ten Have Advisory Group Inc. is a Thunder Bay–based policy and consulting practice focused on Canadian apprenticeship reform, the deployment of federal trades-training investment, and the development of Canada’s most complete repository of trades-related demand intelligence.
BuildForce Canada’s two most recent outlooks place the total hiring requirement in Canadian construction to 2034 at between 306,200 and 380,500 workers, driven by roughly 270,000 retirements alongside net new growth from infrastructure renewal, housing demand, and the energy transition.
New apprenticeship registrations reached 70,521 in 2023 (excluding Alberta) and a record 101,541 nationally in 2024. Yet the share of apprentices who complete within their program’s expected duration was only 20.1 percent in 2023, below the 21.8 percent observed in 2019.
The most-cited barrier to apprenticeship completion: no employer sponsor for Level 1 or Level 2. The current system requires apprentices to find an employer before being formally registered — the dam at the front door.
Apprentice First deploys the Team Canada Strong investment through four pillars. Together they remove the sponsor bottleneck at the front, de-risk the first hire for employers, and keep the door to further education open behind. It is offered as a federal proof of concept: a national standard and portal that the provinces adopt and deliver, built once rather than thirteen times over.
A single federal intake point for any Canadian aged eighteen or older who wishes to enter a Red Seal trade. The portal administers a Minimal Entrance Examination and, on a passing result, issues Registered Federal Apprentice (RFA) status. The record goes to the provincial authority, which keeps full control of registration, training and certification.
An optional, federally funded seat in the first level of trade-specific technical training, delivered at colleges, Indigenous-controlled post-secondary institutions, polytechnics, cégeps, and union-hall / JATC training facilities, and completed before the search for a sponsoring employer begins.
A capped hourly wage subsidy: $10 per verified paid hour, up to $10,000 in each of an apprentice’s first two years, $20,000 in all. It attaches to the apprentice rather than the employer, so a shop closure or layoff does not strand the apprentice.
After Red Seal certification plus one year of journeyperson work, or five years as an RFA, the Government of Canada covers year one of a college diploma, advanced diploma or degree, to a maximum of $10,000. Portable across provinces and not means-tested.
Revision 2 recommends the Bridge as a capped two-year wage subsidy, with the existing federal Apprenticeship Service consolidated into it, so that the same support reaches the same apprentices through a single national instrument with one line of accountability. The framework operates within the announced Team Canada Strong envelope.
A structurally distinct stream, proposed through a two-partner model: Matawa First Nations Management, through its KKETS division, as the ISET access partner, and Oshki-Pimache-O-Win as the credentialing institute. The architecture is provisional. Partnership discussions are underway, and no partner has made a final commitment.
A four-layer architecture: an Annual Trades Modernization Report, a Tri-Council Review every 24 months, an independent five-year evaluation, and a quarterly Indigenous-partner feedback loop.
CAST is a one-year, roughly 1,000-hour accelerated diploma. In a single intensive year it delivers the full first level of two established trades, the electrical trades and instrumentation, alongside a new third pillar: industrial networking, operational-technology (OT) cybersecurity, and the integration of AI into real systems. It is built for absolute beginners, many straight from high school.
The electrical trades (309A / 309C / 442A): code, theory, installation, motors. The program covers 100% of the harmonized electrical Level 1, which is common core and opens all three together.
The Automation and Instrumentation Technician trade (447A): measurement, calibration, and control. The program covers 100% of the harmonized 447A Level 1.
Computing, industrial networking, OT cybersecurity, and the integration of AI into real systems. Cybersecurity and AI integration are absent from both existing trade standards.
PLCs, DCS and SCADA. A line running today is electrical, instrumented, networked and increasingly intelligent all at once, and the technician who keeps it running has to live in all three pillars.
A graduate finishes employable four ways: through apprenticeship as an electrician (309A / 309C / 442A) or an Automation and Instrumentation Technician (447A), as an AI Systems Integration Technician as recognition follows, or by direct employment on the strength of the diploma alone.
