NDP pledges job training for 1,500 apprentices

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This article was published 04/04/2016 (3794 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The NDP would spend up to $10 million a year to train another 1,500 apprentices, leader Greg Selinger promised Monday.

“It’s about making sure young people have an opportunity for good job opportunities, careers,” Selinger told reporters. “When you get a trade, you get a career for life.”

Selinger said the program especially hopes to help young women and indigenous people: “Indigenous people are very hungry for these jobs,” he said.

Speaking at the Operating Engineers Training Institute of Manitoba in the Murray industrial park off Moray Street, Selinger also promised, “We are going to fund a simulator here” for training on heavy equipment.

Selinger said there are 10,000 apprenticeship training spots in Manitoba now, about five times what there were when the New Democrats took office in 1999.

The funding will also cover training at Red River College and Assiniboine Community College to help 20 journeywomen become instructors each year, he said.

“We’re not restricting this funding to any part of Manitoba,” Selinger noted, citing successful training centres as far away as Swan River and Cranberry Portage.

Selinger also took a shot at Conservative Leader Brian Pallister, whom Selinger accused of having no youth labour training strategy.

Pallister was critical of Selinger’s announcement.

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“The Selinger NDP wants Manitobans to believe they’re suddenly concerned about youth employment and training, after 17 years of lost opportunity,” Pallister said in a news release. “But here’s the real broken NDP record:

“Manitoba lost 1,200 youth full-time construction jobs last year. That was the biggest loss in Canada, percentage wise,” said the Tories. “Since Greg Selinger became premier, over 20,000 young people have left the province. Manitoba is one of only three provinces where the youth unemployment rate is double the provincial one.

“As for claims he is concerned about indigenous youth, Manitoba has among the lowest graduation rates of aboriginal students and it’s getting worse under the Selinger NDP,” Pallister said.

nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca

Nick Martin

Former Free Press reporter Nick Martin, who wrote the monthly suspense column in the books section and was prolific in his standalone reviews of mystery/thriller novels, died Oct. 15 at age 77 while on holiday in Edinburgh, Scotland.