Sasha Patrick is enrolled in CNC’s Industrial Mechanic (Millwright)/Machinist Foundation Level program

Prince George, BC – While the BC Liberal Government rolled out two major announcements regarding skills training this past week, and the opposition New Democrats decried the moves as a band-aid approach, Sasha Patrick is just happy she’s found a path into a trade that she’s excited to follow.

The 21-year-old College of New Caledonia student is enrolled in a 22-week foundations level program that’s introducing her to all that’s involved with becoming a millwright.  "Millwright isn’t just about working in the mills anymore, you pretty much do everything: fabrication, reading blueprints, repairing parts, making new parts," says Patrick.  "I couldn’t just pick one (trade), I didn’t want to just go into welding or electricity.  Millwright is pretty much a jack-of-all-trades."

The young woman from Bella Coola was on-hand for Premier Christy Clark’s announcement last Tuesday of $17-million dollars to replace antiquated equipment at BC post-secondary schools.  The following day, Clark announced a plan to expand and align skills training programs with economic opportunities in the province to ensure ‘British Columbians have the right skills, in the right places, at the right times’.

New Democrat skills training critic, Gwen O’Mahoney, says ten years after dismantling the trades and skills training system, it’s a band-aid approach that’s too little, too late.  O’Mahoney points out the 16 bullet points that are part of the plan come without any commitment to new resources or a strategic plan to back them up.  She says many of the key activities in the plan don’t begin for another year.

"Part of the problem," she adds, "Is that many of the apprentices we have in the skills training system are not completing their studies, a problem that can be traced back to the Liberal dismantling of the skills training system in 2002."

The Premier admitted on Tuesday that with graduation rates lagging behind other parts of the country, it is an area of concern that her government continues to work on with help from industry.

It is early goings in her training, but with an estimated one million job openings in the province expected by 2019 – 43-percent of those in the skilled trades, Sasha Patrick appears to be positioning herself to take advantage of those openings.