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Canada's Got an Inequality Problem


freebuddy

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Not everyone I guess but this country is willing to wipe anyone's ass. Theres subsidies, grants, assistance to get a better education. If people are willing to go to northern bc, Alberta & Saskatchewan, there's countless opportunity. Anyone can do it. But ya I guess in theory not everyone can in theory.

Mining and resources drove a boom in our country to but now with china wanting less of our iron ore and commodity prices falling revenue to both the private sector and govt. is falling too .

Previous govt's mainly howard ones failed to follow one basic economic policy , when times are good put away for a rainy day , instead of doing this they gave away a lot of it in tax breaks which were to everyone but guess who got most of the money ?

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Canada measures unemployment differently than other countries. Our figures are also skewed by our horrible treatment of our aboriginal people.

Horrible treatment? You mean government cheques, tax breaks, ability to hunt anything they want, excessive amounts of grants and scholarships as well as preferential spots in top colleges and universities who can't fill their goals for native students?

Yeah it's REAL tough being an Indian in BC.

/sarcasm

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So that equates to measuring your unemployment differently to other nations ?

This is an indictment on your society of its treatment of it's indigenous citisens and as a few of us have stated on this board before the scandinavian countries lead the way in their treatment of their own citisens and their quality of life

You are not alone australia also treat it's indigenous people horribly and they are also included in our unemployment figures

Reread what I wrote. Those were two separate statements:

1) Canada measures unemployment differently; and

2) You cannot compare Canadian statistics to European ones, which do not include a large and disadvantaged aboriginal population.

I did not say one led to the other.

The way different countries measure unemployment has to do with how they count their working force. Most countries only include people actively looking for a job. Differences then come when you decide how long you have to look before being taken off the list. In Canada, you have to have looked within the last 4 weeks. Other wrinkles come with part-time workers, students, etc...

So you cannot say X country has a 7% unemployment rate so things must be better than Y country, which has a 7.5% unemployment rate. The analysis is far more complicated than that.

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Horrible treatment? You mean government cheques, tax breaks, ability to hunt anything they want, excessive amounts of grants and scholarships as well as preferential spots in top colleges and universities who can't fill their goals for native students?

Yeah it's REAL tough being an Indian in BC.

/sarcasm

No I was referring to the horrible genocide, which created the societal problems they have. Not the meager band-aids, which have only recently taken place.

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Horrible treatment? You mean government cheques, tax breaks, ability to hunt anything they want, excessive amounts of grants and scholarships as well as preferential spots in top colleges and universities who can't fill their goals for native students?

Yeah it's REAL tough being an Indian in BC.

/sarcasm

Don't forget those all inclusive residential schools/country clubs they got to go to.

In a thread built on silly things being tossed in either direction you may have the one that stands out. Congrats.

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Interesting theory, but it's not working out that way. It's not market for salaries dictating where people go, it's a false sense of value attached to getting a "university degree".

As it is, a tradesman can make 100k a year and a sociology major will probably make $0. If anything the salaries for tradesmen are too high, as the general cost of labour is affecting the costs of goods and services.

There is a huge difference in actually making 100k and the potential to make a 100k as a tradesman.

Tell us where a tradesman can make a 100k and tell us how many tradesman there are

Tell us how many consecutive years a tradesman can make a 100k and tell us how long the window is open for a tradesman to make a 100k

And finally how much does a self employed tradesman earning 100k actually take home? An employed tradesman will never make a 100k fyi.

Then, after the window is closed, how much does a worn out tradesman make and how much is his pension paying him/her

Sorry,

Tradesperson.

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There is a huge difference in actually making 100k and the potential to make a 100k as a tradesman.

Tell us where a tradesman can make a 100k and tell us how many tradesman there are

Tell us how many consecutive years a tradesman can make a 100k and tell us how long the window is open for a tradesman to make a 100k

And finally how much does a self employed tradesman earning 100k actually take home? An employed tradesman will never make a 100k fyi.

Then, after the window is closed, how much does a worn out tradesman make and how much is his pension paying him/her

Sorry,

Tradesperson.

Fair point. I won't argue with that.

It's not just tradesmen though. When the economy shuts down to the point that a large proportion of tradesmen are out of work, so are many other areas of work. There are few recession proof industries.

