The lack of supports can have severe consequences. One Manitoba community college study found a much lower graduation rate and a much higher non-completion rate among Aboriginal students (Cook Consulting, 2001). This research pointed to factors such as culture shock, relocation problems, loneliness, lack of funds, size and complexity of college campuses, inadequate academic background and lack of confidence as causing differences in performance.

Visible Minorities

Despite wide recognition that community agencies representing visible-minority groups play an important role in supporting visible-minority apprentices, these agencies have seen their capacity to act decline substantially as a result of continued erosion of funding.

Numerous sources confirm that community organizations representing particular ethno-cultural groups play an essential role in addressing some of the barriers to apprenticeship faced by members of visible minorities (CCMA, 2003; ). Such groups provide a wide array of services designed to prepare visible minorities for apprenticeship, including:

• Basic skills, literacy and pre-apprenticeship training (including skills or learning assessment)
• Workplace-preparedness training to help members of visible-minority groups, particularly youth, cope with problems such as discrimination and racism
• Dispute-mediation among apprentices, unions and employers
• Representing the interests of visible-minority groups and raising awareness about the barriers these groups face
• Promoting equity in workplaces and hiring practices (CCMA, 2003; McDonald Human Resources, 1994; )

Although these activities are widely recognized and celebrated as making a significant contribution to enhancing the training and employment opportunities of visible minority groups, many community groups representing visible minorities face a number of barriers that have limited the scope of their activity. Curtailment of these groups’ activities narrows the pathways to apprenticeship for the individuals they represent, individuals whose particular barriers require additional supports.

Several informants and sources confirm that many such groups have suffered from a substantial decline in public funding for their budgeted activities (McDonald Human Resources, 1994; ). While this problem was noted in Ontario and Quebec, similar funding constraints have been attributed to federal, provincial/territorial and municipal governments (). Expansion of these programs, and their closer integration with the formal apprenticeship system, are key to addressing the barriers to apprenticeship faced by members of visible minority groups. In some instances, the capacity of these groups may have declined significantly ().

Recent Immigrants

Recent immigrants often require additional supports to continue apprenticeships and enter a trade. However, resources available to many immigrant-serving agencies are insufficient to provide these supports.

Recent immigrants non-employment needs are usually well served by community-based immigrant- serving agencies or settlement agencies. Immigrants also receive help from colleges with education support (). Often, however, and for a variety of reasons, settlement and immigrant-serving agencies do not provide support services for actual or potential immigrant apprentices or tradespersons (Jothen, 2002).

Immigrants often find themselves “left on their own,” particularly when it comes to finding employers to sponsor their apprenticeship, or managing the training-to-work transition (). While this barrier is not unfamiliar to many other apprentices, language barriers and the lack of family and social networks can compound this barrier for immigrant apprentices.

In addition, immigrants may continue to face language-related barriers throughout the course of their apprenticeship training, which suggests that they may not have access to ESL supports or the financial resources to purchase this training (CREHS & Skills for Change, 2001). This instruction is often delivered by community organizations that support immigrants. These institutions, however, currently lack the necessary funding to provide these services (Jothen, 2002).

At the same time, it should be noted that the degree of severity associated with this barrier might vary from one region or city to another. Support structures in large urban centres that welcome the majority of new immigrants— Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal—are more readily available than in smaller centres ().

Persons with Disabilities

Funding constraints remain a significant barrier to the integration and adaptation of persons with disabilities into work and training environments (). The lack of funding extends to the area of support for special pedagogical aids ().

Service providers addressing the employment needs of persons with disabilities are often overloaded with casework, which makes it difficult for them to do extensive follow up with individuals who have been placed with employers or trainers (). School and career counsellors, for their part, tend to have little knowledge about the special workplace-adaptation needs of persons with disabilities, available resources, and adaptation possibilities ().

This lack of awareness can be explained, in part, by the absence of a critical mass of members of this group engaged in apprenticeship.

Women

Organizations seeking to promote women in the trades also reported important resource issues at the community level. Resource constraints, for example, affected the capacity of local Women in Technology and Trades (WITT) organizations to promote particular training programs, provide training supports to women, or establish training centres of their own ().