The Canadian Cybersecurity Network’s State of OT report found that 73 percent of reported cyber incidents struck operational-technology systems in 2024, up from 49 percent the year before, and that the single greatest vulnerability is the shortage of OT-specific cybersecurity expertise.
CAST is a converged credential that works alongside the trades; it is not itself a skilled trade. Canada needs thousands of these technicians, not the hundreds of thousands it needs of electricians or carpenters, and a trained workforce is necessary but not sufficient for security. Its value is as a sovereignty capability: a country that cannot defend its own water, power, and pipelines with its own people carries a strategic dependency it should not accept.
There is no federal diploma and no federal registrar. The credential is granted provincially and carries a national, Red Seal-style endorsement. The federal role is limited to the standard, the funding, and the portal.
Artificial intelligence is moving into the control systems that run Canada’s essential services, and the country has no occupation that certifies the people who put it there. Utilities, water authorities, manufacturers, pipelines, mines and ports are installing AI for forecasting, anomaly detection, predictive maintenance and process optimization. AISIT, pronounced ‘ACE-it’, is the proposed trade for that work.
Industrial data networks and communications, OT cybersecurity fundamentals, OT threat detection and response, AI integration for industrial systems, applied AI for operations and analytics, and automation and PLC/SCADA fundamentals. Delivered as part of the CAST year, or standalone.
Process data engineering, historians and quality. Deploying and integrating models at the edge and in the control room. The OT/IT boundary and industrial protocols.
Model evaluation, monitoring and drift control against process reality. Human-in-the-loop design and the decisions a model may never make. Functional-safety interaction.
ISA/IEC 62443 applied to AI-enabled systems. Zero-trust and segmentation for model endpoints and data paths. Adversarial machine learning, data poisoning and prompt injection. Incident response in OT, and the certifying capstone.
You do not send an electrical engineer to wire a hospital; you send an electrician. The engineer builds the model. The technician makes it work safely on a real plant and keeps it working.
Running AI inside a plant is, at bottom, a measurement-and-control problem: data in, automated decisions out, over a network, calibrated, monitored and kept safe. That is what instrument mechanics have always done. AISIT is the Automation and Instrumentation Technician trade (447A) extended into the AI era.
CAST is the recommended entrance and foundation, because it supplies the operational-technology grounding that safe integration depends on. A prior-learning assessment, or a qualifying instrumentation, electrical or control credential, establishes the same foundation for an experienced tradesperson.
Level 1 is defined and published as a 290-hour standard. Levels 2 to 4 are framed and remain to be built, and the trade-recognition pathway is in development. The proposal asks for recognition of the trade as a priority to accelerate and for support to complete its development.
Tim ten Have spent twenty-five years in senior industrial-management roles before becoming a federal policy author. He is himself a Red Seal certified Industrial Instrument Mechanic; his Provincial Core Training students at Confederation College passed their Red Seal qualifying examinations on the first attempt with no re-writes — direct evidence relevant to the framework’s PSL1 design.
At the De Beers Canada Victor Mine, a $1 billion IBA-anchored project with Attawapiskat First Nation, he served as Owner’s Representative during construction, then built and led the Maintenance and Engineering department, then managed site projects and construction. First production was reached on the target date, a three-month schedule improvement that kept the project within budget, with no lost-time accidents. That operational experience informs the framework’s Indigenous-stream IBA-leverage design.
At Tetra Tech (formerly Wardrop Engineering), he worked as Project Manager and Project Engineer, taking projects through feasibility into detailed design and implementation, with risk analysis, technical bid analysis and life-cycle value assessments. For Cameco’s Key Lake Operation that included the VSEP test plant, the Crystallization Plant upgrade, Solvent Extraction modifications, and replacement of the Calciner. Earlier, as Superintendent and Instrument Mechanic with UA Local 628, he installed and commissioned instrumentation on new construction for J.R. Simplot in Brandon, TransCanada Pipelines and Algoma Steel, and later managed instrumentation services at Cascades Fine Papers.
