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Demand for Trade Work Has Never Been Higher. Why Is It Impossible to Find a Job?

Ontario needs 100,000 new construction workers by 2030, but apprentices are struggling to get certified

Devin Gera grew up fixing things. He loved motocross, so the twenty-four-year-old was used to repairing machinery from an early age.

Ontario needs 100,000 new construction workers by the end of the decade

Factors like low wages, frustrating administrative processes, and unsteady work often discourage apprentices from completing training

Provincial funds set aside for skills development has been recklessly allocated, but federal support appears promising

After a stint studying to be an automotive technician at his high school in Hamilton, Ontario, Gera set his sights on the manufacturing engineering technician program at Mohawk College. He would be a millwright, like his father and grandfather.

He graduated last year, joined a large company, and finished 8,000 hours of mandatory apprenticeship training. It was time to write his certification test with Skilled Trades Ontario (STO), the provincial agency established in 2022. Like many, he did not pass on his first try. On his second attempt, he received a notice that he had failed again, with a grade of 1 percent.

When he called STO, he says, they told him the third-party contractor that handles the exams had lost his test paper. Because it was impossible to input a score of zero into the system, someone had logged a grade of 1 percent and called it a day, he recalls the representative explaining. He would not be getting a refund. Gera was forced to take the test a third time—shelling out another $169.50—and finally passed with his certification after months of trying.

Gera is one of an untold number of workers navigating a frustrating administrative process, financial pressures, and difficulty finding employers willing to take them on as apprentices. Now in his first year as a certified millwright, Gera says the path to get there was incredibly frustrating. “It’s a great job and everything,” he says. “I just don’t think the government’s making it any easier for people to get in.”

STO was created, in part, to streamline the training and certification requirements for more than 140 trade jobs. A month after Gera wrote his final exam, Sudbury New Democratic Party labour critic Jamie West called on the province to address concerns with the third-party contractor responsible for testing. With only two testing centres in Northern Ontario, he warned, prospective workers were facing months-long delays, with little recourse........

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