theQuestion: Is B.C. putting too great a focus on skills training for jobs in the LNG industry?*
I’m stunned by Laila’s argument this week. For someone who usually supports left-wing policy and practice, her argument against retooling B.C.’s education system in favour of a strong focus on skilled trades is astonishing. A person must have a real hate on for Premier Christy Clark and her BC Liberal government to abandon the left’s long-cherished principle of supporting good union jobs, held by well-trained B.C. labour.
Skilled labour built B.C. and we need more of it. Not everyone can be a doctor or lawyer. Sociologists and psychologists don’t build hydroelectric dams. English and history majors don’t weld steel girders or fabricate machine parts.
Since the 1980s, when the self-involved baby boomers enshrined the “professions” and careers in manufacturing consumer culture as the route to self-gratification, our society has placed an overabundance of esteem on jobs that don’t build anything.
As a product of the 1980s, I can report from experience that jobs in the trades were viewed with the utmost disgust. They were deemed not worthy of pursuit. These are the values baby boomers instilled in us through consumer culture, popular films and television, and via high school curriculum. When I graduated high school in the Okanagan in the late 1980s, trades were seen as lower-class occupations — despite these jobs being highly paid and plentiful.
I didn’t agree with this thinking then, nor do I now. The retooling of B.C.’s education system is long overdue. Yes, the province has placed training for LNG jobs at the forefront of the rationale for the changes. But let’s keep in mind a couple of things. Even if only one mid-sized LNG facility goes online it could deliver tens of thousands of new jobs and bring in $800 million in LNG tax revenue over 10 years — some estimates peg that at $8.1 billion if you include provincial sales tax, royalties and corporate income taxes.
Also, the skills and training for potential LNG jobs are transferable to numerous other industries. High school trades training sets B.C.’s young workers on a path to Red Seal certification in pipefitting, welding, heavy-duty electrical, equipment mechanic, construction, the list goes on. The Red Seal program sets national standards of excellence for 57 skilled trades in Canada.
B.C.’s Skills and Jobs Blueprint is about a lot more than just training for LNG, it’s about restoring esteem and relevancy — making skilled trades an attractive option again for today’s youth.