Human Resources Committee on Oct. 25th, 2006

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

In accordance with Standing Order 108(2), the committee will begin its study on employability in Canada. This morning, we will be seeing representatives of the Canadian Construction Association and the Canadian Federation of Independent Business.

I believe we're supposed to have also the Conseil interprofessionel du Québec, but they have not arrived yet.

If you need simultaneous translation, you will find the English on channel 1 and the French on channel 2. Every group will have seven minutes to make a presentation, after which there will be a question-and-answer period.

Mr. Argento, the floor is yours. You have seven minutes.

[Alfonso Argento, Chairman, Canadian Construction Association]

Merci. Thank you very much.

Good morning, everyone. Good morning, Mr. Chairman, and good morning, members of the committee. My name is Alfonso Argento. I'm the current chair of the Canadian Construction Association. I'm also a contractor. I'm president and chief operating officer of a company called Seven Brothers Construction based here in Quebec and Montreal. We are a family operated business.

With me this morning is Jeff Morrison, who is CCA's director of government relations and public affairs.

On behalf of the Canadian Construction Association, I want to thank you for your invitation to appear before you today. We are pleased to present our views respecting the consultation on employability in Canada. Certainly this matter is of significant interest to CCA and its members.

CCA is well positioned as the national voice of non-residential construction in Canada. CCA's activities benefit more than 20,000 enterprises in the industrial, commercial, and institutional sectors of the construction industry in the country.

The Canadian Construction Industry is facing an unprecedented labour shortage, due primarily to the aging workforce and exceptional economic growth in Canada for some years. In fact, a recent study by the Construction Sector Council shows that the Canadian Construction Industry will have to recruit at least 190,000 new trade workers over the next eight years.

We recognize that no single initiative can deal with the increasing demand for workers and solve the labour shortage issue, be it apprenticeship programs, immigration, worker mobility, or career promotion in non-traditional construction jobs. We will have to take an ongoing, multifunctional and multidimensional approach in order to identify all facets of the problem. That approach will require government support at a number of levels, as well as the support of construction industry stakeholders.

The main focus of this committee's study is employability in Canada. In the brief we have submitted to the committee, we have highlighted the following points, which in our view require additional measures.

First, the pool of Canadian workers will have to be increased. Second, the challenges and opportunities associated with the permanent and temporary immigration of foreign workers will have to be identified, and third, worker mobility across Canada will have to be promoted.

I would like to take the time I have left to make a number of comments on some of the points raised in our brief.

Concerning national apprenticeship standards in Canada, there is no question that a smooth-functioning construction industry is dependent upon a highly skilled, occupationally and geographically mobile labour force. To that end, we call on federal and provincial governments to work towards the development and implementation of national apprenticeship standards for Canada.

Under the current apprenticeship system in Canada, ten provincial and three territorial governments set the training standards for apprenticeship in their respective jurisdictions. This is often done without concern for what prevails in other jurisdictions. Resulting from this diversified approach to apprenticeship, we find differences in trade names, training curricula, and in which components of a trade they are compulsory and in which they are on a voluntary basis. The criteria differ from province to province, from territory to territory. We do not have a uniform system.

CCA believes mobility will be facilitated by development and adoption of common apprenticeship standards for Canadian skilled workers. We may already have that standard in the interprovincial Red Seal certification program. CCA is a strong proponent of the Red Seal program; however, its applications are limited to a small number of trades. Currently, only 45 of more than 300 designated Red Seal trades have the Red Seal standing. We believe the Red Seal program ought to be expanded to cover the broadest range of occupations for which apprenticeship or significant training is required.

Concerning support for apprentices, we applaud the federal government's recent demonstration of support for apprenticeship by way of the apprenticeship incentive program announced in the May 2006 federal budget. Although these initiatives are a good start to encourage apprenticeship in the trades, more can and must be done.

For example, the application of the tax credit and the tax grant is limited to Red Seal trades. It is our view that these federal budget initiatives must be available to all trades, since it should be clear that all construction trades meet the budget inclusion test of being economically strategic.

We believe that the earn while you learn nature of apprenticeship ought to extend to the in-school portion of apprenticeship training as well as the on-the-job training portion. We therefore call on the federal government to address provisions of the Employment Insurance Act that serve as barriers to allowing apprentices to earn while they are taking the in-school portion of their apprenticeship program.

