'I am angry': Alberta farmers will continue fight over world class motorsport resort
The rolling hills leading to the hamlet of Rosebud are dotted with sprawling farms and cattle pastures -- and a sign sporting a simple message: No Race Track.
A shortage of skilled workers is intensifying in Canada, potentially threatening the pace of the economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, and that has policymakers looking at a largely untapped market for new construction workers: Women.
But attracting and retaining women in the skilled trades has long proven difficult, with tradeswomen and advocates citing challenges balancing childcare and on-site work, the stubborn sexism still ingrained in some workplaces, and a lack of opportunities for women to get a foot in the door.
Vanessa Miller was a young single mom when she decided to scrap university for welding. She got her journeyperson ticket and became a rarity in Canada: a woman with her own welding rig, a truck kitted out with all the equipment needed to do big jobs.
"Every time you go to a different job and nobody knows who you are, you have to prove yourself," she said, speaking from her home in Regina, Saskatchewan. "It's still difficult to break into the industry, it's still very male dominated."
Canada, like other developed nations, is facing a shortage of skilled trade workers just as a pandemic stimulus-backed building boom gets underway. At the same, more women than men remain unemployed because of the pandemic, and about 54,000 women have left the labour force since February 2020.
The gap between women's labour force participation and men's costs the Canadian economy C$100 billion ($79.3 billion) each year, said Carrie Freestone, an economist at RBC.
"Obviously skilled trades are a good opportunity," Freestone said.
In its latest budget, Canada's Liberal government pledged C$470 million ($373.2 million) to support the hiring of new apprentices for the most in-demand trades. Companies that hire women, Indigenous people and other minority groups get double the funding.
But women working in the trades and union leaders say it will take more than just money to get more women in the trades.
"We're doing the work to mentor tradeswomen, to build our supply of under-represented groups," said Lindsay Amundsen, director of workforce development at Canada's Building Trades Unions. But she said there should be quotas on major projects to ensure women get hired.
Canada has suggested quotas for certain groups - like women and Indigenous people - on major projects that get federal support, but it is up to the provinces to set them, a spokesperson at the infrastructure ministry said.
More than a decade ago, the province of Newfoundland and Labrador realized that efforts to get women more interested in the trades were working, but few were sticking with it.
The province funded the Office to Advance Women Apprentices (OAWA) to connect tradeswomen with employers and also set hiring quotas for women and other under-represented groups, like Indigenous people, on major projects.
By 2017, about 14% of construction tradespeople working in Newfoundland and Labrador were women, far above the national average of 3-4%, though some barriers remain.
When journeyperson millwright Cassandra Whalen landed in remote Voisey's Bay, Labrador for a recent job, she discovered there was no safety equipment in her size on site.
"I needed a respirator, I needed gloves and I needed a harness, none of which they had in size small," she said. "They had to be flown in."
But Whalen loves her work, and says union advocacy has made the industry more inclusive.
One of the unions leading the charge is UA Canada, which pays up to 24 weeks salary to pregnant members unable to work due to safety risks. They also pay a top-up for both men and women who take parental leave after a baby is born.
"I really think it does help with the retention for sure," said Alanna Marklund, a national manager at UAC who is also a journeyperson welder.
But childcare continues to be an issue for many tradeswomen. Several tradeswomen interviewed by Reuters said they depended on family members or spouses to help care for young children.
Maggie Budden, a journeyperson ironworker, ended up taking a job in a bank after her children were born. "Unfortunately with construction you need to travel and I could not do that with my daughters," she said. She now runs the newest branch of OAWA, in Cape Breton.
Daniella Francis was living in Ontario when she started considering the trades, but she couldn't find any programs for women in her province. She ended up moving her entire family to Alberta and is now an apprentice plumber.
"There needs to be more options," she said, adding however: "I would say, as a woman, don't be afraid to go into the trades. Things are changing."
($1 = 1.2594 Canadian dollars)
(Reporting by Julie Gordon in Ottawa; Additional reporting by Allison Lampert in Montreal; Editing by Andrea Ricci)
The rolling hills leading to the hamlet of Rosebud are dotted with sprawling farms and cattle pastures -- and a sign sporting a simple message: No Race Track.
Dozens of Ontarians are expressing frustration in the province’s health-care system after their family doctors either dropped them as patients or threatened to after they sought urgent care elsewhere.
For decades, North Bay, Ontario's water supply has harboured chemicals associated with liver and developmental issues, cancer and complications with pregnancy. It's far from the only city with that problem.
A man who tried to access Drake’s Bridle Path mansion earlier this week returned to the property Saturday and was apprehended again for allegedly trespassing, Toronto police say.
After weeks of preparation, crews are scheduled to conduct a controlled demolition Sunday evening to break down the largest remaining span of the collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge in Maryland, which came crashing down under the impact of a massive container ship on March 26.
Multiple people at the protest camp torn down at the University of Alberta campus Saturday say police's actions against protesters were "violent" and "disproportionate."
When West Virginia Republicans vote in Tuesday's primary, they will have a hard time finding a major candidate on the ballot in any statewide race who openly acknowledges that U.S. President Joe Biden won the 2020 election.
Thousands more civilians have fled Russia's renewed ground offensive in Ukraine's northeast that has targeted towns and villages with a barrage of artillery and mortar fire, officials said Sunday.
Amazon's paid subscription service provides free delivery for online shopping across Canada except for remote locations, the company said in an email. While customers in Iqaluit qualify for the offer, all other communities in Nunavut are excluded.
A family of fifth generation farmers from Ituna, Sask. are trying to find answers after discovering several strange objects lying on their land.
A Listowel, Ont. man, drafted by the Hamilton Tigercats last week, is also getting looks from the NFL, despite only playing 27 games of football in his life.
The threat of zebra mussels has prompted the federal government to temporarily ban watercraft from a Manitoba lake popular with tourists.
A small Ajax dessert shop that recently received a glowing review from celebrity food critic Keith Lee is being forced to move after a zoning complaint was made following the social media influencer’s visit last month.
The Canada Science and Technology Museum is inviting visitors to explore their poop. A new exhibition opens at the Ottawa museum on Friday called, 'Oh Crap! Rethinking human waste.'
The Regina Police Service says it is the first in Saskatchewan and possibly Canada to implement new technology in its detention facility that will offer real-time monitoring of detainees’ vital health metrics.
Just as she had feared, a restaurant owner from eastern Quebec who visited Montreal had her SUV stolen, but says it was all thanks to the kindness of strangers on the internet — not the police — that she got it back.
The stakes have been set for a bet between Vancouver and Edmonton's mayors on who will win Round 2 of the Stanley Cup playoffs.
A grieving mother is hosting a helmet drive in the hopes of protecting children on Manitoba First Nations from a similar tragedy that killed her daughter.