Human Resources Committee on March 19th, 2019

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Good morning, everyone.

Pursuant to the order of reference of Monday, November 19, 2018, the committee is resuming its study of labour shortages of the greater Toronto and Hamilton area.

We're very pleased to be joined by a very full panel today. We have quite a few speakers but we have the full two hours to ask questions.

Joining us from BuildForce Canada is Bill Ferreira, executive director, Ottawa office. Also from BuildForce, we have Robert Collins, senior economist, Toronto office.

From the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, we have Leah Nord, director, skills and immigration policy.

From the Carpenters' District Council of Ontario, we have Mike Yorke, president and director of public affairs; and Mark Lewis, general counsel.

From the Canadian Home Builders' Association, we have Kevin Lee, chief executive officer.

From the Ontario Home Builders' Association, we have Rick Martins, president; and Joe Vaccaro, chief executive officer.

Welcome, everyone, and thank you for being here.

We're going to start with BuildForce Canada for seven minutes.

Mr. Ferreira, you have the floor.

[Bill Ferreira, Executive Director, Ottawa Office, BuildForce Canada]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good morning, committee members. My name is Bill Ferreira. I am the executive director of BuildForce Canada. As was already said, I'm joined here today by Mr. Bob Collins, who is our senior economist. We greatly appreciate this opportunity to assist you with this study, and we look forward to our participation.

As background, I feel it's important to point out that BuildForce Canada is not an industry association. We are an industry-funded research organization. We do not engage in policy advocacy. That role falls to our strategic partners. With the support of the Government of Canada, we strive to provide the construction and maintenance industry with balanced and timely labour market information to help the industry carry out labour force development and training. We work with industry stakeholders across the country to assemble and validate our numbers. Many of these stakeholders are here today and will also be presenting.

With regard to your study, we have pulled together a brief slide presentation to assist you with your analysis. It is included in the package that was distributed. It focuses specifically on the greater Toronto and Hamilton area and some of the numbers we are seeing. That was drawn from this year's forecast.

Suffice it to say the construction industry has seen dramatic growth over the past 20 years, nearly doubling in size since the early 2000s. Over the next 10 years, we see much more moderate growth, only growing about 3% from 2018 levels. However, several provinces will exceed that level. B.C. is expected to grow at about 9%. Alberta is also expected to grow at 9%, but that's after 2022. Ontario is expected to grow at 3%, but there will be pockets in Ontario where we anticipate that growth is going to be much higher, such as southwestern Ontario, which we anticipate will be about 8%, and central Ontario at about 6%. The greater Toronto area is expected to grow at about 2%, but that's on top of record-level construction activity today.

Nationally, we see 260,000 workers retiring between now and 2028. That's 22% of the current labour force. In the greater Toronto and Hamilton area, 43,500 workers are expected to retire over the next 10 years. That's 23% of the 189,500 workers currently employed in the 34 trades that we monitor. When coupled with demand increases, this means the region will need to hire 50,000 new workers between now and 2028. Even if we are successful at recruiting younger workers at the current levels, that's still going to leave us with a gap of nearly 14,500 workers by 2028. That means those 14,500 workers will need to be recruited from outside the region's labour force, from outside the province, from other industries or from outside the country.

Retirements will also contribute to higher levels of labour force tightness. We saw some of this in 2018. These are early signs. The unemployment rate in July 2018 reached 1.3%. Just by way of a comparison, in 2007, when Alberta was experiencing a significant labour crunch in the construction sector, the lowest the unemployment rate reached in Alberta was 1.7%. We are well beyond that. Effectively, everyone who can work right now in the construction industry province-wide is working.

Not surprisingly, employers are struggling to find the workers that they need to continue to proceed with their projects on time and on schedule. Over the next seven years, we have identified at least 36 billion dollars' worth of major projects that are stacking up on top of, as I said, already very high levels of construction activity.

