Government Operations Committee on June 11th, 2026

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thank you, everyone. We're back in session.

Before we start with our opening statements, just so you are aware, our witness from Unifor has not logged on yet. We're trying to locate him. In the meantime, we'll start with our witnesses who are here and hope to get them on board.

We'll start with you, Mr. Coutrouzas. Welcome. You have five minutes.

Again, colleagues, we have people online, so please state whom you're directing your questions to.

Sir, the floor is yours, please, for five minutes.

[Nole Coutrouzas, Business Manager, Millwright Regional Council]

Good afternoon, Chair and members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today.

My name is Nole Coutrouzas. I serve as the business manager for the Millwright Regional Council, representing 10,000 highly skilled millwrights across Canada who install, maintain and repair the equipment that powers Canada's economy. I also serve as president of the Hamilton-Brantford Building and Construction Trades Council and as vice-president of the Waterloo, Wellington, Dufferin and Grey Building and Construction Trades Council, representing an additional 30,000 skilled trades workers across Ontario.

I'm here to speak to one central point today: A true buy Canadian policy must include Canadian skilled trades labour, not just Canadian materials and manufacturing. Canadian workers must be at the centre of buy Canadian. When we talk about buy Canadian, the focus is often on goods, steel, equipment and materials, but those products do not install or maintain themselves. It is Canadian skilled trades workers who build, assemble, install and maintain the infrastructure and industrial systems that these investments depend on.

If public funds are being used for projects in Canada, there must be clear requirements that work is performed by certified journeypersons and registered apprentices, trades are recognized under provincial and territorial trades designations, and qualifications meet interprovincial or Red Seal standards, where applicable. Without these protections, buy Canadian becomes incomplete and risks excluding the very workers who deliver these projects on the ground.

Canada has built a world-class skilled trades system through apprenticeship training and interprovincial standards. Billions of dollars have been invested by governments and industry into workforce development, including such programs as the union training and innovation program, otherwise known as UTIP. However, there are no consistent requirements tied to federal funding to ensure that these standards are upheld on publicly funded projects. This creates a gap whereby work may be performed without proper certification. Trades standards may be undermined, with public investment and training not fully utilized. We should be maximizing that investment, not bypassing it.

Another critical issue is the use of international labour mobility pathways that allow foreign workers to enter Canada for industrial installation work. We have seen this on major projects that include such facilities as the NextStar project in Windsor, Ontario. Similar concerns are emerging with upcoming developments like the Volkswagen PowerCo plant in St. Thomas, Ontario.

Foreign technicians are brought in through such mechanisms as business visitor provisions for after-sales service, intra-company transfers and international mobility program streams tied to free trade agreements. These pathways are intended for highly specialized proprietary work. However, there is growing concern that they are being used to perform general skilled trades work, work that Canadian millwrights and other skilled trades workers are fully trained and available to do. This creates a backdoor pathway that bypasses the Canadian labour market, undermines domestic workforce participation and contradicts the spirit of buy Canadian.

Where a labour market impact assessment or any labour market access pathway is being considered, building trades unions should be formally notified and engaged to ensure that Canadian labour standards are upheld and that qualified local workers are given first opportunity to perform the work. These organizations can provide real-time, on-the-ground insight into labour availability and help ensure that policy intent is respected.

Let me be clear: Canadian trades support global investment, but not at the expense of Canadian workers being displaced from work they are fully qualified to perform. When Canadian skilled trades workers are employed, their wages are spent in Canada, they support local businesses and communities, and they contribute directly to Canada's GDP and tax base. When that work is performed by temporary or external labour with limited integration, a portion of the value is lost to the Canadian economy.

Buy Canadian is not just about procurement; it is about economic retention and growth. Canada already has the workforce. Policy must ensure that it is used. We have invested in it, we have trained it and we are ready to deploy it. If we are serious about a buy Canadian policy that strengthens our economy, then we must ensure that it includes Canadian workers, Canadian standards and Canadian opportunities.