Concerning challenges and opportunities offered by immigration, both on a permanent and temporary basis....

The policy and process underpinning immigration in Canada are structured to ensure that Canadians have first refusal on job opportunities in Canada, and preventing the hiring of foreign workers from having a negative impact on Canadians' job opportunities. The Canadian Construction Association vigorously supports the policy. However, given the unprecedented growth in the industry and the difficulty of recruiting Canadian workers in sufficient numbers, the Canadian Construction Association believes that temporary and permanent immigration could significantly contribute to the availability of construction workers in Canada.

In July, the CCA published a series of recommendations on how the government could reform the immigration system to meet human resource needs in the construction industry. The recommendations included the following:

First, review the points system used to assess skilled workers, put a stronger focus on criteria associated with experience and arranged employment. Second, extend the list of trades eligible under the temporary foreign workers program to include the greatest possible number of construction trades. Third, expand the seasonal Agricultural Workers Program so that it also covers the construction industry. Fourth, establish a process other than deportation for workers without papers, so that they can stay in Canada and have legal representation while they are in Canada without forcing them to go back to their countries of origin and then come back here, with all the frustration that entails. In any case, these are workers we need here, now

The Canadian Construction Association believes that, with these changes, Canada's immigration system would be much more useful in meeting labour market needs in the construction industry.

Next is promoting labour mobility in Canada. Employment in Canada in the Canadian construction industry is, by its very nature, characterized by high mobility. Construction projects are always a temporary work site, and it's not uncommon for construction workers to be moved about regularly among numerous job sites. For the most part, mobility is limited to movement within a region or a province, such as the region of Montreal or the province of Quebec. There are times, however, especially in periods of economic growth--or recession, for that matter--when workers need to be mobile on an interprovincial basis. The current economic boom we are experiencing in Alberta and B.C. is a good example of that, and you see a massive movement of people from east to west.

We were encouraged by the announcement of September 7, 2006, coming out of the committee of federal-provincial-territorial ministers responsible for internal trade respecting the goal of unrestricted mobility for Canadian workers by April 1, 2009. We believe this is a worthy goal and one that will allow labour market decision-makers at the provincial and federal levels to focus on the issue of enhancing labour mobility in the country. Notwithstanding the existence of the Red Seal program, other barriers can limit interprovincial mobility.

There is considerable cost involved in moving temporarily to a new location to seek employment. There are the costs of travel and accommodation, as well as general living costs just to go and look for work in a new location. There are also the other costs of maintaining a second home, as most workers will not want to disrupt family situations to move to temporary employment. We believe these costs could be reduced by assisting unemployed workers to relocate to new employment. This could be accomplished through the reintroduction of the exploratory component of the federal government worker mobility program that was in place in the mid-1970s. Under this program, an exploratory grant was available to workers to help them defray the travel and accommodation costs incurred in seeking employment in another location of the country.

I will conclude, Mr. Chairman. The Canadian Construction Association is pleased to have had this opportunity to provide our input to your deliberations on employability in Canada. The reports we are receiving clearly suggest that Canada is stricken with a serious labour force deficit in the immediate years ahead of us. We believe the federal government must take a leadership role to ensure that Canada is able to maintain its global competitiveness by ensuring that we have an adequately skilled labour force to meet the demographic challenges the country faces in the immediate term and the economic growth that is projected for the coming decade.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you, Mr. Argento.

We're going to move to Mr. Lavoie.

You have seven minutes.

[André Lavoie, Senior Policy Analyst, Canadian Federation of Independent Business]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

If you don't mind, Mr. Allison, I will address you in French, as it is my mother tongue, but I would be more than pleased to answer questions in French or English, depending on who is asking.

We are very pleased to be here today. The Canadian Federation of Independent Business is an organization that represents SMEs from across Canada. You have before you a presentation of a few slides that I will come back to briefly, so as to allow a time for discussion afterwards.

Some of my colleagues already appeared before the committee in Newfoundland and in Moncton. Many members of the Federation are present since the issue of labour shortage is one of the constant priorities of SME leaders, throughout Canada as well as Quebec.