A smaller labour force plus increased demand is going to continue to exacerbate the problem for the foreseeable future. Some relief may come after 2022 as eastern Ontario and northern Ontario demand will moderate somewhat, but those workers will be pursued by other regions of the province, as well as, as I said, British Columbia and Alberta. All it will take is a slight increase in demand here, and in our forecast, we haven't factored in RendezVous or whatever the successor project is to that. That could very easily change the mathematics.

There are a couple of solutions that we would like to take a look at. Short-term solutions really are greater mobility, and not only mobility between the residential sector and the non-residential sector, but also within the province, moving the labour force around within regions, and at times and as necessary, drawing in workers from other provinces.

In the longer term, the industry needs to maintain its commitment to apprenticeship. As a percentage of registrations, the industry in Ontario has exceeded the national average for apprenticeship completions over the past five years, but more in this area can be done. Greater employment support for apprenticeship development is something that you may wish to consider. Sixty per cent of the construction businesses are micro-businesses, and that's fewer than four employees.

Most of the current incentives in apprenticeship development are directed at the apprentices themselves. Apprenticeship is a partnership. Without an employer, it doesn't matter how many grants you direct at the apprentice. If that apprentice can't find a job, they're never going to be able to take advantage of those grants. One area that you may want to take a look at is how you can better create incentives for smaller construction employers to participate in apprenticeship.

Another area that you may wish to take a look at is the federal skilled trades program. The foreign-born population in Canada accounts for about 22% of the total population. In Ontario, it's about 29% according to Stats Canada. Just over 70% or 2.7 million people of Ontario's 3.8 million foreign-born population live in the Toronto area. The construction industry is made up of about 26% new Canadians. Clearly, there is room for improvement with respect to our recruitment of new Canadians into the industry. Part of that challenge is that those new Canadians that are available in Toronto didn't come here to work in the construction industry. Really, the only program that directly brings in immigrants into the construction labour force is the federal skilled trades program.

One of the easiest ways to try and help alleviate the situation in the city of Toronto is to focus your efforts on trying to increase those numbers. Currently, I think that about 1,875 workers are brought in annually under that program. If you were to increase those numbers, we could certainly do a much better job of bringing in the workers that we need.

I think I'm almost at my seven minutes, so I'll leave it at that.

I'm happy to take any questions that you might have.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you very much, sir.

From the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, we now have Ms. Nord, director, skills and immigration policy.

You have seven minutes.

[Leah Nord, Director, Skills and Immigration Policy, Canadian Chamber of Commerce]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, Vice-Chair and committee members. It's a pleasure to be here today.

My name is Leah Nord, and I'm the director of skills and immigration policy at the Canadian Chamber of Commerce. The Canadian Chamber of Commerce is the voice of Canadian business. Our network consists of 450 chambers of commerce and boards of trade across this country, representing 200,000 businesses. We also have over 100 corporate members and an equal number of association members.

The issue of labour shortages and skills mismatch ranks consistently as one of the top challenges for our members. I appreciate this opportunity to speak about labour shortages in the greater Toronto and Hamilton area, specifically in the construction industry, as outlined in M-190.

The testimony presented to date has covered the data and issues well, so I will primarily focus on providing the committee with recommendations, adding a few data points from my colleagues at the Hamilton Chamber of Commerce, the Toronto Region Board of Trade and the Ontario Chamber of Commerce. Provincially, it is important to remind ourselves that while Ontario receives the proverbial lion's share of immigrants in Canada—almost 40%—the number of economic immigrants to the province has been declining and is not proportional to its size. I have a series of data points but in the interests of time, I'll continue.

In addition, preceding the much-discussed BuildForce report, a little over two years ago, the Toronto Region Board of Trade published a report entitled “Building Infrastructure, Building Talent”, which concluded that there would be 147,000 job openings in construction through the Toronto region over the next 15 years. The most in-demand category is the construction labourer, followed by carpenters, electricians and construction managers.

In addition, my colleagues in Hamilton wanted to make sure I mentioned that it estimated there were 3,500 construction jobs needed for the LRT Hamilton construction project, with another 300 jobs to deliver regular operations and maintenance.