Five practice areas. Each is grounded in primary trades experience and in publicly available Canadian data — reproducible, defensible in regulatory contexts, and consistent with the public-good logic of federal core funding.
End-to-end policy proposal development for federal trades modernization, apprenticeship reform, and the deployment of federal labour-market investment. Includes design rationale documentation, budgetary modeling, governance architecture, and ministerial briefing materials.
A quarterly index covering all 54 Red Seal trades, decomposed by region, weighted by project completion probability, and inclusive of long-term maintenance demand from completed infrastructure. The most complete consolidated repository of Canadian trades-demand intelligence — grounded entirely in publicly available data sources.
Convening services for regional pilot design and operationalization — bringing together Confederation College, Lakehead University, Oshki-Pimache-O-Win, principal regional employers in forestry, mining, construction, and infrastructure-maintenance, and the relevant ISET service holders. No financial stake in pilot intake numbers; no conflict of interest.
An original ten Have Advisory Group design consolidating a traditional two-year diploma into one calendar year — 1,000 hours of instruction across three intensive 14-week semesters — for Indigenous, rural, and rapid-re-credentialing learners. Respects the “one year away from community” constraint. Realized as CAST, the companion pilot described above.
Representation of the owner’s interest between what was intended and what gets delivered: translating intent into requirements, overseeing the consultants and contractors who build to it, and holding scope, quality and schedule to the owner’s interest. Offered on major industrial projects, and on workforce, apprenticeship and credentialing initiatives for sponsoring institutions, governments and Indigenous institutions.
Grounded in the principal’s work as Owner’s Representative during construction of the De Beers Canada Victor Mine: monitoring the EPCM provider’s progress and schedule, resolving disputes, reviewing scope changes, and aligning construction with commissioning. First production was reached on the target date, a three-month schedule improvement that allowed the project to be completed within its $1 billion budget, with no lost-time accidents.
ESDC, provincial apprenticeship authorities, Indigenous Skills and Employment Training partners. Quarterly seat-cap allocation, provincial enrolment calibration, regional cohort design.
Tetra Tech · Hatch · WSP · Stantec · BBA · Ausenco · Knight Piésold · Worley · AtkinsRéalis · AECOM · Wood · Fluor · Aecon · Kiewit · PCL · Ledcor. Project-portfolio workforce planning.
Multi-site operators in construction, mining, oil & gas, manufacturing, energy generation, shipbuilding, and the defence industrial base. Mobility programs and apprentice-sponsorship decisions.
Polytechnics, cégeps, colleges, JATCs, Building Trades locals, and individual Canadians deciding which trade to enter or which region to relocate to. Labour-market information that does not currently exist in any consolidated public form.
The principal proposal is accompanied by an Indigenous partnership companion, the CAST program proposal and its evidence annex, and a set of illustrative supplements that make the framework’s examination, measurement and reporting concrete in advance of implementation.
The principal policy proposal, Revision 2, submitted to the Hon. Patty Hajdu, P.C., M.P. Four pillars, a ramp from 10,000 to 40,000 Registered Federal Apprentices a year, and a recommended plan that operates within the Team Canada Strong envelope.
A proposed multi-organizational delivery partnership with Matawa First Nations Management (KKETS) and Oshki-Pimache-O-Win, setting out how the Indigenous stream would run through Indigenous-controlled delivery. The architecture is provisional and is offered for the partners’ consideration and revision.
The detailed program proposal for the one-year accelerated diploma: three pillars, 100% of Level 1 in two established trades, and a multi-site pilot.
The evidence annex for CAST: a sourced record of cyber incidents against the operational technology that runs water plants, power grids, pipelines, ports and factories.
Three illustrative companions: an entrance-examination blueprint with sample items, a worked example of the Trades Demand Yardstick, and a sample mock-up of the Annual Trades Modernization Report.
The national pilot proposal for the trade, prepared under separate cover with its evidence annex, Artificial Intelligence in the Control Room.