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A Canadian City Once Eliminated Poverty And Nearly Everyone Forgot About It

Zi-Ann Lum

12/23/14 09:38 AM ET

On a December afternoon, Frances Amy Richardson took a break from her quilting class to reflect on a groundbreaking experiment she took part in 40 years earlier.

Well, that was quite a few years ago, she said. There was a lot of people that really benefitted from it.

Between 1974 and 1979, residents of a small Manitoba city were selected to be subjects in a project that ensured basic annual incomes for everyone. For five years, monthly cheques were delivered to the poorest residents of Dauphin, Man. no strings attached.

And for five years, poverty was completely eliminated.

The program was dubbed Mincome a neologism of minimum income and it was the first of its kind in North America. It stood out from similar American projects at the time because it didnt shut out seniors and the disabled from qualification.

The projects original intent was to evaluate if giving cheques to the working poor, enough to top-up their incomes to a living wage, would kill peoples motivation to work. It didnt.

But the Conservative government that took power provincially in 1977 and federally in 1979 had no interest in implementing the project more widely. Researchers were told to pack up the projects records into 1,800 boxes and place them in storage.

A final report was never released.

Richardson is now 87 and still lives in Dauphin. She says only three or four of the citys original Mincome recipients remain among the prairie communitys 8,251 residents.

During the programs heyday in the mid-1970s, Richardson was a mother of six three of her children lived at home.

To earn money, she ran a small salon out of her home called Fifth Avenue Beauty Chalet. Whatever cash she could make styling hair contributed one stream of the familys income; her husband Gordon provided the other with his job at the local telephone company.

Her ailing mother also lived in the house at the time. She remembers Mincome researchers visiting the home regularly to calculate how much money the family was qualified for.

We kept track of everything and somebody would come once a month, she explained. I kept track of what I made and they would pay the difference to what they figured that cost many people to live.

Mincome provided the Richardsons with financial predictability and a sense of stability. There was always food on the table. The bills were paid. The kids stayed in school.

And when Gordons health took a turn for the worse mid-way through the pilot project, the family still made ends meet.

It was a lot of good, but see, the Manitoba government and the federal government both went out of power that year and they ran out of money so it was just dropped, Richardson said.

It was done.

An extraordinary program for ordinary people

In five years, Mincome helped one thousand Dauphin families who fell below the poverty line earn a livable income. When the project ended, locals didnt make a fuss because they knew the cheques were temporary anyway.

Some people thought it was like charity, Richardson said about Mincome. It wasnt really charity, it was need.

So in 1979, it was business as usual again. After Mincome folded, people tapped into their prairie work ethic and looked to make do however they could. The Richardson family went back to scraping by, the same way they had before the project began. The kids found jobs: one sold gas at the local garage, another landed entry-level work in insurance.

Richardson continued to bake bread and can her own preserves at home. Its a cash-saving skill born out of hard times some food bank-dependent families have lost today, she suggested.

I think if we had a Mincome where they were helped a little, she added. That might be better.

* * *

Why Dauphin? How did a farming community play host to such a landmark social assistance program?

Good political timing didnt hurt.

In 1969, the left-leaning provincial NDP led by Edward Schreyer swept into power for the first time. The transition injected new rural sensitivities and democratic socialist influences into politics.

On the federal level, Pierre Elliott Trudeau was prime minister. The two men worked swiftly to set up conditions for a basic income experiment.

In 1973, Manitoba and the federal government signed a cost-sharing agreement: 75 per cent of the $17-million budget would be paid for by the feds; the rest by the province.

The project rolled out the next year.

All Dauphinites were automatically considered for benefits. One-third of residents qualified for Mincome cheques.

How Mincome cheques were calculated:

1. Everyone was given the same base amount: 60 per cent of Statistics Canadas low-income cut-off. The cut-off varied, depending on family size and where they lived. But in 1975, a single Canadian who was considered low-income earned $3,386 on average.

1975 2014 dollars

Individual $3,386 $16,094

Family of two $4,907 $20,443

2. Base amount was modified: 50 cents was subtracted from every dollar earned from other income sources

It was sort of something new and utopian. It was completely different, said Dauphins current mayor Eric Irwin. It was an attempt to define social services in a different way.