Thank you for your time. I look forward to your questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thank you very much.

We'll now go virtually to Mr. Delov.

Go ahead, sir, for five minutes.

[Igor Delov, Director, Government and Stakeholder Relations, Provincial Building and Construction Trades Council of Ontario]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I appreciate the opportunity.

To the esteemed members of the committee, I would like to extend my appreciation for the opportunity to voice our council's views on the buy Canadian policy.

My name is Igor Delov. I'm director of government and stakeholder relations at the Provincial Building and Construction Trades Council of Ontario.

We represent 15 unions with a membership of 150,000 construction craft workers in every discipline of the sector, which accounts for 7% of Ontario's GDP.

With our signatory employer partners, we manage over 100 joint apprenticeship training centres, which prepare the safest, most qualified construction workers who build the homes, roads, bridges, schools, hospitals and energy systems that Ontarians depend on.

From a building trades perspective, we're encouraged by the current trajectory of project commitments being made by federal and provincial authorities. We welcome the federal announcement of $115 billion towards infrastructure investments in the next five years, which will result in the creation of thousands of training and apprenticeship opportunities and long-term careers in construction. We further salute the government's buy Canadian procurement policy framework, which will help catalyze domestic production and import substitution.

Requiring public procurement authorities to purchase verifiably Canadian-made materials, such as steel, aluminum and lumber, makes sense and will help protect and grow Canadian jobs. Furthermore, this initiative augments efforts that are under way to harmonize safety and training standards in recent legislation, like Ontario's Bill 2 and the federal government's Bill C-5, which are designed to secure seamless labour market credentials across Canada, including in the construction trades. The ultimate goal of harmonization is to achieve a single market, greater worker mobility and a stronger Canada. We support these objectives as long as we train to the highest health and safety standards.

Global geopolitical uncertainty seems to be a permanent feature of today's economy. Amid this upheaval, if implemented properly, a buy Canadian policy has the potential to bolster greater self-reliance to support communities right across our country while mitigating risks coming from external factors.

In addition to buy Canadian, the government would be well advised to implement a hire Canadian campaign. For years, the building trades have called on governments of all stripes to decrease our reliance on temporary foreign labour to build Canada's infrastructure. Relying on the international mobility program and the temporary foreign worker program while ignoring the domestic labour market situation is simply reckless. Under the auspices of the TFWP, temporary foreign workers tend to face exploitative practices, such as wage theft, unauthorized deductions, eroded labour standards, poor health and safety conditions, and substandard housing.

As we reimagine our procurement policy, we need to reimagine our human resource policy with a view to maximizing opportunities for Canadian residents to join the construction trades, especially at a time when youth unemployment is nearing 15%.

Our training providers have no shortage of domestic applicants living in their communities and seeking to enter the newest cycle of apprentice recruitment across most trades. In that sense, the buy Canadian approach can help spur work opportunities, not only in construction but also more broadly across the entire supply chain, from prefabrication shops to manufacturing facilities. There are pockets of trade-specific unemployment that we need to pay attention to so that we can deploy certified journeypersons to projects as quickly and seamlessly as possible. The government has taken steps to incentivize construction work travel through the labour mobility tax deduction for tradespeople, which is a great step forward.

More generally, however, the government must put Canadian workers first on publicly funded projects, without exception. The building trades do not accept governments, owners or employers using excuses like skill shortages, original equipment manufacturer expertise, warranty service requirements or proprietary technology to circumvent the hiring of skilled Canadian apprentices and journeypersons, including those from under-represented and underemployed communities.

Canadians live by the choices governments make, and we would submit to you that a buy Canadian, hire Canadian policy contains the long-term solution that our economy needs in order to revive growth and secure our economic future.

Thank you very much. I would be happy to answer the committee's questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

You had one second to spare. Well done. Thank you.

