March 28, 2026
MARKING THE FIRST INVESTMENT of its kind in over twenty years, the B.C. government has announced a historic $241 million commitment to the trades training system.
“That funding is really going to be transformational to the system and allow us to move from a period of austerity and scarcity to a period where we can truly, fully fund the training seats that we have and the expansion that we need,” says Brynn Bourke, executive director of the BC Building Trades.
Over the next three years, the funding will aim to increase per-seat funding for apprenticeship programs, address waitlists, and increase mobility between industries, among other targets, such as expanding skilled-trades certifications for crane operators.
After a slew of largely anti-union policies enacted under BC Liberal premier Gordon Campbell in the early 2000s, apprenticeship funding was left largely to industry to keep afloat.
While some of these policies were gradually reversed, particularly following John Horgan’s NDP government in 2017, the 15 per cent cut to trades skills training seen in 2003 remained – until now.
“It’s a huge victory and one that only would have happened because of the work that building trade unions did,” says Bourke.
Over the last 20 years, even amid continued cuts and no increases in funding, BC Building Trades unions stepped up to fill the gap, setting aside $0.35 to $1.50 from every construction hour worked for training, contributing over $30 million and sponsoring over 6,000 apprentices across the system.
“We’ve probably demonstrated the best practices for a truly world class system… but now we can see what it looks like with… appropriate funding and we can really take on industry needs,” says Jud Martell, training coordinator at the Sheet Metal Workers Training Centre Society.
The funding has arrived at an auspicious time for the industry: There is currently a record-breaking 50,000 people registered as apprentices in the province, and more than 11,000 high school participants.
For Martell, this announcement comes on the shoulders of work that people in the industry have been doing for decades, including many who are no longer alive to see the reversal of this long cycle.
“What they truly believed in was a well-trained, well-educated workforce,” he says. “[There are estimates that say that] those decisions [in the early 2000s] cost the province $8 billion in workforce revenue… this doesn’t fix the last 25 years, but it does begin to address how we go forward.”
“We have a unique opportunity at this point to [discuss] what a world class, best practice, leading apprenticeship system is,” Martell says, adding that the existing work the unions have been doing could serve as a great model moving forward.
As decisions around budgets and funding allocation are ironed out over the coming months, Bourke underscores that this is truly a historic win for the many trades workers and unions who never stopped fighting.
“It’s been years of hard work to get to this moment… it’s one of the most important things that building trades unions do, we fight for safety, for membership security and apprenticeships are lifechanging,” she adds, “This announcement is going to change thousands of people’s lives – we did this.”
By Maddi Dellplain