A gap in the system ignored

Dr. Evelyn Forget is the researcher at University of Manitoba credited for tracking down those 1,800 dusty boxes of Mincome raw data that sat forgotten for 30 years.

She first heard about the project in an undergraduate economics class at the University of Toronto in the 70s. Mincome cheques were still being delivered when her professors praised the experiment as really important, saying it was going to revolutionize the delivery of social programs. It stuck with her.

In 2005, she began looking for the Mincome data. After a strenuous search, she located the records at the provincial archives in Winnipeg. She was the first to look at them since they were packed up in 1979.

[Archivists] were in the process of wondering whether, in fact, they could throw them out because they took up a lot of space and nobody seemed interested in it, said Forget.

It didnt take her long to realize the plethora of files could never be funneled into any sort of statistical analysis. There were questionnaires with circled answers. And data on one family could be scattered between countless boxes.

It also didnt help that there were no labels or index.

Because of an ethics board policy, Forget couldnt directly contact the people whose data she was now in possession of the participants had consented to speak to the original researchers only. Instead, she used a guest spot on a local radio station to invite Mincome recipients to call her.

One woman called to say she remembered the Mincome project. In the early 1970s, she was a single mother raising two girls on welfare then called Mothers Allowance. She said she had always been treated respectfully, but there was one thing case workers said that bothered her.

She said she wanted to get some job training. They told her to go home and take care of her kids and they would take care of her, explained Forget.

When the opportunity to transfer from Mothers Allowance to Mincome came along, the woman took it. With no restrictions on how she could spend the money she was given, she signed up for training and got a part-time job at the local library which eventually became a full-time career.

So when I talked to her, she was incredibly proud of having modelled a different kind of life for her daughters, Forget said. The retired librarian invited Forget to visit her home. Inside, she was shown pictures from her two girls graduations, mother beaming with pride.

In 2011, Forget released a paper distilling how Mincome affected peoples health using census data. She found overall hospitalization rates (for accidents, injuries, and mental health diagnoses) dropped in the group who received basic income supplements.

By giving a communitys poorest residents enough to lift their incomes above the poverty line, there was a measurable impact on the health care system. Its this kind of logic that Forget hopes will propel the idea of basic income forward, four decades later.

Im enough of an optimist to believe that eventually were going to end up there. I think we already have part of the program in place, said Forget, referring to existing supplements including the Guaranteed Income Supplement for seniors and the National Child Benefit.

The one gap in the system right now is the working poor: people working in insecure and precarious jobs.

* * *

A classic Ottawa initiative

Two years before the Harper government shut down its operations, the National Council of Welfare released a damning report criticizing how welfare rules are trapping people in poverty.

Canadas welfare system is a box with a tight lid. Those in need must essentially first become destitute before they qualify for temporary assistance, said TD Banks former chief economist Don Drummond after the social agencys report was released in 2010.

But the record shows once you become destitute you tend to stay in that state. You have no means to absorb setbacks in income or unexpected costs. You cant afford to move to where jobs might be or upgrade your skills.

Former Conservative senator Hugh Segal is a longtime proponent of a guaranteed annual income policy. He believes the program could save provinces millions in social assistance spending on programs like welfare.

Instead of being forced through the welfare system, peoples eligibility would be assessed and reassessed with every income tax filing. Those who dont make above the low-income cut-off in their area would be automatically topped up, similar to Mincome in Dauphin.

How guaranteed annual income could work today:

Distributed as a federal Negative Income Tax Top-ups are calculated automatically and delivered after income tax filings Top-ups would render people ineligible for provincial welfare Provincial welfare money gets reallocated to other priorities (i.e. elder care, expanded early childcare programs)

But the idea never took off in Canada. The lessons of Mincome never spread. Simply put: The Mincome experiment discontinued because the governments changed.

Segal says what happened in Dauphin was a classic Ottawa initiative, with a lot of money spent putting a program in place, but without adequate investment to evaluate if it was effective or not.

Basic income not a silver bullet

Renewed energy in European campaigns for basic income have attracted more reporters and researchers to Dauphin. This summer, a Netherlands TV crew brought some excitement to town while on location to film a documentary about Mincome.

