Human Resources Committee on Oct. 30th, 2025

[Andrew Tarr]

We are getting a lot of young people coming to our industry. I don't think people are discouraged. I think people get discouraged when they come to us and we can't give them a job.

A big part of my concern is that we're spending a lot of time trying to attract people, and we don't have the jobs for all the people. There are people who come to the industry. It's just that we can't keep them, or we can't give them jobs.

As for temporary foreign workers, currently we have a little over 100 in our system. I'm learning a lot about them, because it's creating some training problems for us. There are quite a few temporary foreign workers within the HVACR industry—union and non-union. I couldn't give you a number, though.

[Natilien Joseph, Liberal, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

You just said there were a hundred in the system.

[Andrew Tarr]

I'm sorry. Can I have that repeated?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Mr. Joseph said that you.... Do you have it?

[Andrew Tarr]

Oh, I'm sorry. The 100 are within my union. I can do a search in our member management system. I have just a little over a hundred 900-series SIN numbers, which are for temporary foreign workers.

[Natilien Joseph, Liberal, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Do you think the construction industry could continue to operate normally without foreign workers?

[Andrew Tarr]

My part of the construction industry could, yes.

[Natilien Joseph, Liberal, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

There is currently no labour shortage in your sector, then.

[Andrew Tarr]

No. There's a shortage of very experienced workers, but there are a lot of people wanting to get into the trade.

[Natilien Joseph, Liberal, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Why don't you hire those people?

[Andrew Tarr]

I don't have the work.

[Natilien Joseph, Liberal, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Okay. I see.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

You have a minute and a half, Madame Desrochers or Monsieur Joseph.

[Jessica Fancy-Landry, Liberal, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

I think I can tag in, because I had three questions last time, and I didn't get to the last question.

I'll start with Mr. Tarr.

I'm a former educator, a principal, and we've worked really hard in my province of Nova Scotia on skilled trades and whatnot. My colleagues across the floor were saying how they're from out west and a lot of easterners—I'm from Nova Scotia—go out west for work. My question is, how do we keep them home?

A lot of young Canadians don't live inside urban centres. I'm looking for that kind of regional rural lens on how we keep them home in terms of where the job market is and in training and infrastructure. I'm looking for more of a rural-centric lens on how we keep skilled trades programs open for youth from those areas.

Thank you.

[Andrew Tarr]

I think people tend to go to where the work is, so if there's no work.... I know that the east has had some issues over the years. I had to move from my home. I moved only four hours away, but I still had to move. You go to where the work is, I guess.

[Jessica Fancy-Landry, Liberal, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

If given the time, I'd also like Mr. Vultur to answer that question in terms of how we keep kids in the rural and remote communities where they've grown up.

[Mircea Vultur]

We've done studies in Quebec on the migration or outflow of young people, meaning the abandonment of rural areas. We found that, contrary to what Mr. Tarr was saying, young people don't leave their regions for jobs alone. They also leave to pursue an education or to live independent lives somewhere else. Many return to their regions. Ultimately, what matters most is having a stable job and starting a family. We have to invest in rural areas to help create good jobs and make it possible for young families to have a better quality of life. That is the key to keeping them in rural areas.

[Jessica Fancy-Landry, Liberal, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Thank you very much, Mr. Vultur.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you.

Mrs. Gill, you may go ahead for two and a half minutes.

[Marilène Gill, Bloc, Côte-Nord—Kawawachikamach—Nitassinan, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Vultur, I have one last question for you.

You're a professor in the sociology department at Université Laval. Among your publications, you've written two books about overqualification, but also a book that is somewhat the result of a comparative study on young people's relationship to the world of work in France and Quebec.

Extrinsic factors such as the economy and access to higher learning come up a lot, but did you note any intrinsic factors? By that I mean factors originating with young people themselves?

Making young people aware of certain fields is one possible solution, but why aren't jobs being filled? I don't mean to say that young people are responsible, but I'd like to know why they are unwilling to take jobs in fields that could potentially be worthwhile for them and society as a whole.

[Mircea Vultur]

To explain the youth employment situation, I have to talk about their new values. These workers aren't like the ones in the 1960s. Back then, 70% of young people worked to serve the collective good. Older generations strongly equated work with a moral duty. Among the youth of today, that figure has dropped to 4%. The perception of work as a moral duty no longer exists. What matters to them is personal fulfillment. Today's youth aren't necessarily looking for a stable, good-paying job. They want good working conditions, a comfortable job, good relationships with their co-workers and a certain degree of independence. That intrinsic dimension of work matters a lot to them. I really want to stress the idea of quality employment, because today's young people won't go to work on an assembly line just for a paycheque, like older generations did. They don't want to work to live; they want to live to work.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you.

We are entering our last two slots.

Ms. Goodridge, you have five minutes.

[Laila Goodridge, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Tarr, I feel the need to clarify a few things.

I did a quick Google search. It turns out that, in September 2025, the federal government's Employment and Social Development organization put five post-secondary institutions under review and considered suspending their federal student financial assistance eligibility, citing financial risk to students and the government.

You are not incorrect in stating that there are training colleges out there getting federal funds that, perhaps, were not doing it. If that wasn't the case, I do not believe ESDC would have suspended those five institutions' funding. I just want to put that on the record. I think you said something that a lot of people feel. I hear about it in my region. There seems to be a mismatch. They say, “Why is this getting some of the government's funding when I don't necessarily see the outcomes?”

That's one of the overall issues I have with the Liberal government right now. They are very focused on how much money they are spending—which is a lot—but they're not very focused on what they are delivering for that money. You talked about how there's a shortage of skilled tradespeople. I think there's an issue with the pipeline. They don't seem to understand that, if you don't support the first-year apprentice, it's really hard to have a second-year apprentice. If you don't have a second-year apprentice, you can't have a third-year. If you don't have a third-year, you can't have a fourth-year. If you don't have a fourth-year, you can't get a Red Seal. It shouldn't be rocket science. It's very basic, simple math.

Is that something you're seeing in your union?

[Andrew Tarr]

Yes. That's why I mentioned fixing EI, so that it matches the apprentices. We have people turning down trade school because they can't afford to go, since it's two months without pay. If we could change EI so it supports apprenticeships better, we could possibly fix that bottleneck. The bottleneck, sometimes, is that people can't go to school because they can't afford it.

[Laila Goodridge, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

I talked to tradespeople going through apprenticeship. They have put it off because they have a young family to feed. They point-blank cannot afford that piece, even though going to trade school means they will make more money once they achieve that schooling.

Do you have any suggestions as to how the Government of Canada can get out of its own way so we can get these people into the education they need?