Thank you very much for the question. It's a very important issue for the construction industry. The only really substantive data provincially on this is from Ontario. As I indicated earlier, it's $1 billion to $3 billion a year, but you can take that on a percentage basis and roll it right across the country. It's happening in every province.
I can't emphasize enough how this misclassification of workers really curtails the amount of revenue that's available to provincial and federal governments to fund programs like EI, and how it puts workers in a vulnerable position, where they're easily exploited by their employer because they don't have any real protection. The other thing it does, which is often not spoken about—and I mentioned earlier, Ms. Ashton—is the competitive nature of it. You can have contractors who are bidding for municipal contracts, for example, who don't have to make those payroll payments on behalf of their employees because they've styled them as independent contractors or independent operators. They're able to bid for a project and save that money and undercut the legitimate contractor who is making those appropriate payroll remittances to Revenue Canada, CPP, etc.
It puts workers in vulnerable positions. It does not afford them the kinds of protections that normal workers would have in an employee-employer relationship, and it also negatively impacts more legitimate contractors who are bidding for this work and making the right payments. The challenge is that the contractor who styles his or her workers as independent contractors is not breaking any law, so you can't say that they are operating illegally. However, through styling their workers in such a way, they're able to get a competitive advantage over contractors who pay their workers as they should pay them, as employees. It's a problem on multiple levels.
The other thing I didn't talk about was workers' compensation claims. In terms of solving the problem, I know years ago in Ontario, they tried to solve it by making it mandatory to pay WSIB. I don't think that has solved the problem. I think there just needs to be a government regulation or legislation that severely curtails the ability to style a worker as an independent contractor. That's the only way you're going to solve this.