Arboriculture Canada would like to sincerely thank the arborist industry in Canada for your business in 2020.  When the pandemic hit Canada in March and we saw almost a complete shut down of business, we wondered how essential training would be and what would happen when we were allowed to provide face to face training again.

This year brought challenges for all businesses, and our business wasn’t excluded from the roller coaster ride!  We saw almost 100% cancellations of all training programs in March and did not gain much business again until September.  Then, we experienced the busiest fall season in 20 years of operations in September and October, and began to see cancellations of most training again in November and December.

We learned some big things this year!  We developed rigorous protocols for sanitization and protecting attendees and instructors from COVID-19, and we implemented them.  We moved most training formats to the outdoors in their entirety, often eliminating indoor classroom venues and the use of power point presentation.  It took us back to the early years of our business when all training was completed in field sessions.  We were challenged to open our minds to how we can provide online training to our customers in certain topics, and what training still needs to continue to occur in face to face settings.

We learned that training in our industry is essential.  Safety is not an option for tree care workers.  Learning how to perform work safety in an extremely high risk occupation is essential to survival. 

We kept our eye on every province in Canada, as the infection rates came and went in waves across our country.  We adapted to the variances in every province, and we had an amazing team of instructors across the country that helped to keep us current and worked to provide training locally to customers.

We want to thank our customers for their patience in 2020.  We had to cancel many public training programs and reschedule them, sometimes rescheduling two or three times.  We realize a lot of emails were sent as things were being rescheduled, and there were additional requests to complete health assessments.  We thank those people who chose to stay home if they were not feeling well, and we hope to see you at a program in 2021.  We saw many contract programs cancelled, and patience was needed by all as we rescheduled and tried to find instructors more local to delivery.  We have experienced big challenges with instructors traveling from province to province and have done our best to reduce the need for instructors to travel.

We are working hard over the winter months to continue to adapt to a new way of offering training to our valued customers and the arborist industry in Canada.  In addition, we will be taking a well earned break over the holidays to rest as we ease more slowly and thoughtfully in 2021 than ever before.