Alberta Premier Jim Prentice’s budget decision to cut $6 million in funding to apprenticeships killing 6,000 apprentice jobs is an attempt to promote the temporary foreign worker program, according to labour groups.
 
Prentice, who slashed the funding  for apprenticeships by 13 per cent, from $47.7 million to $41.5 million,  has lobbied Ottawa on behalf of businesses wanting increased access to imported labour.

Prentice had previously dismissed criticism that the TFW program was an exploitative practice that businesses use to drive down wages claiming that Alberta’s employers were unable to find skilled workers given “the red hot economy.” 
 
“What red hot economy? Boom or bust we see cuts to those least deserving of it.”  Michael Thomas, a founding director of Canadian Workers Advocacy Group (CWAG), said. “We should be eliminating tuition for apprentices and making it easier to start an apprenticeship not making it even more difficult for both new workers and employers. ”

“It’s obviously clear that Jim Prentice is looking for a quick fix to balancing the budget,” Brian O’Donnell, the founder of Canadians Against the Temporary Foreign Worker Program said. “He has put no thought into the fact he is cutting close to 15 per cent of the apprenticeship training budget. The whole reason that Alberta, and Canada are having the supposed ‘Labour Shortage’  is that for years, students were pushed towards computer and technology fields and there was no budget to entice students into going into the trades.”
 
NDP leader Rachel Notley, who is widely expected to become the next premier following the May 5 election, called Prentice’s move to cut funding to apprenticeships as “reckless,” and vowed to reverse the cuts.
 
“They’ll make the skills shortage even worse in trades like mechanics, carpentry and welding,” Notley said. “The PCs made the wrong decision and the wrong choice, and they did it at the worst possible time.”
 
“Rachel Notley is on the right path by promoting training and making it viable for companies to train our own children rather than cut funding and give those jobs away to cheap foreign labour instead,” O’Donnell said.
 
“Cuts like these don’t save money, they just shove debt onto future governments.” Thomas said. “This is how we engineer failure and it’s time to stop.”

The groups are urging Albertans go out and vote on Tuesday, and treat this election as referendum on whether the province should meet the demand for skilled labour by creating more training opportunities in Alberta or by “opening the TFW floodgates”.

“We do not need to sabotage Canadians in order to replace them with easily exploited foreign slaves,” Thomas concluded. “We need to stop valuing workers based on how easy they are to exploit.”