From the equality of rights springs identity of our highest interests; you cannot subvert your neighbor's rights without striking a dangerous blow at your own. Carl Schurz

Thursday, March 21, 2013

Q: When is a skills training program not a skills training program

A: When it is designed by the Conservatives


So let me get this straight, the Conservatives will grant you up to $5,000 for skills training but only if employers and the provinces agree to match. Yeah that outta work just dandy

If employers were interested in investing in skills training they would be doing so already which we all know they are not,  as for the provinces they are broke and not interested in investing in new programs especially one where the feds contribution will come from funds clawed back from them.

Lets say for the sake of argument this program does magically come together, far from turning over responsibility to employers thus reducing red tape and government interference it will as is always in the world of Con doublespeak do the exact opposite.

Say you somehow convince an employer to fund your training, yeah I know but we're spitballing here remember, you would then have to convince the province to match, once you've done that then you would have to do the same with the feds. This can only lead to a massive bureaucracy and thus bigger government.

Now continuing to assume this somehow all comes together there still needs to  be negotiations with the provinces, these aren't slated to begin til next year at the earliest. So even if the Cons pull off the impossible there will be no federal funds for skills training for at least a year if not longer.

Tom Mulcair was wrong when he called this merely a re-branding exercise meant only to put the maple leaf on the cheques. It is much worse than that, it is a program designed to fail, one designed to give the impression of action where there is none. Something this government is expert at.




6 comments:

  1. Sounds like AdScam deal to me. Tons of $ going out the door with no means to ensure that it is actually working. How do we know that temporary foreign workers or foreign student won't be the recipients and not Canadians.

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    1. The only thing I trust the Harper Conservatives to do is the wrong thing

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  2. Kev, the sops to business in this budget are quite striking. The point you make about how, if business were interested in investing in jobs' training they would do so is also true of the speeded up depreciation allowances for equipment and financial incentives for innovation and new equipment acquisition in this budget. All this for a group that collectively is sitting on about $600 billion dollars!

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    1. Exactly Lorne and as Walkom put it this afternoon Why train when you can simply import cheap labour, which is just what happened when a Guelph based auto parts maker did when they recently imported 50 Filipino workers. Cuz we all know there is a shortage of skilled unemployed auto workers in southern Ontario

      Jim Flaherty’s dirty little job-training secret

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  3. The prospects of this becoming a cheap labour slush fund are great. $15,000 would be a 80-90% (variance in provincial minimum hourly wage) subsidy for a minimum wage on-the-job training position.

    Certified apprenticeship programs run for at least 4 years for skilled trades so I have no idea how this new grant program fits in. The current program provides apprentices up to $4000 over 4 years to offset in-class tuition, travel and tools. Employers get to claim a tax credit. So how does this new scheme fit in and improve the outcomes of creating a skilled labour force?

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    1. I'm not sure it fits in anywhere, perhaps I've become too cynical but I believe this is nothing but cover for the Cons claw back of provincial training funds.

      They fully expect the provinces to balk at participating or at the very least the hope to rag the puck til after the next election

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