Good afternoon and thank you for this opportunity.
My name is Tania Johnston. I am the chief executive officer of the Mechanical Contractors Association of Canada.
MCAC is the largest trade contractor association in Canada. Our organization was established in 1895. We have grown to represent over 1,000 companies nationwide. These businesses employ over 50,000 Canadians who provide plumbing, heating, ventilation, air conditioning, control systems, medical gases, welding and fire suppression solutions. Primarily they do this work in industrial, commercial and institutional sectors, but also in large housing construction, such as condominiums and apartment buildings.
Our member companies are simultaneously very busy but also struggling. This may seem like an oxymoron, but the strain being put on our sector comes from three challenges that are not easy for single business owners to address. We face major labour shortages, and the products and supply chains that our members rely on have taken a beating. My counterpart from CIPH, Ralph Suppa, will speak more to the supply chain and regulatory challenges, while I will focus on labour.
We face both a retirement challenge and a training challenge. As you may have heard, BuildForce Canada estimates that 260,000 skilled tradespeople are expected to retire by 2030. In plumbing and mechanical trades, the average age is higher than that of most other trades, and we expect the problem to be even more acute in our sector. We estimate that one in five people in the plumbing and mechanical trades is preparing to retire in the next five years. That is especially challenging timing, given that there is an expectation that Canada will build more housing units and retrofit more buildings for better energy efficiency over the years ahead. Simply put, if we do not see increased funding for skilled trades training and promotion of the skilled trades as a career of choice, we will not have the people necessary to meet Canada's goals.
We're beginning to see the cracks. Inflationary pressure is driving costs up for consumers. When our members do not have access to enough workers for a project, they will either have to pay more, driving up the costs directly, or forgo their bids, which causes price increases due to less competition.
Billions of dollars are being invested in energy efficiency, retrofits and new construction over the years ahead at all levels of government. To help small businesses in our sector, we need a coordinated plan with the federal government. We also need provincial buy-in that helps more skilled workers in trades like ours, which are especially important to solving Canada's problems of building more housing and transitioning to a low-carbon economy.
With that, I will turn it over to Ralph Suppa.