We haven't gotten our Unifor witness logged in yet, so we'll start our rounds, and we'll keep trying to get Mr. Cloutier aboard.

We'll start with Mrs. Block for six minutes.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses who have joined us today.

I want to circle back to a conversation we were having in the previous hour in regard to the regional tariff response initiative. I just want to put on the record that in Ontario, both southern and northern, the eligibility threshold is five or more employees. In Quebec, it's only manufacturing SMEs, and in the Prairies, it's 25% of total business impacted by tariffs. A business with 50-plus employees could be impacted at 20% but not be eligible for regional help. I just put that on the record, because we had quite a discussion in the last hour.

For the Millwright Regional Council, you mentioned in your remarks that you have concerns over labour gaps in the policy. Can you elaborate on that?

[Nole Coutrouzas]

What I was referring to is essentially Canadian workers. A lot of money was being invested, whether provincially, federally or municipally, into training in the skilled trades, but the solution is aligning the policy to match putting Canadians first. In the free trade agreements, through the examples I gave, they're allowing foreign workers to come over for specialized trades. When we're seeing these specialized trades doing the exact same work our members and our workers do every single day, then that gets concerning, because now you're getting into the general trades. It's not specialized.

We're not saying there is no need for workers, especially specialists, to come. We're just saying that work that can be done here should be done by the people who are being trained here, spending the money here and investing here. The trade gap really is.... We hear about the shortage, but, quite frankly, we're not seeing the shortage. We're hearing about the shortage, but we're not seeing it yet.

The way we work is that we go job to job. Not every job is back to back. Last month, you could have asked me, and I could have said, “We're full-out. We're going. We're ready.” This week, it's a different conversation now. It's just the way the industry goes. We go where the work goes, and we need to have it, so that there's consistent work here. The work that is being done here needs to be done by the Canadian workers who are being trained by all of us.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

Thank you.

How important are zoning and regulatory reforms, more broadly speaking than just for procurement things, such as housing construction, on which we've seen some worrying news about decreases in new starts? Can you comment on that?

[Nole Coutrouzas]

My expertise is not really on the residential side. I'm more on the industrial and manufacturing side. From my conversations, I've heard that a lot of it comes, honestly, to the municipal side, with permitting. That's a lot of it, and then you add in that the people who are supposed to build the houses aren't building because, yes, there's demand but not the demand at the prices they're trying to get. That's really as much as I can speak about for the residential side or sides like that.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

Thank you.

We saw the government boasting in the spring economic update that the Toronto line 2 trains will be 55% Canadian content. How much is normal for labour to take up in a given job or project?

[Nole Coutrouzas]

Sorry, but can you repeat that?

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

How much is normal for labour to take up in a given job or project?

[Nole Coutrouzas]

For the budget, you're looking at probably around.... I don't know, but I would guess about 50% is usually your labour. The equipment takes a big chunk, but labour on any project, I would assume, would be your biggest expenditure.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

Okay. Then it's not very difficult to get to the 55% total from there.

[Nole Coutrouzas]

No.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

Thank you.

I am just wanting to ask for a comment about an article by Michael Howlett and Andrea Migone of Simon Fraser University. In it, the authors note that, rather than trying to improve efficiency, “Government efforts instead have often focussed on layering additional requirements...on top of an already complex set of bid requirements.”

Can you comment on that?

[Nole Coutrouzas]

Bid processing is out of my scope of expertise. I can speak from seven years ago, when I was on the tools and my example of that. In the current climate, I'm not comfortable answering about the budget or the estimates of it.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Mr. Danko.

[John-Paul Danko, Liberal, Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Coutrouzas and Mr. Delov, for joining us. It's really important to have the perspective of organized labour when we're talking about buy Canadian. I think you both raised some fairly consistent points around buy Canadian procurement and how it also has to put Canadian workers first. I really appreciate the sentiment of “hire Canadian” also.

