Thursday, September 12, 2024

Hitting the Mark

Construction Bootcamp, Lobby Day, and providing input to government legislative reforms highlight recent activities in Ontario

Guide Magazine

By Ian DeWaard, Ontario Director

In June, I had the privilege of delivering the second annual CLAC-OYAP scholarship award to a graduating high school student who augmented their co-op experience in the trades by participating in the Ontario Youth Apprenticeship Program (OYAP). This program allows students to get credit hours toward an apprenticeship while in high school.

Later that night, when 103 students crossed the stage to receive their diplomas, 24 were acknowledged for having participated in OYAP. Clearly, the message to young people inviting them to consider a life in the skilled trades is hitting the mark.

This summer, CLAC’s Construction Bootcamp was offered to two more cohorts: one to members of the First Nation community at Walpole Island and another at Hamilton District Christian High School. On its second day, that class was joined by MPP Patrice Barnes (pictured above, centre), who is the parliamentary assistant to Ontario’s minister of labour, immigration, and skills development. Shiloh Worthy (pictured back row, third from the right), a graduate of CLAC’s first-ever Bootcamp, joined that day to tell students about his journey to becoming an apprentice and to encourage them to stick to their training.

The highlight event of the last few months has been the second annual Ontario Healthcare Lobby Day. Fifteen members took 13 meetings with MPPs on March 4. We were acknowledged in the legislature and hosted a noon reception with an estimated 100 MPPs and their staff.

Our focus for the day was to highlight messages/proposals from our 2024 prebudget submission, with a particular emphasis on the inadequacy of mileage and travel time for homecare workers and the need for essential service bargaining for that group. We continue to push for WSIB reform so that retirement home workers receive workplace injury/illness insurance.

This spring, CLAC also met with Ministry of Labour staff to offer suggestions on how to build the sixth installment of their Working for Workers legislation, due this fall. In addition to the healthcare reform we’ve been lobbying for, CLAC also offered recommendations on how to enhance and protect worker democracy rights in Ontario’s Labour Relations Act.

In recent years, the province created Skilled Trades Ontario (STO) to manage and address Ontario’s apprenticeship system. This organization replaced the College of Trades.

We’ve been actively engaged with them, and recently our own Sarah Harris (CLAC Jobs, Ontario) was appointed to STO’s Industry Advisory Committee, where she’ll have the opportunity to offer CLAC’s advice for the plans and programs being developed by STO.

Hitting the Mark

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