Great. Thank you very much.
On behalf of Unifor, I want to thank the chair and the members of the committee for this opportunity today. As mentioned, I am the national president of Unifor. My name is Lana Payne. Unifor is Canada's largest private sector union, representing 320,000 workers from coast to coast to coast, in every sector of the economy.
I want to speak to you today about the economic reality that is confronting workers and why the budget must respond with effective measures, including well-developed industrial strategies, to protect Canadian jobs. Canada's economy and labour market are showing cracks, with private sector industries and workplaces facing mounting pressure. These pressures are converging on Canadian workers from different directions.
First, the Trump administration's trade war on Canada continues to hammer critical manufacturing industries, including in the auto, aluminum, steel and wood products sectors, resulting in far too many idle plants, shift reductions, layoffs and delayed investments.
Second, workers are facing rising precarity, with not enough supports to lean on. This precarity includes the privatization of public assets, unchecked automation and AI use, contract flipping and misclassification, workforce restructuring, and contracting out. If we want an economy built on good jobs, fair wages and growing productivity, we need to put Canada on a new track. Budget 2026 is a critical opportunity to spark this shift by reshaping where investment dollars go and what kinds of jobs are created.
Unifor's budget recommendations build on three key policy pillars that our union brought to Ottawa earlier this year. The first is to sell here and build here. Companies that sell into Canada must build and source from Canada as well. The second is worker-centred industrial strategies. We need comprehensive industrial strategies that prioritize workers, job quality and transitional skills. The third is promoting good union jobs. Rather than watering down labour rights and attacking the right to strike, the federal government should be strengthening labour conditions and standards and improving the conditions for fair and free collective bargaining to take place.
We recommend that the federal government's buy Canadian procurement policy be strengthened, including by applying it retroactively to large, strategic, nation-building procurements, like the decision over who will build Via Rail's long-distance fleet coach cars.
On trade, we recommend that the federal government disqualify U.S. suppliers from preferential treatment in the forthcoming policy for reciprocal procurement, and that we identify further points of leverage on which to influence the direction of the ongoing CUSMA talks. We urge the federal government to use all available statutory tools to prevent companies from offshoring Canadian production.
We want to see government establish strict conditions for federal funding programs, to ensure that any firm receiving public funds must adopt union neutrality agreements to promote good union jobs. When it comes to improving workers' supports and protections, Unifor recommends that government make temporary special EI measures permanent while committing to a comprehensive employment insurance reform, including increasing income replacement rates and the duration of benefits.
Lastly, we strongly urge government to refrain from making amendments to the Canada Labour Code that would undermine the right to strike and fair and free collective bargaining in the federally regulated private sector, where Unifor happens to represent 70,000 workers.
Our submission also outlines a series of targeted supports across multiple sectors of the economy, including auto, telecommunications, aerospace, transportation, critical minerals and energy, to name just a few. On forestry, we are looking forward to the release of the task force report on a sustainable forestry sector for Canada.
I want to thank the committee for this opportunity to speak. I look forward to any of your questions.