Skills Advance Ontario Launch

The Governments of Canada and Ontario are collaborating through the Canada–Ontario Workforce Tariff Response initiative to support Ontario’s labour market by reinforcing sectors impacted by trade disruptions, tariffs, and other global market shifts. Ontario’s Skills Advance Ontario (SAO) program, a sector-based workforce development initiative that funds strategic partnerships between employers and employment and training service providers, will be one of the delivery mechanisms for this initiative and is jointly funded by the Governments of Canada and Ontario.

SAO is intended to:

• Support target sector workforce sustainability, resilience and development by funding partnerships that connect employers with the employment and training services they require for their workers;
• Help employers access and retain a skilled and adaptable workforce to meet evolving labour demands;
• Enable jobseekers and workers affected by trade disruptions, tariffs and evolving global economic uncertainty, to upskill, reskill, and advance;
• Support jobseekers and workers to pursue meaningful career pathways spanning entry-level through medium and high-skilled roles by helping them gain essential, technical and employability skills;
• Support workers to obtain or retain employment by providing them with employment and training services;
• Support training opportunities for workers on reduced hours; and,
• Connect jobseekers to employers with identified job vacancies or advancement opportunities if they are already employed.

A new SAO section has been created on the Employment Ontario Partners’ Gateway (EOPG) with program overview, latest announcements page, questions and answers and a link to the SAO Program Guidelines on the Central Forms Repository.

Further information is also available on the SAO page at Ontario.ca.

Prospective applicants can apply through Transfer Payment Ontario.