Alberta Trade Contractors Council Publishes Skilled Trades and Apprenticeship Education Act (STAEA) Priority Outstanding Issues

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With the pending announcement of a new Cabinet, it is important that ATCC members have a consistent message that can be delivered at every opportunity over the next few weeks and months. New Ministers, Chief of Staff, and Deputy Ministers will be seeking to engage industry as they plan and roll out their Ministry priorities. We encourage you to meet with them often and be deliberate and consistent with messages you deliver.

  1. Apprenticeship Training – All Training institutions must teach a provincial standardized, minimum threshold curriculum and test all students with provincial standardized examinations.
  2. The curriculum and exams must be developed in consultation with relevant industry representation.
  3. Training Institutions may teach enhanced curriculums at their discretion.
  4. Standardized curriculum and examinations must be developed in consultation with employers, apprentices, training providers, and the registrar.
  5. The government needs to provide a clear path to the construction trades on how this will be accomplished.
  6. Development of training programs that could be deemed to be within the scope of work of an existing trade (ie: micro credentialling) will only proceed on the basis of full consultation with and approval by the impacted trade(s).
  7. ATCC’s position is that minimum requirements for micro credentials within the construction trades should be a journeyperson certification, ie: micro credentials are an addition to.
  8. The current provincial board must be repopulated to reflect the demographics of the construction industry. The current board representation is narrow and inappropriately weighted to favor specific interests, (ie training institutions and unions).
  9. The STAEA regulations have opened a pathway for employers to deem individuals competent to perform work within their trade’s scope of work, but only as ‘deemed qualified as a journey person. These ‘deemed qualified’ journey people, or certified journey people, can supervise registered apprentices at a ratio of one journey person (or ‘deemed qualified’) to two registered apprentices. Labourers are no longer allowed. The government has not provided any criteria for this ‘deemed qualified’ status, nor do they intend to provide the means to record or track individuals who have been deemed competent by an employer. They will however, as the registrar, track registered apprentices and certified journey people. In this manner they will not understand the actual workforce size for any trade. While this is a pathway to help resolve current labour needs, it throws open the door to a downward spiral of unregulated and poor-quality workmanship and ultimately, becomes a safety issue.