Thank you, Mr. Chair and honourable members. On behalf of the some 20,000 member firms that the Canadian Construction Association represents, I'd like to say that it is, indeed, a pleasure to be here with you today.
Since I do only have five minutes and I don't want to go over time, I'm going to get right into it. We have five recommendations for you to consider.
The first is with respect to labour mobility, and my comments here are specific to EI-eligible unemployed. A mobile workforce is critical to the country's future, particularly in our construction sector. We need to encourage the unemployed to travel to where the jobs are and not limit their job searches to just their local market. But as we all know, money is tight when you are unemployed, which is why most unemployed Canadians limit their job search to their local labour market.
To overcome this challenge, the Canadian Construction Association recommends that current El policy be amended to permit the unemployed to access an advance of up to $2,000 from their approved EI benefits to help offset their job search costs outside their local market. This could be done through the existing El claim process without the federal government incurring any significant, new administrative costs.
Moreover, it would encourage the unemployed to broaden their employment search outside their local market without incurring significant expense at a time when they can least afford it. Should they find work as a result of this expanded job search, repayment terms could be negotiated between Service Canada and the El recipient.
A second way we can help create additional employment opportunities for groups currently detached from the labour market is to incentivize employers to invest in their training. The Canada job grant is one important initiative, but its focus is on short-term skills only, making it too limited for most employers to consider when training someone with specific employment challenges.
Furthermore, no employer is going to move a bookkeeper into a comptroller position just because the bookkeeper took a week-long course on accounting, so it's unrealistic to think that short-term upskilling will lead to additional hiring. Recommendation number two is that the program needs to be expanded to encourage more longer-term skills development.
A third solution is to create greater financial incentives for employers to participate in workforce development. Our members are particularly interested in apprentices. We believe the government has it right with respect to the apprenticeship job creation tax credit. This program helps many medium-sized employers take on apprentices by subsidizing their wages for the first and second years of their program. Unfortunately, however, the credit is limited to a maximum of $2,000. For most small and micro-businesses, which make up 99% of the companies active in the construction industry, it is not a substantive enough incentive to encourage them to hire apprentices.
Recommendation number three is to expand the credit. Right now it only applies to apprentices in their first and second years of apprenticeship. To try to incentivize apprenticeship completion, we'd like to see it expanded to years three and four. We'd like to see the $2,000 limit increased to $5,000. The current credit only applies to apprentices in Red Seal trades. We'd like to see it applied to all provincially recognized apprenticeable trades.
Fourth, we believe investments in infrastructure and the strategic use of tax policy can best contribute to business growth in all regions and sectors of the country. Infrastructure is an economic enabler. The better our infrastructure is, the more efficiently we, as Canadians, can export our goods and services to international markets. With all the effort Canada has put into trade diversification through free trade agreements, we must not limit our potential growth opportunities due to infrastructure limitations. Unfortunately, that is the situation we face today. Much of our trade-enabling infrastructure is operating at near capacity, with limited ability to accommodate any significant additional growth.
I'll leave it to my colleague at the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers to quantify this problem in his sector, but let me just say this. If we are going to continue to permit the extraction of natural resources in Canada, does it make sense to deny ourselves the best possible price for those resources because of infrastructure limitations? We need to prioritize the development of trade-enabling infrastructure so as to ensure we continue to receive the best possible global price for Canadian natural resources.
That is recommendation number four. To that end, we recommend that the federal government establish a public-private advisory committee to help prioritize and direct investment decisions related to critical trade-enabling infrastructure. As part of this effort, the federal government should ensure that these identified assets receive priority funding from either an expanded national infrastructure component under the current new building Canada plan or through the proposed federal infrastructure bank.
Number five, and the last one, is capital cost allowance. The allowable capital cost allowance, or capital depreciation, on mobile diesel-powered equipment and machinery in the construction industry does not allow us to write it off over the useful life of the equipment. We are at a disadvantage when it comes to the tax treatment of that equipment in the United States.
The newer forms of equipment have better emission controls. The newer engines are much more environmentally friendly in that respect, so we feel that trying to encourage a turnover in that equipment to go to the more advanced machinery is also good for the environment.
I'm sure my five minutes are up, or just about up, so I'll stop there.