We welcomed some tradesmen to our home this week. I say welcomed, because a few weeks ago we were told the earliest we could expect a service visit for our air conditioner was August. Really? We asked to have our request go to a waiting list. Someone cancelled and our appointment was moved up. While he was here with a young assistant, I asked the more senior technician, “Why such a delay?”
“Company’s having trouble hiring people,” he said. “That’s why I have an assistant with me. He’s training on the job.”
Three years ago, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) described this predicament as an economy with “underappreciated” work. A CFIB report found that small Canadian firms lost $38 billion in business opportunities because of labour shortages, particularly in the construction sector. Another recent report from Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) blames part of the problem on retiring people in the trades; ESDC said that nearly a quarter (or 700,000) of the four million trades workers in Canada will retire by the year 2030.
Last year, during an interview on CBC radio, Mandy Rennehan, a construction CEO in Burlington, Ont., predicted that businesses would soon see skyrocketing rates for construction and maintenance because of the shortage of skilled workers.
“It used to be 70 or 80 bucks for somebody to come to your house just to look at your dishwasher,” Rennehan said. “Now you’re going to pay double that.”
I think Rennehan hit the nail on the head, however, when he criticized western societies for exalting university education and knowledge work over apprenticeship and working with one’s hands; he added that the problem gets exacerbated by employers not willing to take on someone with little or no experience, and by governments that don’t see the value in funding community colleges with trades-based courses.
One sign of things going in the wrong direction is the Doug Ford budget. Last month, Peter Bethlanfalvy’s budget announced a cut in post-secondary school funding across Ontario – from $14.2 billion to $13 billion. He’s ramping up the funding of science, technology, engineering and math teaching at Ontario colleges and universities.
At the same time community colleges, such as Centennial where I taught for 18 years, are chopping underfunded programs for electronics workers, environmental techs and construction project managers. How does the Ford government expect to build affordable housing or to develop the Ring of Fire resources of the province without skilled labour?
But it’s not just carpenters, plumbers and electricians who are the underappreciated; it’s also people in goods and services. The latest view of the restaurant workplace, for example, reflects a similar problem.
Restaurants Canada published a survey last year that the industry had over 78,000 job openings, but couldn’t attract servers and chefs to fill the positions. The result is not at all appealing – labour costs will increase up to 15 per cent and patrons will absorb the additional cost.
Nearly 150 years ago, John A. Macdonald envisioned and built the Canadian Pacific Railway to connect the country from sea to sea. During the Second World War, Mackenzie King spearheaded a Commonwealth air training plan whose postwar legacy was Trans-Canada Airlines (later Air Canada).
True, in the case of the CPR (built in the 1880s), the so-called “national dream” was achieved on the backs of abused and head-taxed immigrants. But who can argue that the enduring ties that bind this nation from its birth were not delivered by the hands of dedicated workers?
Finally, here’s a trend that today’s politicians, corporations and educators should heed. Current demographic models show that Gen Zs – those young people born between the mid-1990s and 2012 and those at the heart of today’s consuming, taxpaying and voting society – show a greater interest in pursuing the trades than attending university. Known as “the toolbelt generation” they are gravitating to apprenticeships not lecture halls.
Which brings me back to the two air conditioner tradesmen at our house this week; as they were leaving, I asked the younger assistant, “Why so quiet?”
“On probation,” he said. “Couple of weeks to go.”
In a way, Canada’s future is very much on probation. Until the country’s planners actually start to support and fund apprenticeship programs, trades schools and applied post-secondary institutions, all those predictions of Canada leading the G7 economies are just pie-in-the-sky.
We don’t need more video gamers, engineers and bankers. We need a nation of new builders.