Help Wanted: Quebec is paying students to learn a trade

Floundering under the weight of Canada’s worst labour shortage and in desperate need of workers, Quebec found an innovative way to convince the unemployed to enrol in professional training: pay them.

Starting in 2020, when the pandemic pushed tens of thousands more out of work, the government launched a training initiative that paid students up to $500 a week to enrol in vocational courses in anything from auto mechanics and accounting to how to be a senior’s aide, sous-chef, carpenter or hairdresser.

The program, dubbed PARAF (Programme d’aide à la relance par l’augmentation de la formation), paid students a salary roughly equivalent to that of a full-time, minimum wage employee. It had a budget of $114 million and in its first year it helped to convince more than 20,000 to take up training for professions where chances of employment were deemed high. Nearly 40 per cent signed up in priority sectors like construction, health and daycare services.

It’s part of a government shift toward focusing on employment needs in the province, many of which can be filled by students trained in professional or technical trades as opposed to university graduates. Learning a trade was once relegated to second-class status behind university studies. Quebec is now spending billions trying to guide potential workers to technical studies in sectors where workers are desperately needed.

“In total, 99 per cent of those training courses were for CEGEP professional training or vocational schools,” Jean Boulet, then Quebec’s minister of labour, told the Montreal Gazette this summer. “And these were jobs of all types — masons, painters, bricklayers, nursing assistants.”

For jobs in information technology and communications, where the needs are particularly high (the labour ministry estimates it needs more than 50,000 graduates in that field alone) and training is more extensive, the government sweetened the pot, giving students $650 a week to study, and a $2,000 bonus for completing the course. More than 8,500 applicants did, and as of early June, another 5,400 were in training, 80 per cent of them in CEGEP professional programs.

Last November, Quebec embarked on an even more ambitious recruitment program, promising $3.9 billion over five years for Opération main d’oeuvre (Operation Workforce) to train 170,000 workers in priority sectors — primarily in health care, education, mental health services and daycare on the public side, and in construction, engineering and information technology on the private side, again with money thrown in to entice candidates.

“I think we acted on all the needs and levels of training,” Boulet said. “It will give results for certain, in the medium term.”

Employers and labour analysts are hoping the government plan will help, but warn that Quebec’s rapidly aging population and low birth rates mean it will never fill its needs without increasing immigration rates. A lack of workers has forced businesses to close or scale back on investments, slowing the economy. It has also meant less social services — fewer psychologists to treat those in mental distress, fewer youth care workers for adolescents in need. At its most dire, the labour shortage and subsequent lack of care has been directly linked to seniors dying in government-run old age homes.

Quebec has shown itself willing to throw large amounts of money at a shortage issue and act quickly when desperate. During the pandemic, it managed to hire and train nearly 10,000 orderlies within a year to fill spaces at seniors’ residences, paying candidates $21 an hour to study, and offering salaries of nearly $50,000 a year upon graduation. The usual nine-month training period was condensed to 12 weeks.

Experience has shown money alone can’t solve the problem, however.

Of all 254,000 vacant jobs needing to be filled in Quebec as of last June (a number that has nearly quadrupled since 2016), 31 per cent required a professional or vocational degree, and 11 per cent require a university degree, a study by the Institut du Québec found. Nearly 70 per cent require either no schooling or only a high school degree.

Quebec has made a major shift to extolling vocational and technical training, promoting professions that for a long time were not valued, said Denis Hamel, vice-president in charge of workforce development for the Conseil du patronat, Quebec’s largest employers’ group.

“Parents would often say ‘If you do well in school you can go to university, otherwise you will end up in technical college,’ ” he said. “It was a social phenomenon. Now there is a lot of value seen it. But work needs to be done to convince parents as much as students.”

There are 115,000 students enrolled in 144 different vocational training programs throughout Quebec. Another 95,000 are registered in CEGEP technical courses. Quebec’s universities numbered 234,000 full-time students in 2018.

But Quebec still needs to make it easier for students to get into courses, Hamel said. Often programs are cancelled because not enough students sign up, particularly in the regions where labour shortages are acute. Allowing smaller class sizes or distance learning would help, he said. More support needs to be given to employers who offer their own on-the-job training programs but are hamstrung by rules requiring candidates have a high school degree.

“Just because a student doesn’t have his English or French qualifications doesn’t mean he can’t still be an excellent technician or employee,” Hamel said. “We need to get beyond academic requirements and allow training in businesses with mentoring and accompaniment.”

The government made a crucial move in 2019 by changing the eligibility criteria for economic immigrants, basing it more on labour needs and less on level of schooling. Now it’s much easier for those with technical and professional degrees to enter. The problem, Hamel said, is most are only allowed in on a temporary permit, and very few of those are given permanent residence status. As it stands, Quebec admits between 150,000 to 180,000 temporary workers each year, but only 20,000 are allowed to stay, most of whom have higher education degrees. The constant short-term turnover is hard on the workers, and on employers left scrambling to find replacements.

“It’s just a patch, the temporary immigration,” Hamel said. “It’s not something that’s viable in the context of our labour shortage and aging population.”

The Quebec election campaign now underway has put the issue of immigration in the spotlight. The Quebec government currently allows 50,000 economic immigrants a year. The Conseil du patronat has been begging the government to admit at least 80,000, particularly because it has to make up for the immigration slowdown that occurred during the pandemic. The government of François Legault, Hamel said, quickly said no, arguing it only has the means to integrate 50,000 annually into French society.

For Charles Fleury, a professor in industrial relations at the University of Laval, the question of whether a government should prioritize vocational training over university courses depends on your school of thought.

“Is the aim to form citizens, or just make workers?” he said.  “Does society value or encourage the promotion of these technical or professional courses? Maybe not enough. But at the same time we’re in a culture that values university studies, despite the fact it may lead to an over-qualification among many graduates who can’t find work in their domain, or at the level of competence of their training.”

More important than just promoting certain professions is ensuring that work conditions are acceptable, Fleury said. A recent study looking at nurses, nurse aides and orderlies found many in the profession said they had too much work, felt undervalued and were unable to maintain a satisfying work-life balance.

“So you can promote these professions, but we also need to look at how we treat people in these jobs,” Fleury said.

A case in point: of the nearly 10,000 orderlies recruited to work in the province’s long-term care centres during the government’s hiring blitz, nearly a third had left within a year, either because they failed their courses or found the working conditions intolerable.

rbruemmer@postmedia.com

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