Marjorie Griffin Cohen and Margaret Manery, Simon Fraser University 
Community Skills Training by and for Immigrant Women 
The main objective of this study will be to examine the training programs of two highly successful immigrant skills training centres in Toronto. These were programs that have been in place for over twenty years and have undergone considerable transformations over this time. One of the main themes of the study will be to examine the complex relationship between the immigrant groups and the granting agencies. In particular it will analyze the organizations’ responses to government training program changes as well as the changes in training that were needed as the economic conditions and climate changed.

Susan Wismer, University of Waterloo, Karen Lior, Advocates for Community-Based Education and Training for Women 
Still Shopping for Training: Women’s Labour Market Training Needs, Government Responses and The Role of Community-based Training 
The unique and important labour market training needs of women in Canada have been formally recognised in policy since 1986, when Ministers Responsible for the Status of Women endorsed 19 measures aimed at enhancing women’s education and training opportunities. In 1993, recognising that progress had been slow, a joint federal-provincial-territorial Working Group was established in order to identify principles, models and best practices, as part of a comprehensive training strategy for women’s training. This study examines what has happened since 1993, focusing on the role of Community-based Training in attempting to meet women’s training needs in a rapidly changing policy context and under increasingly restrictive funding arrangements.

John Anderson and Canadian Labour 
Congress The division of training delivery between unions and public institutions 
This project researches the division of training delivery between unions and public institutions. The research examines the potential and actual effects of this division, assesses best practices and proposes a model protocol dealing with the effects of union negotiated training on public institutions.

John Anderson and Canadian Labour Congress 
A Labour Agenda on Training Funding 
Today, the sources of funding are rapidly changing, as the federal government withdraws from the funding arena. As well as this change in who funds training, the amounts allocated to training are drying up, as cutbacks to funding or freezes have been widespread. How then, in these troubled times, does the Canadian labour movement and society guarantee some kind of continued funding for training?

Paul Anisef and Paul Axelrod, York University 
The Social Determinants of Education and On-the-job Training among members of the class of ‘73 
This interdisciplinary study examines the experiences of a generation of Ontario residents who graduated from grade 12 in 1973 and are now in their forties. It is the longest longitudinal study of its kind in Canada, with the last phase being completed in 1994/1995, and provides a wealth of information about the links between schooling and employment, labour market conditions in a time of technological change and economic instability, and the different strategies that men and women have employed to reconcile familial and occupational demands. The study also aims to explore complex issues pertaining to job training, underemployment and over qualification, career mobility, life and work satisfaction, income attainment and the tension between vocationalism and liberal arts, at the post-secondary level.

Colette Bernier, Université Laval 
An Inventory of the Vocational Training Industry in Quebec (Le marché de la formation professionnelle au Québec: un état des lieux) 
This study proposes to critically analyse the actions, positions, and influences of the organisations that provide vocational training in Quebec as a prelude to on-site studies of the province's vocational training industry. This industry includes three major components: the private sector (corporations, consulting trainers), the public sector (ministries, schools) and the communal-associative sector (professional associations, unions).

Sylvain Bourdon, Université de Sherbrooke 
The Québec Government’s Access Programmes, Community Organisations and the Quality of Training (L’évolution de la qualité de la formation dispensée par les organismes communautaires dans le cadre des mesures gouvernementales visant à contrer l’exclusion au Québec) 
This research project documents transformations in the quality of training provided by community organisations a) in the current context of budget cuts and devolution of training to the provinces, and b) within the framework of Quebec’s programs aiming at countering social exclusion. What has been the impact of these measures on the practices, course contents and the participants in programs offered by community based training organisations? An historical analysis of the policies and programs along with 15 case studies will address this question and test the hypothesis that two opposed training paradigms are in operation: a logic of accessibility and democracy carried by community organizations and one of selection and exclusion implicitly embodied in current government policies.

Sylvain Bourdon et Claude Laflamme, Université de Sherbrooke 
The organisation of vocational training in intermediate organisations: unions and professional associations (Organisation de la formation professionnelle dans les organismes intermédiares: les syndicats et les ordres professionnels) 
The objective of this project is to compare the organisation of vocational training in unions with that in professional associations, to determine whether it is appreciably different and better adapted to a long term developmental perspective of the labour market.

