Training the Excluded for Work is an important contribution to debates about the importance and viability of job training policies and programmes that are directed to those who are “excluded” in the Canadian labour market. It is also timely insofar as job training, in contrast to post-secondary education policy, remains somewhat underexamined in Canada. This is particularly ironic, as job training has emerged as a key issue for policy makers, industry, workers and activists. Training is frequently touted as a panacea that will address a host of economic ills including unemployment, low productivity levels and lagging investment. On the one hand, many employer and industry groups view training measures as part of a larger strategy to address the imperatives of a global economy. Here, neoliberal rationales tend to prevail—job training becomes an investment in individual human capital. But on the other hand, job training can also be an important means by which marginalized groups, including youth, women, indigenous groups and racialized minorities, address the terms of their exclusion from (or limited inclusion in) the labour market. In doing so, other rationales come to the fore, most notably the need to address social inequities in the labour market. This edited book addresses this latter aspect of the training policy debate.

Editor Marjorie Cohen has assembled a diverse collection of interesting chapters. Indeed, it should be noted that one of the strengths of the volume is that the articles are the product of scholarship emanating from a number of disciplines. But, equally importantly, the book includes contributions by those outside the academy, and thus offers additional perspectives on job training in Canada. Cohen's introduction makes clear that the book focuses on specific policies and initiatives designed to show what works and what does not in training programmes directed at excluded groups. She states at the outset that “the overriding theme of this book is that training for people who are either marginalized or at risk in the labour market can be highly successful if undertaken with their needs in focus” (8). To greater and lesser degrees the volume's 14 subsequent chapters emphasize this point throughout. Indeed, they demonstrate that a “one-size fits all” approach to training does not address the specific needs of groups experiencing labour market disadvantage, nor does it produce effective outcomes. This is a wide-ranging volume and it covers a lot of ground. While it is difficult in the space of a short review to adequately address all the contributions in detail, some critical linkages emerge.

Many of the contributors in the book explicitly draw the link between gender and job training by underscoring the ways in which policy outcomes affect men and women differently (as well as different groups of men and women) and how societal ideas about gender roles find expression in training programmes. In this regard, a number of chapters directly address the restructuring of the policy environment in the post-1996 period and discuss the impact this has had on women's access to training and the kinds of training available. In chapter 1, Ursule Critoph offers a careful mapping of the changes that have taken place in the federal level vis-à-vis labour market programmes in the period 1995 to 1997. In many ways, her analysis provides an excellent contextual framing for the cases that follow it. Critoph highlights the federal government's retreat from providing targeted programmes to equity groups, cuts in programme spending, changing employment insurance rules, and the downloading of responsibilities to provinces. She concludes that as a result of these policy changes, “women and women's organizations have been severely negatively affected” (31). This story is further developed in chapters 11 and 12. In the former, Joan McFarland offers an accounting of the effect of federal policy shifts, coupled with provincial actions in the province of New Brunswick. In the latter, Karen Lior and Susan Wismer examine the legacy of these same changes and point out that the onus is now placed on individuals to secure training. They write: “today, women's choices for training and employment are, at the same time, more limited and greater than ever before. For the woman on social assistance, there are typically a very restricted number of programs offering minimal training opportunities” (214).

The attempt to encourage women to use training as a vehicle to enter into jobs traditionally performed by men—“non-traditional jobs”—is taken up by a number of the book's case studies. Marjorie Cohen and Kate Braid examine the efficacy of equity initiatives targeting women and First Nations people in a Vancouver highway construction project. They argue that the presence of equity provisions at an early stage of the tendering process, coupled with the active involvement of community advocates and permanent equity co-ordinators, produced a successful result. In contrast to this case is Susan Hart and Mark Shrimpton's chapter on the Hibernia oilfield construction project. This details the attempt to encourage women into the oil and construction industry. Unlike the Vancouver highway construction project, “formal attempts to integrate women were limited in their scope and implementation, and undermined by informal practices and day-to-day interactions in the workplace” (76). Indeed, the theme of workplace culture is taken more concertedly in chapter 5. Drawing on her own experiences, Kate Braid, a carpenter, teacher and writer, details the masculine culture of construction, arguing that existing training models often fail to consider how this dynamic acts as a barrier. As she notes, the retention of women in trade-related jobs is very low. Braid also dispenses advice to women on how to navigate the unfamiliar territory of a construction site. Margaret Little's study focuses on the struggles of low-income women, many of whom are Aboriginal, and chronicles their participation in an intensive programme that is designed not only to provide them with carpentry skills but also to take their specific needs into account. Through in-depth interviews with the participants, she identifies the systemic barriers—of race, domestic responsibilities, violence, lack of experience as paid workers and poverty—that this group of women struggle with. Taken together, these chapters effectively demonstrate that encouraging women into non-traditional jobs and keeping them in these positions requires proactive and creative efforts on a number of fronts.

Two case studies focus on the restructuring of female-dominated job sectors and the challenges this poses for developing and providing appropriate training programmes. Alice de Wolff and Maureen Hynes's chapter examines the rapid changes taking place in office work and the different programmes directed at training office workers in Toronto. Larry Haiven and Liz Quinlan focus on health care training in Saskatchewan. Their study highlights the tension between the traditional provision of training as a public good and the increasing role played by private-sector initiatives.

Other contributions problematize specific aspects of training programmes and issues of delivery and access. Shauna Butterwick's work interrogates the often-celebrated but little examined concept of “life skills training.” Drawing on Foucauldian insights and feminist critical theory, she considers both the discursive construction of “life skills” in social welfare and labour programmes and participants' and trainers' lived experiences. What emerges is a fascinating account of the contradictions and power relations embedded in life skills training. Robert Sweet's chapter considers the impact of women's individual choices vis-à-vis training and their subsequent earnings. In chapter 8, Margaret Manery and Marjorie Griffin Cohen highlight the importance of community-based training. They trace the evolution and history of two community-based training models, the Working Skills Centre and the MicroSkills Development Centre, both started by immigrant women to meet the needs of immigrant women. These two projects pioneered effective programmes but their success did not insulate them from recent policy changes. New training criteria and the rise of market-based approaches that prompt individuals to pay for their own training adversely impact the constituencies that these projects were designed to serve (158).

The last chapters of the volume consider the issue of job training directed specifically at youth. Linda Wong and Stephen McBride's research, for example, outlines the positioning of youth in the labour market and focuses on the ways in which programmes in British Columbia have addressed their needs. They demonstrate how provincial youth training programmes reinforce bifurcated labour markets. Some training, namely programmes that were directed at social assistance recipients and those lacking post-secondary qualifications, channelled trainees to low-skilled occupations. In contrast, other programme clients, who had higher education, were given better placements. Their chapter, like the other contributions in the volume, makes it clear that there is no uniform or generic definition of training. Rather, as the authors write, “training implies that all training increases an individual's human capital and leads to a better situation in the labour market. However, this obscures the fact that not all programs are equal, that not all youths are treated equally …” (237).

Not surprisingly, there is variance to be found between the 14 chapters: some are more narrowly empirical than others and not all contributors draw out the broader lessons that can be learned from each case as explicitly as they could. Additionally, while it is impossible for one volume to address every aspect of labour market disadvantage, it would have been useful to see some case material on older displaced workers and other racialized minorities. These points aside, the contributions in this collection work well together. We do not know enough about the workings of training programmes and their potential to address social inequity. Overall, the cases offer a rich and fascinating examination of the issues and debates associated with job training policy directed at particular groups.