With that said, I will move to the chamber's recommendations. You may recognize many of these recommendations as ones you've heard in the past from us, and similar to recommendations this committee itself has put forward. Importantly, these recommendations have broad applicability to urban centres across jurisdictions and, in many cases, to smaller communities across the country. These recommendations have the support of the breadth and depth of the chamber network.

Regarding immigration, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce has three recommendations.

The first is to modernize the temporary foreign worker program to reflect labour market needs on a regional and sectoral basis. Specifically, we suggest the following: (a) implement a trusted employers program; (b) permit applicants for temporary foreign workers in the construction industry in regions where there is considered to be full employment; (c) review the national occupation classification code process in all provinces and establish flexible, responsive practices that incorporate regional and sectoral labour market needs; (d) return the cap to the proportion of temporary foreign workers a business can employ to 20%; and (e) facilitate pathways to permanent residence for temporary foreign workers who can fill permanent labour market needs.

Our second recommendation is to build on current immigration programming. This has two aspects. The first is regional in nature. Decentralizing immigration selection processes started with the provincial nominee programs and has been extended with the Atlantic immigration pilot program and the recently announced rural and northern immigration pilot program. We need to continue moving to a more local level of decision-making. We need local solutions built by communities, for communities, that address community workforce needs. These communities include cities such as Hamilton and Toronto.

Second, we emphasize that there needs to be a sectoral lens alongside the above recommendation, for a more local focus. In this respect, we propose exempting businesses in the trades from the obligations when they need to provide a transition plan for temporary foreign workers.

Taking this a step further, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce recommends expanding categories within the global skills strategy that are exempt from labour market impact assessments and/or developing parallel programs. Employers are very happy with the global skills strategy program, and it has set a precedent for what can be achieved.

The Canadian Chamber of Commerce's third recommendation emphasizes the importance our members put on occupational-specific language training as critical to labour market integration. OSLT is important for risk management and safety, effective labour integration, labour retention and upward mobility. Equally important to what is delivered is how it is delivered. Considerations of work site learning, blended learning and innovative delivery methods are necessary.

On the skills side, first and foremost, society as a whole needs to promote the trades. We need to start in primary schools. We need to encourage skilled trade professions at the secondary level and expose high school students to the full range of career possibilities as they decide what to pursue professionally.

We also need to support tradesmen and tradeswomen through their training and education. Here the federal government does have jurisdiction and the ability to make an impact. The Canadian Chamber of Commerce's second recommendation regarding skills is expanding the student work integrated learning program beyond the STEM fields to include opportunities such as apprenticeships. As somewhat of a side note, we also need to really make inroads into upskilling and reskilling.

Third, soft skills continue to be an issue. Also known as human skills or foundational skills, these include communications, problem solving, teamwork, adaptability, leadership and entrepreneurship. I quote a 2017 report on trends and Hamilton's labour demand as follows:

Skilled trades occupations continue to be noted as a top concern for many manufacturing and construction employers particularly. Employers said that finding experienced skilled trade workers is extremely difficult. Employers sought out skilled/fully qualified workers because they found the soft skills and math skills of the apprenticeship applicants were not always good..

In wrapping up, I will acknowledge that I am in good company overall on this side of the table today, but I will ask, as I often ask at many of our chamber roundtables with members....

I normally ask who in here has a college degree. Today I would ask how many people in this room are tradespersons or have experience in the trades. We need to do more than just consult skilled trade workers and organizations that represent them. We need to ensure that they are at the influencing and decision-making tables.

I will close by reiterating that these recommendations are not new. We all know what needs to be done. We need to start doing it. The Canadian Chamber of Commerce and its members are willing partners in making that happen.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you very much.

Up next, from the Carpenters' District Council of Ontario, I believe it is Mr. Yorke who is going to be speaking.

[Mike Yorke, President and Director of Public Affairs, Carpenters' District Council of Ontario]

Thank you very much for the opportunity to appear before the committee.

My colleague, Mark Lewis, will be doing the presentation.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Fantastic.

