News Releases

April 21, 2021 EVERYBODY DOES IT, but only construction workers are expected to do it in a filthy portable toilet. “We’re talking about the sanitation practices for workers on construction sites,” said Brynn Bourke, interim executive director for BCBT. “The time has...

April 20, 2021 THE BC BUILDING TRADES applauds the BC NDP government for investing in essential infrastructure, jobs and skills development. Budget 2021 commits a record $26.4 billion to capital spending over three years. This investment in hospitals, housing,...

April 17, 2021 EISLEY MCKAY OWES A LOT TO THE JOURNEYPERSON who showed him the ropes when he was a first-year plumbing apprentice. “She explains processes, tools and tricks of the trade – she is a great teacher,” he says. But not only did she teach him a lot about the...

April 1, 2021 WHEN COVID STRUCK IN MARCH 2020 and construction was deemed an essential service, it was quite a shock for those in trades training. Program coordinators had to be quickon their feet to keep apprentices moving forward. Paddy Byrne, director of training...

March 16, 2021 A NEW SURVEY FINDS that most British Columbians support compulsory certification of the skilled trades and believe certification will make the construction industry safer. “This poll demonstrates that British Columbians overwhelmingly support a return...

January 7, 2021 Vancouver, BC — Forty years ago, four men went to work building one of Downtown Vancouver’s most iconic highrises: the Bentall Centre Tower IV. Those men never came home. They were carpenters Gunther Couvreux, Brian Stevenson, Donald Davis and Yrjo...

December 29, 2020 DESPITE THE SHORTAGE OF workers, many of the most motivated candidates experience barriers to employment in the trades. In 2019, the Workplace Alternative Trades Training (WATT) program was created to reduce those barriers as a new pathway to...

December 28, 2020 IN CANADA, FIRST NATIONS' LONG PROUD HISTORY as ironworkers reaches back to the 1880s when men from the Iroquois Confederacy were hired to build the Victoria Bridge across the Saint Lawrence River for the Canadian Pacific Railway. In B.C., First...

December 14, 2020 OTTAWA’S NATIONAL Shipbuilding Strategy is generating jobs and training for skilled maritime workers as the once-threatened industry continues its dramatic recovery. Seaspan Shipyards’ delivery of its third offshore science vessel to the Canadian...