Dear Mr. Cordiano,

I am writing this letter to congratulate you on your recent commitment to expand and improve skills training. Skills training is a vague but very direct approach to collectively group a number of highly technical and pertinent jobs to the future development of our manufacturing sector and more importantly to the growth of Canada.

I have read many articles recently about how the government must intervene and aid the auto industry. Since the termination of our auto pact and the North American free trade agreement, little has been done to sustain or maintain our lucrative auto industry. These high paying jobs have vanished by the thousands over the past ten years and more importantly the people who have left the industry have left knowing that the training and development for the future has been lapse.

Your strategic skills investment (SSI) and the Canadian Automobile Partnership Council (CAPA) are great leaps forward to a prominent future for our manufacturing sector. Securing our future with new and emerging technologies will most definitely put a lock on future investment by the big three automotive producers. With a skills development in place we must not forget about the research and development side of the industry. In Canada, we should aim not only for component and assembly plants as an investment but more importantly research and development facilities.

Research and development is such an integral part of the industry and it is with these facilities we could engineer and develop future products by Canadians and to be manufactured by Canadians. With our own research and development facilities in place, it would guarantee us years of productivity and new developmental products in a timelier fashion so we could tie the training and development to our skilled trades and project future needs of these skilled individuals.

I believe  that I do understand the importance of our future development of our skilled trades people and I am a part of a group of skilled tradesmen of the Niagara Region who have formed an alliance called, ‘The Skilled Trade Association’. Equally as important I have seen the other side of the manufacturing business from a management perspective seeing that my father is a Vice-President of a privately owned stamping conglomerate based in Detroit that have nine plants situated in North America and are a huge producer to the big three here in Canada.

Mr Cordiano, it is at this time that I would like to personally invite you and your committees to view our website, If we could at any time be of assistance to you, your committee, or your causes we would welcome the opportunity knowing that we share the same vision which promotes the development of Canadians to secure a bright future for Canada.