[Mark Lewis, General Counsel, Carpenters' District Council of Ontario]

Thank you for the opportunity to speak again on Parliament Hill about an issue that is near and dear to the hearts of carpenters across Ontario. We are a union that has 16 local unions across the province. We are the largest single source of apprenticeship in the trades in Ontario.

Our situation currently in Ontario and particularly in the GTA is approaching crisis levels. We are short of skilled tradespeople in virtually every facet of the carpentry trade in Toronto where our members work. In the GTA, or what I would think of as the GTA proper, we have three local unions: local 27, which is general carpentry; local 675, which is drywall and interior systems workers—these kinds of ceilings, for example; and local 1030, which does primarily residential work.

Our members work in the industrial, commercial and institutional sectors on large infrastructure projects, buildings, universities and subway stations, and in the residential sector, significantly in the GTA.

We cannot fill the jobs right now. We provided the speaking notes. We rely heavily on our friends from BuildForce in terms of their economic analysis. What we're here to tell you is that those are not just statistics. Those are the crises that we face everyday when contractors phone us and say, “I have a project and I need 10 carpenters on Monday morning”, and we don't have them.

This is slowing down Toronto and all of the industries that make up Toronto. Toronto has grown significantly over the last 10 to 20 years. Construction has not kept up. Infrastructure projects are stacked one upon the other around the GTA. I urge you to look at some of the slides from BuildForce and look at the demands that there are.

On the flip side is the demographic crisis that we're facing in terms of the aging of the workforce generally and the aging of the skilled trades workforce in particular. Our membership is aging. Hopefully, it won't happen, but fully 40% of our members could be eligible to retire by 2030. We need new workers coming into our trade. We have put in our speaking notes materials all of the efforts that we, together with our employers, are making to recruit into our industry young Canadians and people who haven't previously considered work in the trades, and the efforts that we've gone to with regard to women, for example, to try to bring them into the trades. We still need help from immigration. We're urging you to consider a few different unique features of the construction industry when looking at a micro-localized solution for the GTA.

Employment in the construction industry with any particular employer is always, by its very nature, transient. Jobs start and jobs end. The model that we have within our immigration system of an employer reaching out to bring a foreign worker to Canada does not work for our industry. Our employers can't forecast their specific labour needs with enough certainty because they go contract to contract. Our industry, however, knows what we need. We can't tell you which contractor is going to get the drywall on a new hospital, so we can't tell you that that drywall contractor will need 50 board men. We can tell you, though, that one drywall contractor is going to get that work and that we will need 50 board people to put up the drywall.

What we are urging is that, in the GTA in the construction industry, consideration be be given to an industry-wide approach through the unions that are involved. It's one of the most heavily unionized sectors in the country.

The unions are a force and a player, and are willing to play a role with the employer associations to allow for broader industry-based immigration, and broader industry-based temporary foreign workers to come in, so they can be shared amongst the employers who need them. If it is done properly, through the unions and the associations, we feel we can negate any of the potential impacts of foreign workers being exploited.

My last point, very quickly, and this is what I wish to stress—allow the temporary foreign worker to transition to some sort of permanent residency status. We are urging you—pleading with you—to consider something for our industry and our tradesmen and women who come here. We have hard-working, decent people who come here as temporary foreign workers for two years and go to work every day. When I left this morning, going through Mr. Vaughan's constituency to the airport, there were construction workers out at 5:30 in the morning, to start work on those condos at 7:00 a.m. They work every day for two years and at the end of those two years, they have no hope of becoming permanent residents in this country, because we say as a nation that if you can't read or write English to an acceptable level, we don't want you.

We have brought with us two people who work at the sharp end of the process. Mr. Yorke and I have the easy part. Vlada Hershtynovich and Michael Randazzo actually do the intakes to try to navigate our members through the complex system that is immigration in Toronto. They have the unenviable task of telling hard-working carpenters, “You're good enough to have built those subway stations in Toronto for two years, but Canada doesn't want to keep you as a permanent resident because you can't meet the language requirements.”

