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Construction Seats

Carlton Trail College receives roughly $300K in provincial funding for pre-apprenticeship training

Jul 10, 2023 | 4:06 PM

The Government of Saskatchewan is providing $2.5 million for construction-related pre-apprenticeship training, which will add more than 200 seats in targeted skills training programs.

Roughly $300,000 of that funding will be going to Carlton Trail College (CTC), to increase their available seats by 60.

“With the the pre apprenticeship expansion for training seats in the province, we have approximately 60 seats of new training seats over the next two years in the area of skilled trades,” explained Deanna Gaetz, CTC’s business and skills training director. “That gives us the ability to add some extra trades training to our program plan.”

This will correspond directly with the expansion to their trades facility in Humboldt that they are anticipating being able to begin training there for the 2024/25 academic year.

The trade areas that CTC is providing training in are electricians, welding, carpentry, heavy equipment operators, construction trades labour, and plumbing, in the next couple of years.

For the time being, they will be able to utilize their existing facilities (throughout the region) to cover some of the programs, while they await the completion of their expansion.

The college hopes to begin construction later this summer (around August), and is optimistic that by later next spring it will be complete.

“Some of our programs, we do fill to capacity, so we have waitlists for a few of our trades programs. This gives us the ability to fill the programs and allow people to get their training done and out into the workforce that much quicker, instead of having to wait for the next year or whenever it may be offered in a different location,” Gaetz added.

According to the provincial government, Saskatchewan’s post-secondary trades training system is currently producing sufficient supply to support the ongoing replacement of workers in the construction sector.

However, investments to bolster the number of training seats for skilled trades are needed to keep pace with the significant number of infrastructure projects underway in the province.

This new funding, provided to training institutions across the province, is meant to ensure interested learners can access this programming and start on a path to a meaningful career.

“We do have a lot of employment opportunities in the area of the trades, and of course, labour shortages within our region. We were kind of anticipating looking at increasing our trades training seats anyways, so this definitely helped out,” Gaetz told northeastNOW.

“We are able then to help our local employers of the business and industry within the region meet their employment needs by getting skilled workers out into the workforce a little bit quicker.”

The Government of Saskatchewan plans to continue to provide programs, services and innovations for job seekers and employers, in hopes of advancing progress toward Saskatchewan’s Growth Plan goals of 1.4 million people and 100,000 new jobs by 2030.

The province said they are focused on working with employers and job seekers to ensure they can recruit, train and retain the labour force Saskatchewan needs to support its growing economy.

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