In the past few years, we have seen that the labour shortage was closely linked to several problems, be it the tax burden, be it administrative and regulatory burden or employment insurance. The heads of SMEs talk to us about the labour shortage every year, because this is a constant priority for them. And their concerns in this regard have been growing in the past few years.

In the slides that I distributed, you will see that the concerns of the heads of SMEs are not necessarily tied to unemployment rates. One might tend to think that the labour shortage is inversely proportional to the problem of unemployment, but that is not necessarily the case.

Alberta is currently experiencing significant labour shortages. Our SME leaders say that the qualified labour force, more specifically among the young, is moving West, which hurts them. In fact, Mr. Argento asked a question earlier dealing with the mobility of the labour force.

That fact that we are in a period of lower unemployment does not necessarily stop the problem of labour shortage from getting worse.

The Canadian Federation of Independent Business is an organization that polls its members. We asked them questions about their hiring plans for the next 12 months: only 26 per cent of them intend to hire more full-time workers in the next 26 months, and only 13 per cent of them intend to increase their part-time workforce.

These low percentages are closely linked to the problems in hiring workers. Our members will still fill their labour force needs, but by using different strategies. They will hire underqualified staff or temporary staff or even let business opportunities passed them by. Generally speaking, these strategies are not necessarily viable in the long term, because they only fill a short-term need.

The time involved in training new workers often represents a considerable number of hours for employers in all regions of Canada. These employees are not necessarily qualified and need to be trained in order to bring them up to par.

However, the tendency to train new employees is lower in Quebec than elsewhere in Canada, which is somewhat worrisome. Quebec provide 104 hours of informal training and 22 hours of formal training to new employees whereas in the rest of the Canada it comes up at 113 and 23 hours respectively.

It is appropriate to examine the issue of training in greater depth, because that is one of the solutions to the shortage of qualified labour. When we ask our members what government can do to alleviate labour force shortages, we see that labour force training, especially in Quebec, is a very compelling subject for the heads of SMEs.

With the adoption of the Act for the development of manpower training, known as Bill 90, the heads of businesses whose payroll is $1 million or less are exempted from the obligations under this act.

The CFIB has often criticized — and I will get back to this — the burden that this legislation placed on the heads of SMEs. And yet, the CFIB is not against labour force training by SMEs. As we are members of the Commission des partenaires du marché du travail [Labour Force Partners' Commission] and we have a vision on this very issue, we will have opportunities to discuss it further.

Quebec has many areas of jurisdiction: employment, training, immigration, etc. We will soon be publishing an extensive survey on the labour shortage. For the past few years, the federation has been keeping an eye on this issue. Our report on this monitoring, which will also deal with the question of immigration, will be published in the coming weeks.

The federal and provincial governments must coordinate their efforts in order to create flexible approaches, be it on training, employment insurance, immigration, pensions, etc., and find solutions.

We also believe that it is important to educate business, and bring everyone on a level-playing field. One must understand the reality of SME leaders. A SME is not a multinational corporation. The head of the business wears many hats: director of finance, director of human resources, production manager. Moreover, he brews the coffee for his employees in the morning.

You must take into account the reality of managing a SME when you develop public policy. I could discuss this at length, but we will certainly have an opportunity to discuss it in the coming minutes.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much, Mr. Lavoie.

We're going to move to our next guest, who has just arrived, Monsieur Gariépy.

Mr. Gariépy, you have the floor for seven minutes.

[André Gariépy, Director General, Quebec Interprofessional Council]

Ladies and gentlemen, Canadian parliamentarians, good morning. Welcome to Quebec and to Montreal, a region where realities sometimes take a different form which must be taking into account. I am here today to discuss one of the realities we experience from the stand point of regulated professions.

You have received my brief directly, since I am aware of the rule to the effect that one does not transmit documents that are not translated into the other official language. The employees of the Parliament of Canada are rigorous in applying this rule. When it reduces access to information, it does trouble me somewhat. So I therefore sent you our brief directly. Thanks to the fine service of the translators, you will receive the English version, as was the case when we appeared before the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration in April 2005. You might also want to consult the brief that the Council tabled at that time.