We are urging you to recognize that for skilled tradespersons, if they come here and demonstrate that they can work at good jobs, at family-supporting wages—in some cases, $100,000 a year, because of the hours available in construction.... My friends from the Home Builders' will tell you what they pay their labour. These are good jobs. These are employers who are crying out to keep the workers, but we can't find ways to keep them here now because of—I wouldn't say anachronistic measures, but measures that don't make sense for construction workers. I don't want to sound.... Reading and writing are wonderful; they changed my world, but somebody has to build the library in which those books are kept. Somebody has to build these rooms and these buildings. Those people are just as valuable to the future of this country as anybody else.

I think that's our seven minutes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

That's your seven minutes, thank you.

[Mark Lewis]

I'll defer any questions to later.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you very much, Mr. Lewis.

Up next, from the Canadian Home Builders' Association, we have Mr. Kevin Lee.

[Kevin Lee, Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Home Builders' Association]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

The Canadian Home Builders' Association represents some 9,000 companies from coast to coast. As such, we are the national voice of the residential construction sector. More than 4,000 of our members reside in Ontario.

I am pleased to be joined today by both the CEO, Joe Vaccaro, and the president of our Ontario Home Builders' Association, Rick Martins, who will also be able to provide you with more insights.

Today, all of Canada faces challenges in meeting requirements for skilled tradespeople in the residential construction industry, and that challenge will increase over the coming decade, as we've heard. This is particularly true in the greater Toronto and Hamilton area.

The challenge is that we are already facing tight labour markets in many regions. Given the aging workforce, our work with BuildForce Canada shows that some 130,000 workers will be retiring from the residential portion of the construction sector over the next decade. The current feeder system of young Canadians and immigration, as we have heard, will not serve to fill those vacancies, so those skills shortages will heighten unless we change the equation.

This situation will require ongoing new construction and extensive renovation of Canada’s existing housing stock, and with it, of course, residential construction workers. It's important to note that the renovation portion of our sector has overtaken new construction in Canada in terms of economic activity; thus even in areas with poor economies and hence less new home construction currently, renovation continues and skilled worker requirements remain.

The challenge is not unique to residential construction. I regularly attend the employment insurance commissioner’s round tables at Employment and Social Development Canada, along with representatives from all employer industries in Canada. From all sectors there is a continual refrain: not enough skilled and, frankly, unskilled labour, and we're all competing for the same undersupplied pool.

Over the past two or three decades, in a drive towards higher education to respond to the knowledge economy, Canada’s education and immigration systems have focused on university education and its career paths. This has led to a shortage in the skilled labour workforce.

In residential construction there is a particular challenge. As we've heard, it's a sector of small businesses with limited training and recruitment capacity. More than 240,000 residential and non-residential building enterprises in Canada are sole proprietorships. Then, of the 142,000 enterprises that have employees, 81%, or 115,000 firms, have fewer than 10 people working for them. Just over 500 firms—thus less than half a per cent—have 200 or more employees. Education, training and recruitment are all challenges for small businesses.

On a positive note, recent fixes to the apprenticeship ratios in Ontario will be helpful for the residential construction industry in the GTHA. At the same time, it is important to note that the sector also employs many skilled workers who are not in apprenticeable trades, so federal programs geared only to apprentices fall short for the construction sector and many other industries.

That’s the challenge. Now, how do we address it?

To address skilled worker shortages all across Canada and in the GTHA, the federal government needs to take a lead role in promoting careers in the skilled trades. We have a cultural “parity of esteem” issue, whereby skilled worker careers are seen as lesser options than university degrees. This needs to change, and there is a federal role in leadership to be filled here. The federal national occupation classification system needs to better reflect residential construction. Also, the federal government needs to support more economic immigration for skilled workers in residential construction.

In general, we need to tweak the immigration system to respond better and more quickly to labour shortages in construction through permanent immigration solutions, as we have been hearing, noting that these skills are transferrable and mobile even, if regional conditions change. We need to adjust the education system to better direct students into skilled worker careers. Also, we need to encourage young Canadians to make construction a career path of choice.

