Thank you very much.
Chris Smillie from my office is here to make sure that I don't undo any of his good work. I'm getting graded for this.
I'd like to thank the committee. The last time we appeared, you made a recommendation to support worker mobility from place to place. I would suggest, with respect, that what was vital before is more vital now.
As well, you recommended $85 million for skills training for some of the stuff we do in the building trades. Thank you very much for that. We won't let you down.
The building trades represents 500,000 men and women who make their living in the construction business. It's half of the construction workforce. We're a group that works in politics but isn't partisan. We hopefully are here to represent ideas and not things.
We build everything, from the greatest plants being built anywhere in the world through to your garden shed. Our workforce is in a pool. That is because every construction job comes to an end. Our work is transitory for workers and it's transitory for employers. When the work ends, people move on to another job.
One of our issues is that workers and workplaces aren't always co-located. In Alberta and Saskatchewan, over the course of the last few years, we've seen a significant number of fly-in, fly-out jobs. They're still there; there are a lot fewer of them. Where some of the work is going to be won't necessarily be in those locations.
The infrastructure spend that the Government of Canada recommended in the last budget will be the construction marketplace in a number of places. You need to make sure that we get a workforce to build the bridge over the Saint John River or to build the hospital in Brampton. We need to be able to move that workforce.
You have invested in skills training. The last Government of Canada invested in skills training. Skills training is something we can deliver. Tie skills training to the infrastructure spend.
The fact is that we did a bunch of research in the days of the Construction Sector Council. Not having the money to travel is a major factor in people not moving towards the work. The current relocation tax doesn't work for construction workers, and no one is going to uproot their family to take a two-month job at the other end of the country. It has worked, and it is useful, that the communities across the country have been able to stay in existence with people who work away.
We're here asking for help. I said before that now is more important than any other time. We do get some help from owners occasionally moving across the country. However, the truth is that the people we represent, the welder who doesn't get to deduct anything for travelling...if he were the welding rod salesman selling the product that he's burning, he would be able to write it off. The person doing the work can't.
We don't care how we get there, whether it's an EI pilot—and maybe that is the easiest way—or whether it's a tax deduction or a tax credit, we will ease unemployment levels in hard-hit regions and support local communities and take skilled people to where the work is.
You heard the chamber talk about skills. You heard the Conference Board talk about skills. To be a dentist, you need a Doctor of Dental Surgery. To be a lawyer, you need an LL.B. To be an apprentice, you need a J-O-B. If you don't have a job, you're not an apprentice. We need to find a way to make sure that the young people coming into our business have a place to learn on the job. No job, no apprenticeship.
According to the studies done by BuildForce Canada, we are going to lose 25% of the construction industry, and somewhere in the range of 35% of superintendents and supervisors, as the baby boom generation fools people and actually retires. That's over the next five to six years.
In an industry that's highly competitive, and in fact combative, on the idea of support for a mobility program, the National Construction Labour Relations Alliance, Progressive Contractors, the Christian Labour Association, and the Canadian Construction Association will all support the idea of mobility. Mobility equals jobs. Jobs equals paying taxes, not being on pogey.
On a program to defer the cost of travel, a pilot program—however we get there—the payback according to the professionals we've consulted is five to one. The Government of Canada does five times better than having someone on pogey at home. We would support any monitoring or compliance programs that might be developed.
Those are my submissions.
Thank you very much.