Canada’s infrastructure plan has a human hardware problem: Senator Mohamed
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Prime Minister Mark Carney’s nation-building agenda is the right call. Under the Building Canada Act and the Major Projects Office, ports, mines, grids and homes are moving from slide decks toward shovels. The spring economic update identifies 15 projects worth more than $125 billion.
Canada should build them.
But alongside questions of cost, speed and location, we should ask a more fundamental question: who will build them?
A permit does not pour concrete. An approval does not wire a substation. A project does not commission itself.
Canada is facing an extraordinary infrastructure opportunity at precisely the moment too many young Canadians are struggling to enter the labour market. That is not simply a challenge; it is an opportunity to connect two national needs.
Youth unemployment stood at 12.9% in August, still well above the pre-pandemic average. Meanwhile, Canada faces a looming shortage of workers. BuildForce Canada projects that more than one-fifth of the residential construction workforce will retire by 2035, while Ottawa projects more than 1.4 million skilled-trades job openings between 2024 and 2033.
We have a country that needs workers and a generation that needs work. We should be designing policy around that fact.
The federal government’s Team Canada Strong plan to recruit, train and hire 80,000 to 100,000 new Red Seal tradespeople by 2030–31 is an important down payment. But recruitment alone is not a workforce strategy. Young people need a pathway to get in, get trained, get paid, get certified and stay in the workforce.
That means making youth employment a central component of the government’s build plan.
More than 100,000 apprentices registered in 2024, but only about 34,000 completed their apprenticeships. Registration is not certification. We need to understand why young people leave: wages during training, transportation, housing, childcare, access to classroom instruction, mentorship and workplace culture all matter.
The same principle applies beyond the trades.
For too long, Canada treated university as the default definition of success and skilled trades as the alternative. We should not repeat that mistake in reverse.
The people who build Canada’s infrastructure will include electricians and welders, but also engineers designing the grid, programmers writing the code, researchers developing new technologies and entrepreneurs commercializing innovation.
These are not competing pathways. They are an ecosystem.
The question is whether Canada is creating enough bridges from education into meaningful work.
So here is a straightforward proposition for the Carney government: every major federally supported infrastructure project should have a youth employment plan.
Before receiving final federal approval or funding, projects should show the occupations they will need, the number of apprenticeships they will create, expected youth hires and the training institutions and communities involved. Plans should include meaningful pathways for Indigenous people, newcomers, women and young people in rural and remote communities.
And then government should measure the results.
How many young people were hired? How many entered apprenticeships? How many completed them? How many were still employed six and 12 months later?
If we are serious about delivering infrastructure faster and better, workforce outcomes should be treated as seriously as other project key performance indicators.
The same principle should apply to the federal government’s $2-billion investment in provincial and territorial training capacity. Funding agreements should measure not only enrolment, but completion and certification.
A young person who starts an apprenticeship but cannot afford the tools, transportation, housing or time away from paid work to complete it has not been given a pathway. They have been given a revolving door.
We should also connect young Canadians to major projects before construction begins. At least 12 months ahead of a project’s launch, governments should support partnerships among employers, high schools, colleges, Indigenous communities and local organizations to offer paid site visits, work placements, pre-apprenticeship programs and clear information about the careers being created.
This is how an infrastructure announcement becomes an employment opportunity.
It is also how nation-building becomes more than steel and concrete.
A young person moving from unemployment into a skilled career is not simply receiving an opportunity. Canada gains a taxpayer, consumer, homeowner, parent, entrepreneur, community member and potentially a future employer.
That is an investment with compounding returns.
Canada has an extraordinary opportunity in front of it. We can build ports, mines, grids and homes. We can build the physical infrastructure that will underpin our next century. But we should also build the generation that will design, construct, operate and improve it.
The smartest nation-building strategy does both.
Senator Farah Mohamed represents Ontario in the Senate.
This article was published in The Hill Times on October 7, 2026.
Prime Minister Mark Carney’s nation-building agenda is the right call. Under the Building Canada Act and the Major Projects Office, ports, mines, grids and homes are moving from slide decks toward shovels. The spring economic update identifies 15 projects worth more than $125 billion.
Canada should build them.
But alongside questions of cost, speed and location, we should ask a more fundamental question: who will build them?
A permit does not pour concrete. An approval does not wire a substation. A project does not commission itself.
Canada is facing an extraordinary infrastructure opportunity at precisely the moment too many young Canadians are struggling to enter the labour market. That is not simply a challenge; it is an opportunity to connect two national needs.
Youth unemployment stood at 12.9% in August, still well above the pre-pandemic average. Meanwhile, Canada faces a looming shortage of workers. BuildForce Canada projects that more than one-fifth of the residential construction workforce will retire by 2035, while Ottawa projects more than 1.4 million skilled-trades job openings between 2024 and 2033.
We have a country that needs workers and a generation that needs work. We should be designing policy around that fact.
The federal government’s Team Canada Strong plan to recruit, train and hire 80,000 to 100,000 new Red Seal tradespeople by 2030–31 is an important down payment. But recruitment alone is not a workforce strategy. Young people need a pathway to get in, get trained, get paid, get certified and stay in the workforce.
That means making youth employment a central component of the government’s build plan.
More than 100,000 apprentices registered in 2024, but only about 34,000 completed their apprenticeships. Registration is not certification. We need to understand why young people leave: wages during training, transportation, housing, childcare, access to classroom instruction, mentorship and workplace culture all matter.
The same principle applies beyond the trades.
For too long, Canada treated university as the default definition of success and skilled trades as the alternative. We should not repeat that mistake in reverse.
The people who build Canada’s infrastructure will include electricians and welders, but also engineers designing the grid, programmers writing the code, researchers developing new technologies and entrepreneurs commercializing innovation.
These are not competing pathways. They are an ecosystem.
The question is whether Canada is creating enough bridges from education into meaningful work.
So here is a straightforward proposition for the Carney government: every major federally supported infrastructure project should have a youth employment plan.
Before receiving final federal approval or funding, projects should show the occupations they will need, the number of apprenticeships they will create, expected youth hires and the training institutions and communities involved. Plans should include meaningful pathways for Indigenous people, newcomers, women and young people in rural and remote communities.
And then government should measure the results.
How many young people were hired? How many entered apprenticeships? How many completed them? How many were still employed six and 12 months later?
If we are serious about delivering infrastructure faster and better, workforce outcomes should be treated as seriously as other project key performance indicators.
The same principle should apply to the federal government’s $2-billion investment in provincial and territorial training capacity. Funding agreements should measure not only enrolment, but completion and certification.
A young person who starts an apprenticeship but cannot afford the tools, transportation, housing or time away from paid work to complete it has not been given a pathway. They have been given a revolving door.
We should also connect young Canadians to major projects before construction begins. At least 12 months ahead of a project’s launch, governments should support partnerships among employers, high schools, colleges, Indigenous communities and local organizations to offer paid site visits, work placements, pre-apprenticeship programs and clear information about the careers being created.
This is how an infrastructure announcement becomes an employment opportunity.
It is also how nation-building becomes more than steel and concrete.
A young person moving from unemployment into a skilled career is not simply receiving an opportunity. Canada gains a taxpayer, consumer, homeowner, parent, entrepreneur, community member and potentially a future employer.
That is an investment with compounding returns.
Canada has an extraordinary opportunity in front of it. We can build ports, mines, grids and homes. We can build the physical infrastructure that will underpin our next century. But we should also build the generation that will design, construct, operate and improve it.
The smartest nation-building strategy does both.
Senator Farah Mohamed represents Ontario in the Senate.
This article was published in The Hill Times on October 7, 2026.