One potential opportunity is to note that the Future Skills Council announced on February 14 did not include the construction industry in its plans. This is unfortunate, as no matter how many other industries evolve in the future, there will be an ongoing need for residential construction, for more skilled workers in this sector and for an evolution of skills and productivity to address workforce shortfalls. CHBA would be happy to work with the government to put together a similar initiative for residential construction.

Last, I would be remiss if I didn’t quickly comment on the very biggest thing having an impact on jobs in this sector: the stress test, compounded with previous mortgage rule changes, which together are now causing an excessive economic slowdown in some regions in residential construction.

It’s important to note that the Bank of Canada has now changed its forecast from the fall, and housing is now forecast to instead be a drag on the economy. Our CHBA member survey showed that 95% of our members blame that on the stress test directly. We are seeing layoffs in our industry in some regions as a result and warnings from members that things will get worse in 2019. This is at a time when the Bank of Canada is stating that it over-estimated the strength of the economy and is now predicting an economic slowdown. Residential construction and skilled worker jobs should be a part of the solution, but right now government policy in this area overshot and is directly responsible for the economic downturn in housing, and hence, the downturn in the economy, which will get worse unless things change.

We need fixes to the stress test and 30-year mortgages for first-time buyers immediately. We need these fixes for young Canadians, for their financial futures, for jobs and for the economy right now and tomorrow.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

You're very welcome.

Now, from the Ontario Home Builders' Association, we have Mr. Rick Martins, president; and Joe Vaccaro, chief executive officer.

You have five minutes.

[Joe Vaccaro, Chief Executive Officer, Ontario Home Builders' Association]

Thank you very much for having us here today.

My name is Joe Vaccaro, and I proudly serve as the CEO of the Ontario Home Builders' Association. I'm joined by my president, Rick Martins, who is a builder and an employer in the region. We are pleased to be here today to support MP Fonseca's motion.

Some facts to be put on the table to consider are:

The greater Toronto and Hamilton region is growing by 100,000-plus people a year. Housing demand is real and driven by real people looking for more housing choice and supply. These are home believers looking to achieve the great Canadian dream of home ownership. Home believers need our members, both builders and renovators, to deliver 50,000 new units of housing, along with all the associated services, roads and such, to the marketplace to support their dream.

You have heard data from our colleagues here around the table on the skilled trades issue in this region. The reality for our members is that the demand for housing is real; the demand for construction services is real; the need for skilled labour is real and the need to skill up our current labour force is real.

With that, I'm going to turn it over to my president, Rick, to talk as a builder and as an employer.

[Rick Martins, President, Ontario Home Builders' Association]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

With regard to my own company, Huron Creek Developments, we're active in the apprenticeship and mentoring programs. Each semester we're able to bring about 30 to 50 students from the high school level into the construction program. It has been a great rewarding experience. Yesterday morning I was working with Louis. Fifteen years ago, we started him in an electrical apprenticeship program. He was on my site actually pulling some wire yesterday.

Well-paying jobs and very rewarding jobs are unfortunately a drop in the bucket. I've been doing it, like I said, for over 20 years. We have a huge skilled trades shortage.

Unfortunately, we have a problem. The numbers don't match up. We have people retiring at a high rate. On average, my masons on my site are in their late sixties. When one retires, we not only lose a great mason, but we also lose a mentor. We lose business acumen, and it's hard to replace. We really need to open up the avenues to immigration to bring in the skilled people, to help us learn from different techniques out there and, more importantly, to help us train the youth and the apprentices that we have here because there isn't that mentoring available.

Joe and I are happy to hear everything that was said here today. I wouldn't be present here if the rules of immigration were what they are today. My father is Portuguese, and he came over, immigrated and worked really hard. To this day, he can speak and understand English, but he can't read or write it. He has been very successful. He raised four boys. We all went to school and are successfully employed.

I think we need to understand that it's not all about book smarts. We're not all going to go to NASA or become surgeons and whatnot. It's about being willing to work hard and enjoying what we do.

It's the greatest industry in the world. I can go back 25 years and point out to my kids when we're driving through a subdivision, “You know what? Dad cleaned up the bricks over there” or “You know what? I did that roof over there.” It's a great industry.

