Ontario government partners with Sault College for steel sector training project

The provincial government has doled out over $1.5 million for a training project that has seen 50 people enter into steel and manufacturing sector-specific training at Sault College. 

Training, colleges and universities minister Ross Romano was joined by Associate Minister of Small Business and Red Tape Reduction Prabmeet Sarkaria at Sault College Friday to make the announcement. 

“The SkillsAdvance Ontario program is a really unique program geared towards resolving the issue that we have right now in our community and across Ontario, where we have jobs without people and people without jobs,” Romano told reporters. “The idea behind this with this program is that our employers, local employers, work directly with our training delivery groups - in this case, Sault College - and the two work hand-in-hand to come up with the curriculum, so that our employers have a very significant aspect of that curriculum development, so that they can show the training delivery exactly what they need - what skills they need the workforce to have coming out of the program.” 

“This way, the workers will come out on day one with the skills, foundational skills, and background skills that they will need to go directly into the workforce.”

Romano says there’s a dozen companies from the local steel and manufacturing sector working with the college as part of the one-year SkillsAdvance Ontario project, which began on Sault College campus last month. 

Adam Carpenter of R.F. Contracting says that many of the overhead and general staff employed by the Sault-based mechanical contractor are “well over” 55 years of age, and with retirements looming, there’s a real need to advance and renew the company’s workforce. 

“If they show promise we will push them to a skilled trade, or move them to a union hall where we can access them again,” Carpenter told reporters following Friday’s announcement.

SkillsAdvance Ontario has 19 similar projects taking place across the province in the realm of manufacturing, logistics, tourism and forestry.