This started about a year ago with the press fooling around, starting to ask questions, Irwin said.

While the idea of basic income has gained traction in countries including Scotland, Switzerland, Namibia, Uganda, and India, others are skeptical. Im not convinced its a silver bullet, explains Leilani Farha, executive director of Canada Without Poverty and acting United Nations special rapporteur on adequate housing. Its not just about money. Its about so many other things.

Poverty is also about stigmatization and discrimination. You know, basic income is not going to address that. No single policy is going to address that, she said, criticizing the existing social assistance system as one that hands out paltry, paltry amounts of money.

The problem is that nothing is going on, said Farha referring to government momentum. Theres no leadership on these issues.

Currents changing in Canada

During his nine years in the Senate, Segal advocated strongly for basic income for Canadians. But in his time as a member of the Conservative caucus, he didnt see the tiniest indication of interest on the part of the government in another test site or implementation.

Thats because the current government shares the Mulroney administration view that the best social policy is a job, he said.

The one exception was late finance minister Jim Flaherty who established the working income tax benefit to aid working Canadians living in poverty. He was the only one to engage constructively, Segal says.

Segal said he doesnt expect the concept to gain traction again among the Harper Conservatives.

I would think its fair to say ideologically, the present government would eye the notion that this is some kooky left-wing scheme without addressing the fact that really strong social and economic conservatives like Milton Friedman argued in favour of a negative income tax, he said.

In Canada, the idea of an universal basic income was first presented at a Progressive Conservative policy convention in October of 1969. Then-leader Robert Stanfield argued the idea would consolidate overlapping security programs and reduce bureaucracy.

But in the last two elections, Segal says poverty did not come up in television debates between party leaders once. Its something he doesnt want to see repeated.

I think its an abomination that we wouldnt discuss it when we have close to 10 per cent of the population living beneath the poverty line.

Yet he remains more optimistic in this decade than the last because of signs of interest from the federal Liberal and Green parties.

One begins to sense, not that the ice is breaking, but the currents underneath the ice are beginning to move more quickly, he said.

http://m.huffpost.com/ca/entry/6335682

You need to stop posting articles as a response. Link it and give your take on it.

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So happy you finally weighed in :)

I know, it's such a treat when deb weighs in.

Give her some credit, it happens more often than it does with freebuddy.

EDIT: and of course see his first (and second) reply in this thread, as quoted above - and please stop doing that people. Quoting a massive article style post is almost worse than just posting an article to begin with.

You should really post commentary with your articles. It'd neuter at least 75% of the criticism about your posts and allow you advance your narrative on your terms. Otherwise, your posts are just a rush to point out how you don't post your opinion and get some jabs at you.

Your forum etiquette is just awful.

Post the link. Post the most important paragraph from that link. Post your own commentary on why the link is important.

Do not just post the entire article as a huge wall of text.

I'm scrolling through on a smart phone and every time you post an entire article it just makes the whole thread difficult to read.

These, mobile posting or not.

I'm ok with posting a whole article if it's shorter but if it spans more than 2 or 3 screen lengths and you get nothing else from the OP on the subject then you know he's just spamming links. We have no idea if he's read any of the article or if he just reads the title and copy/pastes. We don't know if he understands the content or if he's just waiting to see the responses from people (whether or the topic or his posting style).

Until freebuddy understands that and takes the time to make a thread worthwhile, I'm not too worried about making my responses to his topics worthwhile either.

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Give her some credit, it happens more often than it does with freebuddy.

EDIT: and of course see his first (and second) reply in this thread, as quoted above - and please stop doing that people. Quoting a massive article style post is almost worse than just posting an article to begin with.

These, mobile posting or not.

I'm ok with posting a whole article if it's shorter but if it spans more than 2 or 3 screen lengths and you get nothing else from the OP on the subject then you know he's just spamming links. We have no idea if he's read any of the article or if he just reads the title and copy/pastes. We don't know if he understands the content or if he's just waiting to see the responses from people (whether or the topic or his posting style).

Until freebuddy understands that and takes the time to make a thread worthwhile, I'm not too worried about making my responses to his topics worthwhile either.

