Tuesday, October 14, 2025

The Joy and Gift of Skills

Pursuing multiple tickets in the skilled trades can open up employment opportunities and contribute to Canada’s economic prosperity.

Guide Magazine

By Wayne Prins, Executive Director

Some of you may have been as fortunate as I was growing up with a mom who was also a nurse. No matter the severity of the cut, bump, burn, or bruise, Mom always responded with a calm competence that made us kids feel safe and cared for.

Although Mom has long retired from nursing, I’ve always been immensely proud of the breadth of her nursing knowledge and experience. Her range of nursing skills come to mind when I think of a new initiative CLAC is undertaking related to members who are skilled tradespeople.

Achieving a journeyperson ticket in any trade is an impressive achievement in and of itself. That ticket represents years of work experience, many months of classroom learning, and demonstrated competence both in the field and in the exam room.

Once you’ve achieved a journeyperson credential, each trade offers a vast range of applications, specialties, and additional certifications. For example, just as a nurse can specialize in trauma, pediatrics, geriatrics, ICU, oncology, or many dozens of other areas of medicine, an electrician can specialize in residential, industrial, control systems, power systems, or many dozens of other areas of electrical work. Likewise, a welder can specialize in structural, pressure, up hand, down hand, MIG, TIG, aluminum, alloys, or dozens of other types of welding. And the same is true for every other trade. This is why a career in the trades can be so exciting and rewarding.

There is another way of expanding the range of opportunities for skilled tradespeople: dual or multiticketing. Simply put, multiticketing is when a journeyperson in a given trade pursues an additional journeyperson ticket in one or more other trades.

There are several advantages for a skilled tradesperson to pursue multiple tickets. First, it expands the range of skills you bring to the marketplace, which makes you more employable and extends the amount of time you can contribute and participate on any given job site. Second, it expands the range of tasks you perform day to day, which may make your workdays more engaging and enjoyable.

Third, more and more employers are starting to incentivize multiticketing by paying premiums for those who possess more than one ticket in applicable trades. This is done in recognition of the additional value such tradespeople bring to the job site.

And finally, we believe supporting individuals through the acquisition of additional tickets will contribute to Canada’s economic prosperity by helping to address a severe and worsening skilled labour shortage. It’s not necessarily a silver bullet for this shortage, but if we can support as many tradespeople as are interested in pursuing multiple tickets, we believe this will have a meaningful impact on addressing the economic cost of our current and future skilled labour shortage.

Since CLAC is a union that represents all trades under one collective agreement, we are perfectly positioned to support members in life-long learning—developing new skills, achieving new tickets, advancing their careers in remarkable ways, and helping to address the skilled labour shortage that is one of Canada’s greatest economic bottlenecks.

The Joy and Gift of Skills

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