Skilled Trades Blog

For the last few weeks the Skilled Trades Academy has been hosting our Gas Technician classes online and we're pleased to report that it has been a great success. Both students and instructors have embraced online learning but many of you are wondering how it all works so here's some information on what to expect. 

Job satisfaction, security, in-demand skills and year-round work - just some of the benefits of being a certified Gas Technician. They say that the average person spends nearly one-third of their life at work so a fulfilling career choice is incredibly important. 

We hope you have kept safe and healthy over the past few weeks. Since temporarily closing our classrooms for the health and safety of our students, staff, and community at large, the team here at the Skilled Trades Academies have been working together tirelessly to come up with a solution to get your classes back up and running. It is our goal to keep all of our classes on schedule the best we can, but understand that due to circumstance beyond our control, all practicals, shop time and TSSA exams will be scheduled to recommence as soon as we are allowed.

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to grow, The Skilled Trades Academy is working to protect the health and safety of students, faculty and staff. While we have been enacting a series of measure to safeguard student, faculty, and staff wellbeing, we have come to the conclusion that it is essential to temporarily suspend all in-person classes for the time being to protect our community.

On March 8, the Niagara Skilled Trades Academy joins the world in celebrating International Women’s Day. If you know us, you know that this day is very important to us as we recognize the value of female trades workers and encourage young women to pursue opportunities in the gas technician industry. Since World War 2, when women were a critical part of the skilled trades industries, the number of women entering our field has dwindled, but in recent years we are happy to report that the number of female workers in the trades has once again started to rise as more women are embracing the trades as an exciting and rewarding career opportunity!  

The skilled trades industry is an important part of our society and economy — tradespeople touch almost every aspect of our daily lives. They build our homes and our cars. They work in manufacturing, mining, oil and gas. Canada depends on the skilled trades, they keep our country going.

Whether you are just leaving secondary school to pursue the trades or are making a career switch, skilled trades training can be expensive. However, it isn’t impossible. There are skilled trades funding options available specific to trades women to help encourage a more diverse workforce in the skilled trades.

Women are more commonly being recruited into Ontario skilled trades training as the trades workforce continues to become more diverse. By 2020, it is expected that the need for skilled trades labourers will rise to almost 1.8 million workers Canada-wide.

We’ve talked before about why it is important for women to join the trades, but it isn’t just important for the industry, but valuable for the women themselves to join the trades. Many young women overlook the trades because they feel it isn’t a viable option for them, and don’t realize that choosing gas technician training can lead to all of the things they want out of a career. We’ve listed some of the reasons why gas technician training is an attractive option for young women when deciding their career.

The skilled trades in Canada is a predominantly male-dominated field, with only about 5% of trade jobs being performed by women. But here at the Skilled Trades Academies, we strongly believe that we are about to see this number rise dramatically. With current trades people getting closer to retirement age, there is about to be a gap in the workforce, and it would be amazing for that shortage to be filled with women in the trades.