If they're too lengthy for you, go troll the other people who post long articles and see what happens.

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Mining and resources drove a boom in our country to but now with china wanting less of our iron ore and commodity prices falling revenue to both the private sector and govt. is falling too .

Previous govt's mainly howard ones failed to follow one basic economic policy , when times are good put away for a rainy day , instead of doing this they gave away a lot of it in tax breaks which were to everyone but guess who got most of the money ?

What do you think of having a basic minimum income for everyone who doesn't make enough money to keep them out of poverty?

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Taxes. The society.

Fo sho but who specifically then pays for it. Who is going to feel it the most I guess would be a better question? Does the family with 1 person working bringing in an income of 300 000 a year feel that more than my family with both my wife and I working and barely bringing in 90,000 a year for our family feel it more?

On top of that based on my experience doing volunteer work at missions and shelters every week for the past 8 year handing out money is going to be very detrimental to the health of a lot of people.

This giving money to people for doing nothing crap is a lovely idea but would fail in practice. Now take that money and give it to programs like new life missions and shelters and rehab facilities etc etc etc and it might actually do some good. I'd rather not feel the pinch worse than I already do for some pipe dream program that isn't going to do any good for the majority of people it's supposed to "help"

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Fo sho but who specifically then pays for it. Who is going to feel it the most I guess would be a better question? Does the family with 1 person working bringing in an income of 300 000 a year feel that more than my family with both my wife and I working and barely bringing in 90,000 a year for our family feel it more?

On top of that based on my experience doing volunteer work at missions and shelters every week for the past 8 year handing out money is going to be very detrimental to the health of a lot of people.

This giving money to people for doing nothing crap is a lovely idea but would fail in practice. Now take that money and give it to programs like new life missions and shelters and rehab facilities etc etc etc and it might actually do some good. I'd rather not feel the pinch worse than I already do for some pipe dream program that isn't going to do any good for the majority of people it's supposed to "help"

Well, who feels the taxes right now? I don't see why the same people wouldn't be feeling it the most. I would say that a single person making 300k pays more in taxes than your family, ergo I'd say that person feels it more. Don't really see where this thought should take us though. Elaborate? And by the way, 90k is about 40% higher than the average Canadian family household income, so "barely" making 90k shouldn't be such a downer.

This is why anecdotal evidence counts for squat when dealing with issues spanning nations and affecting millions. I don't doubt you're aware of the Mincome project from a few decades ago, which resulted in improvements to people's quality of life, increased education for youth, and more stay-home moms to take care of their young. And more.

I'm not sure what detrimental health effects giving the poor money would have. Increased drug use? I'd refer to the Florida "experiment' where the Republican governor (tied to the testing company) tested welfare recipients for drugs, finding few people using (and the program being a tremendous waste of public money). Giving money to people is more likely to result in them buying food/shelter than drugs and alcohol.

This giving money to people for doing nothing crap is the future, whether you like it or not. Do you have a plan to employ millions of drivers who will be unemployed within a decade or two? Bus drivers, taxi drivers, truckers, and on and on and on. How about grocery store clerks? My local store has 6 machines that process customers faster than any cashier. We can also look forward to ordering meals from a computer screen at MickeyD's, being greeted by screens at our local banks, and more. The reality of the situation is that human labour will eventually be more and more concentrated in providing entertainment than services and production. And it's not just low skill workers that will be affected. Imagine the value of an AI that can parse legal documents, be able to diagnose diseases. That's coming too, and it may even be closer than self-driving vehicles.

Finally, it's not about giving people money for doing nothing. Rather, it's about giving people a means to survive in a society dominated by lobbying money, stagnating wages, increasing prices for everything people need to pay on a repeating basis (yes, TVs have gotten cheaper. Bread? That's a different story).

What are the costs of our bureaucracy to provide welfare, EI, sickness benefits, and so on? It's huge. Pour that into the program. Need to find more money? Implement a national prescription program to lower the cost of drugs by buying in larger quantities. Implement dental into health coverage and save once the benefits of preventative care kick in in a decade. Jeeze, you can even increase taxes! There was no purpose in cutting 2% off the GST and losing billions per year in government revenue (well, there was a reason - populism).