Mr. Coutrouzas, I'll start with you.

You talked about some of the challenges with foreign workers and prioritizing Canadian labour and Canadian labour availability. Billions of dollars of federal investment are going into build Canada strong, Build Canada Homes and the defence industrial strategy. For all of these programs, we need to make sure that we have labour availability for them and, through the buy Canadian policy, that federal procurement is prioritizing Canadian content.

Can you comment on how we can make sure we do prioritize Canadian workers for all the work that's coming through?

[Nole Coutrouzas]

First off, the problem isn't with the companies; it's with policy.

These companies and corporations are basically using the loopholes and policies that are available to them to make these business decisions. They get foreign workers to come in by using the free trade agreements and labour mobility programs.

There used to be formal consultation with building trades unions before an LMIA was assessed or any form of mobility pathway was enabled. That went away a couple of decades ago. I tried to get the exact date when it stopped from some of the older members who are getting into retirement age. When we look at LMIAs or any of these programs, we have to search. There's LMIA.org and others.

A resolution to it would be to consult with the building trades affiliates, such as the millwrights, to confirm whether qualified Canadian workers are available and to ensure labour mobility pathways are limited to only specialized work. That's my goal here.

Then you'd tie federal funding to the use of certified trades and apprentices and require compliance with the Red Seal trades and the provincial trades standards. We all have a trade code. Every province and territory has trade codes for specific work, yet there's nothing in policy or in the buy Canadian policy yet that says Canadian workers should be doing it first.

That's what I'm trying to say. I'm not saying to not use foreign workers, because there is a time and a place, and we understand that. I'm saying that with all this money being invested in training us, we should be the ones who are doing it. That would be a direct return on investment.

[John-Paul Danko, Liberal, Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON]

Thank you.

I also want to give Mr. Delov a chance to answer the same question and to expand on it.

If we are insisting on public procurement supporting certified and qualified Canadian workers, fair wage policy and union workers in particular, how do we make sure that this is part of the procurement process, and if it does incrementally increase costs, how is that also taken into account when you're going out to tender on these projects?

[Igor Delov]

I would echo my colleague's comments that the main focus is within the policies, so if we tweak the policies, the business response will be commensurate with those changes.

We've seen a lot of investments in the training capacity of our organized construction sector to enhance the ability of our affiliates to train the workers we'll need for the projects that are coming forward. In terms of meeting that capacity, the investments from the UTIP program and from the provincial skills development fund programs are all meant to augment the existing structure we have, whereby our workers and employers jointly contribute to our apprenticeship training trusts.

We have a very good infrastructure in place. I think really we need to zero in on our international trade agreement obligations and prioritize Canadian workers on that front, and also we need to focus on our general immigration policy, our existing temporary foreign worker program and our international mobility program. A lot of workers are coming in through those programs.

Investing in our workforce and giving Canadian workers the opportunity to go through an apprenticeship on a major project will have spinoff effects locally in the community for years and decades to come. It won't just create jobs; it will create careers for people who will become certified journeypersons at the end of their apprenticeships.

Mr. Danko, I would say to you, we have the infrastructure in place. I think we just need to make some adjustments in terms of how we prioritize the hiring of the people doing the work where the investment is being commissioned.

[John-Paul Danko, Liberal, Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON]

To follow up on that, if we're going to a buy Canadian procurement model, Canadian workers, presumably unionized or employed through a fair wage policy, would insist on higher wages, which I think is a good thing, but some of the criticism is that we're moving away from a low-bid public procurement model.

Mr. Delov, how would you respond to that kind of criticism, that there may be a higher price with a buy Canadian policy in place?

[Igor Delov]

Thank you.

In a nutshell, labour costs on major projects account for about a fifth of the overall cost. I know that a 50% number was mentioned earlier, but I think it's closer to about 20%.

That's point number one.

Point number two is that the spinoff effects—