Jean Charest, Université de Montréal and Suzanne Leduc, Confederation of National Trade Unions 
Devolution of Labour Market Programmes and the Effectiveness of Public Employment Services: The Perspectives of Employment Counsellors and Program Participants (La dévolution des programmes de main-d’œuvre aux provinces et l’efficacité des services publics d’emploi: le point de vue des agents d’aide à l’emploi et de la clientèle au Québec) 
Since the 1980s, numerous studies have indicated the importance of coherence and continuity between active and passive employment measures. Particularly necessary is the creation of consensus mechanisms for the principal labour market actors. In Québec there is an additional hypothesis that the double presence of federal and provincial governments in labour market programmes creates unnecessary complexity and that this complexity itself is a major obstacle for accessibility in training and job-creation programmes. Integration of services was implemented following the Québec-Canada Labour Market Development Agreement of 1997. Research in Québec since then has neglected the empirical questions around the actual management of services to the public. In our project, the evaluation by employment counsellors in Emploi-Québec and by clients who receive employment services serve as indicators of the effectiveness of the management of these newly devolved programmes.

Marjorie Griffin Cohen, Simon Fraser University, and Kate Braid 
The B.C. Island Highway Project: A Model for Access and Retention of Equity Groups in Skilled Trades and Semi-Skilled Blue Collar Jobs 
This project is an in-depth study of the means by which the Island Highway's success in equity group participation has been achieved. It examines where the strengths and weaknesses of such a program are, and how it might be expanded and improved and applied more broadly, not only to the public but to the private sector. Because retention is currently a major challenge, the study also examines retention rates and the possible impact of training on the retention of equity workers. The fact that this is a 7-year project allows a valuable perspective over time, especially on the impacts of training on retention.

Mona-Josée Gagnon, Université de Montréal and Louise Miller, Fédération des travailleurs et travailleuses du Québec 
Social Engineering as a Dimension of Training (L’ingénierie sociale comme dimension de la formation professionelle) 
This research project is being carried out thanks to the implementation of the Loi favorisant le développement de la formation de la main-d’oeuvre (Québec act to promote skill training development), which is designed to increase in-house occupational training through labour-management cooperation. Our objective is to focus on life and work skills training given in-house, some of which falls under our Social Engineering hypothesis. Through case studies, we will attempt to determine where this training fits in as a qualifying factor within the context of labour-management relations as well as labour ideologies and practices.

Diana Gibson, Capilano College, and Susan Lockhart, Trade Union Research Bureau 
Factors in the Long Term Success of Women in Trade Employment and Training Programs: A Case Study of the BladeRunners Program 
This project examines differences in rates of retention for women in trades training and employment programs. Through an in depth study of the BladeRunners Program, the study will identify the key factors affecting these retention rates and the supports needed to improve the long term participation of women in the trades. The BladeRunners Program is a construction trades employment training program for people facing multiple barriers to employment. The program has a comparatively high proportion of women participants and allows the opportunity to compare their participation rates with those of male participants. With a relatively high percentage of first nations participants as well, the program also provides the opportunity to examine barriers faced by women from different backgrounds.

Larry Haiven, University of Saskatchewan 
Training and Re-Training Health Care Workers Amid Health Care Restructuring, Downsizing and Rationalization 
Health care employers have responded to a range of changes in health care delivery -- downsizing of institutions and employee complements, emphasis on community-based rather than institutional care and, in Saskatchewan, de-centralization (from the provincial government) and re-centralization (from institutions) of health care administration to regional health authorities -- by seeking greater "flexibility". These changes pose serious challenges to the training regime for health care workers. This study examines their implications for the definition of training needs, employers' and employees' responsibilities for providing or acquiring training, financing of training, how training is provided, and for whom it is available. It also assesses employee and union responses to changes in the division of tasks, the recomposition of bargaining units and the definition of training needs and their provision.

Maureen Hynes, George Brown College, and Alice de Wolff 
Removing Barriers to Transferable Training for Clerical Information Workers 
The project provides a thorough assessment of the absence of transferable training accreditation for clerical information workers. This key problem affects a large number of working people, mostly women, in an occupation that is experiencing profound change. The study works with a newly formed clerical training network in Metropolitan Toronto to examine the institutional barriers to, and opportunities for creating a coherent, developmental training system for clerical workers in this region.

