What Is The College of Trades?

Anyone interested in how costly government bureaucracies are created need look no further than the Province of Ontario. Most tax payers are already familiar with some of the more highly publicized program and capital project spending failures of the McGuinty government such as the billion dollar Green Energy plan, the billion dollar gas plant shutdown leading into the last election and the decade’s long salary and benefit increases that have created such a huge sense of entitlement amongst public sector unions of every stripe. But the general public hasn’t heard much about the massive growth in bureaucracies including the new College of Trades. Whenever we hear the term ‘College’ we naturally think about some type of educational institution where new knowledge or skills can be acquired to broaden our horizons in the workplace. But in this case the ‘College’ doesn’t hold classes or teach courses, its’ sole purpose is to extract money from the pockets of tradesmen and women across Ontario to fund yet another bureaucracy. Invoices will start going out in January 2013 requiring payment from hardworking men and women for nothing more than the privilege of working in Ontario – that’s it. Nothing will be received for payment other than a receipt. Before describing how this new ‘tax’ will be implemented some background information would be helpful. Firstly, it is important to understand that Ontario already has the most complicated trades system of all Canadian provinces. There are a total of 157 different trades in Ontario with 22 classified as ‘compulsory’ and the remainder as ‘voluntary’. Compulsory means that the trade must be ‘certified’ thereby requiring formal recognition by the Ministry of Colleges and Trades. In order to achieve certification, candidates must graduate through an apprenticeship program that includes on the job training as well as classroom study. A voluntary trade is one that can be learned on the job through experience, the way all tradesmen used to learn their craft. Lastly, there are provisions for some voluntary trades to take training to achieve certification but not for others. One of the biggest roadblocks to entering the apprenticeship program is simply finding a company that is willing to undertake the necessary training. With most compulsory trades, Ontario requires the presence of at least three fully qualified journeymen for each apprentice on a job site. Compare this to other provinces where the ratio is one to one and in some cases there can even be more apprentices than journeymen on a job site. This is the main reason why Ontario is falling further behind other provinces. The vast majority of Ontario’s trades are comprised of small and medium sized companies that simply cannot meet the ratio requirements. The reason that the current ratios have been retained appears to be to satisfy unions whose objective is to keep the status quo where there are always fewer journeymen than the market requires so that demand and hourly rates can be kept high. Instead of making some simple changes to the apprenticeship system that industry has been requesting for years, the Ontario government has opted to create a new union bureaucracy called the College of Trades. The College has set up a ‘Trade Board’ consisting of 8 people from across the Province for each of the 157 trades. These Boards must meet on a regular basis to discuss issues that arise regarding their Trade. This means that the College will operate with 1256 staff directly related to the Trade Boards, plus full time staff to monitor each trade group and assist the Trade Boards in their meetings, plus an untold number of Executive Board members. Each will be reimbursed for expenses covering all travel, accommodation, meals and incidentals plus a per diem of between $200 and $400 per meeting. In 2012 the Government of Ontario budgeted $24 million for the College and in 2013 this increased to $32 million. Once the College becomes fully operational there will be a need for significant numbers of enforcement and industry liaison personnel, and so the bureaucracy will continue to expand. It is important to stress that no new service or product will be produced by the College, it will simply collect money from one group of workers in Ontario called trades and use it to pay another group employed by the College There are an estimated 427,000 compulsory certified Trades in Ontario who must now pay a $120 annual fee and of these, 163,000 are directly employed in the construction sector. New trades needing to be certified will now pay a $150 examination fee. The College proposed that employers should also pay a substantial fee however public opinion against this rapidly escalated and so the initiative has been temporarily dropped. Students enrolled in an apprenticeship program will pay a $60 annual fee. The list goes on and on. There are two important lessons to be learned from the College of Trades. Firstly, once bureaucracies are created, they can rapidly spin out of control, consuming an ever increasing amount of taxpayer’s money and inventing new classifications of jobs to be filled that provide no needed service or product. The second lesson is that Ontario’s apprenticeship system is an overly complex and obsolete relic that must be completely scrapped along with the College of Trades so that we can develop a modern educational program that is easily understood and better serves Ontario residents interested in entering the skilled trades sector.