Finance Committee on May 16th, 2022

[Chris Lewis]

Thank you very much.

To build off of your testimony, you had mentioned about three million workers in North America who are represented. I do believe it to be true that another 350,000 skilled trades workers will be needed by 2025 in Ontario alone.

In and through Bill C-241, I'm a really big believer that if we're going to build Canada back—if we're going to build our bridges, sewers, electrical systems and the homes that we all agree we desperately need—we have to get skilled trades and get skilled trades moving.

In and through the introduction of Bill C-19, there was an introduction from the government. It's a great start, but it has a cap of $4,000. That $4,000 could equate to a month and a half or two months of travel. Under C-241, my private member's bill, there's no cap because if we are going to have our skilled trades moving to various areas across the country, I believe that they should not have any restrictions. As a business person myself, there are no restrictions as to how many times I can get on an airplane, stay in a hotel or have a meal out of town.

I'm curious, sir. Could you expand on how exactly you think this would perhaps be more beneficial to the legislation than Bill C-19?

[Sean Strickland]

Thank you very much for the question, MP Lewis. Thanks very much for your advocacy and the sponsorship of the private member's bill.

As I mentioned in my remarks, we've been advocating for a tax deduction at Canada's Building Trades Unions for a long time. Previously, there have been three private member's bills sponsored by the NDP and the recommendation that came from this finance committee was for a tax deduction, which I believe received the majority of support from the finance committee.

Our position is that our workers need tax relief now and the quickest way to get that, I believe, is through what is contained in the budget. However, our job at Canada's Building Trades Unions is to support what policy and legislative initiatives benefit our members, so we're supportive of legislation that delivers the greatest benefit. In fairness, we're not asking for anything that's unfair compared to other taxpayers, but we support initiatives and legislation that benefit Canadian construction workers, including the 600,000 members of Canada's Building Trades Unions.

[Chris Lewis]

Excellent. Thank you.

Through you, Mr. Chair, back to Mr. Strickland. You had touched upon cross-border mobility. Ironically, in my riding of Essex, we have a new battery plant coming. We have the Gordie Howe bridge, which will be.... Well, the Ambassador Bridge is already the busiest international border crossing in North America, with huge amounts of trade, but I know they're having a tough time getting skilled trades workers there to complete these projects.

Could you touch upon how Bill C-241 may enhance getting more skilled trades to our area to build this infrastructure that's so desperately needed?

[Sean Strickland]

I think there are a couple things, MP Lewis.

One challenge now is that our workers, particularly unionized construction workers, are a very mobile workforce. Close to your area now in Sarnia, there's a big project and there are electricians and boilermakers from all over the country. In Fort McMurray during shutdowns, construction workers travel all across the country.

For these big projects, oftentimes there's a living-out allowance included, so there's an incentive for workers to go. However, oftentimes, there aren't living-out allowances, so you'll have areas where you have high unemployment and maybe 300 kilometres down the road you have excess demand where there aren't enough workers available. There's a disincentive for workers to travel because they're going to have to pay those travel, accommodation and lunch costs out of their own pocket. They're not going to make that journey. If you provide this tax deduction in the budget implementation bill and/or in the other initiatives, that will provide incentives for workers to go where the work is and help balance labour markets in Canada.

[Chris Lewis]

Thank you, Mr. Strickland.

In our final 35 seconds, could you quickly talk about temporary foreign workers and the impact Bill C-241 might have on helping them, perhaps?

[Sean Strickland]

Any kind of incentive that provides tax relief to workers for travel should, in theory, reduce reliance on temporary foreign workers.

The temporary foreign worker problem is a much larger issue for Canada and the Canadian economy. It's not only the construction industry. It's across agriculture, fisheries and other areas, as well. We need a holisitic approach to improving our labour market availability across all kinds of sectors in Canada, and to look at ways to reduce reliance on temporary foreign workers.

Since the temporary foreign worker program exists, however, there are many things we need to do to change it to make it more reflective of our Canadian values and to protect workers from exploitation when they come to work here from places outside Canada.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, MP Lewis. That's the time.

We'll now move to the Liberals for questions.

MP Dzerowicz, you have six minutes.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Thank you so much, Mr. Chair.

I also want to thank all the presenters today for their excellent presentations.

I'm going to start off with questions for Mr. Hinton, and then I'll go to Mr. Strickland.

Mr. Hinton, thank you for your very thoughtful presentation. You gave an urgent call to our government regarding the importance of IP, and an urgent call to action about our needing to create rules around freedom to operate.

For those who might not understand, what do you mean by “the freedom to operate”? Could you explain that in 30 seconds or less? Further, what are the top two or three things we need to do to create a “freedom to operate” environment for our businesses?

[James Hinton]

Thank you.