Nancy Jackson, McGill University 
Training Industry: Whose Good? Australian Perspectives 
This project examines how notions of "skills training" and the "training industry" have been socially/discursively organised over recent years as the objects of public and /or industry policy. Thus, it examines the training industry specifically as an arena of ideological struggle, as well as a battleground over resources. The study aims to illuminate whose interests are served and whose claims are silenced by the manner in which training policy frameworks and institutional arrangements have repositioned "job skills" variously as a "private good", a "public good", a "corporate good" and, increasingly, as a "traded good". To provide leadership in this increasingly complex policy climate, the labour community needs not only a comprehensive map of "training activity", but also a well developed critical perspective on how the notion of a skills training industry itself is constituted as part of a process of cultural, industrial and political struggle. This project examines and compares the ideological framing of skills debates in the last decade in Australia and Canada.

Gregory Kealey and Michelle McBride, Memorial University 
Training at the Hibernia Project: An Investigation of Labour, Management and Government Roles 
This research examines the issue of training for the Hibernia oil project in Newfoundland in its construction and pre-drilling phase. The construction portion of the project employed over 5000 workers and involved the cooperation of 14 unions under the "super-union", the Oil Development Council. Training at Hibernia was unique as it involved the federal and provincial levels of government, the Oil Development Council representing the unions, and the Hibernia Management Development Company representing the owners. This research examines the division of labour between these organisations and the educational providers. It examines who provided the training, who paid for it, how the training was meted out, what problems arose from the training, what the success rate in job placement was for the training, and if the training courses occurred in a timey fashion.

Pradeep Kumar, Queen's University 
The Union Experience with Sectoral Councils in Canada 
The primary objective of this study is to assess the union role in and experience with sectoral councils in Canada. The study evaluates whether, and to what extent, unions, through their participation in sectoral councils, have been able to advance their training agenda. Case studies include the Canadian Steel Trade and Employment Congress, the Sectoral Skills Council and the Auto Parts Sectoral Training Council. The experience of these sectoral councils will provide a valuable perspective on barriers to and facilitating factors in union involvement in joint training initiatives.

Carla Lipsig-Mummé, York University, Bob Hatfield, Communications, Energy and Paper Workers Union, Tom Clairmont Public Service Alliance of Canada 
What Works? The Provision of Training to Laid Off Workers and Survivors 
This study has a triple focus: It seeks first to identify training and educational practices and materials which effectively service the following: laid off workers, "survivors" and the unions which work with them. Second, by studying best practices in training situations in widely differing sectors and situations, it seeks to evaluate why best practices are best practices, identifying those ways of training which transcend sectoral specificity. Can they also transcend differences in employment situation? Third, the project seeks to develop widely applicable training materials for both the laid off workers and the survivors.

Margaret Little, Queen’s University, and Lynne Pajot, Canadian Union of Postal Workers 
Integrating Women Apprentices in Canada Post 
Changes in national and provincial apprenticeship programmes, the closure of Women in Trades and Technology programmes at community colleges, and other policy changes that shift the burden of tuition to programme participants introduce new uncertainties for unions seeking to introduce equity training principles to their workplaces. This project examines the ways women have been successfully recruited and retained in the skilled trades through workplace programmes in Canada and other countries. Its objective is to identify programme designs and supports with which equity training objectives may be successfully achieved.

Catherine Livingstone, Capilano College and Susan Lockhart, Trade Union Research Bureau 
The Training Accord and the Commercialization of Training in the Public Sphere in British Columbia 
The growing impact of the market on education is evident not only in a major shift towards private provision of training, but also in the blurring of the very distinction between private and public provision of many educational services. The latter is evident in the increased pressure on most faculties in public post-secondary institutions to provide services in which costs for both faculty's own labour and the facility's infrastructure can be recovered - that is, to commercialise their services. This, in turn, has potentially meant less focus on a broadly based liberal education and more on narrower competency-based training. Our study looks at how far these pressures have exerted themselves in British Columbia and whether the recent Training Accord between the colleges and the provincial government actually deepens this commercialization, serves as a brake on it, or creates an entirely new situation.

Stephen McBride, Simon Fraser University 
Devolution and Privatisation as Tools of a Human Capital Approach to Training: A Comparative Study of the Challenge to Public Training in Canada and Australia 
The perception that the welfare state is being replaced by a "workfare state", in which participation in labour markets is a condition of receiving income support, indicates that two previously distinct areas of public policy -- social policy and labour market policy -- are increasingly integrated. In some countries, increased integration has been accompanied by devolution of responsibility to sub-national levels and by increased privatisation of services and/or individualisation of responsibilities. This study compares Australian and Canadian experiences to determine the extent to which the human capital paradigm shapes the provision of training, to identify its effects, and to consider the relative importance of federalism and nationally specific factors and the implications of institutional devolution, privatisation and individualisation.

