Doling out employment life rafts
Jim Coyle Jun. 06, 2008
With jobs blowing up all around him, Premier Dalton McGuinty gave a pretty fair...
Critics say province rushed news to blunt fallout from GM cuts
Robert Benzie
Queen's Park Bureau
Premier Dalton McGuinty has unveiled his long-promised "second career" training program but General Motors workers losing their jobs next year are out of luck until they're on the street.
"The program will obviously be well up and running then and will be available to those workers," McGuinty said yesterday, outlining the three-year, $355 million effort.
However, the government might offer other assistance sooner as GM prepares to close its Oshawa pickup truck plant, which now employs 2,600, because of sagging U.S. sales.
"If we need to put in an action centre, for example, and provide them with some help on an earlier basis we're more than prepared to do that," McGuinty said at a Seneca College retraining centre.
The new program – announced in the government's March budget – is aimed at workers who have been laid off within the past year. It's designed to help them find new, lasting careers as mechanical engineering technologists, lab technicians, denturists or bookkeepers, among other vocations, instead of jumping at the first job available.
Workers will be trained at either a community college or private college for up to two years, with each participant eligible for up to $28,000 in aid to help pay tuition and household living expenses.
The program, available through 150 Employment Ontario assessment centres across the province or a hotline at 1-800-387-5656, is open to laid-off workers regardless of whether they are eligible for unemployment insurance.
Opposition parties accused the government of rushing the program into action to deflect criticism this week of its $175 million, 50-year interest-free loan to GM as it axes thousands of jobs in Oshawa.
The $355 million for second careers won't go far considering about 200,000 manufacturing workers have lost their jobs in the past few years, said NDP Leader Howard Hampton.
"If you look at the numbers, less than 10 per cent of the workers who have lost their jobs will be able to get that retraining. ... What happens to the other 180,000?"
McGuinty defended the program as a "substantial amount" given a squeeze on government revenues in tightening economic times, but said he's not sure how strong demand will be.
The government already spends about $1 billion a year helping 900,000 people through its Employment Ontario program.
As the new training regime was unveiled, controversy swirled over previous apprenticeship programs and the awarding of funding for them to a Liberal-friendly union.
Progressive Conservative MPP Bob Runciman (Leeds-Grenville) revealed that the International Union of Operating Engineers, Local 793, received $5 million in Liberal grants between last June and this January for training centres.
Earlier, the union local had also received $1.98 million in provincial training grants.
Runciman noted the union's president was chair of the pro-Liberal Working Families Coalition, which has run expensive ad blitzes during the past two elections urging Ontarians to vote against the Tories.
A furious Training, Colleges and Universities Minister John Milloy told the Legislature the allegation is "outrageous," adding there was a competitive call for bids and "open and transparent process" administered by the public service.
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