Official Hansard
Mr. Speaker, I would just like to start off by saying I will be sharing my time with the member for Richmond—Arthabaska. It is with great honour that I rise in the House to speak on behalf of the hard-working folks of Elmwood—Transcona. My speech today will centre on the spring economic statement, with a specific focus on the updates regarding trades and labour. Before becoming a member of Parliament, I worked as a construction electrician. My last day on a ladder was actually March 21, 2025, just two days before the election was called, and I am still the sitting vice-president of my local, IBEW Local 2085 in Winnipeg. When I reviewed the spring economic update, I was thankful to see some efforts that would benefit Red Seal tradespeople through a plan to recruit and train 80,000 to 100,000 new Red Seal skilled trade workers by 2030, with a 50% reduction in time. To do this, the Liberal government wants to give Red Seal tradespeople a national registered apprenticeship number. However, the major problem that would arise is that different jurisdictions have different rules in place that would need to be addressed before any interprovincial harmonization could take place. Furthermore, following the implementation of this plan, the Liberal government wants to have more training and exams be online, but as we learned during COVID, online training is not really effective for the trades. Trades training requires real-life scenarios and hands-on instruction. These critical classes must continue to be taught in person so apprentices can receive training in real-world environments and so they can become comfortable with the powerful equipment they will be operating. Right off the bat, the online testing plan and secure credentials would have adverse effects on trade workers who are trained under the current system. As I said, different jurisdictions have different certification processes and training requirements. According to the Liberal government, its goal is to build one Canadian economy instead of 13. The unintended consequence of this is that a national registered apprenticeship number would force a top-down standardized system that would not have automatic buy-in from the provinces. Extensive consultation would be required with all the provinces to get their buy-in on a national apprenticeship system. It is a bit of a “cart before the horse” thing. Furthermore, several active federal apprenticeship grants were shut down by the current Liberal government without justification. Just one year ago, in 2025, the apprenticeship incentive grant, the apprenticeship incentive grant for women, and the apprenticeship completion grant were all shut down. In addition, in 2024, the apprenticeship service program was shut down. All these programs, which were designed to support apprentices through their education, were very important to young Canadians looking to break into the trades. They were supports I relied on when I was an apprentice, yet they were all closed by the Liberal government. Now the Liberal government has decided to enact the build Canada apprenticeship service, with a new announcement of the same apprenticeship grant it cancelled just one year ago. The government is essentially trying to take credit for creating a program exactly the same as the one it shut down. While the Liberals are patting themselves on the back, many apprentices who relied on that funding left their journey in the Canadian trades because the government turned its back on them. The cuts undoubtedly had significant impacts on apprentices who were already in the training program. In a 2025 article, the Progressive Contractors Association of Canada pleaded for the government not to abandon apprenticeship supports, explaining that 70% of apprentices used the original apprenticeship incentive grant to cover the cost of training expenses such as tools, and 32% of apprentices used part of the grant for general living costs. We need to support Canadians who are eager to build. The last thing the Liberal government should be doing is turning its back on them. In 2024, I read a Global News article titled, “Manitoba stakeholders concerned as federal government tosses apprenticeship grants”. This article predicted the very concerns that trade workers had with the government’s decision to cut the apprenticeship grants. Darryl Harrison, director of stakeholder engagement with the Winnipeg Construction Association, was interviewed in the same article and said, “the removal of this grant seems like a backward step to us.” Many apprentices counted on receiving the grant from the government and not needing to get a loan. Curtis Haines, an electrical apprentice at the time, stated that losing the apprenticeship incentive grant may have been a deal breaker for many of his peers and colleagues who had other financial responsibilities such as bills and young families. When I started in the electrical trade, I was a late bloomer in the trade, with small children. I needed every dollar of support I could get. Those grants helped me make ends meet, and many of my classmates at the time relied on those same supports. Another piece of worker policy in the spring economic update that I want to address is the Liberal government’s promise to quicken the process of training new Red Seal skilled trade workers by 50%. Rushing the training of Red Seal trade workers can have negative impacts on their education, especially when it comes to their safety training. It is clear to me that the Liberals want to treat workers as inputs on a spreadsheet, to get workers certified as quickly as possible so they can get each unit under way, regardless of the risk. In reality, it is important for apprentices to have the quality education and training that prepares them for the job site. Job sites can often be a dangerous workplace. Another major issue that the spring economic update fails to mention is that there has not been any additional funding for seats in post-secondary institutions that provide training. For example, in Manitoba, Red River College Polytechnic, a post-secondary institution offering many skilled trades programs, has been forced to temporarily shut down certain programs because of inconsistent messaging around support from the federal government On top of program cancellations, post-secondary institutions have had to reduce seat capacity and cut the number of students accepted into the programs. Many instructors have been laid off due to course cancellations. Many programs have waiting lists but cannot expand capacity because the spring economic statement expanded funding to only a portion of the training journey of an apprentice. Red River College Polytechnic is hardly the only one. Many trades colleges across Canada have faced similar issues. The reality is that there seems to be a disconnect between what the Liberal government plans on doing and the situation we are currently facing on the ground. The Liberals are claiming that they want to add a significant number of new Red Seal trained trade workers, yet educational institutions no longer have the resources nor the capacity to welcome new students. The Liberals have no plan to address these shortages, and the longer they continue to ignore what is happening on the ground, the more unrealistic their targets will become. This sounds familiar. Their plan also fails to explain how they will make sure that skilled trade workers will continue having good-paying and reliable jobs available to them in Canada. In the spring economic update, the Liberal Party claims that, with the team Canada strong plan, they would be creating clear pathways for young Canadians to get into good jobs. They are quite sure that these job opportunities will arise, yet they are simply ignoring the fact that, according to StatsCan, there are 207,000 unemployed Canadians in the trades right now. How can Canadian workers have faith in the system when the system is not interested in looking out for them? The unfortunate reality is that after we worked with the Liberals to pass Bill C-5 nearly one year ago, giving them sweeping infrastructure powers with the development of the Major Projects Office, nothing has come of it. It is a shame that we are not building in this country. After 11 years of inaction, we have simply fallen behind globally. For people who are not familiar with the trades, I will explain that apprenticeship training can be broken down into two main sections: technical training in the classroom and field hours on the job site. Field hours are the most important part of any apprenticeship training in the trades, and without adequate field hours, an apprentice will not secure their Red Seal certification. Simply put, apprentices need jobs in order to continue building infrastructure in Canada. With the lack of jobs, apprentices are having greater difficulty completing their training. The Liberals can throw all the money at training and programs that they want to. However, if we want to truly support the workers of tomorrow, we need to get trades jobs flowing in Canada. The Liberals should be focusing on finding solutions to the problems they have ignored over the last decade. It is not enough to just encourage young Canadians who are looking to get into the trades as a possible future to get certified, only to find out that they will not be able to find job opportunities. The road back from this mess starts with support for trades colleges, certainty that apprentice funding remains constant, a clear promise to never cut trades funding again, and a push to get major projects going and to get jobs flowing back into Canada.