Will it be easy? No. Will it be cheap? No. Will it provide a higher quality of life for the populace? Absolutely. Will it improve our society? No doubt. We shouldn't strive to maintain status quo because change is expensive or scary, we should see the trends over the last decades and think how we can prepare for the inevitable surge in self-operating technologies that will wipe out entire industries.

Edit: I neglected to mention how financial security will permit people to take risks with their business ideas, not having to worry about living on the street. This one I know first hand, I made 400 dollars a month for well over a year to build a business, that eventually failed anyway. How about increased creative and artistic output from society? People having more time to pursue their life's ambitions instead of working in a cubicle for half their time on the planet. We're not robots, and if we can give ourselves more time to enjoy life instead of spending that time on trying to afford life, are we really that much worse? Will you really be upset if there is never another billionaire after Bill Gates? I sure won't, and I'm part of the business folks who strive to make millions (emphasis on strive, heh).

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What "forum etiquette" ? There is none in this forum. If the articles I post are too difficult for you to handle, don't read or respond to them, nobody is forcing you to pay attention to them.

I think it's horrible forum etiquette for that group of 4-5 CDC addicts to hate on you so openly.

Thanks for posting the link it was a good read.

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Don't forget those all inclusive residential schools/country clubs they got to go to.

In a thread built on silly things being tossed in either direction you may have the one that stands out. Congrats.

Thanks I guess!

I grew up in the north coast - the real North coast not Vancouver - and my school was about 60% native. My post was actually toned back, if I went into things I saw regularly (like where the 15+ grand they recieved upon turning 18 went, or where many of my friends ended up after graduation instead of taking advantage of the opportunities for free schooling) I honestly think you wouldn't beleive it. I have many native friends, but still strongly beleive the majority are being ruined by handouts from our government.

As far as your genocide etc comment - find a society that has no past examples of the same or similar history. However, unlike you, I don't suffer from white man guilt.

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I really disagree. There aren't enough ticketed tradesmen in Canada. We have a plethora of English/Sociology/History/Psychology majors though.

The issue is that Canada (and the US) is one of a few countries without a centralized education system. The Canadian government pays out the arse for university/college but does not control how many students are allowed into each program. In most European countries, the government looks at what the economy needs and then creates quotas in each field. Students in highschool who are obviously not going to be academics are streamed into trades oriented schooling for their last couple of years of highschool.

Instead in Canada, we teach that getting a useless degree and smoking pot with your friends somehow gives you life experience/makes you a better person. We don't respect what it takes to get a trades ticket and, instead, attempt to force every round peg into a square hole.

It's funny, because I keep hearing that. However, my own personal experience says otherwise.

As a bit of background, let me start out by saying that I'm in my 50s. About 6 years ago, I decided that I wanted to make a shift in my career arc. Up until that time, I had worked primarily is sales, the hospitality industry and middle management. Being "burned out" I decided to take an entry-level job in construction.

Not only did I find that I enjoyed the work, I found myself in the best shape I had ever been since my junior hockey days.

After two years, the company I worked for folded. Not wanting to re-enter the sales workforce, I applied for and was granted funding to enter the Electrical apprenticeship program. The problem with this is, anyone can take year one of schooling, but after year one, you have to find a company that will "sponsor" you through the final three years of the apprenticeship. Obviously, at close to 50 years old, this wasn't going to be easy for me.

However, at the time, (2010) there was a government program in place that would allow students to take both first and second year training, before finding a sponsor. This was a huge distinction, since many companies (especially in the Oil patch) were hiring 2nd year apprentices straight out of school.

There were four of us in my class who planned on doing this. We had all registered and put down deposits for year two, which would have begun classes a week after we passed our year one exam.

After 6 months of going to school and fully expecting to go right back for another 10 weeks, we were informed that the program we were counting on had been cancelled. (They told us this on the final day of classes, right after we finished our final exam)The story went that the program had been too successful and the market was now flooded with Electrical apprentices. Obviously, we were the only students in our class of 15 who had not been circulating resumes at that point, so we were left with relatively few options.

I still haven't completely given up on the idea of becoming an electrician, but almost 5 years later, it's not looking good.

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