Canada's skilled trades sector faces growing challenges in recruitment, retention, and accessibility—particularly for equity-deserving populations. EHRC is collaborating with employers and unions across the country to help apprentices overcome challenges—financial, geographic, and inclusivity-related—that hinder access to skilled trades and completion of their training toward becoming Journeypersons.
As a part of this project, EHRC aims to address these challenges by developing two digital platforms that provide tailored apprenticeship information, pathway guidance, and wraparound supports for apprentices, job seekers, employees and employers. This project is rooted in principles of accessibility, inclusivity, and regional adaptability.
- Platform one will enable apprentices to explore current and potential career pathways into and through apprenticeship and after achieving Journeyperson.
- Platform two will enable apprentices and journeypersons to take select training that allows them to upskill and be better prepared for an economy that is ever-changing while building on the core technical skills they have already learned as part of their apprenticeship. Current courseware under development includes soft-skills growth, mentorship and coaching skills, etc.
Both platforms have been developed leveraging a web development AI tool called Lovable.ai. The purpose of this RFP is to select a vendor that can do the quality assurance of the code completed by Lovable, and setup an appropriate deployment regime for the platform based on best development operations practices in place in Canada today.
