Thank you.
Good day, everyone. I really appreciate the opportunity to meet with you today.
CLAC is a national union founded on the belief that people, businesses and work communities flourish when workplaces are based on co-operation and mutual respect. We believe that co-operation and partnership between labour and management create more positive work communities and better outcomes for everyone.
CLAC was established in 1952 and is today one of the largest independent multisectoral unions in Canada, with over 60,000 members working in a wide range of sectors and industries, including construction, health care, retail, transportation, manufacturing, food processing and others. Internationally, CLAC is an affiliated member of the World Organisation of Workers, for which I currently serve as president. The World Organisation of Workers collectively represents 1.5 million workers throughout much of the world.
We remain independent of traditional labour bodies in Canada, such as the Canadian Labour Congress, which you have already heard from. We have a great deal of respect for the traditional labour establishment, and in many instances we have come to work in collaboration with their affiliated members on ground-level initiatives. That we are not a member of the labour establishment speaks primarily to a different perspective regarding the nature and role of a union in a workplace, as well as worker choice and union accountability. However, in many respects, the day-to-day work of our unions is similar, and certainly we face the same challenges in today's environment.
I'd like to commend all parties for coming together and supporting a quick and effective response to the COVID-19 crisis. Key among the programs are the emergency response benefit and the emergency wage subsidy. The emergency response benefit has been extraordinarily successful in helping millions of Canadians through the worst of this crisis, and the emergency wage subsidy, particularly significant because it is a 75% subsidy, has literally saved thousands of Canadian businesses and kept millions of Canadians gainfully employed. While these programs will need some adjustments going forward, they will remain critically important for months to come, supporting workers and employers as we rebuild the economy.
I want to speak to a national crisis that, in the midst of this COVID-19 crisis, has taken centre stage in the Canadian conscience.
CLAC represents nearly 10,000 members working on the front lines of health care and long-term care in Ontario, Alberta and B.C. Grace Manor of Holland Christian Homes, which was one of the homes mentioned in the national media last week, is represented by CLAC. These workers are caring for our nation's seniors with amazing dedication and commitment. If you've spent time with them, you know how they love the residents and work desperately hard to care for them in such a way that keeps them comfortable and preserves their dignity.
They work in an environment that is exceedingly challenging and for money that often falls short of a living wage. The workers use every possible minute of their shift to provide hands-on care for the residents, yet the system drowns them in needless paperwork and documentation, which takes time away from the residents. The expectations and burdens of care have been steadily increasing, yet the rate of funding has steadily declined. As a result, the working conditions are so challenging that finding qualified staff is very difficult. Worker shortages are common and caregiver burnout is on the rise.
All of this betrays an appalling indifference as a society to the care of our seniors. The sector has been neglected by governments across the country for decades. In fact, CLAC, along with others, has been ringing alarm bells on this issue for over 30 years. I understand that this sector is primarily in provincial jurisdiction, but we now understand the issue as a national crisis. There's a moral imperative for all stakeholders to get together and find solutions to the crisis now. The federal government can play a helpful role in this, starting with establishing a national standard of care for our seniors. This could be achieved by a nationally orchestrated study of best practices that have resulted in superior outcomes.
With all that has been said recently, I want to take this opportunity to honour the service of the workers in this sector. We are not upset that the military released its report on the homes in Ontario. In fact, it may finally be the catalyst for meaningful change. However, for us, it is deeply distressing to see the front-line workers in long-term care shouldering the weight of public outrage when, in fact, the guilt belongs elsewhere. The workers remain the heros in this equation, and the burden is on the rest of us, starting with our political leaders, to fix it.
Lastly, I want to talk about the construction industry and work in the skilled trades. CLAC represents over 40,000 skilled tradespeople working in construction and skilled trades. Notably, CLAC represents about half of the construction and contracted maintenance workforce in Alberta's oil sands, as well as about half of the workforce building the clean energy megaproject in northern B.C., called the Site C dam. We will build much of the LNG Canada project in Kitimat, and when the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project ramps up to full activity later this year, over 60% of that workforce will be CLAC members.
We are very proud to be building much of the infrastructure in our natural resource sector, which ultimately propels the entire Canadian economy.
Through this crisis, construction activity has been an economic lifeline for many Canadians. While the majority of the economy has been shut down, governments across the country declared much of construction work essential. This affirms what we in the industry talk about as parity of esteem, which is that education in the skilled trades is as noble as any other form of education, and work in the skilled trades is as important as any other in the country.
It's important to understand that the construction workforce in Canada is comprised of three main groups: the traditional building trade unions, CLAC and other alternative unions, and the non-union or open shop. Each of these groups enjoys a significant share of the market in Canada, and just as Canadians are well served by the competition among political parties, we are also well served by the competition among the players in the construction landscape.
I say all of that because there is an important link to what comes next in the economic recovery from COVID-19. As we saw just this morning with the Prime Minister's announcement regarding municipalities, a key response to stimulate economic growth and activity will be major investments in public infrastructure.
The federal government alone will spend billions of dollars on construction projects, and so will your provincial and municipal counterparts. In many cases, particularly on large projects, funding will come from multiple levels of government. In all cases, it is incumbent upon governments to ensure that this money is spent both efficiently and in such a way that it's used to the greatest benefit of the community in which it is spent. This idea has given rise to the use of community benefit agreements, a contractual tool used to ensure that these benefits are realized.
CLAC, of course, endorses the use of community benefit agreements when they are used properly. By “properly” I mean that they identify the desired community benefits and then set in place the conditions and resources necessary to achieve them without losing the benefits of fair and open competition for the work among all players in the construction industry.
Sometimes community benefit agreements are used to limit access to the work to only one group of labour. For example, the Government of British Columbia has entered a community benefit agreement with the B.C. building trade unions. This means that on designated projects paid for by all citizens of B.C., only members of the building trade unions are permitted to perform the work. The City of Toronto has done the same thing with the Ontario building trades.
Evidence suggests that where community benefit agreements are used in this restrictive way, the cost of public projects increases by 20% to 25%. Imagine 20% to 25% on the billions of dollars of infrastructure money that will be spent across this country over the next decade. This is a critically important issue. Fair and open tendering of public infrastructure, whether under the auspices of a community benefit agreement or not, is the best approach and the approach the federal government should demand of every infrastructure dollar spent on behalf of Canadians.
I will leave my opening comments at that, and I look forward to answering questions from the committee.
Thank you.