Grand River Public School
Article content originally published in Electrical Line Magazine on September 22, 2025.
With a reported 70% of Ontario manufacturers struggling to find skilled workers, the Canadian Tooling & Machining Association (CTMA) has found an unconventional solution to address the challenge: high school teachers.
Through a unique program, called Career-Ready with CTMA: Expanding Opportunities, the organization is providing hands-on training in precision metalworking to hundreds of educators at 157 high schools across Ontario and furnishing their classrooms with high tech, shop-standard CNC milling machinery and tooling. The teachers in turn are confidently training their students – 25,000 of them to date – to program and use the equipment, setting them up for profitable and rewarding careers in manufacturing right out of high school.
