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With Canada facing a pending labour shortage — particularly in construction and the skilled trades — a new national initiative aims to accelerate solutions by expanding programs that have already proven successful.

The Future Skills Centre (FSC), which is dedicated to driving innovation in skills development, has launched a $5.5-million initiative called Replicate, designed to take effective skills training programs that have worked in one community and reproduce them in others across the country.

Industry estimates suggest Canada will need to recruit more than 250,000 new construction workers under the age of 30 by 2035 just to keep pace with retirements and growing demand. At the same time, youth unemployment reached 14.7 per cent in September 2025, a 15-year high — illustrating a disconnect between available workers and jobs.

The Replicate initiative is intended to bridge that gap by speeding up the process of expanding successful training programs rather than constantly reinventing them.

“There’s a lot of good programs out there and they never make it to becoming permanent programs,” explains Alex Stephens, director of programs at the FSC. “There aren’t a lot of organizations out there that necessarily can give that sort of continuity – that can take up a project or an initiative that’s working well – and then see what it takes to make it more permanent for people over the long term.”

Many promising initiatives are launched as short-term trials but never scaled up beyond a local community, he says.

Replicate aims to change that. The concept behind the initiative is straightforward: identify programs that have demonstrated success and develop “toolkits” that allow other organizations to implement the same model.

Those toolkits outline how the program works, how it is delivered and what resources are required, allowing new partners to skip years of development work and focus on delivering training directly to participants.

Replicate will initially expand three programs focused on workforce readiness: a construction trades pathway, a youth employment initiative and a program aimed at people who are distant from the labour market.

One of the most prominent examples is Construct, a trades training program originally developed in Ontario by Blue Door Support Services. The eight-week program provides hands-on construction training to individuals who face barriers to employment – including at-risk youth, women, Indigenous participants and people who are not in education, employment or training.

“It’s really geared toward people who are normally pretty excluded from the labour market,” Stephens says.

The program combines technical training with supports designed to help participants complete the course and transition into employment, everything from providing a stipend to helping people with transportation and counselling if they need it, says Stephens. “People bring different needs, and the idea is to give them what they need to succeed.”

Participants who complete the program are connected directly with employers and apprenticeship opportunities.

Hundreds of participants in Toronto have already been trained through the program, demonstrating strong results in helping people transition into construction careers. Now the FSC is working with partners to replicate the model in other regions, including Ottawa and Alberta.

Organizations such as the Ottawa Community Housing Foundation and Trellis Society for Community Impact will test the program to see how well the model transfers to different labour markets.

“That’s what we’re trying to test,” Stephens says. “You’ve got a program that works. Let us help you test it out in other places.”

Replicate itself is still an experiment.

The initial projects will run for less than a year, partly due to the centre’s funding cycle, but the goal is to determine whether successful programs can be scaled quickly and sustainably.

“This is the first time we’re trying it,” Stephens says. “We’re an innovation organization, so we’re always happy to start experimenting with different things to respond to different needs.”

The FSC will measure outcomes such as program completion rates, employment results and long-term career outcomes.

If the evidence is good and the results are strong, then the next step is asking what it takes to make the program sustainable, Stephens says.

Ultimately, he says, Canada cannot afford to let effective training programs remain isolated successes.

The labour shortages are substantial and the pressures are making it even more likely that they’ll be aggravated, so we need to find different ways of attracting people into these occupations related to construction and get them the training they need, he says.

The stakes are high.

“In terms of the demand for skilled trades, it is going to get only bigger and bigger,” Stephens says.