We really believe in our industry. There's a huge shortage. We can do a lot more if we work together and open up our minds and open up the system because, really, that's what we need.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you.

Thanks to all of you for your opening remarks.

Up first with questions is MP Barlow.

[John Barlow, Foothills, CPC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank all the stakeholders who came here today. You gave us a lot of information. I think you will be happy to hear that a lot of the things you are telling us are resonating with just about every stakeholder we have had, and certainly in our discussions with people outside of this committee.

When I was in government, we made the changes to the temporary foreign worker program, so I know how difficult that program is to work with, and some of the issues we have when it comes to it. Over the last year or so, we have certainly seen that, in my opinion, the temporary foreign worker program, that brand, has become so tainted that I don't think there is any resurrecting it. I think we have to come up with something totally new that addresses a permanent solution to what has become a permanent problem in Canada, not only in your industry but in agriculture. Across Canada, I hear it as probably the number one issue. Access to labour is becoming a crisis. If we want to grow our economy and reach new markets, we must have these tools to be able to do that, and we must provide you those opportunities.

Ms. Nord, you were talking about a trusted employer program. We have certainly talked about coming up with some sort of model—almost like a NEXUS card for employers. Once you've been in this program—whatever we end up calling it—how long would you say...? Would this be something that an employer has been in for three, five or 10 years, and then you say, “Okay, you've been accessing this program, you've been audited, everything has gone well”? In terms of your membership, have you had those discussions, and a timeline, for example, “We've been in this program for five years, or whatever, and I think that's sufficient”?

[Leah Nord]

Within our trusted employers program—

[John Barlow]

How long would you say they are members?

[Leah Nord]

Well, there are two models, actually. There is the NEXUS model, which I think in the short term would serve a purpose. If you take a look at models in the U.K. or Australia, where they have been since the early 2000s, it's actually not a NEXUS model. It's an overall accreditation model, where all employers across the board, to be considered in the first place, would have to be accredited. I would probably recommend doing a NEXUS model in the short term. It would allow a rollover, and then over time, something that would allow accreditation. We've bantered about different options. There are no models that exist with the NEXUS model, but we would be more than willing to help. We have committees that look at this as well.

I'd be nervous to give a time, but I would say that our membership would approve or support a NEXUS model that looks to an overall accreditation model, because then it just flips through. To be accredited, there is a level and a standard that nobody wants to mess with.

[John Barlow]

As part of what you're talking about as a trusted employer program, once they are in, they would no longer have to do an LMIA or pay that $1,000 fee. Is that...?

[Leah Nord]

There is a range on the table, but that would be the ideal.

[John Barlow]

Okay, great.

The immigration minister recently announced an additional 2,000 positions through the provincial nominee program. I'll open this to whomever. My feeling is that even with the Atlantic pilot project, we've nibbled at the edges of this thing for long enough. We know the problem. I don't think we need any more pilot projects. I think we need to come up with a definitive solution, and maybe that comes from this study. Maybe this is something that we help build here. Is that increase of 2,000 in the provincial nominee program enough, or is that merely a band-aid? From the numbers Bill brought up, it sounds like we're way off target. Is that a start, or something we need to address more quickly?

Maybe I'll pass that over to Bill first, since he threw those numbers out.

[Bill Ferreira]

Thank you for the question.

The provincial nominee program is certainly an option. The reason I focused on the federal skilled trades program is that it is probably the single immigration program that would most directly impact our industry. You are actually bringing in skilled trade workers, and it goes down, as far as I know, to NOC C level, which would allow us to cover heavy equipment operators.

I think one of the biggest challenges we have with that program—with all the programs—is the issue that was already identified, and that is language requirements. To some degree, they are a little bit onerous for the type of work and the type of worker we are bringing in. A little flexibility on that front would go a long way, as well as increasing the number of federal skilled trade workers brought into the country on an annual basis.

[John Barlow]

Thanks, Bill. I don't want to cut you off, but I have just a little under a minute left and I wanted to ask Mark too.

I'll let you answer that question also, but I'm going to ask you both this question at the same time, so that I get my question in.