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An apprentice's essential Skill level has a critical role in determining his or her success in the trades. In technical training, it is expected that apprentices should have the Reading, Document Use, and Numeracy skills required at the outset. A 2010 Construction Sector Council business case study found that many apprentices failed their first year for reasons that included low essential skills. They have difficulty completing job tasks and are likely to perform work below standard, resulting in higher probability of errors or safety infractions. In the same 2010 business case study, insufficient essential skills was amongst the top five reasons given by employers for not taking on apprentices.  About 20 to 40 per cent of apprentices in technical training do not have adequate essential skills.

Typically, these apprentices cannot navigate through long pieces of dense text from textbooks and manuals, and have difficulty identifying what is important from what is irrelevant. Some apprentices need help remembering numeracy concepts they learned in high school. Not being able to complete operations using fractions, for example, can cause them to fall behind the rest of the class. These apprentices may also have difficulty translating a problem into a process that includes choosing the correct formulas to apply in solving it. Apprentices with low essential skills tend not to be independent learners. They may have been out of school for many years, did not complete high school or never learned the skills needed to complete an academic program.
 

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When Ignat Kaneff came to Canada in the early 1950s from Bulgaria, he had little education, no money and few prospects. A friend got him some construction work around Mississauga, and he soon began building houses. That eventually led to the creation of Kaneff Group of Cos., a major Canadian home builder. Mr. Kaneff always regretted not being able to attend university. And he believes higher education is more important today than ever for young Canadians, given the increasing competition from Asia and elsewhere. “We have to be prepared for big competition,” he said in an interview. “The Germans and Japanese and Chinese do not sleep. They are working hard. We have to be prepared to compete with other countries, to be able to sustain the living standard we have today in this country.”

He and his wife, Didi, made sure their daughters had every opportunity to attend university and both – one a lawyer, the other an MBA graduate from Harvard University – now work for the family business. “It’s 62 years since I came to this country with no education,” he said. “Now both of my daughters are very well educated. … If they hadn’t gone to school, they wouldn’t have been able to help me in the company to the degree I am looking for, because the world has become very competitive.” A few years ago, Mr. Kaneff began donating to York University and helping with fundraising, first for a major expansion of Osgoode Hall Law School and more recently to finance a new entrepreneurial engineering program. He has donated $8-million in total to York, including $5-million to the engineering school. “People were very good to me when I came to Canada,” he said. “I didn’t have an education, so this is my way of giving back.”

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The unemployed university graduate is everywhere these days, from CBC’s Generation Jobless documentary to the cover of Maclean’s. Since the recession, so the story goes, almost all 27-year-old university graduates are sitting in mom’s or dad’s basement playing Guitar Hero, firing off job applications and ranting on Facebook about how they’d be better off as plumbers. This has become such accepted wisdom that when Allan Rock, president of the University of Ottawa, argued in a speech last week that it is, in fact, a myth, the Ottawa Citizen saw it as news. Newly-released Statistics Canada charts of unemployment rates by education among 25 to 29-year-olds back up Rock’s point. Last year, university graduates were more likely than anyone else in that age group to be employed and just as likely to be working as the same age group was back in 2005 when no one fretted about jobs.

Of course, the doom and gloom didn’t just magically appear. The job market did get noticeably worse for university grads after the market crash of 2008. Their unemployment rate went from 4.7 per cent in 2008 to 6.6 per cent in 2010. College graduates and tradespeople fared slightly better over that period, but still felt their unemployment rate rise from 5.0 per cent to 6.4 per cent. Since the recovery, as the new figures show, university graduates did better. Their unemployment rate fell back down to 5.8 per cent in 2012, just 0.1 per cent from where it was in 2005. Meanwhile, college graduates and tradespeople saw their rate fall just slightly to 6.2 per cent in 2012, making it—contrary to popular myth—higher than that of university grads post-recession. That said, there’s not much difference between 5.8 per cent and 6.2. The scarier gaps are between those with post-secondary credentials of some kind and those with none. In 2012, high school graduates had 8.8 per cent unemployment and those without high school were at 16.4 per cent.

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Two Emergency Vehicle Technicians from the St. John's Regional Fire Department have received the highest possible EVT Certification. Sean Gillingham and Peter Wall are the first Emergency Vehical Technicians in the province to receive the Master Certification. There are currently only 72 Master EVT Certified Technicians in Canada, and a total of 600 in all of North America.
 

Older children of immigrants will be prevented from joining their parents and siblings in Canada under a new federal government plan to restrict the definition of “dependent child.” The change, which takes effect Jan. 1, will narrow the definition of a dependent child to someone younger than 19, rather than the current 22, and remove an exception for older children who study full time. The new rules could make roughly 7,000 immigrants a year ineligible to come to Canada. According to an outline of the plan obtained by the Star, the changes reflect the government’s immigration goals: to fuel economic prosperity, transition to a fast and flexible economic immigration system and target those with the skills to meet labour needs. “The earlier in life immigrants arrive, the more their educational experience will resemble that of their Canadian-born counterparts and the easier it will be to learn an official language and adapt to Canadian cultural traits and social norms,” it says.
 

Under the current immigration law, one’s child is considered a dependent if they are under 22 and remain single. Exemptions are given to those over 22 if they depend on the parents’ financial support and have attended school continuously as full-time students. According to 2012 government statistics, dependents under the age of 19 made up 90 per cent, or 64,757, of all sponsored children to Canada, while those 19 or over made up just 10 per cent, or 7,237. The change will ultimately apply to live-in caregivers and refugees. For these groups, the process of qualifying for permanent resident status in Canada varies and can take years; by then, their children may miss the age cut-off. A seven-page outline of the plan says Canada’s economic stability has remained fragile. “Age at immigration frequently determines where a person receives his or her education. With the difficulties in determining a foreign credential’s value in Canada and evidence that the return on Canadian education is much higher,” it says, “age at immigration becomes the most important factors in determining the economic outcomes of immigrants.”
 

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