Q+A with the CEO of Skills Canada

Shaun Thorson, CEO of Skills Canada.

Canadian Metalworking magazine recently talked with Shaun Thorson, the CEO of Skills Canada, about the state of skilled trades in the country.

The organization's mission statement is "To encourage and support a coordinated Canadian approach to promoting skilled trades and technologies to youth", and they recently held the Skills Canada National Competition in early June.

Canadian Metalworking: First off, can you give us a bit of a background on Skills Canada, who you guys are, and what the organization is all about?

Shaun Thorson (CEO, Skills Canada): We’re a not-for-profit organization that promotes trades and technological education for young people. Basically, the goal is to try and increase the level of awareness and understanding of careers in skilled trades and technology.

We try and do that through very interactive events, sensory experience events – one of the ones we’re most well known for is competitions. We actually bring students in from across the country in different trades and technology areas, so CNC machining, precisions machining, welding, sheet metal competition.

We bring those people together, we put them in very practical, hands-on situations/challenges. Based on that we award the top placing students from across the country with medals and every two years we send a group of youth to participate in World Skills competitions, so it’s the same type of format, but at an international level.

CMW: You just had that Skills Canada National Competition (June 5-8) – how did that go?

ST: Yeah, we just finished the national competition in Vancouver. Each year, starting at the school level there’s competitions, which then select people to participate in school board, then provincial/territorial competitions, and then from there that gives us the grouping at the national level. So each year through that whole process there’s about 100,000 youth that participate in the competitions, leading up to approximately 500 that participate at the national competition.

And it was hosted at BC Place. We always try to host it at a convention-centre style facility that makes it easy for visiting students, non-competitors, general public and media to walk around and understand the complexity that’s involved in those occupational areas.

And at the same time with the competitions we have something called “Try-a-Trade & Technology”. So for those visiting students they can actually try to build a brick wall, or wire a circuit board, or try something at a very base level in those occupations. They can weld, they were making a pop bottle opener in one of the machining areas, so they can try some of that to give them a base understanding of what type of materials they would work with. That, combined with complexity and the high level of competition, and the competitors they’re able to observe, I think it makes for a pretty strong case of how dynamic some of those careers are.

CMW: Apart from the competition, what’s some other stuff Skills Canada does to engage youth and spread the message?

ST: We also do “National Skilled Trades & Technology Week”. We do that as an annual event across the country. Our provincial and territorial Skills offices and our national office host events during that week, again to try and raise the awareness of those occupations, and again, usually there’s some type of sensory experience or experiential learning element that occurs with that. That’s kid of the core of all our activities – that there’s something very hands on. We do cardboard boat races, we do young women’s conferences, so there’s a lot of different initiatives at the provincial/territorial level.

There’s skills camps that are done, throughout the summer in some of the provinces and territories. So similar to when you send your son or daughter to a sports camp, you can send them to a skills camp so they learn a little more about some occupations. There’s in-school presentations that take place. We have liason officers and staff that go into schools and explain to them how apprenticeships work, and how they can get involved – things of that nature. Those are some of the other things that happen throughout the year.

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CMW: The skills camp sounds like a good idea.

ST: Yeah, you have experts from the specific industries there talking about the equipment and material, and giving young people a chance to actually touch it and build something, and start to develop that connection between hand and mind, and that whole creative process.

CMW: You focus a fair bit about sensory initiatives. What’s the reason behind that? Is it just a natural fit when dealing with trades?

ST: Yeah, I think it kind of puts everything into perspective a little bit. And I’m not saying it’s only specifically with trades, but with a lot of occupations, until you actually have a chance to try it, you don’t have as much appreciation for what’s involved in it.

I think in a lot of the skilled trades areas that’s important, so that people understand the type of material people work with, and the type of equipment and tools, and we think that type of experience stays with students a lot longer than just giving them a piece of paper that tells them how an apprenticeship works.

CMW: Do you do any work with any of the trades schools across the country?

ST: Most of the community colleges or technical institutes are partners at a provincial or territorial level, so many of them are involved in helping us deliver some of the programming.

We have them at our events as judges, we have them as some of our technical experts that help us design the content of some of the different activities that we develop.

