Time to force corporations to invest in labour

Re: “Canada to welcome immigrants with trades; Points system will change, says Kenney,” The Jour

nal, Jan. 30. Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney is poised to make changes to the Immigration Act to allow tradespeople from other countries easier access to Canada.

The corporate community is complaining loudly that there are not enough skilled people to fill the labour needs of Canada. I find it interesting that at no time has anyone asked these corporate leaders how many apprentices are on their payrolls.

Sadly, the answer is very few or zero.

Canada has an incredible apprenticeship program that is being underutilized because there are corporations that refuse to invest in training the labour pool that serves them.

The North American corporate sector, as a whole, is myopic in its approach to training and education. Corporations simply don’t want anything to do with training. It is easier and cheaper to hire or steal skilled workers from other areas. And as we are now witnessing, there is a shortage of trained tradespeople. To combat that, these industry leaders propose to beg, borrow or steal tradespeople from other countries where the training is subpar to Canada.

When are governments going to make these industry leaders more accountable for their lack of vision and understanding?

When are we going to ask the difficult questions of the corporate sector and force them to explain why they refuse to train their labour pool?

Supplying tax breaks is not the answer, as the corporate sector already receives preferential treatment. Laziness is just an excuse.

Robert Wereley, Sherwood Park