| | Good Day
Please accept this letter in the spirit it is given. Our goal is to help, not complain. This is a long communication and we appreciate your taking the time to read it.
We are the Skilled Trades Association at General Motors, St. Catharines division. Some of us are unemployed and some of us are not. We are an aging work force and we are facing a major challenge which you may, or may not realize, faces you also. Our youth needs our help to secure the best jobs (future) possible through education, training, and apprenticeships. They require an extended term of support and educational assistance from us to accomplish those goals. There are those students who want to continue on to higher learning and they do just fine. There are those students who do not go on for one reason or another and their talents and hopes are diminished. Although the ideas that will be presented here extend to all youth, there are those students who need our help desperately before they fall through the cracks. There are far too many good, intelligent, young people who get lost in their problems of troubled homes, low income and low self-esteem. They need a greater level of help from us to progress forward in education and life skills, to eventually become useful, contributing, members of society.
It is at this point, that the author of this letter should have made it clear what is expected of you. Sorry, but I can’t do that. I can say that we need to talk soon. I respectfully request that you continue to read this urgent message for your future and that of our young.
Niagara’s industry base has been eroding for decades now, as I’m sure you don’t need to be told. The nature of business in Niagara is rapidly becoming small business and primarily service industries. Each of us has been working diligently to educate our own children in the hopes for a better future for them. Our day was one where, you could quit a job in the AM and be working for another company in the PM. Those days are over. Unless! we help our youth become so versatile and well trained that their skills are in demand by businesses that have recognized Niagara as having quality workers and have located here to take advantage of that situation.
Like I said, each of us has been doing this on an individual basis so far. If we wish to secure Niagara’s, Ontario’s and Canada’s future we need to make the most enthusiastic use of our resources, (our youth) and a concerted effort to help them.
There has been a suggestion from our new Minister of Economic Development and Trade, The Honorable Mr. Joe Cordiano, that his government ”will force students to remain in school until age eighteen”. When we are dealing with young people, who for one reason or another, become disgruntled with their life and education, forcing them to remain in school will not achieve anything. The young people who need our help the most, are dealing with life issues that require a greater understanding on our part and a very real offer to help them enter a meaningful career, while at the same time helping them to want, need and attain a higher level of education.
Mr. Cordiano’s group also states, “We will require that all young people continue their education, either in school or in an approved out-of-school training experience, until they reach 18 years or until they graduate”. We need a system that is not based on an either-or-scenario. There needs to be a transition where both can be utilized to augment the other and achieve common goals.
Another statement they present is, “We will expand programs for co-op placement and apprenticeships. We will also create a stronger, more integrated apprenticeship system that is more accessible to those entering the skilled trades and employers hiring them. We will promote on-the-job learning in high-demand areas where there are chronic skill shortages”. We agree that more is good, but, is it more of “the same”? The demand for these young people needs to be stimulated. We can have programs from here till tomorrow, but if they do not stimulate participation from business and our youth, they are useless. My son is a smart, kind, diligent, young man. He has finished courses at Niagara College in tool making and has for two years worked as a CNC computerized machining operator. He has continuously made application to many businesses for an apprenticeship for general machining or tool and die, as have many of his friends, and nothing is available. I have participated in Job Gyms for pre high school students and I’m discouraged to offer them hope for a skilled trades future when I know the opportunities are not there. Niagara’s http://www.apprenticesearch.com assistance programs for helping young find businesses to train them is disheartened. They have plenty of young listed but virtually no employers. I will repeat myself and say, that more of the same will not help and something different is needed.
Our young need to be educated, but trying to force them to learn, or failing to recognize that they are young adults who need a new approach, will not achieve our goals. More of the same will not produce the tens of thousands of skilled young that Niagara needs, or the hundreds of thousands of skilled young that Ontario needs over the next few years. It is no secret, that we are entering an era of aging skilled people and not enough skilled young, to fill the void.
We have the young people (resources) available. What we need now, is a new method of capturing their interest and giving them the opportunity to mature and learn. Also we need a method of assistance to employers. We need to stimulate them to want and become enthusiastic about employing and training our youth. Our youth need a synergistic environment of learning and working simultaneously, as apposed to an either-or process as at the present. We are wasting our most precious resource and we need to think new thoughts, not more of the same.
We are not suggesting that it is either Mr. Cordiano’s ideas or ours. We are suggesting that it is time to put ourselves in the employer’s shoes and those of our young. Lets consider how both of them can be courted into assisting each other along with our help. The final outcome will be of benefit to everyone.
My boy was in a bad car accident recently. He walked away from a totalled vehicle without a scratch. His good health continues and nothing else matters, nothing important was lost, he is well and what remains is only bent metal and plastic. My point is this. Niagara, Ontario or Canada could lose everything she has collected or accomplished, but if she had her intelligent youth and a nurturing adult base she has lost nothing. We can have all the resources in the world, and at the same time have nothing, if we did not have the intellect to respect, understand and use it wisely.
