Jon, Operations Manager

The satisfaction of building is something that I've always enjoyed doing. My grandfather was a carpenter. I watched him at a young age, build out buildings around his house and that's something I took interest in right away.

Hi, my name is Jon, I'm an Ops (Operations) Manager for CORCAN Construction, Pacific Region.

CORCAN Construction is a division of CSC (Correctional Service Canada). CORCAN actually is an abbreviation for Corrections Canada.

We are a program first and foremost. We provide employability skills for offenders and we also run as a business so our objective is to produce a product for our clients and build it on time and within budget. We offer apprenticeship hours in the fields of carpentry, electrical, plumbing, HVAC. Those are the opportunities these men and women have when they come and work for CORCAN.

My experiences with working offenders, it's positive. What I see when these men and women come out and work with us, typically they don't have any skills. So, we're basically starting at a point where we're introducing the tools to them, we're introducing them how to read a tape measure, how to do basic math.

You can see them grow into a confident person. When they first start, they're shy, they're just quiet and then you see them slowly grow where they're sharing, they're interacting with staff and other offenders that are working with us. They understand the importance of working for CORCAN, they can see that they're gaining hands-on skills where they can take those skills and potentially use them to apply when they are released, apply in the private sector and get a good job out there.

What happened with Jasper last summer, they were affected by the wildfires. I believe there was about 350 structures damaged. CORCAN Construction reached out to Parks Canada, just letting them know that we're here to assist with any construction related needs they have.

So, we have currently shipped four homes to Jasper where they're placed on temporary foundations. And then in the next six months we're building another 20, just so that they can get their staff in in the summer to obviously, you know, they have to rebuild their trails, their park. So these will house them temporarily and during that time we will be actually forming and placing permanent foundations and once those are complete they're going to crane those houses onto those foundations.

I'm very fortunate that I wake up every day and I look forward to coming to work. And, also the fact that we work with offenders that are incarcerated, that didn't have the opportunities when they were a child, you know, giving them those abilities, those skills, those soft skills is something that I take home every day.