These two briefs are quite similar, because in our opinion, these two orders of reference overlap. This only leads us to wonder whether parliamentarians talk to one another. Two standing committees are broaching more or less the same subject: recognition of foreign credentials for immigrants. This leads me to believe that the federal government is experiencing some difficulties, because two or three departments are getting involved in the same issue, namely Citizenship and Immigration Canada and Human Resources and Skills Development Canada. This may make us question the way the government does things, because one has to choose the right interlocutor. I see a lot of people smiling, which indicates that you understand what I am talking about.

Despite the rather broad mandate the committee has taken on, we only intend to deal with the issue of recognition of credentials and labour force mobility, since the Conseil interprofessionel du Québec is a group of 45 professional regulatory bodies in Quebec. We do not represent business people and we do not represent other groups that have an interest in the other issues that you wish to address. We only represent organizations that regulate professions. That is already quite a lot. If you follow the news, you will note that this is often the example that is given to cast a few stones or express good wishes on this issue.

Today, I would like to give you some examples of the reality of the situation, beyond perceptions and prejudices. Facts prevent us from thinking what we want, and it is important to know those facts. It is all the more important for parliamentarians. If you are taking a tour across Canada — which must be costing you a pretty penny — it is because you want to be aware of the reality. You want to make up your own mind about this reality. Well, we will explain some of these facts.

What is professional regulation? I know that the reality may be different in other jurisdictions, but in Quebec, which has its own Code des professions, professional regulation has relied on the notion of protecting the public, for the past 30 years or so, because there are risks associated with certain activities. It is important to monitor professionals as soon as they start their practice, in order to ensure competence at the beginning of their careers and throughout their professional life. This is a provincial jurisdiction, not just by tradition, but also because most of the time, such services must be delivered locally. The Fathers of Confederation understood this correctly 100 or 200 years in advance. They understood that it was good idea that the legislative assembly closest to the people be the one with oversight over professions in order to provide services close by.

To our mind, professional competence is the foundation of the quality of the professional act and the risk management associated with professional practice. From that standpoint, we assure quality for the people of Quebec through 45 professional orders, be it the College of Physicians, or associations of engineers, professional technologists for which my good friend André Lavoie worked a few years ago, or regardless of the field where there is a professional order. It is from this standpoint, that this legislative framework is applied in Quebec. For us, employability means competence within the context of risk and legal responsibility.

Now what about mobility? A professional licence is a tool for mobility, but since professional legislation is designed for the territory where it is expected that most professionals will practice, of course, the specificities, the criteria and the standards are Quebec owns.

I have some concerns about the way the health care system and physicians are overseen in British Columbia. I go there perhaps once every five years. For me, the nearby service is in Quebec, and it is Quebec legislators that I will call upon to reflect my concerns as a citizen with regard to the implementation of oversight standards for physicians who treat my loved ones, my family, my friends and colleagues. Therefore, professional regulation is a reality that is still mostly local and regional. There is mobility, there are inter-jurisdictional services, and in this regard, there are to be certain mechanisms in place.

Quebec professional orders fully participated in the drafting of the agreement on internal trade. Over two thirds of them signed agreements with their counterparts, where they exist, because there are institutional realities that vary from one province to the next. They signed mutual recognition agreements in order to facilitate this.

Quebec was even an avant-garde by lifting certain traditional restrictions associated with professional regulation, notably with regard to citizenship. Professional orders must adopt training equivalency rules in order to recognize the reality of the labour market and the experience acquired on the job.

For many years now, together with several stakeholders in Quebec, we led a reform, or one might say a revolution, regarding the recognition of the foreign credentials of immigrants. In fact, I have an exclusive for you: we have just received an award from the Canadian Association for Prior Learning Assessment, for the actions that the Quebec inter-professional Council — in other words, all of the professional orders of Quebec — have taken since 2001 to promote recognition of prior learning by immigrants. Quebec is now the leader in this field in Canada among professional regulatory organizations, with regard to measures taken to foster recognition of immigrants.

What about the federal legislator and the federal government? The economic challenge, which is one of the consequences of the demographic challenge, must be a constant concern for any legislator in any level of government. When it comes to taking action, it has to be effective. Action must be taken wherever you find the people who can deliver the goods and where the problems and the reality arise.