Stephen McBride, Simon Fraser University 
‘Real’ Training versus Employability Training? Youth Programmes in British Columbia 
Critics of many recent training initiatives have focused on the type of training provided in job readiness and work-to-welfare programmes, which are viewed as fueling the low wage labour market. Such programmes have received a high profile in many provinces including British Columbia, where the province’s Youth Works programme has emphasised job search and work preparation activities as a means of getting young people off welfare and into the labour market. Implicitly such programmes are offered as a ‘solution’ to youth unemployment. Yet the province also provides programmes such as apprenticeship, albeit with lower funding levels, which have a much stronger reputation for delivering ‘real’ skills (and which fit better with the high skill versions of the human capital paradigm). This study compares the experience of participants in these diverse training initiatives directed at young people.

Joan McFarland, St. Thomas University 
What’s Happening with Training in New Brunswick An Inventory 
This project tracks changes in the "division of labour" between public, private and communal-associative training providers in New Brunswick since 1980. It also examines changes in the type of training provided. The increase in the number of commercial providers and the commercialisation of public programs are related to changes in government policies and labour market and income security programs.

Tom Nesbit, Simon Fraser University, and Carla Lipsig-Mummé, York University 
Training for Union Full-Time Officials 
Although labour movements worldwide conduct extensive training of full time officers and regularly monitor and evaluate their provision, full-time officers have a wide range of responsibilities for which they are not always fully prepared. For example, recent developments in computer and office technology have necessitated changes in union full time officers' responsibilities brought about by transformations in industry and employment, industrial relations practices, and within unions themselves. This research assesses the extent to which union full-time officials are prepared for their role through formal education and training. It examines the following questions: What initial and continuing training exists for union full-time officials in Canada? What is the nature of such training? Who provides it? Does it work?

Tom Nesbit, Simon Fraser University, Bob Hatfield, Communications, Energy and Paper Workers Union, David Kilham United Food and Commercial Workers 
Union Strategies for the Organisation and Financing of Workplace Training 
Workplace training has always formed an important link between craft unions and their members. In recent decades it has also grown in importance for the unskilled and semi-skilled members of industrial unions like the United Food and Commercial Workers and the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union. With the current radical restructuring of work, portable skills have become key to job security and voluntary mobility. Union involvement in providing training is an opportunity to influence job design and to ensure that training is portable, developmental and equitable. This project explores i) the organization of union input into workplace training, ii) the experience of unions in joint training structures with employers, and iii) union models for financing training.

Christian Payeur, Centre de recherche et d'intervention sur la réussite scolaire, Université Laval and Laurier Caron, Centrale des syndicats du Québec 
Co-op education: foundational practice or pedagogical alternative? (L'alternance: pratique structurante ou alternative pédagogique?) 
The concept of co-op education is laden with different connotations, linked as much to its uses as to the contexts and agents involved. Each of the different types of co-op programs has its own requirements and conditions for implementation. Where do co-op programs develop? Do they represent a marginal practice or an educational practice which is transforming the pedagogical and organi sational paradigm of vocational training? Is the intended market marginal or at the heart of the training system? Do co-op programs contribute to the promotion of vocational training? Are we experiencing a fad or a permanent transformation of training practices? What conclusions can we draw from recent experiences: conditions of durability, effects on retention and students' successes? The present study has the following objectives in mind: to conduct an analysis of governmental policies and social groups' positions; to create an inventory of the different types of co-op projects; to present the major questions raised by the issues under study.

John Price, University of Victoria, and Stephen Benedict, Canadian Labour Congress 
Exporting Canadian Training: labour perspectives on the Human Resources Development Working Group in APEC 
This project documents and assesses the training initiatives Canadian organizations are promoting within the Human Resources Development Working Group of the Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation. It also documents the reaction of the CLC, which has recently become a member of the Canadian delegation in the HRD working group. Canada has taken the lead role within the APEC working group, with institutions like North-South Institute, Humber College/ACCC, Council of Ministers of Education and the Conference Board of Canada. Thus documenting the activities of the APEC HRD working group will both contribute to international awareness of Canadian perspectives on training and education and provide unique insights into how concepts travel from the domestic to the international spheres.

