WHITBY, ONT - With a wrench in hand, second-year Electric Vehicle Technician students at Ontario’s Durham College are hoping that all their hard work will help them fasten their future career choice. The program is only in its second year, though its gaining plenty of buzz around campus and enrollment demand has risen year over year. “It’s the direction that everything is going,” proclaims Durham College Hybrid Electric Vehicle Professor, Mike Frederick. The Federal Government expects to reach a 75 per cent electric vehicle (EV) adoption rate by 2035, with hopes of reaching a goal 90 per cent by 2040. “As an automotive technician, if we can’t repair EV’s there’s going to be serious consequences. There’s going to be increased demand for all automotive technicians in the near future, there’s more people retiring from the industry than graduates coming into the industry right now” says Frederick. He tells CTV News he believes automotive technicians are just one of multiple trades soon to be in high demand across Canada. “I believe the average age of a bricklayer right now is 59 years old, all of the old trades guys like me are starting to get out of it,” adds Frederick. According to the federal government, by 2033, Canada will need more than 1.4 million new trades workers across the country, in-part due to a retirement rate of trades workers that’s sitting at about 21 per cent. “With the number of people reaching their retirement age we do need to backfill all those jobs and if you look at anything happening with construction, anything happening in Ontario, or elsewhere in the country, we need trades workers, we need skilled professionals,” says Durham College Skilled Trades Associate Dean, Kara Woods. The most recent data from Statistics Canada backs up the claim made by both Woods and Frederick. Stats Can says roughly 700,000 tradespeople are expected to retire by the end of this decade. Trades as a viable career path “I’m trying to follow the future that’s going to come” says second-year Electric Vehicle Technician student, Noman Shakeel. Shakeel moved from Pakistan to Canada 20 years ago. For the larger part of the two decades, he was running a restaurant and working as a chef, until the pandemic hit and he watched as the spending habits of Canadians changed. The second-year student believes working in the trades and specifically training to be an EV technician, will position him well in a future job market that’s become difficult to predict with the rise of AI technology. “When it comes to working with electric vehicles, you’re not only looking into the EV industry, but you also have electric lawnmowers at home, delivery trucks you see on the road, trains and the wider transport sector, I have a whole field of industry right in front of me that needs workers,” says Shakeel. Canadian families are increasingly looking at the trades as a viable option for their children, with one report finding that half of Canadians now see trade school as the best way to prepare their child for a career by 2050, compared to just 37 per cent feeling the same way about a university degree. “Building Canada Strong,” has been a buzz term shared by the federal government. As part of the initiative, Ottawa has pledged $2 billion to recruit and train up to 100,000 new red-seal trades workers within the next five years. “If you want to build a country, you need to get into the trades, you need to have the hands-on skills. The power of any nation is its ability to build their own industries, rather than getting it from somewhere else,” says Shakeel. As Shakeel packs his school bag and heads to his next class for the day, the second-year college student shares that one day he hopes to have his own hybrid and electric vehicle mechanic shop. He believes it’s a dream that he’ll soon make a reality.
