Tax credit available for apprenticeships.

It's time to look into our own backyard to see how we can train our youth and address the growing skilled-labour shortage, says a Sudbury labour market expert.

Employers need to take more responsibility for providing the hands-on learning opportunities for young people by taking them on as apprentices says Sharon Murdock, executive director of the Sudbury-Manitoulin Workforce Partnerships Board.

She was responding to a February report published by the Association Colleges of Applied Arts & Technology of Ontario (ACAATO) called Pathway to Prosperity.

The report talks about the need to address the problems of an aging workforce and the looming skilled labour and skilled trades shortage in the Canadian economy.

The five priorities listed in the report reaffirm what her organization has been promoting for the last 10 years, Murdock says.

Among the priorities were training more people with a higher skill, delivering more flexible training, encouraging greater labour force participation, better long-term planning and more investment.

"The schools have to introduce them to the experiences," says Murdock, "but the business community has to be the one to step up to the plate and say we'll provide those experiences and if there are no training facilities, then we'll have to train them."

The provincial government has come to the table with some incentives. Now available to small businesses with revenues under $400,000 is an apprenticeship-training tax credit up to $15,000 for three years.

The Ministry of Education is pushing more co-op placements for high school students by allowing up to two placement credits to count as compulsory credits.

Murdock adds that with the global demand for skilled labour, business, education and government need to tap into our rapidly increasing young Aboriginal population as well.

www.trainingboard.com

By ADELLE LARMOUR

Northern Ontario Business