Thank you for the opportunity to be here.
Appearing with me today are Mr. Chris Smillie, from the Canadian office of the building trades; and Mr. Steve Schumann, from the operating engineers.
Why are we here? Well, the unionized construction industry in this country has over 500,000 people working in it. We produce 12% of Canada's GDP and 8% of all direct employment. The building trades are the home of the skilled trades in Canada. Nearly 80% of Canada's apprentices are produced by our industry. Construction is a threshold industry on which everything else is based.
We have three major points that we would like to bring to you. One deals with the environment, one deals with tax measures that deal with investment in infrastructure, and one speaks about economic stimulus.
Let me speak about infrastructure first. We would urge in this budget that the Government of Canada think big. Effective stimulus means that putting people to work and allowing industry of all sorts to produce goods and services needs to be considered. Every construction job directly multiplies itself into seven jobs doing supplies and three jobs doing the engineering and all the support, so it's a ten to one multiplier. Major crown projects that have been talked about, such as the northern port facilities at Nanisivik and the rebuilding of Canada's fleets of ships, both for the coast guard and for the navy, need to be undertaken.
Somewhere in the budget, as you did last year, there needs to be support for Canada's nuclear industry. If we are going to have a clean environment, we are going to have to find a way to make that environment work, not being dependent on fossil fuels, and that means nuclear and that means some thought in respect of that.
That's infrastructure to the good. As for infrastructure to the bad, we haven't seen in our industry a lot of money being spent and a lot of contracts being let in all but a few isolated areas. The industry is going to rebound, and if it rebounds before the stimulus spending really has a chance to cushion the blow for construction, you're going to be competing in a hot marketplace and nothing that you have seen will avail.
What doesn't work effectively for infrastructure spending? The EI rate freeze as stimulus doesn't make a single job. The home renovation tax credit, while immensely popular with a number of people, does not create jobs. If you want to create a tax credit for homeowners, make it a little bigger, in the $10,000 range, where people have to go out and hire a contractor who hires people to go to work.
On the environment, if you look at what is happening to our neighbours to the south with the passage of the Waxman-Markey bill, sooner or later we have to have an economic policy that moves in step with that of the United States. If we become the victims of green protectionism, many of the commodity-producing jobs in this country are going to go away. We need to get on the environmental bandwagon now and we need to protect those commodity-producing industries across this country. That means money spent on carbon capture and sequestration; that means money spent on improving the environment through allowing capital cost allowance deductions for businesses that are going to help bring greenhouse gases down.
An acceleration of capital cost allowances, particularly classes 10, 16, and 38, is something we would urge. In budget 2009 there was an extension of those particular provisions. We urge that they be made permanent.
Investment in Canada's largest industry and the multiplier effect is something that will have a positive effect on the economy.
The last major item that we urge is mobility measures to help our workforce move across this country. Today, when the industry isn't quite as busy as it was, we still have 600 jobs for pipefitters in Alberta going begging. We still have jobs for 300 ironworkers and 600 electricians.