Evidence of meeting #139 for Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was workers.
A video is available from Parliament.
Hamilton Mountain, NDP
The writer of this motion, Mr. Peter Fonseca, made a recommendation that he would like to see, which is to see “the Atlantic immigration pilot project, as a template, and the use of permanent immigration to assist in addressing this huge challenge.”
Do you agree that the Atlantic immigration pilot project should be used here? That's for anybody.
Director, Skills and Immigration Policy, Canadian Chamber of Commerce
Yes, absolutely. There are benefits to pilots. I'll leave it at that.
Liberal
Dan Ruimy Liberal Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, BC
Thank you. I'm going to share my time with Mr. Vaughan.
I have just a quick comment. This is what I keep coming back to. There is definitely a place for immigration here, but I keep thinking of the future. We have youth who are falling through the cracks. We need to address that, because there's a potential workforce. We have women wanting to get into the skilled trades, and we have indigenous people. There needs to be a point where we can sustain all these people, not just bring them in, because if we're just bringing them in, we're never training a whole new workforce that we have on the ground.
Mr. Vaughan.
Liberal
Adam Vaughan Liberal Spadina—Fort York, ON
Thanks.
I'd note that “tradesmen” is “tradespersons”, I guess. It's more appropriate, because this is certainly one of the untapped sources of labour with the new trades. Women have equal access to these jobs, and the programs are in place to make sure that we can train women to take advantage of these salaries.
I want to get back to that issue of Bill's. When you talk about things being right, okay, maybe now, but there is a cost implication to the market in the way it's currently structured. In other words, when there is a right size of labour to work, either work forms around the labour or labour stalls around the work. That drives costs. I'm curious as to what the cost implications are of not getting the labour piece right, for your industry and also for home builders.
Executive Director, Ottawa Office, BuildForce Canada
I think they would be in a better position to identify the specific costs. What we would say is that the situation in Toronto has been pretty dire now for a couple years. It's not just Toronto. Look at the Lower Mainland. It's in a very similar situation.
The fact is that the project completion time frames are getting pushed out further and further, in part because, as you point out, there are only so many bodies available. The fact that Ontario hit this past July an unemployment rate of 1.3% I think says it all. Pretty much everyone who can work is working right now.
As for the cost implications, I would turn it over to the home builders.
President, Ontario Home Builders' Association
Just like everything else, it's supply and demand, right? I think it's a given that costs have gone up.
The truth of the matter is that, yes, we need to get our youth involved, but it's going to take us 15 years to bring in the supply we need. In those 15 years, we have framers and masons, for example, who are 63 plus and are going to retire. You need to bring in the intellectual capital from outside to help train those people.
Liberal
Adam Vaughan Liberal Spadina—Fort York, ON
Is it that rightsizing the labour force through the rear-view mirror is driving costs into housing? If it takes you six months longer to complete a project because you can't find the labour, those carrying costs get passed on to somebody.
Liberal
Adam Vaughan Liberal Spadina—Fort York, ON
If we are rightsizing labour demand through the rear-view mirror and saying that we had enough yesterday and therefore we don't need more tomorrow, we are by implication driving costs into housing, but also, we're not anticipating growth and therefore not fuelling and creating the pathway to growth. We're choking it off with this notion that we've rightsized the labour market.
Executive Director, Ottawa Office, BuildForce Canada
I'll just say very briefly that if you look at slide 5 of the deck we've provided you, you'll see that we do factor into our numbers the historical level of new entrants into the industry. Even factoring in those new entrants, we are going to be short, and that's over the next 10 years.
The fact is that we need to do something that goes above and beyond the traditional measures. One obvious opportunity would be to increase the number of women, who currently make up only about 13% of the overall workforce in the country. In Ontario, it's about 13% as well, but for women in trades it's less than 4%. Obviously, increasing the number of under-represented groups, and increasing the numbers of indigenous peoples as well.... They're about 2.7% of the overall construction workforce in Ontario, so increasing that.... They're at about 4.9% across the country.
Certainly, there are areas for additional recruitment there, and there's ongoing investment in apprenticeship. That's why I come back to looking at certain incentives that might help bring more of the smaller employers into the apprenticeship system so they can help with training, but—
Liberal
Adam Vaughan Liberal Spadina—Fort York, ON
As we build that system, there are the immediate needs. You can't create a carpenter overnight, and you can't create a carpenter in the short term, so that's where immigration strategy and some sort of the pathway to citizenship for undocumented workers create an immediate response.
President and Director of Public Affairs, Carpenters' District Council of Ontario
Yes. That's absolutely right. It's a two-part question.
We hear you loud and clear in terms of doing the proper outreach. It's something that we've not ignored. Right now we have a crisis in the industry, but at the same time, we are planning for the longer term.
In terms of Bill's suggestion around women in construction, we're very active on that issue. We have a number of partners in the industry: the City of Toronto, Toronto Community Housing, the Daniels Corporation, major employers in the industry.
We've done specific training programs for women. One is CRAFT, Creating Real Apprenticeships for Toronto. We work with every school board in the GTA. We bring in 100 OYAP students every February and give them three to four months of training, and they do their last semester with us—
Liberal
Adam Vaughan Liberal Spadina—Fort York, ON
A program that is still measured in years, not days or months....
President and Director of Public Affairs, Carpenters' District Council of Ontario
Absolutely, and it's a four-year program, so—
President and Director of Public Affairs, Carpenters' District Council of Ontario
[Inaudible—Editor] crisis right now.
Liberal
Adam Vaughan Liberal Spadina—Fort York, ON
Just to deepen the conversation, if we suddenly just relaxed all the stress tests.... I understand the arguments around that to try to stimulate some demand, but if we stimulate too much demand, there's the question of whether or not the industry has the capacity to step up and meet that demand. We have to do this in lockstep. If we do it out of proportion, we may stimulate massive demand but not have the workforce in place to get it built. That's going to create even more inflationary pressure, is it not?
Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Home Builders' Association
I can just say that—
Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Home Builders' Association
Sure.
I think what you're saying is that it's the overshooting right now. We're trying to loosen things back up, which won't create a huge demand. It won't suddenly do an about-face and go right back to a huge demand. We're seeing major challenges all across the country and economic conditions that don't support it, right? It's really just tweaking to get it back on track.
You're absolutely right. I mean, we need immigration. We need to bring in the under-represented groups as well, but it won't be enough, and the BuildForce forecasts show all of that. It's really important to note, as a couple of people were talking about, that this is not just about apprentices and journeypersons, especially in residential construction. It's about skilled workers who are in non-apprenticeable trades, and that's why adjustments to the NOC system are so important in order to reflect residential construction. It doesn't reflect that very well yet.
Rodger Cuzner has just joined us. He has heard this around the employers' table, not only from residential construction but from many other sectors. The NOC system right now is set up more around those higher levels. In almost every sector, we need skilled workers who are non-apprenticeable.
