A slight increase for job training institutes
By Tiffany Head
Photo by Tiffany Head. Honorable Don Morgan and Larry Hubich, President of the Saskatchewan Federation of Labour.
For the past couple of years there has been a labour shortage in the job market as there were not enough skilled workers to fill the jobs. The government was woefully unprepared and now they seem to be making amends.
Trade training institutes such as the technical institutes and regional colleges in Saskatchewan received a bit of a boost in the 2014-15 budget. Most are happy with the budget and the opportunities it will provide.
“For SIAST (Saskatchewan Institute of Applied Science and Technology) it really signals that the government is investing in its priority areas which is education and we received some increase funding but we will use that funding to leverage and other funding from private sources to make sure were able to provide this province with the skill source that it needs to keep our economy going and meet the provinces growth plans,” said Larry Rosia, president and CEO of SIAST.
While the budget shows that the government is investing in advanced education, others think it is not enough, especially for workers that are to go into the work force. Larry Hubich, President of the Saskatchewan Federation of Labour did not have a comment on the amount of increase the regional and technical colleges received in the budget, but he did comment that the budget came up short of what the federation was expecting.
‘People in our province wants to see the government bringing in the budgets as fair… they seem to be preoccupied with initiatives like P3 and Lean,” said Hubich.
Rob Norris, Minister of advanced education, seemed to be more focused on First Nations and Métis when asked about the technical and regional institutes and what he thought of the slight increase and if it was enough.
"SIIT funding is going up by 4.1 per cent and Gabriel Dumont Institute, it’s actually going up by the same amount. These are the most significant increases across our post secondary system, our post secondary system is seeing an investment increase of 3.7 per cent obviously fist and foremost we want to continue our support for students and for our institutions we continue to help focus on areas of affordability and accessibility and that’s why our student support has increased by 14 per cent," he said.
"What we tried to do was make sure there are dollars, meaningful dollars, that are invested in new ways. We’ve tried to be fair; we’ve tried to be forward looking. And at the same time fit within a balanced budget. Through the fund which is a response to the joint task force, that fund is doubling from three million to six million the distribution with those funds will be worked out between education, the economy and advanced education. But I think that’s an indicator of how we continue to focus on helping to close the education and employment gaps offering more opportunities for our first nations and Métis students’ right across the province."
Meanwhile, the SFL's Hubich wonders if students learning the trades today will be treated fairly as workers when they graduate.
