The Nova Scotia government wants to stem the flow of welders, carpenters, electricians and other skilled tradespeople leaving the province. The government is hoping industry will help, and how such a private/public partnership could work is spelled out in a recent discussion paper from the provincial Department of Labour and Advanced Education.

According to that paper, the answer lies in the formation of a new agency, spearheaded by industry and employers, that would encourage more firms to hire apprentices that match the needs of each trade, clarify out-of-province hours for apprentice credit and help more apprentices complete their training.

The government has high hopes for its apprenticeship agency, to be launched this year. Many people inside and outside the government believe something needs to be done – and quickly. The lure of better-paying jobs (often more than double what skilled workers could earn in Nova Scotia) and greater opportunity for any employment lead about 3,500 people (including many tradespeople) to leave this province each year. Many more make a regular commute, usually to and from Alberta. In the building trades, for example, about 15% of skilled tradespeople are commuters.

Industry insiders often debunk the belief that Nova Scotia has a skills shortage. The problem is not in training too few people, but in keeping the ones we do have here. Finding opportunities for workers to complete their apprenticeships in the province has proven elusive, for example, and there are issues (now being ironed out) that make getting credit for apprenticeship completion outside the province difficult.

The success of the proposed new agency, the government contends, lies in giving industry a greater voice in apprenticeship matters. This will be achieved, we’re told, through industry representation at the agency level. And, the Department of Labour and Advanced Education has promised, the result will be an industry-led and industry-driven system with greater employer participation.

That promise is not without merit. Nova Scotia Business Inc. (NSBI), the province’s business-development agency, is led by the private sector. It has been successful in attracting new investment, including building a financial services sector that boasts global players in hedge fund administration.

NSBI says the key to its success is the involvement of business at both the decision-making and vision-making levels. Indeed, NSBI has approached business issues from a non-government stance before and has taken calculated risks. Many of those have paid off for the province.

Now, it’s a question of whether that model will work in another area. It well might. The government’s discussion paper proposes a board of directors supported by trade advisory committees to help the system be more responsive to the labour needs of each trade. In some ways, though, the proposal is premature – consultation with industry has not yet occurred.

Once it has, success will depend on the government acting on what it learns from industry and not simply moving ahead on its own, discussion paper in hand. IE

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