Just think about it. That's 80%, roughly 80% of students going the university or college route. So what have province and territories done then to try to bring people, more young people, especially into the trades?

There's been a lot of efforts and every province from what I've seen has put something in place to get young people into the trades. One of the provinces, New Brunswick, has this program called the New Brunswick Teen Apprenticeship Program, which is coordinated by the province. And what they do is for students in grades 10 to 12, they can apply for a paid summer internship, which gets them high school credits, but also gets them apprenticeship hours. You see similar programs in many parts of the country, British Columbia, for example, for its senior students, you can get credits towards high school and you can get technical training hours. Ontario's most popular program is the Ontario Youth Apprenticeship Program, which is a specialized program that

students take after grade 10. So think of it as our co-op placements, except in the trades, where you're gaining sort of apprenticeship experience, but you're also receiving high school credits at the same time. You mentioned a program in Ontario. I understand Ontario also has a bit of like a sampler program where students can kind of try out the different trades. Can you tell me about that? This is a program that's specific to the Toronto District School Board. So I visited this program. It's called Step to Construction. It's for senior high school students. It's a semester long program where the teacher has coordinated with a number of developers and construction sites across the city so that students can come in for the semester and basically sample the trades. So you're with the electricians for a couple of weeks,

then you're with the plumbers for a couple of weeks, then you're with the painters for a couple of weeks. And the hope is by allowing these students who have shown some interest in the trades to be able to go in there and see if there's anything that fits to hopefully narrow their decision on what they want to do. Because one of the things that we're seeing, Manika, is that when it comes to apprenticeships, StatsCan said that about 37% of young people finish their apprenticeship. So we really have an issue there with the number of people completing it. And one of the reasons behind that,

People for Education, which is an advocacy group in Ontario, said that one of the reasons behind that is a misconception of what they're doing. So they go into this trade, this apprenticeship program, and they realize it's not really for them. But perhaps having a sample ahead of time would benefit students in understanding what it is that they want to narrow their choices to. And so you've spoken to some students who've been part of these programs, Caroline. What have they told you? I visited the program at Step to Construction, which is based at Northview Heights Secondary School. And I spoke to about three students in the program.

And many of the students sort of, you know, some were doing well in school. Some were not really enthusiastic about being in classroom. They didn't like sitting around all day and learning. They wanted to be more hands-on. So they applied to this program. Now, this program takes in about 40 kids. This current semester that we're in, we're in the second semester of high school. They had 80 applications for the program, and they could only take in 40 kids.

So it's in high demand. It's a high demand program. You know, the students in the program were talking to me about how they felt like this program was really what they needed to help them decide on what they perhaps want to do when they graduate high school. Many of the kids in this programs are in grades 11 and 12. So they're in their final years of high school, if not the final year of high school. And it gave them a sense of what they wanted to do. And I think there was one kid in particular that you spoke to. Can we talk about what he thought? I spoke with Evandro Arrudo. Evandro was a senior in high school. He's doing his fifth year of high school. He describes school as feeling like a robot.

Wake up at 8 a.m., whatever, go to school, do homework like everybody else, and repeat. And he said being at a job site was exciting because it was something, granted this is a sampler program, but there was something new to do every day. He was doing the work. He enjoyed the hands-on. It feels nice, right? Because I feel like I've accomplished more in a construction day more than what I've done in a normal school day. So he worked for the semester, for the past semester, at a site in downtown Toronto.

It was three condo buildings being built. They're pretty much almost finished. He watched the painters. He worked with the electricians. And the unit that he spent the most time with and that he really enjoyed, actually he enjoyed two units, but this one, the sprinkler fitters. And when I was with him, he was cutting the pipes. He was measuring the pipes. He was fastening the pipes and gluing them.

He's a quiet student, but he was just having, you could tell that he was enjoying the work. Like he was smiling. Maybe the cameras were there, so that's why. But he was enjoying the work. Like he was smiling, maybe the cameras were there, so that's why, but he was enjoying the work. He also, you become a better version of yourself, I guess, because you have time management and you have to take care of yourself because construction isn't an easy job, per se. And so I was speaking with the site superintendent about Evandro, who said that Evandro has shown up on time. Evandro admitted to me that he was not always on time at school. But the shift started at 7am. And he was there at 7am. It ended at 3pm. He said

he would have stayed longer if he could. He just brightened up like this was what he wanted to do. So at the end of the day, he was offered a position with the sprinkler unit when he graduates. But Evandro really also enjoyed watching. He couldn't do the work, but watching the elevator mechanics. And he said he may go on to pursue that trade as well. And Caroline, I know you also spoke with some of the teachers who run this type of program. What did you hear from them? There's two teachers that run the program. One is Elvie Morrow. Elvie Morrow is the teacher who started the program. This was about two decades ago.

And Elvie is an affable teacher, really kind, can talk to you about the program, loves the program. He really feels like exposing kids to as much as possible. And I'm a believer, throw as much as you can at a student and then see what sticks, see what matters, right? So they have to experience and that's what experiential learning is all about. Like, get them out there, get them to try, get them to talk, even if they just talk to the workers. And he feels like we need to expose kids to the skill trades because there are jobs there, there's stability there, there's a good income there, there's a career path there. And so LV is a really big proponent of this program.

They're going to go back to school reinvigorized. It means something now, English, because I had to communicate with the workers on Sunday. I know what that means now. I better brush up on it. They asked me to measure something, and maybe what that means now. I better brush up on it. They asked me to measure something and maybe I wasn't exact. I better learn math and simple addition and multiplication and, you know, geometry. They got to know shapes. We'll be right back after this message.