In Canada, there are five economic regions whose systems and labour force structures vary. Of course, there are exchanges between the regions, but the fundamental realities, the geographic realities, the economic realities, the structures of the economy and the structures of the industry are regional in Canada. There have always been and there always will be five economic regions, and each one experiences its own reality when it comes to the labour market.

I do understand that the federal government is concerned with development overall, and with Canada's performance on the international scene and its competitiveness and that it wants to take action. But let us be careful here: when it comes to the constitutional areas of jurisdiction of Quebec or the other provinces, when it comes to being effective, it is hard to believe that it is preferable to manage things from Ottawa. We had high hopes, given everything the Conservative Party had said during the election campaign about respecting areas of provincial jurisdiction and working with the provinces. Unfortunately, the arrival and announcement of an agency for the recognition of prior learning which will be superimposed on what has already been done in many provinces and especially in Quebec, where mobilization is well anchored and delivers results, is very troublesome to us. We are worried about this. We feel that it is a waste of resources and pointless overlap.

We are here to tell you that things are going well in Quebec. We still have a great deal that needs to be done, but we are moving in the right direction. The Quebec government is well connected with its partners, the professional orders and support groups for immigrants. There have been reports, documents that are very clear, very concrete, and we are at the stage where we are taking action. If the federal government creates another structure, another place for discussion or intervention, there will be overlap, inefficiency and worse, it will mean that the problems will persist even longer. This is not beneficial to immigrants, nor to Quebec or to Canada. Let us work with the people who have the solutions and who are already in the field.

If the federal government wants to earmark money — and we all hope that this will happen — it should transfer the money to Quebec. Quebec already has a well-organized system and the results speak for themselves. So let's go forward then.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Monsieur D'Amours, for seven minutes.

[Jean-Claude D'Amours, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

I will begin by combining both groups, namely the Canadian Construction Association and the Canadian Federation of Independent Business. Please let me know whether I am heading in the right direction. Thirty-one per cent — which is almost 33 per cent — of the members of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business in Quebec are companies which operate in seasonal sectors, not only in Montreal, but also in outlying areas. This would include the restaurant and hotel sectors, and even agriculture and construction.

I am convinced that you each face challenges as far as retaining workers is concerned in these various sectors. Because of the specific type of work involved, seasonal cycles are bad for business. You cannot harvest potatoes or broccoli, or work in some areas of construction, 12 months a year. It's possible in some sectors, but not in others.

Is it difficult, for either one of your organizations, to retain workers for the next season? In some sectors, the timelines may seem short, but if there is no work ten months out of 12, it's vastly different. Generally speaking, how do your members deal with the problems associated with seasonal work?

[Alfonso Argento]

Up to a certain point, our industry is affected by the weather, but for the most part, we operate 12 months a year. This situation, however, is improving with climate change.

A construction worker generally stays in the construction business. It does not happen very often that a construction worker will also work in the restaurant business unless he has been involved in a workplace accident making him unable to stay in that sector, and so perhaps he would have had to retrain for another line of work.

I do not think that seasonal cycles generally are a problem for the industry.

[André Lavoie]

That's a business which is benefiting from climate change.

In fact, one of the biggest problems faced by these types of business leaders is that they must comply with regulations which are not necessarily adapted to the specific workplace conditions of their companies. For example, Quebec has had a parental insurance plan for about one year now, which is different from those of other provinces.

Let's take the case of a businessman who grows small fruit or vegetables and who employs foreign workers, such as Mexicans, on a seasonal basis. This businessman must, because of existing social programs, pay the same employment insurance premiums for these workers as he does for his permanent staff. This puts the seasonal workers and the permanent employees on equal footing. Perhaps we should give that a little more thought.

Lawmakers are beginning to adopt measures which take into account the size and specific conditions each business operates under. For too long, the Quebec government — even though the federal government also does not have a perfect record — based its policies on large companies. The reality of smaller businesses was not taken account, whether they were seasonal businesses or other types.

Over time, the size of a business was taken into consideration and we are beginning to see policies and laws which take this reality into account. When you develop your policies, I would encourage all federal or provincial legislators — and I will not get into a debate on areas of jurisdiction — to take the reality of these people into account.

