Six billion dollars is being spent getting people into the trades. Almost nothing is being spent making it somewhere worth staying. We work on the second part.
Canada has committed $6 billion CAD over five years to recruit, train and certify 80,000 to 100,000 new Red Seal trades workers. In Alberta, another $2.1 million was announced in August for apprenticeship training.
That money exists because people do not want these jobs. Not because the pay is bad. Because the trades read as unpolished and as a dead end, so a young person picks something that sounds more like a career. Employers cannot fill the roles, so they hire from overseas, where people arrive already refined.
Look at where the six billion goes and it is all front door. Recruitment, certification, a completion bonus, a weekly top up during technical training. Not one line of it is about whether a person can hold a conversation with a foreman, lead a crew, be trusted with a client, or see a path that ends somewhere other than their body giving out.
You can spend six billion dollars getting people through the front door and still not give them a reason to stay in the building.
Why the shortage does not closeMake the skilled trades a career people choose on purpose and grow inside, by building the human side of it that nobody is funding.
Not technical training. There is six billion dollars of that. We work on communication, leading people, handling clients and conflict, and seeing where a trade can actually go. A tradesperson who can supervise, estimate or run a business has somewhere to be at forty five. One who cannot has only the tools.
SkillUp Trades is a social enterprise. It is built to sustain itself, and it is judged on what happens to the people who come through it.
One mission, three groups, because the gap shows up differently for each.
Women who are one of very few on their site. Newcomers whose trade skill is real but whose read on a Canadian workplace is not. Black tradespeople with nobody ahead of them to follow. Furthest from the polish, first to be passed over.
Any background, any trade. Good with their hands, capable of far more, and nobody has ever shown them the rest of it. The ones who make it out do not do it because they were better on the tools.
They are not marginalized. They just do not want it, because nobody has shown them a version of it worth wanting. This is the one that goes at the reason six billion dollars was needed in the first place.
Black Professionals Canada received funding under the federal Supporting Black Canadian Communities Initiative, and engaged SkillUp Trades to build and deliver the mentorship side of it.
We designed the culturally grounded mentorship strategy and trained the mentors to carry it. The mentors work with Black offenders and Black ex offenders on career objectives, entrepreneurship, Black identity, and justice awareness and prevention.
That is where the method comes from, and it is why we know this is not a technical problem.
We brought SkillUp Trades in to build the mentorship side of our SBCCI programme. Mentorship is what we do, but this was harder ground. We needed a culturally grounded strategy for working with Black offenders and ex offenders, and mentors actually equipped to sit with someone and talk about career, entrepreneurship, Black identity and justice. That is what they designed and delivered, and our mentors came out of it ready for the room.
Charles Ifechi, Founder and Executive Director, Black Professionals CanadaLed by Bukky Wonda, who runs international recruitment for Canadian employers and designed and delivered the SBCCI mentorship training.
Registered non-profit. Mentorship, placement and career development for Black professionals, students and newcomers across Canada. Holder of the SBCCI funding that SkillUp Trades was engaged under.
Employers who want a deeper bench of people ready to step up. Community organizations who want to run this with us. Tradespeople who want more than the tools.
info@skilluptrades.com