Good morning, Chair and members of the committee. Thank you for this opportunity.
My name is Mark Ellerker. I'm the business manager of the Hamilton-Brantford Building Trades Council representing 16 unions and over 10,000 skilled trade workers.
As Sean mentioned, the unique, cyclical nature of construction requires different solutions to address labour availability. Our key focus is to continuously recruit, train and dispatch skilled trades workers, creating opportunities for the local and regional economies first.
As labour market experts, we know that the demand for workers can fluctuate from one-or two-day shutdowns to weeks, to longer-term projects. As a result, we often deal with labour availability and labour shortages. Sean made some important points that I want to expand on.
A skilled trades workforce mobility tax deduction will remove employment barriers for workers. Our labour demand fluctuates. We often have workers travelling from Thunder Bay to Windsor to help assist with critical shutdowns in steel mills, petrochemical and auto plants and power generation, the entire time having to pay for accommodations on the road while continuing to support their family back home.
On cross-border mobility, I'm a steamfitter by trade. The textbook used to obtain my certificate of qualification is the exact same as what my American sisters and brothers use; our training is just that close. In Hamilton-Brantford, we have steel mills and refineries that all require a large, short-term, mobile skilled workforce, and we are right beside the Buffalo border.
We support a balanced approach to the temporary foreign worker program. We would work with employers and owner clients to bring in workers like this past summer from Portugal, but when the scope of the project changes, local workers are laid off, and the contractor has to keep temporary foreign workers or risk getting penalized.
Finally, on immigration, the construction industry is built on immigration. I myself am a first-generation Canadian. My father and his three brothers all immigrated to this country because of the skilled trades.
We cannot allow employers or labour markets to undercut and water down fair contractors who have invested in established best practices in apprenticeship and training.
If we bring people in to build our country, we should give them respect and every opportunity to become Canadian citizens.
Thank you, and I look forward to any questions you may have.