{"id":70598,"date":"2025-08-05T07:30:36","date_gmt":"2025-08-05T11:30:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/?p=70598"},"modified":"2025-08-01T11:33:00","modified_gmt":"2025-08-01T15:33:00","slug":"fixing-the-gap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2025\/08\/05\/fixing-the-gap\/","title":{"rendered":"Fixing the Gap"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week, Bike Share Toronto reported a record-breaking 980,000<\/a> rides in June. The most ever in a single month. Toronto is inching closer to a one-million-ride milestone, and it\u2019s clear: people want to cycle. But as we encourage more residents to swap steering wheels for handlebars, a critical piece of our cycling ecosystem remains unacknowledged and unsupported: the skilled hands that keep those bikes rolling safely.<\/p>\n

While we celebrate this ridership boom, the very people who maintain the machines underpinning our shift to active, low-emission travel remain invisible in the eyes of our federal workforce strategy. Canada still doesn\u2019t officially recognize bicycle mechanics as a national occupation. And that has to change.<\/p>\n

The Hidden Workforce Behind a Greener City<\/h2>\n

It might surprise you to learn that bicycle mechanics do not appear in Canada\u2019s National Occupation Classification<\/a> (NOC) system. Despite being the national framework that guides employment insurance, job training, and immigration, the NOC has no standalone code for this essential profession. That means no clear pathway for federal training programs, no data for employers to build a stable workforce, and no formal recognition for workers.<\/p>\n

As a result, bicycle mechanics, many of whom are young, racialized, or newcomers, are often miscategorized under broader titles like “Retail Salespersons” or “Other Repairers and Servicers.” This is a structural barrier that hinders workforce development, suppresses wages, and ultimately compromises public safety.<\/p>\n

An Echo in the Green Economy: A System-Wide Problem<\/h2>\n

The failure to recognize bicycle mechanics is not an isolated oversight; it is a symptom of the exact systemic gaps that Toronto’s own green economy leaders are struggling to close. In a June 2023 webinar <\/a>on advancing the TransformTO strategy, a panel of experts from industry, education, and policy convened to discuss the immense challenge of building a workforce for the green economy. Their conclusions create a powerful echo that validates the urgent need to professionalize this specific trade.<\/p>\n

The panelists spoke of a massive “skills gap” and the critical need to create new, clear training pathways for the green-collar jobs of the future. They stressed that success requires a deliberate, collaborative effort to define, train, and support the necessary workforce. This high-level discussion perfectly diagnosed the problem, and one of the event’s own organizers and panel moderators is now leading the charge on the solution.<\/p>\n

That leader is Rob McMonagle. As the former Sector Development Officer for the City of Toronto’s Economic and Culture Division since 2011, McMonagle has been instrumental in introducing initiatives to accelerate the city’s green sectors. His decades-long career, from founding one of Canada’s first renewable energy companies in 1980 to helping create the nation’s first Feed-in Tariff program, gives him an unparalleled view of the gap between policy goals and practical implementation. He understands that for Toronto to succeed, we must build the workforce from the ground up.<\/p>\n

The Toronto Context: A System Under Strain<\/h2>\n

Here in Toronto, we\u2019re riding on a fragile assumption: that the people fixing our bikes and a growing fleet of complex e-bikes will always be around, available, and properly trained. That assumption does not hold up to scrutiny.<\/p>\n

According to the City of Toronto\u2019s 2022 Bike Industry Consultations Report<\/a>, workforce issues were identified as one of five urgent strategic priorities for the sector, alongside safety, market growth, supply chain resilience, and industry capacity building. Employers across Toronto noted immense challenges in attracting and retaining qualified talent, with a particular shortage of certified training programs.<\/p>\n

The same report notes that community bike hubs like Charlie\u2019s Freewheels<\/a>, Bike Sauce<\/a>, and Bike Chain at the University of Toronto<\/a>, could become crucial training grounds and workforce pipelines, if only a formal occupational pathway were established. But without official recognition, these efforts remain informal, underfunded, and limited in scale. Toronto has long pitched itself as a green jobs hub, but how can we champion the green economy when we can\u2019t even define one of its most vital roles?<\/p>\n

A Global Outlier in a Policy Vacuum<\/h2>\n

Canada is increasingly out of step with the rest of the world. The United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and most European Union countries have formal occupational codes for bicycle mechanics.<\/p>\n

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  1. United States<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n