PGAA Special General Meeting-Adoption of the Red Seal Occupational Standard-Glazier-Creation of the Revised Curriculum

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The PGAA last week called a Special General Meeting of members, for 2025-10-22 at 15:00 to ratify a decision approved by the PGAA board, 2025-09-24. A proxy request and a Microsoft Teams invitation will follow.

Earlier this year, the Provincial Glaziers Association of Alberta (PGAA) group working on changes to the Designated Trades and Restricted Activities regulations (DTRA), were presented with the idea of adopting the Red Seal Occupational Standard for Glazier, as the basis for the Glazier curriculum in Alberta.

At that time, it was mentioned that a Federal group looks at this curriculum regularly, for updates needed across the country. The  Red Seal Occupational Standard-Glazier consists of three eight week education periods with a requirement of 3,600 field hours before period 1 education, an additional 1,800 hours before period 2, and a final 1,800 hours before period 3. This is a total of 7,200 field hours. The Red Seal Occupational Standard-Glazier has three-eight week periods rather than the current Alberta standard of four-six week periods, and the same amount of field time as the Alberta standard of 1,800 hours before each education period, or 7,200 hours total.

Apprenticeship and Industry Training (AIT) is promoting this change as part of the Canadian harmonization process. Currently both Ontario and British Columbia are following this Red Seal Occupational Standard-Glazier, while many of the other territories and provinces, follow what Alberta is doing, and by moving to this program, we could consolidate the training across the majority of the country, enhancing labour mobility. A student who took period 1 in another province, could easily complete their training in Alberta, or vice versa. Also, with the two-tiered system in Alberta, many do not write their Red Seal final test. While they are Alberta journey people, they do not have the labour mobility that Red Seal would provide them. With this move there would only be one test to write, the Red Seal, which would give the students their certification and allow them mobility across this country.

This adoption was presented to the PGAA board, 2025-09-24, and was approved by the board. To ratify this with PGAA (members include all Calgary Glass and Architectural Metals Association (GAMA) and Glass Trades Association of Northern Alberta (GTA) members), we need to call a special meeting, and get the Red Seal Occupational Standard-Glazier package and related information out 21 days ahead of the special meeting.

The advantages that we had discussed at the PGAA Board meeting included:

An advantage from the Government of Alberta (GOA) is:

This change was previously looked at in 2019, by the Provincial Advisory Council (PAC) of the day, but rejected as they felt that this might mean the demise of the PAC and our role in keeping the curriculum current. Regardless, we lost the PAC , with the implementation of the Skilled Trades and Apprenticeship Education Act (STAE), in July 2022. We are still involved in curriculum updates, the process and those involved are less regimented than with the PAC.

Marc Lalonde of AIT joined us at the PGAA board meeting to talk about why AIT wants us to approve this. His PowerPoint presentation is below. As mentioned, one advantage to AIT and the Government of Alberta (GOA) is that the final test costs then fall on the Government of Canada (GOC), versus the GOA.

Regardless, we are currently moving ahead with a curriculum review, at AIT’s request, beginning 2025-07-16 and 17, with three further meetings scheduled for the remainder of 2025. The Red Seal program will play into this curriculum if the PGAA members chose to adopt the program.

The only major issues we saw, as differences with the Red Seal Occupational Standard-Glazier, are a larger residential content (this fits with the DTRA requirements), a small portion on automotive glass (windshields), and a small section on marine glazing. Please see the Red Seal Occupational Standard-Glazier at https://pgaa.ca/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Federal-Glazier-Red-Seal-Occupational-Standard.pdf.