With Alberta seeing unprecedented demand for new homes, the province is increasing its investment in the skilled trades.
This month, Alberta announced it would be investing $117 million in trade apprenticeship programs in 2024-2025, up from $93 million last year. The investment includes $78 million to create 3,200 new trade apprenticeship seats at 11 colleges and technical schools.
“By encouraging Albertans to choose apprenticeship programs in Alberta, we can ensure that more skilled tradespeople are pursuing an education and career close to home,” Rajan Sawhney, Alberta’s minister of advanced education, told Canadian Affairs in an email.
Shane Wenzel, a Calgary-based home builder who has worked in the construction industry for nearly 40 years, says the investment is needed to fill labour shortages in critical areas like construction, plumbing and electrical work.
“We’re very challenged with the skilled trades right now because there’s a limited amount [of qualified tradespeople] in Canada, let alone in Alberta,” he said.
But Wenzel says the province should also be focused on training and accrediting workers to fill non-apprenticeship roles — such as drywalling and painting — that are critical to completing new builds as well.
A growing population
Like much of the country, Alberta is seeing strong demand for new homes. In the first eight months of the year, there were about 30,000 new housing starts — a 44 per cent increase from the previous year.
Demand is being fuelled by a population boom driven by international and interprovincial migration, Canadian Affairs reported in June. The province’s population grew 4.4 per cent in 2023, thanks to strong private sector job growth and a relatively affordable housing market.
The growing population has created an acute need for people to move through trades programs and onto construction sites as quickly as possible, Wenzel says.
“It’s a question of can we graduate any more, especially with a population that’s growing.”
The Northern Alberta Institute of Technology, a polytechnic and applied sciences school in Edmonton, has seen a surge of interest in its trade apprenticeship programs, says Matt Lindberg, the college’s dean of construction and building sciences.
The college’s largest apprenticeship programs — including those to train electricians, plumbers, automotive technicians and welders — are “continuing to see application pressures that require significant growth to keep up with apprenticeship demand,” Lindberg said in an emailed statement.
“With this increased financial support from the province and the Ministry of Advanced Education, we have grown the number of seats being offered in 2024/2025 by more than 14 per cent over last year’s numbers and anticipate over 10,000 seats being made available across 27 apprenticeship programs,” he said.
The province is also taking steps to expand the pipeline of young people choosing apprenticeship programs after high school.
Alberta administers a Registered Apprenticeship Program that enables high school students to earn credits toward their high school diploma while gaining on-the-job experience toward an apprenticeship program. And it has created a Youth Skills Network, Sawhney says, to assist high school students, their teachers and parents parents in making informed decisions about apprenticeship education and career opportunities.
In announcing its trade apprenticeship investment, the Ministry of Advanced Education also touted the benefits to young people of pursuing careers in the skilled trades.
“[S]tudents are considering a high-impact, low-cost investment in their future with a wide range of opportunities to contribute to Alberta’s growing economy,” the media release said.
In Alberta, electricians earn an average of $80,275 a year after completing a four-year apprenticeship, according to the Alberta Learning Information Service, an online governmental resource. And much of a student’s time during an apprenticeship program is spent in paid, on-the-job training, where they earn a portion of a fully certified employee’s salary.
Red Seal
With its recent investment, Alberta has prioritized trade apprenticeships that lead to Red Seal certifications — a nationally recognized designation that enables individuals to work outside of the province in which they were trained.
But many of the jobs on work sites do not require apprenticeship-level training.
“‘[E]lectricians and plumbers only contribute to building part of the home,” Wenzel said. “Your carpenters, they’ll do the finishing, but you do need drywallers, and you do need professional drywallers who are taught correctly how to hang drywall, and to tape and mud it.”
Wenzel says he would like to see the province more involved in training and accrediting individuals for these non-apprenticeship roles.
“Not everybody needs to be a Red Seal trade,” he said. “[On]e of the biggest deterrents to that younger age group especially is the length of time it takes to get that [certification], which is roughly four years.”
He notes that new immigrants in particular could benefit from being trained in non-apprenticeship roles. Immigrants often come with prior work experience and a desire to work, he says, but “they’re working with a different material than what they’re used to back home.”
In Wenzel’s view, the government should be a key player in boosting training for these roles.
“What we do need is a public-private partnership for a trade school [for] … your painters, your window installers, your drywallers, your siding people, your roofing people.”
“And what I’m really talking about there is a four-month course for them to receive some sort of accreditation to take up those trades. Because currently what they’re doing is learning on site, which isn’t necessarily the best way to learn, especially in a hot market like we have in Alberta.”
