Hudak says Ontario can create 200,000 skilled trades jobs

VAUGHAN, Ont. – Ontario Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak took the first step Thursday to reveal how he plans to create one million jobs over eight years, saying he’d start with getting more young people into apprenticeships for the skilled trades.

Allowing more apprentices on work sites so young people can get good-paying jobs as plumbers, welders or electricians and help address a labour shortage in the skilled trades makes good sense, he said.

“They have this old rule that dates back to the 1970s that says for every single apprentice in many trades you have to have four or five journeymen, so they limit the number of opportunities,” Hudak told construction workers at a new housing project.

“Allow each journeyman to mentor and train an apprentice, one each, and that’ll help create 200,000 positions.”

Ontario Election 2014: Full Coverage

The Tories say changing the apprenticeship ratios is an easy fix to a growing labour shortage in the trades and a good way to start addressing the high unemployment rate among youth.

“Why would you restrict young people from getting good jobs in the trades,” asked Hudak. “It won’t cost you a penny. One simple cabinet meeting, one stroke of the pen, and it’s done.”

Limiting the number of apprentices hurts young people, but benefits entrenched unions that support the Liberals by funding campaign advertising attacking the Tories under the banner of the Working Families Coalition, said Hudak.

“Special interests like the Working Families Coalition want to artificially limit the number of people that get into skilled trades because it increases their bargaining power,” he said. “I get that. I think it’s wrong.”

A Conservative government would make trades training a community college course and would abolish the College of Trades set up by the Liberals as a self-regulating body, which Hudak said amounts to little more than “a tax grab” to fund a “needless new bureaucracy.”

The Tories have always opposed the College of Trades, which was created just over a year ago, because workers in applicable trades are required to pay $120 plus tax every year to be licensed to work, up from the old fee of $20 a year.

Premier Kathleen Wynne said “there’s absolutely no evidence” Hudak’s plan to change the apprentice ratios would create jobs, and warned he will cost the province jobs by slashing government spending and ending grants to corporations.

“The cornerstone of Tim Hudak’s jobs plan is actually to cut jobs, is actually to cut education and health care and to drive wages down,” Wynne said in Ottawa. “The proposals we’re putting forward are about creating jobs, supporting companies, building infrastructure, investing in an environment that is going to bring jobs.”

The New Democrats said the College of Trade was relatively new, and while it should be responsive to criticism so it can improve, it shouldn’t be shut down.

“You don’t cut something off at its legs before it’s even able to walk,” said NDP Leader Andrea Horwath at a campaign stop in Niagara Falls.

Hudak also vowed a PC government would not raise taxes, and said the two other parties could be expected to take that path if they are elected June 12.

The PC leader also lashed out at the Liberals and New Democrats for attacking his proposals, and each other, and said he planned to keep delivering a positive message.

“The Liberals and the NDP have spent the first week of this campaign on the attack, pointing the finger at somebody else each and every day,” said Hudak. “I’m pointing my finger at my million jobs plan. I have a positive vision to get people back to work, balancing the budget, getting hydro rates under control.”