Thank you.
My name is Ken McKinlay, executive director of the Saskatchewan Home Builders' Association, or, to use our new name, Canadian Home Builders' Association--Saskatchewan.
The residential industry, I'm sure you've heard, is facing extreme shortages of skilled trades and entry-level employees in all areas. The industry includes both the new home industry and the renovation industry.
The residential construction industry accounts for 48% of total permit building values in the province of Saskatchewan, going back to 1950. Please remember that renovations are not tracked in a lot of permit systems, and therefore the industry likely accounts for well over 50% of the construction activity in the province and across Canada.
A shortage of employable persons in our industry has resulted in all industries competing to find people to fill vacancies and new positions. This market pressure and competition has resulted in price increases on consumers who buy new homes, renovate their homes, or sell existing homes.
The Saskatchewan market continues to be impacted by Alberta and the draw it has on our youth in the vision of great paying jobs. The land-of-opportunity draw from Alberta seems to be showing signs of discontent in many areas among many who have been drawn to that province. Builders in Saskatchewan are reporting that some homebuyers are coming back from Alberta or are building homes in order to live in Saskatchewan and travel to Alberta. Finally, something's happening in Alberta that's putting something back into our province.
A Sask Trends Monitor statistician here in our province presented a presentation to the Regina Home builders. He indicated that there are 25,900 unemployed persons in our province, but only 10,000 of those would be employable, and only if they've had some skills training to get back into the workforce. We have a very thin layer of people to draw from.
The apprenticeship system has been developed to serve the ICI sector. It has always served that sector. It is responding to restructuring the culture within to address our needs in the residential sector. It's a slow process to churn through redeveloping that system to our specialized trades in the residential system, but we are working on it.
Education and training are provincial government jurisdictions, but we certainly need a coherent integrated approach to Canada's skilled labour requirements. No one level of government has the capacity to address skilled labour shortages. Apprenticeship and many government departments all want statistics to base training requirements for funding on. The more meetings we have with current bodies that develop statistics, the more we start to realize they do not provide the depth of information needed by the industry or governments to make good decisions.
We believe Canada's education institutes, technical schools, and colleges are as frustrated as we are that Canada does not have a system that provides national recognition of residential trades and supports portability and transferability. We need a coordinated system here.
You received a brief earlier from the Canadian Home Builders, probably in Ottawa. We have an action plan therein, and we need to have that carried out. Right now, we are just left with working under the Construction Sector Council, and it's not a targeted enough approach.
Residential construction industry tradespeople specialize in many different trades than are currently recognized under the apprenticeship system. We've done occupational profiles on all of our trades; the home builders in each province have done this right across Canada. CHBA–Saskatchewan has worked for five years with Apprenticeship, and we have finally established the framer trade designation. Five years--we have on file with them the concrete former, interior finisher, and exterior finisher. It's a slow process.
Tradespeople in the residential construction industry work in a self-directed manner, which is a lot different from commercial. They must interpret and apply codes and standards to all levels of those specialties.
We're working with the construction sector, as I said, but it's not meeting all of our needs. Local associations are really working with high schools and building partnerships as fast as we can as an industry, in order to find methods of getting kids into our industry.
Certainly, we work with Construction Careers Regina and Construction Careers Saskatoon, which deal with the aboriginal groups and EI clients--we sit on their committees--to try to get those groups into our industry. Again, our industry is so different that we have to find a little different way of working with them. Regina placed forty aboriginals last year, but none of them stuck out there in the field.
We have produced brochures that I will try to get in to your staff.
The residential construction industry is the other half. We're behind the eight ball. Commercial has developed their training system. We now have to blend and find out how to have a training system within that culture, and we're scrambling. We have the action plan in front of the federal government, and the strategies are listed in my paper.