Fill a growing need for skilled, trained workers.
Canada’s growing demand for skilled trade and apprenticeship workers was addressed by the council through a three-year national Trades and Apprenticeship Project.
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Build strong Aboriginal and private sector partnerships.
Workforce Connex was a series of national forums that helped resolve regional issues and barriers to inclusion that opened up the potential to effectively train, recruit and retain an Aboriginal workforce. See this section for forum reports and a video library of the Ontario Workforce Connex forum.
Support for Aboriginal trade sector opportunities.
Since its inception in 2001, the Alberta Aboriginal Apprenticeship Project (AAAP) has registered 307 candidates for apprenticeship training. The most common trades selected were electrician, welder, heavy equipment technician, plumber and ironworker, although, in total, apprentices were enrolled in 25 different trades. Women continued to be attracted to the trades, accounting for more than 19 per cent of registrations.
In addition to providing support to both apprentices and employers, the AAAP also promotes awareness about trade sector opportunities in various provinces and, as a result, adaptations of this model are now being initiated in other parts of Canada.
From the onset of the project, AHRC has provided accounting and project management support to the AAAP, while actively promoting this model to help other regions advance Aboriginal apprentices through the success of the Alberta project. The council will continue to provide administrative support to the project for the 2007/2008 year. Promotional support will continue through the council’s web site and other trades and apprenticeship initiatives.
The project was initiated in March 2000 to nurture strategic partnerships between Manitoba business and Aboriginal communities to create employment of Aboriginal people in the province. A first in Canada, this two-year pilot project was custom designed to assist Manitoba businesses to understand the benefits and business case of Aboriginal human resource strategies.
The project’s aims were to:
Council partners included the Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce, Business Council of Manitoba (BCM) and Manitoba Education and Training.
In the INROADS project, we worked with Aboriginal organizations and five national companies to develop a long-term approach to mentoring post-secondary Aboriginal students. Contributing corporate sponsors to this project were Rawlco Radio Inc., HSBC Bank, SaskTel, Procter and Gamble and the Bank of Montreal.
The INROADS concept is a transfer of a successful American idea applied for the first time to Canadian Aboriginal needs. INROADS was first established to identify interested, capable high school, college and university students to pursue business, engineering, technical and allied health care careers.
Our role in this initiative was to provide management support and document the template with the objective of encouraging other INROADS projects across Canada.
Our partnership with the Canadian Trucking Human Resources Council (CTHRC) was designed to organize two roundtables with representatives from Aboriginal employment centres (Aboriginal Human Resources Agreement holders) in Ontario and Alberta. Roundtable discussions were geared at designing innovative methods for Aboriginal employment centres to use the newly developed Occupational Standards for the trucking industry and the CTHRC essential skills strategy to help advance the recruitment of Aboriginal people as professional truck drivers.
» Trucking Sector Essential Skills Roundtable Report (May 5 & 19, 2004)
» Visit the CTHRC web site
There has historically been a strong Aboriginal presence within the ironworker trade. Not only do ironworkers earn a good wage, but the pride they show in their work has been evident since the Canadian Pacific Railway project was started in 1886 to build a bridge across the St. Lawrence Seaway.
With this history in ironwork apparent, and to help fill Canada’s skilled trades shortage, we partnered with the Construction Sector Council to launch an initiative to motivate Aboriginal youth to become ironworkers. The program provides Aboriginal people with mentors and role models and a clear picture of the opportunities within the trade.
