Thank you for the question. This is Mark Maxson here from the personal income tax division at Finance.
The labour mobility deduction comes out of a context in which the income tax provides recognition for some expenses for mobility, but generally those include cases in which someone moves permanently for a job or perhaps where they're required on a regular basis to travel away from their employer's workplace.
What we heard from the sector was that construction workers often, as I think was mentioned, face periods of downtime in their local market. There may be opportunities elsewhere in the country, so they take temporary jobs. They travel for temporary jobs, and the expenses they incur in relation to those relocations haven't been attracting existing tax relief.
What this measure proposes is to introduce a new labour mobility deduction for tradespeople that would recognize certain travel and relocation expenses for tradespeople and apprentices in the construction industry, allowing them to deduct up to $4,000 in a year across eligible relocations, and that would include temporary lodging expenses, round-trip transportation and meals within the course of that round trip. The proposal here is that this would take effect for the 2022 tax year, which is the year in progress, and for subsequent tax years.