Tories: Skills Training, Agent Orange

Tories to offer skilled-trades plan ALEXANDER PANETTA, Oct. 12, 05

OTTAWA (CP) - The federal Tories will propose a package of incentives for young people to take up trades to help reduce Canada's shortage of skilled labour. Stephen Harper will promise a financial boost for training and for employers, and also tax breaks for the tools tradespeople use. [. . . . ]

Do we ever need skilled tradespeople!

While we're at it, let's bring back technical skills study for girls, as well as for boys, and home economics for both. It was so short sighted to get rid of these departments in favour of buying computers . . . for students who need to learn to read, reason, calculate . . . and, and, and . . . before they need to use the internet. First things first!

If a school offered a course nearby on the basics of electricity (How not to get electrocuted -- and still fix something?), plumbing (How to stop the water in a toilet from running?), carpentry (Bookshelves that wouldn't fall down?) and a few other absolutely necessary survival skills, I think I would take it. Too many of us know too little to fix the little things that go wrong. We thought all we had to do was study, go to university, and the world would unfold just fine. How short-sighted! There are a few basics to learn so we don't have to call on a skilled tradesperson to help -- for even the smallest problems. Bring on the skills training for all of us!




NB MP Greg Thompson-MLA Jody Carr

Tories eye Agent Orange inquiry

FREDERICTON (CP) - Two Conservative politicians in New Brunswick are calling on the federal Liberal government to make fundamental changes to the inquiry into the Agent Orange controversy at Canadian Forces Base Gagetown. [. . . . ]

They are recommending an arm's length technical review committee and a speedier compensation process for the hundreds of people who believe their health was harmed by exposure to herbicides used at the base from the 1950s to the 1980s. [. . . . ]

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