Okay, so Ontario now has proposed a new idea to get kids into the trades. It seems to go a little further than other provinces. So, Caroline, what has Ontario proposed? I would call it the most radical proposal, but also the most controversial proposal. So Ontario has proposed that after grade 10, kids can leave high school to go on to full-time apprenticeship work. It was proposed last year. They're still in consultations. This is something that is not done

anywhere else in the country. You're removing kids from the high school building. What is unclear about this proposal is whether or if kids would get their high school diploma. Okay, so they could go do some trade work essentially after grade 10. So this is the question then, like, yeah, would they finish high school? Or how they would finish high school. It's unclear if these students would get a GED, which is a general education development, which is the equivalent of a adult high school diploma

that people get later in life, or if there's some kind of thing that they would work out with the school board so that kids can get their high school diploma or earn credits while they work in an apprenticeship program. So it's unclear sort of how this would work. And observers are really worried about this. They feel that, you know, not only is a high school diploma important

because a lot of jobs out there require a high school diploma, but there's something to be said about having kids in school until the end of grade 12 where they're learning really good sort of analytical, critical thinking skills. They're absorbing material that probably they would not have at a job site necessarily. So it's important to have sort of these kids in school until grade 12. Okay. I guess I just have like a really basic question about this, Caroline. Like, don't you need to finish high school legally in Canada? Like, isn't that just a requirement? I believe it's 18. So this would be removing students from school at the age of 16. So I'm unclear still, Manika, on how that would be worked out.

I guess the Ed Act would have to be changed or maybe these kids are technically still in school if the government somehow works with the school boards. What has the Ontario government said about why it's proposing this then? Housing. You know, you've heard the Ontario Premier speak about housing on countless occasions. As Canada and Ontario welcome more people, we need to build more homes of all types. Too many families are frozen out of the housing market. They're priced out of the dream of home ownership. We just, we need homes. Simple as that. Not mentioning.

And they said, you know, we have these high vacancy rates in the trades and we have nobody to fill these positions. So one of the driving forces is the labor market. So what they would do theoretically is there is about 100 skilled trades that require a grade 12 education. They would remove that and make it a grade 10 education. Okay. So, I mean, you talked a little bit about the criticisms, but I would imagine there's some pushback to this idea. There is, because I think among the education community, they would really love kids to be in school till grade 12. There's a lot of skills that you learn in school. You know, a lot of trades require math, for example.

And is a grade 10 math course enough? Or do you need higher levels of math? We spoke earlier about trades needing computer programming. You learn that in high school. You learn that in higher grades in high school. A trade is not only your hands-on work. You need to communicate with your coworkers. You need to communicate with your coworkers. You need to communicate with your employers.

Those are all skills that are developed in those teen years in high school. And observers in the education community feel those years, taking away those years would not be helpful for young people. Caroline, the students that you spoke with, how do they feel about finishing high school? Like, do they feel like it's still important? I asked all of them about this government proposal because I wanted to get their sense of things. And what I heard from each and every one of them

is that they need to graduate high school. They need a high school diploma. So even that kid you spoke about earlier, Evandro, even he who didn't really like high school, he still thinks it's important? Yep. He said to me, he's like, I need that high school diploma. I want that high school diploma. My parents want me to have it. And he didn't even give it a second thought. You know, when I asked him about it, he was pretty adamant that, yeah, I need to graduate high school. My parents were immigrants, so it'd be far hard to get here. So I feel like I owe them

the diploma at least, or that's the least I could do for them, I feel like. So, you know, even if this government goes ahead with this proposal, which I have no idea if they will, the students are telling me that that diploma is very important to them. So keeping all of this in mind, Caroline, I guess how should high schools be thinking about the structure of education and how to make sure, you know, all students can fit into it? I'll speak about Ontario where I am. Ontario moved to de-stream high school or the early years of high school. Streaming was a practice where kids were divided up into academic courses, which put them on a path for post-secondary, or applied hands-on courses. And so Ontario in 2020 announced that they would start de-streaming with grade nine,

grade nine math to start off with. And de-streaming was needed because what happened was when you streamed, it affected the vulnerable community. So, you know, we saw Indigenous students, Black students, special needs students all being put into applied courses where, you know, they were not afforded the same opportunities for a higher education than kids in the academic courses. So it was much needed. But I think what needs to happen now, and, you know, Evandro was a good example of that, is that kids need a bit of hands-on as well. We can't forget

that there is a group of kids that don't want to go to university, that don't want to go to college. They want a different path and we need to raise the skill trades. I think we need to tell students that there are these opportunities that are as good, that pay as well in many cases, and set them on a long-term career path.

And I think that line of thinking, it's starting to trickle in. Like you see that in L.V. Morrow's course. You see that with Promises trying to do this. But I think that thinking needs to change in the education sector. Yeah, I guess there's kind of two things to kind of reconcile here in a way. It's, you know, in Ontario, at least de-streaming, so we don't kind of pigeonhole students at grade nine for one track or the other. But at the same time, trying to give them tailored education is something that they're interested in, you know, whether that be academia or the trades. So I guess, I mean, this is a big question, Caroline, but yeah, how do we reconcile those two things? How do we make that work within the education system?

I think we have to remember that in education, we're giving kids opportunities, or we're showing them what the opportunities are. And there's a whole host of opportunities. It's not everybody going to university. You know, one of the things in education is that all our teachers went through the same system, which is not a bad thing. They all went to post-secondary, right? So they understand that path. They understand sort of what it takes to get there. And I think, you know, we need to educate our educators that there are different paths out there.

And there are paths that are as good as going off to university. So that thinking needs to change. Caroline, thank you so much for being here today. Thanks for having me. That's it for today. I'm Maina Karaman-Wilms. Our producers are Madeline White,

Cheryl Sutherland, and Rachel Levy-McLaughlin. David Crosby edits the show. Adrienne Chung is our senior producer, and Angela Pachenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you next week.