I will conclude by saying that, on average, Quebeckers work between 32 and 33 hours per week. There has recently been a long debate on this subject, but I will not get into that issue this morning. Forty per cent of small- and medium-sized business owners work 40 hours or more a week, and 30 per cent of them work 60 hours or more. This applies only to sectors which produce goods and services. These people do not work these hours just to comply with regulations or legislation. So I think you should take this into account when you develop your policies, whether it be at the federal or provincial levels, or elsewhere.

[Jean-Claude D'Amours, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

I would like to come back to the issue of agriculture and the primary sector, and of hotel and restaurant services in the tourism sector.

I come from northern New Brunswick. These concerns all come together, be it in my area or in other areas of Quebec. We are dealing with similar communities, which are often rural.

Are we to tell a person who finds work for eight months a year that we will move heaven and earth to retrain them and that we will send them off to another type of job, that this person will have to move elsewhere in order to work all year? Would that cause a problem to the businesses you represent when a worker is not available the next year or the next season? Would you have to train someone new and find new workers? Does this also aggravate the problem you talked about, which is the obligation of employers to pay employment insurance premiums for every employee, irrespective of their status?

[André Lavoie]

Obviously, if there is a regular turnover of staff, it's not necessarily easy for a business person to train a new employee, since there are hiring costs involved. In fact, it probably costs more to hire someone than to retain workers.

Of course, we all know that the West is booming today.

Take our young people living in outlying areas of Quebec, for instance. It is clear that a young person who is the least bit qualified, who knows that with a specialized college degree they can easily earn 25$ or 30 $ an hour, may be tempted to pick up and move. But is this person's departure necessarily linked to the working conditions of seasonal employment? I could not say.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much. That's all the time.

We're going to move on to Monsieur Lessard, for seven minutes, please.

[Yves Lessard, Bloc, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I would like to begin by thanking you for sharing your knowledge and for giving us your opinion on how our policies should be directed.

My first question is for Mr. Argento.

I am pleased to hear you talk so spontaneously and so disingenuously about foreign workers whose residence permits expire and who are sent home again, when in fact they have to come back. I agree, it is absurd. You say that we have to put an end to this nonsense. It is rare that a person with responsibilities such as yours states things as clearly. I share your opinion. Not only is it an unfortunate situation, but it is also an insult to a person's intelligence.

As did the other witnesses, you began by talking about worker mobility. You said that in the construction business, including under the Interprovincial Red Seal Program, it will be possible to provide more general training to help workers move from place to place. You said that 300 trades or professions could be covered.

Mr. Gariépy, among others, pointed out that regulations applied in particular to distinct economic regions. Don't you think that it's bad for the labour market if worker mobility is based on regional or economic factors?

[Alfonso Argento]

You are right, Mr. Lessard.

We are dealing with programs that allow for interprovincial mobility. Obviously, we must do this in coordination with the provinces. In fact, in many cases, these activities come under their jurisdiction.

Canada is a huge country with a diversified economy. Currently, the situation is somewhat special, because we are going through an economic boom. The economy is doing better in some regions than others, but as a whole, it is doing well.

In provinces with a less vigorous economy, people are happy to move to regions where they are jobs. We think that we must improve mobility so that those regions of Canada that need manpower can benefit from its availability. Finally, we think that we should not miss this opportunity. You must act in coordination with local authorities. I agree with Mr. Gariépy when he says that each province's jurisdiction must be respected.

[André Lavoie]

With your permission, let me follow up in these statements.

I do not mean any offence to my colleague André Gariépy when I say that the provincial regulatory systems are not entirely perfect. We saw this during the dispute between Quebec and Ontario regarding construction. It took several years to resolve. And I do not mean only legislation that has to do with professions. In Quebec, the construction industry has specific features, such as a specific law that deals with labour relations in the construction industry. Now this is where problems arise.

In early September, a forum was held on the Quebec construction industry at Mont Saint-Sauveur. The entirely issue of manpower mobility was raised. In Quebec, it is a serious internal problem. The federation also represents construction entrepreneurs. It is difficult for them to move people, even in the regions.