Harry Smaller, York University 
Vocational Training in Ontario Secondary School System: Policies, Programs, Attitudes, Results and Prospects 
This 12 month research study examines the vocational training programs of Ontario public schools from a number of perspectives to develop a critical view of their present-day status and future prospects. It includes the following components: review of literature on school-based vocational training programs; analysis of past and present-day documents relating to Ontario's vocational programs; survey and interviews of sample groups of teachers, students, administrators and policy advisors within the provincial school system; interviews with representatives of relevant teacher union, trade union, employer and community groups.

Peter Suschnigg, Laurentian University and Laurell Ritchie, Canadian Auto Workers 
Training and Adjustment Programs for Unemployed Union Members: A Case Study of a Worker-Driven Adjustment Model 
This project proposes a case study of a worker-driven program of adjustment and training arising out of a Barrie, Ontario plant closure slated for September, 2000. Such programs are a largely understudied component of the five point Training Agenda set by the Canadian Labour Congress. While labour has identified "best practices" in this arena, there has been little documentation and critical analysis of those practices, and no systemic tracking of the experience of displaced workers, except in the narrow sense of employment "outcomes". Such research becomes all the more important when devolution, privatization and deregulation threaten those "best practices".

Peter Suschnigg, Laurentian University 
Work Foundations for Canada: can we learn from Austria? 
This research evaluates whether variants of the Austrian Work Foundation model might be applicable in the Canadian context. By comparing the experience with work foundations in Austria, Germany and Italy, the study inquires whether the work foundation model is primarily or exclusively a consequence of post-war tri-partitism between government, employers' federations and trade unions. The findings will provide comparative light on the Canadian experience with sectoral councils and may suggest policy directions for Canadian trade unions, governments and employer associations.

Robert Sweet, Lakehead University, Paul Anisef, York University, Zeng Lin, Lakehead University 
The Causes and Consequences of Attrition in Apprenticeships: An Analysis of the 1994-5 National Apprenticed Trades Survey 
The proposed study responds to two needs in the research and policy literature on apprenticeships in Canada. The first calls for a clarification of issues surrounding differential returns to completers and non-completers of apprenticed training. To the extent differences in returns exist, a second need involves examination of the causes of attrition among apprentices, particularly those factors associated with instructional and curricular matters. In both analyses the influence of gender is considered. Government policies (and those of some unions and businesses) are designed to facilitate women’s entry to the apprenticed trades; and participation in ‘non-traditional’ trades is especially encouraged. Yet relatively few women are attracted to vocational work and of those who enter, a great many soon discontinue their training. Analysis of differential returns and causes of attrition will improve our understanding of personal returns to investment in apprenticed trades training.

Robert Sweet, Lakehead University 
Convergence of the Public and Proprietary Training Sectors in British Columbia 
This study explores the concept of convergence as it applies to the college-institute and the proporietary training sectors in British Columbia. Using a variety of documents and public-use data files, the study first develops an historical account of the growth of proprietary and college institutions in the province. Organizational and structural profiles of the public and private institutions are then constructed. These serve as context for a comparison of college-institute and proprietary graduates’ accounts of their trainng experiences and their transition to the labour market. Survey data for the latter analyses are drawn from B.C. government files.

Diane-Gabrielle Tremblay, Télé-Université Québec 
The Training Industry in Sweden, Germany and Japan: international comparisons and perspectives for Quebec and Canada (L'industrie de la formation en Suède, en Allemagne et au Japon: compairsons internationales et perspectives pour le Québec et le Canada) 
For each of the three countries, we will study the division of labour between public vocational training organisations, private organisations, corporations and the communal-associate sector. We will attempt to determine whether there has been an evolution in the role of each during the past decades. The division of training delivery and the role of various agents in these three countries have traditionally been different, though changes have been occuring over the last few years. This study will also touch upon the financing of vocational training by different agents in each of the three countries, as well as the changes observed over past decades.

Thom Workman and David Bedford, University of New Brunswick 
Ideological Strategies and the Sources of Worker Discontent in New Brunswick's Training Initiatives 
This research examines and analyzes training programmes in New Brunswick to determine whether programmes deemed to be valuable by trainees had specific structural or administrative features and whether active union participation affected the training process qualitatively. Bearing in mind, i) the need to sustain a skills emphasis in training initiatives, and ii) the importance of trainee reception of such initiatives, this research is of critical importance and will assist us in the constant need to refine the design and delivery of training programmes so that they suit the needs of labouring people and provide further insight for those administrators "on the ground".