Program to help high-schoolers get into the skilled trades gets $826K in provincial cash

In Grade 11, Gavin Kritzer got into a program that helps Windsor-Essex high-schoolers get ready for jobs in the electrical trades.

By the time he was 17, he was doing electrical work on the new Erie Migration District High School building — the same building where he would finish high school as a student.

“I didn’t know what what I wanted to do, so I figured I would try out a trade … And I ended up loving it,” he said at a press conference on Monday at International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 773, which offers the program.

“So I figured I’d apply to the union, see if I could get in and and ended up getting in, got through this job readiness program. So it taught me a lot, and now I’m in the field and I’m still loving it.”

Kritzer credits the union’s job-readiness program for hands-on training and safety certifications that have put him on the track of an apprentice electrician.

The program received a $826,000 funding boost from the provincial government on Monday morning.

Generation Z is faces Canada’s worst youth unemployment rate in decades.

“One in three tradespeople are destined to retire in the next 10 years,” said Windsor-Tecumseh Conservative MPP Andrew Dowie.

“And so if we don’t have a replenishment of the workforce, we’re going to be in serious trouble in our economy. Adding the capacity and adding the opportunities to be trained in the skilled trades is just something that’s necessary. It should have happened a long time ago.”

It’s not an easy program to get into. Karl Lovett, business manager of Local 773, says last year there were 405 applicants for 36 slots. 

“That’s why we screen. That’s why we use job readiness. With no job readiness before, it was luck of the draw, roll the dice, get people into the program, and then just to find out they weren’t a fit for the program,” he said.

“Utilizing job readiness, we train them ahead of time. We get them all their specified training, proper training, basics of electricity, construction awareness, aerial platforms, confined space … financial management, that sort of thing.

“Then we get them out into the field… It’s worked out phenomenal. The people we have trained are now in the program and they’re out to work.”

The next cohort of IBEW Local 773’s program is at the start of 2026.