We are Skilled Trades, so we consider things from that perspective. From our point of view, we would like to see our youth given the opportunity to remain tied to education, starting at lower high school grades and allowing them to move into a future trade and remain at school also. Some will not want to attain scholastically high standards, but by training and entering a chosen field and remaining in the education system simultaneously, they will be exposed to their future and will automatically excel at something they want to do. A higher degree of education will be accomplished and a better person will be nurtured to grander goals. This is just an example. For each youth there is another scenario to be dealt with. We have many ideas and we need to talk to everyone in Niagara and put together a plan to set our most prized commodity (our youth) at the forefront. A pilot project could be set in place and the bugs could be worked out. That is the nuts and bolts of it, and we realize there is a lot of work to do by all of us, to get from A to Z.
Companies of all sorts need to be anxious to receive our youth throughout our Peninsula. They need to be encouraged to train them, along with our education systems and governments help, both scholastically and financially. No matter what the career, our youth need to work, earn wages and attain scholastic advancements at the same time for an extended period. We cannot lose, only profit, from such a transition into their carriers. It is to our advantage to do what ever is required to help our youth train and transcend into the working world with the least amount of obstacles. Youth is anxious to mature and the longer we can continue to educate them the better for all concerned.
Companies get better employees, who will help improve productivity, contribute to development and be more dedicated to a worthwhile career. Our Peninsula will quickly become known for its highly skilled and dedicated youth, and this will stimulate companies to invest here. Our tax base will broaden, the bleeding will stop, and low unemployment will show other communities the correctness of our thinking. Youth will become stimulated to learn and be earning income as they do. The first hand understanding, investment, budgeting and dispersal of their income, will be part of their education also, and this will have the added benefit for our community and Country in creating smart, money people who will not become a burden on our tax dollars, or even worse, our penal system.
We cannot lose, our youth cannot lose and our country cannot lose by investing wisely in our youth. Our youth goes to school and that is one part of their life. Then, they finish school and find a job and that is another part of their life. They seem to think that the end of one is the start of another. We need to stop that way of thinking. We will never be done learning. As older folks we understand this. Youth can become wary of learning and they want to mature. They want to work and raise a family and whatever. We want and need them to mature and move on. Continuing education and learning is so important for their benefit and ours. We need to encourage their enthusiasm for learning. Our prosperity is unquestionably tied into the education and prosperity of our youth.
Walt Lastewka recently sent me a letter, where he said he is going to be initiating a trades committee in 2004. Walt is a wise leader and knows the importance of educating our youth (all of our youth). I expressed to Walt my feelings about educated youth and their eventual impact on world economics and peace. If we look at the most prosperous and peaceful countries in the world, we will unanimously agree, that they are also the most educated. Education brings understanding that it is not what you have, but who you are, that governs your prosperity. Canada is one of the worlds most friendly and prosperous countries. We have tremendous resources and yet our greatest recourse is virtually untouched. Our youth is our future and our most valued commodity. Given our bountiful physical resources, we need only to nurture a youth ready to use what is available to them, and create a country, which will stand out as an example to the world for peace, kindness and prosperity.
This may be a little far thinking and idealistic, but we must decide today where it is we want to go before we can decide how to get there by tomorrow, and decide whether the price tag is worth the prize. It is through the education of “all” our youth, that a secure future for everyone will be achieved. We need to pass the baton on to them and if we feel nervous about doing that, then it is our own fault. It’s not too late.
If you have been kind enough to read this lengthy correspondence so far, I think you have already thought about what needs to be done. Your Skilled Trades Association is ready to talk to anyone who understands that the prosperity of Canada is in our hands, but can only be accomplished by and with our educated youth. It is our duty and obligation to elevate every young mind to the maximum level they can attain. We have been semi passive about our youths futures (unless they are our own) in the hopes that they will see the light before it is too late. Those days are over. Businesses will be courted by us to train young people. We will invest heavily in their training. Companies will benefit and without exception be compensated by growth, monetary and taxation benefits and be assisted to set high standards of training which will be acceptable to other businesses of similar structure.
From tourism, to heavy industry, to financial institutions, to health care businesses, to government employment, everyone will take responsibility for our future, which is our youth, and stop blaming everything outside themselves for the lack of lustre in our prosperity and absence of grander moralities throughout this great country.
It doesn’t matter what the cost will be to accomplish this task. The future returns will far out weigh what the outlay will be initially. It will not take long before we see a dramatic prosperity and stability in Niagara. This will stimulate the mimicking of our endeavours throughout Ontario and Canada.
Each of us needs to see this big picture and start to talk. Please talk this over with your constituents, leaders in education, our MP’s, our youth and us, and lets not waste another moment.
As I stated in my first paragraph, some of us are unemployed. We will work again soon, because we are educated, trained and in demand. We are currently in our own battle to be re-employed, as you will see when you visit our web site. We realize that what we are proposing here, if implemented, will help create a stable economy in Niagara, Ontario and Canada. We do not have all the answers, and this may not be the most appropriate answer, but we need to discuss this idea and others for the future of our youth, ourselves and our country.
Papa Dez |
