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Canada Vocational Education Essay

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Date: 10/6/2016 Name: Jamie Cole

It’s been a learning curve for the last 100 years for Canadian vocational education. We have had many opportunities to develop Vocational Education with Federal funding over the past century. Unfortunately it has usually come a little too late, with failed communication between the Federal and Provincial government. Let’s have a quick paraphrased look back at its history. After the worldwide economic depression of the mid 1890’s, Canada had a realization of the shortage of skilled workers. The Canadian Manufacturers Association formed in 1887 led a campaign of being the primary force pressuring the Federal government to train skilled works and to open more schools. The Federal government had to …show more content…

When war ended, the Canadian government passed the Technical Education Act (1919). Under its terms, the federal government was to provide $10 million to the provinces, to be spent over a ten-year period, to promote technical education at the secondary school level. The federal government’s funding regulations for this program, however, were considerably tighter than for agricultural education. The restrictive provisions excluded poorer provinces, and by 31 March 1929, only Ontario had claimed its share of the federal funding. As a consequence Ontario’s vocational education programs funded under the Technical Education Act were implemented much earlier than those in some poorer and less industrially developed provinces. Almost 15 years’ easing of federal restrictions was required before all provinces …show more content…

The government removed itself from vocational training funding and left the individual provinces to pick up the entire costs. Some province did well and some did not. They had been placing all their funding towards adult training and invested in the university levels while not funding any vocational education. During the 1970’s, Canada could not compete with Europe’s industrial expansion and competitive costs. By the Federal government not training our own people and not attracting immigrant workers to Canada, we could not keep international trade in balance with other

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