Yesterday’s announcement by the NDP that they would pour more money into skills training was short on specifics and had little in real action to get more workers certified.
The reality is that throwing more money at the system and promising to hire more bureaucrats to run it will do nothing to connect young people with training. In fact, a return to the old training system that existed under the last NDP government would actually end up increasing skills shortages.
Almost 9,000 workers earned their certification in 2012. That’s more than double the 3,600 who graduated back in 2000-01.
The NDP is focusing on the wrong numbers. Graduation rates have been the same 40% range for more than a decade. But with more people in the training system now, we’re graduating record numbers of skilled workers.
The system isn’t broken – unless the NDP gets their hand on it.
