The B.C. government announced August 21 that it will launch a review of the Industry Training Authority (ITA) this fall.
The review was not unexpected given that Premier Christy Clark instructed Jobs, Tourism and Skills Training Minister Shirley Bond to "review the role and function of the ITA" in a June 10 mandate letter.
Any retooling of the organization that oversees B.C.'s trades training programs is likely to be a shadow of what would have happened had B.C. NDP leader Adrian Dix won the May election.
Dix told Business in Vancouver in an exclusive hour-long interview in April that the ITA needs to be revamped so that apprenticeship programs produce a deeper pool of skilled labour and unions have more say in training decisions.
"The major issue facing businesses today is a lack of skilled labour," Dix said. "The idea that we should exclude labour from the equation doesn't make practical sense for those programs. You need to involve everybody."
Representatives of organized labour remain bitter that the BC Liberals scrapped the former Industry Training and Apprenticeship Commission (ITAC) in 2004 and replaced it with the ITA, which was intended to be more responsive to industry needs.
ITAC included board representation with one-third each from business, unions and government – a setup that some say resulted in gridlock.
ITA has no such requirement for its board.
An independent review leader is expected to be announced in September and will then start work immediately, according to the B.C. government.
There are currently 35,000 registered apprentices in the industry training system, including youth. That is an increase of 1,000 compared with last February.
