We a have a college with a trades program already. They just built a brand new technology building for trades at CNC(which they still can’t use because of ventilation problems). The college is underfunded now.

http://www.bclocalnews.com/news/138500119.html

Canfor owned property? When did they buy it from BC Rail properties? That mill is on leased land as far as I recall.

I’m guessing Canfor doesn’t want to pay for the cleanup of the site after the mill is torn down.

This is a wolf in sheeps clothing. Buyer beware.

This is what I had posted on Friday Free for All on this proposal:

“Canfor and the BID Group of Companies are making a presentation to Council on Monday to promote their idea of developing a trades school at the closed Rustad Mill location.

“I think rather than developing a specialized tradeschool that is very industry specific, they should be looking at private industry models in both Europe and Asia to develop a trades school for one or more related insustries.

“As an aside, it is a good location since students can begin to get acclimatized to the poor air quality in that part of town.”

Since I mae that post, I still think they should be going private. As NoWay wrote, there is a new facility at CNC and they are underfunded as it is.

Why does the image look like army barracks?

It looks like they are going to spruce up the current buildings.

“The idea is to use the Canfor owned Rustad mill site to develop a trades training facility, one that will work closely with industry to try and address the shortage of skilled trades workers in the province.”

CNC works closely with industry now. From what I heard Canfor has very few apprentices at their plants right now. So maybe Canfor should indenture more people into the apprentice program and start commiting to training their own.

But Canfor has a problem, they can’t train who they want. They have to follow the collective agreement when it comes to apprentice selection. So apprenticeships at Canfor are few and far between.

I think it is really important to know who will be responsible for the remediation of the property – be very careful City Council – this is Canfor we are dealing with!

Just remember; the mayor is very close to Canfor!

noway, I totally agree. There are people out there begging for apprenticeships. But no, Canfor is training one at a time. Having another training facility isn’t going to help with this problem. I also agree the problem is some guy who is 40 – 50 years old taking the apprentice spot from some keener. sad state.

The City is not involved in this deal YET!?

All they are doing is supporting the efforts of Canfor and BID.

Remember, the City is supposed to be open for business. It would be bad for them to not endorse this.

However, as has been said several times when open for business has been discussed, what is the proposed deal structure with this?

Will Canfor and BID

1. provide the property and facility?
2. pay for the development of the special industry training material where it is not already done?
3. Pay for the equipment and furnishings required?
4. The various training institutes work out a deal with the ministry responsible to cover the subsidized cost of the seats and the arious industries concerned pay for the “tuition fees” beyond the province’s education subsidy

And anything else I have not covered here.

And, it goes without saying, not reduce other programs as a result of helping to feed an industry which should be covering its own almost proprietary training and retraining costs.

Trucking industry … if you have a hard time finding drivers, develop your own.

http://www.ehow.com/list_6530769_accredited-company_owned-truck-driving-schools.html

“Upon successful completion of such training, a driver will be able to obtain his Class A commercial driver’s license (CDL) and become a company driver with full benefits.”

A private Marine training institute in Hamburg, Germany, established 14 years ago.
http://www.marineserve.de/en/company.htm

“Our continuous growth required us to move offices once again and in March 2011 Hammerbrook, a part of Hamburg close to the central station, became the new home of MSG MarineServe. With an increasing number of staff and a state-of-the-art mobile ECDIS classroom (including bridge simulator) we are now able to provide high-class ECDIS training around the globe. In the process of internationalizing the training program, MSG started an initiative in the summer of 2011, which created ETC, the ECDIS Training Consortium: a concept that delivers a standardized ECDIS training program in cooperation with leading training providers worldwide. This ensures uniform, high, standards of ECDIS-training for international officers at the local level thereby cutting down the travel time and costs associated with distant training facilities.”

So tell me, how on earth did this business start 14 years ago and was internationalized that quickly? AND, it is a private business.

It is quite possible to start a new business and be successful.

So, maybe with CANFOR and BID involved and maybe a few other BUSINESS partners they mays till have to get, they can get some advanced training here for proprietary mill and mining equipment and look to grwoing the market beyond the northern half of the Province into the rest of Canada and North America. I do not know what other training facilities they would be up against.

But, I highly recommend that the companies do their own thing so that they have the freedom to improvise, adjust and build the system to meet their needs without going through the bureaucracy at the government education/training institutes and Victoria.

Waiting for Palopu to shoot the idea down …. LOL

Hey, did you ever come up with an example or two of what business might be a growth business around here?

Here’s one handed to us on a platter. Who is going to make it grow wings so it can soar?

Canfor and Bid….now I know something fishy is going on! It must be one expensive
clean up bill coming up. There are training programs already in place the problem is that companies like Canfor prefer to hire already certified trades over training their own people. A specialized training facility for a declining industry? Come on Canfor clean up your own mess!

Contaminated site? Could be but wouldn’t the province have to make sure that the seller cleans it up before they (the province) buy it?

A Northern BCIT has been talked about for years and makes sense. If this helps move CNC towards that model then great. No sense having a University and College AND technical school all with their own administrative overhead.

There is no role for the city other than to say to the province that it’s a good idea. A better question is what does the Advanced Education Minister or our local MLA’s think of the idea? Will they fight for the extra money that’s needed to make this possible?

A northern BCIT? … LOL!!!

Yes, that has been talked about for many years.

That proposal is nowhere near a northern BCIT proposal.

The last time that was talked about seriously here was when Charles McCaffray was the principal of CNC. He had a vision of a Polytechnic. Those were the days of CART (Centre of Advanced Resource Technology) which was instrumental in bringing the wonders of computer assisted design and computer assisted manufacturing to this community at a level not seen in too many places in BC at that time. GIS technology through such systems as Computervision and GE’s Calma system were brought to the mills, primarily in applications such as preventative maintenance control and scheduling.

There were also several programs which presented the first year of BCIT Technology programs here in the early to mid 1980s including wood process technology which was producing graduates that went to BC mills.

By the late 1980s it became obvious that the region was not prepared for the imported technology from Oshawa automotive processes and engineering. The technology was still too expensive and there were no people here who could see it applied to their businesses.

A few years later, Northwood won the bid to become one of the 10+ model forests in Canada. It, and the one at Hinton, were the two which built their plans around creating a vitual forest on ESRI’s platform to test various value systems against best case and multiple value scenarios projected decades into the future.

The Northern Institute of Technoloy gleam in McCaffrey’s eyes eventually morphed into a more palatable university that became UNBC.

BCIT of the north. Dream on. Kelowna has a better chance at that with its Okanagan College which it retained.

CNC Student newspaper 1989
http://pgnewspapers.lib.pg.bc.ca/fedora/repository/qun:1989-11-16-01

Okanagan College Technologies
http://www.okanagan.bc.ca/departments/engineeringtechnologies.html