Freedom to operate is what businesses in the innovation economy have to deal with. IP is a negative right. A patent allows you to prevent others from making, using or selling. It's not so much about protecting what you have come up with, though IP does protect your invention. You're building on the IP positions of other players. If the foundation or land is owned by big or major players, your freedom to operate is ultimately reduced. It's the ability to go out and commercialize your technology, recognizing that most IP granted—90% of patents—is for improvements to other people's positions. Because you don't own that underlying position, you don't have the freedom to operate. If 99% of the IP is already owned by other players, you have to manage that IP and reduce the risks that come with it.

That's freedom to operate. It's the lens that all policy in the innovation economy needs to use: Will this increase the freedom to operate of Canadian companies while also decreasing the freedom to operate of other global players?

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Our federal government has made a clear commitment on a national IP strategy. What would you immediately recommend we do to help create this freedom to operate for businesses in Canada?

[James Hinton]

The immediate thing would be to scale up the Innovation Asset Collective. It's a pilot project that in its last year now. What we need to do is to be with our global peers and have that fully funded. Right now, it's for data-driven clean-tech companies—a very important sector—but it's very underfunded. We need to expand it across all sectors. Provincial and federal governments need to work together to effectively ratchet that up based on innovation spending. We should be spending significantly more than we already are to protect the IP we generate and ensure that it economically benefits Canada and Canadian companies.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

I think you said the innovation asset collective—the IAC—is a $30-million pilot, if I recall correctly. You think we need to scale that up. Would you give us the sum of money you think would be an appropriate amount of funding in order to scale this up?

[James Hinton]

I look to global peers and what other countries are doing. The Chinese and Americans have significantly funded their IP-generation capacity. We can't do that. We need to be more shrewd and look to other countries like France, Korea and Japan—what they're doing as small, open economies. As I mentioned, the French fund, France Brevets, started with 500 million euros and have since received another 500 million euros. That's a significant amount, in the order of magnitude twice what Canada has today with its funding. We really need to be keeping pace with those global peers.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Thank you so much, Mr. Hinton.

Because I have just run out of time with you, could you submit some of your key recommendations on how we can create this freedom to operate beyond the scale-up of the $30 million clean-tech pilot, I would be grateful. Then this committee could consider your recommendations moving forward.

Turning to Mr. Strickland, I want to say thank you for being here today. I also want to say a huge thanks to you for your leadership on the labour mobility deduction for tradespeople and for really pushing our government to increase funding for union training and innovation. It has made an impact and, as you could see, it is in budget 2022.

We have talked a lot about labour shortages in Canada. Over the years, because our immigration system hasn't facilitated tradespeople coming into this country, we have developed or acquired a number of non-status trades workers who are working within the construction sector.

Do you think that we need to normalize or find some sort of pathway to citizenship for those trades workers who have been working in our industry, who have been trained up and who have been largely socially and economically integrated? Do you have any thoughts on that?

[Sean Strickland]

Absolutely. Undocumented workers are certainly a challenge for industry. There are numerous undocumented workers across Canada who are going to work every day. I think that finding a path to citizenship for those folks and bringing them into the legitimate Canadian economy is a good initiative. I know there has been some work done previously with the Canadian Labour Congress. We have had some conversations and there are some pilot projects under way, so that's one thing that needs to happen.

There's another thing that needs to happen when we're talking about immigration. We're beginning to advocate for a construction immigration pilot program. As you mentioned, MP Dzerowicz, it's very hard for construction workers to get into Canada right now under the current immigration guidelines, and we need construction workers.

In Ontario alone, the conservative estimates are that we need 25,000 workers right now. We have similar challenges in British Columbia. Challenges are on the horizon in Alberta. We need to find a way to return to some of the initiatives of the 1950s and 1960s, when we brought in multitudes of construction workers to build the infrastructure of the day, which now needs to be replaced.

There are a variety of initiatives that need to take place to improve labour mobility in the construction industry, and immigration is a big piece of that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, MP Dzerowicz.

Now we will hear from the Bloc and MP Ste-Marie for six minutes, please.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My first questions are for Mr. MacDonald, from Imagine Canada. Then, I will have questions for Mr. Rooke, from Cider Canada.

I want to begin by thanking all the witnesses for being here today. I really appreciated their opening statements, which were all very informative, especially Mr. Cochrane's.

Mr. MacDonald, we had an opportunity to meet with representatives of your organization to discuss the problems with Bill C‑19 at greater length. My understanding is that you would prefer Bill S‑216, because it does a better job of meeting the needs of the organizations you represent.

How do you think Bill C‑19 would impact equity-seeking groups wanting to work with charities?

[Bruce MacDonald]

Unfortunately, Mr. Ste‑Marie, the interpretation did not come through, so I missed most of your question.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Mr. Chair, would you mind telling Mr. MacDonald how to use the interpretation option?

[Bruce MacDonald]

I used it, but unfortunately, it's not working.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

I could not hear the last 20 seconds or so of the interpretation.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

All right.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

I don't know if members are also hearing the channels overlapping each other. The English and the French are overlapping each other.

[Bruce MacDonald]

I'm not getting anything at all, and I have it on. I have tried both settings.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Now I'm getting French interpretation, and I'm on the English channel.