We go to our educational and business partners to provide content that’s relevant to the skills they’re looking for, the elements they think are important to demonstrate for their specific occupations.

So from an educational side, those technical institutes and community colleges are very involved, so that’s good.

CMW: Tell me, how does the provincial versus national breakdown work for your organization? What’s the relationship between the provincial organizations (ie. Skills Alberta) and the national one?

ST: We’re a federated structure. Our provincial/territorial offices are separate entities, but they are members of the national organization, so we work with them on coordinating messaging, and I guess the common element that we have across the country is competitions.

There’s a competition in each province and territory that feeds into the nationals, so that’s one common element. Then as I said, some of the provinces and territories, they’re doing regional competitions, they’re doing cardboard boat races, they’re doing skills camps. That’s where there’s some differences across them depending on regional needs and expertise.

CMW: So, obviously there’s a lot of talk about how we’re facing a serious shortage in skilled trades in the future. How do you think we got ourselves into this problem in the first place?

ST: Well, that’s a tough question. I think part of it is a lack of understanding in what’s involved in skilled trades and technology careers. I think everyone for a long time has pushed young people to go to university, and when they’re in secondary school they’re kind of streamed towards university.

And there’s nothing wrong with that, but that’s not the career for everyone, and that’s not what everyone wants to do. Everyone doesn’t want to be a doctor or a lawyer. People have different interests. So I think at the secondary level, we probably have not done a good enough job at explaining what’s involved; what an apprenticeship is, how an apprenticeship works, what careers are available. Because you may start your career as an apprentice for a particular trade, but that doesn’t mean you’ll work 35-40 years as a journeyperson – it doesn’t mean that’s the ending point.

With additional experience and education, there are a lot of other career pathways that can lead from that starting point, similar to any other occupation. You start at the entry level in any type of job, and with effort and more experience and education you can move in different directions.

So I think that we’ve missed a little bit on promoting that properly, and I think we’ve talked about jobs and not careers a little too much. I think we need to change that discussion so young people understand; 1) There is an option with trades careers – so here are trades, here are some of the careers available and here’s how you pursue them, and 2) There are different directions you can take once you become certified and are a tradesperson – there are different directions you can go on, and a lot of different sectors you can work in.

CMW: Do you think in that past there’s been a bit of a stigma against trades? Maybe people think, oh, welding, that’s a ‘dirty’ job? Has that possibly scared people off?

ST: Oh, I think definitely. Probably from parents, the view is the default is you should go to university. For your son or daughter, this is the direction you wanted them to go in. If they really didn’t know what to do, ‘well, go to university’, where maybe that shouldn’t be the default.  Maybe it should be, ‘well you can go to university, or you can take an apprenticeship program’, and still come out with some great skills either way, but gives you some other options.

So I think there was, and there is still, a stigma that university is kind of the only way to go and we just want to bring some more balance to that discussion. We want to make sure that parents are informed about the different career pathways and if their sons or daughters are asking them for advice, they can give them the proper information so that those young people can make an informed decision about what the want to do.

CMW: Do you see the tide shifting a bit? Do you think more youth are starting to look at trades a career?

ST: I think so. We’ve seen increases in apprenticeship enrollment over the last number of years – so I think that says something. I think people are starting to understand a little bit more about what’s involved. In Canada we do have a lot of natural resources, and being able to access those resources requires people with skilled trades training. Whether it’s building or maintaining plants, or whatever it may be you need people with skilled trades background and qualification and certification to do that.

I think that definitely has an influence when people are looking at the job market and seeing now that there are jobs in these particular areas, so I think people are starting to consider it more.

CMW: What do we stand to lose if we don’t have more engagement with youth about jobs in the trades?

I think it will become increasingly more difficult to get some of those projects started, to maintain those projects in a proper way. I think it will affect Canada’s economy in the long run if we don’t have skilled people to access the resources that we have. (Resources) we can use and other countries would also like to have access to. That is definitely going to hurt our economy over the long term.

So I think that’s the impact we could potentially see and I don’t think people want that. We want to continue to have a strong economy and a skilled workforce.