Traditional levers are not working

By Richard Lyall

for Canadian Contractor

July 16, 2026

Canada is spending billions to tackle its looming skilled trades shortage. However, while the funding is needed, behind the curtain there is a troubling contradiction: while investment has surged, apprenticeship completion rates remain stubbornly low and, in many cases, are declining.

This is not just a policy problem. It is a systemic failure.

For more than a decade, apprenticeship completions in Canada’s construction trades have hovered at roughly 20 per cent of registrations. That means four out of five people who start down the path never reach certification. At the same time, workforce shortages are intensifying, with hundreds of thousands of additional skilled trades workers needed in the coming years.

The cost will be measured in billions of dollars in lost GDP, reduced incomes, and unrealized economic potential.

It would be easy to conclude that the solution is simply to do more of what governments have always done: increase funding, expand programs, and promote the trades more aggressively. But the evidence - and results - suggest that these traditional levers are not working.

A new independent report prepared for the Residential Construction Council of Ontario (RESCON) makes that point with unusual clarity. Co-authored by leading experts in economics and behavioural science, the report argues that Canada’s apprenticeship crisis is not primarily a funding problem or even an access problem. It is, at its core, a design problem.

The system, they conclude, is built on flawed assumptions about how people actually behave.

For decades, training policy has operated on a simple economic premise: if you provide information, reduce financial barriers, and expand access, individuals will make rational decisions and follow through on them. In other words, if the opportunity exists, people will take it.

But human behaviour is far more complex.

People are not perfectly rational decision-makers. They are influenced by uncertainty, time pressure, financial stress, social expectations, and cognitive overload. They abandon long-term plans when short-term costs become too real. They avoid complex systems that are difficult to navigate. They respond to incentives in ways policymakers often fail to anticipate.

The apprenticeship system, as currently designed, does not take these realities into account. Instead, it often works against them.

Consider the journey of an apprentice. It begins with navigating a fragmented and confusing landscape of programs, requirements, and career options. It continues through years of training during which financial pressures mount, especially during in-school periods when income disappears. Along the way, participants face administrative hurdles, unclear pathways, and inconsistent support.

In short, the system unintentionally encourages people to drop out.

Layer onto that the broader behavioural barriers identified in the report: fear of making the wrong career choice, the pull of immediate income over long-term rewards, the complexity of choosing among more than 140 trades, and persistent social biases that still favour university pathways over the trades.

What makes this especially concerning is the timing. Canada is at a critical economic inflection point. Massive public investments in housing, infrastructure, and energy are reshaping labour demand. At the same time, artificial intelligence is disrupting traditional career paths, pushing more workers to consider alternative options, including the skilled trades.

Demand is rising. Interest is there. But the system is failing to convert that interest into completions.

That is why the report’s central conclusion is so important - and so urgent. Canada does not need more programs layered onto an ineffective system. It needs a fundamental redesign.

A behaviourally informed approach would start by asking a different set of questions: not just what opportunities exist, but how people experience them. Where do they get stuck? What makes them disengage? What barriers - psychological, financial, or logistical - stand in the way of completion?

The answers point to a system that must be reoriented around people, not programs.

That means simplifying pathways into the trades and making information easier to understand. It means reducing financial disruptions during training, especially during in-school periods. It means creating stronger incentives to complete certification, particularly in trades where early exit is currently rewarded.

It also means supporting apprentices at critical moments - from the initial decision to enroll, through the training process, and especially at the final stage of certification, where too many fall short due to lack of structured preparation and support.

Equally important is the need for a culture shift. The trades must be presented not as a fallback, but as a first-choice career path - one that offers stability, opportunity, and long-term growth in an increasingly uncertain labour market.

Finally, Canada must embrace a discipline that has been largely absent from training policy. Behavioural solutions are not one-size-fits-all. What works in one context may not work in another. Programs must be designed, tested, refined, and scaled based on evidence, not assumptions.

This is the lesson at the heart of the RESCON report — and it is one policymakers can no longer afford to ignore.

Canada’s ability to build housing, deliver infrastructure, and compete economically depends on a skilled workforce that the current system is failing to produce. We need to make changes.

Richard Lyall is president of the Residential Construction Council of Ontario (RESCON). He has represented the building industry in Ontario since 1991. Contact him at media@rescon.com.