If people from other provinces offer their skills to Quebec entrepreneurs but it does not agree with the current accord, for example such as the one between Quebec and Ontario— and this is very obvious in the Outaouais region, which borders on Ontario—, there are problems. Thus, we must encourage all the work done in promoting mobility, from the interprofessional Council, among others.

Later, I will deal with the recognition of workers' qualifications, both at home and from abroad.

[Yves Lessard, Bloc, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

There is a saying — and I do not know whether it is Canadian or from Quebec — that says that when the construction business is doing well, everything does well. This means that the construction industry, both residential and industrial, is a substantial economic force. We have seen this in past years. Now workers are being recruited in somewhat haphazard conditions. When the need for manpower arises, we realize that people look for places where manpower is plentiful.

Earlier you mentioned the fact that the labour force is aging, and that we must do things differently. In the construction business, is it a serious problem when older workers who can still work can no longer provide the same output. We know that construction work is physically demanding. Are we going to ask these people to move either within the same province or even within the same region once they have settled down in a community with their family, their friends and their possessions?

In such circumstances, how can we take advantage of this extraordinary economic and human asset? You must certainly have thought about this issue.

[André Lavoie]

You have clearly identified the problem, and this raises the full issue of apprentices and companions. At the time when I represented young professional workers, I saw quite a few young college graduates specialized in technical subjects who could not find work in the industry because they were harassed by the Commission de la construction du Québec.

Currently, we have a problem that mainly has to do with entrepreneurs. I understand that older workers may feel threatened, but this is no reason to stop young workers from moving to different regions. These are skilled workers trained by the Quebec education system which is envied all over the world. Some of them would be ready to make the sacrifice and move.

Let us keep in mind that this is a seasonal industry. Choosing to work in construction is somewhat like choosing to become a soldier. Such jobs entail a certain amount of mobility. But it still remains that these people need permits in order to move. There is no reason why we cannot do this while still respecting older workers. As you said so rightly, the older workers are getting older. If we do not rely on younger workers to prepare for the next generation, we are shooting ourselves in the foot. Our industry is under provincial jurisdiction, but let us not forget that the same applies to the other provinces.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Please make just a quick comment, Mr. Argento.

[Alfonso Argento]

Okay.

I would just like to add that more than more solution is needed to settle the labour problem. It is a tough profession. Consequently, when workers reach the age of 55 or 60, we could no longer expect them to work 40 or 50 hours a week. Of course, we want to keep them as long as possible, so long as they are able to work. Sometimes they can work just two or three days a week rather than four or five days. We must look at the whole picture. There are many things to do, not just one.

We heard about promoting apprenticeship. These people need to be trained but they also must be sure to get work after training. The first budget provided tax credits both to employees and employers to help their integration into the labour market. It is difficult to break into the field of construction, but once you are in you stay. We must emphasize this fact.

The future essentially belongs to youth. We must recruit groups that do not lean towards construction, for example women and Aboriginals and of course immigrants. We must also emphasize mobility. In any case, we should not think that any single one of these factors will solve the problem. We must use all the means available. This is quite a challenge.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you, Mr. Lessard.

We will now go to Madam Savoie.

[Denise Savoie, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Thank you very much.

Thank you for your presentations. You raised some issues that I am especially interested in. They have to do with British Columbia, where I live. Of course, things are heating up in the construction business. We also experience the problems that you just described.

You mentioned the tax credits that were in the last budget. I agree that this is a good start. However, as you said, this strategy does not solve problems with mobility, qualifications and so forth.

You mentioned the Interprovincial Read Seal Program. You said, I think, that 45 trades were recognized among 300 existing ones. Are there really 312 trades or is this a further breakdown of the 45?

Regarding this breakdown, our experience in British Columbia was not all that useful for a certain number of apprentices.

[Jeff Morrison, Director, Government Relations and Public Affairs, Canadian Construction Association]

Ms. Savoie, I do not want you and the other members of the committee to suffer. Since my French is terrible, I will answer in English.

[Denise Savoie, NDP, Victoria, BC]

One can express oneself here in either official language.

[Jeff Morrison]

There are 200 trades identified by HRSD under their so-called Ellis chart, which lists apprenticeable trades in Canada. As you correctly point out, only 45 of those 200 are identified under the Red Seal program.