Thank you very much, Chair.
As noted, my name is Mike Yorke, director of public affairs and innovation. With me is Finn Johnson, director of communications.
First of all, thank you very much to the chair and the committee for the opportunity to appear here. I wanted to say that we could have done it virtually as well, but it was obligated on two members of the carpenters' union to appear in this beautiful room in the magnificently restored and revitalized West Block. We're very proud to be here today, in fact, in the rooms that our members had worked on.
I'll give a quick introduction, and then we'll get into what we think is key to a sustainable workforce and green building.
We're a council of trade unions throughout the province of Ontario, and we represent over 30,000 working men and women in all sectors of the economy, in the construction industry and in manufacturing.
Admittedly, there are other provinces, such as Alberta, that are more involved in Canada's just transition and the extraction of the oil and gas, and other unions may have a more direct interest in our energy transformation. That being said, Ontario will still have a huge role in transforming Canadian energy policy, as we're one of the largest consumers of energy in Canada.
In order to achieve a fair and equitable Canadian energy transformation, we believe there is a two-pronged approach: first, rethinking how we produce our energy, and second, addressing the amount of energy we consume and the way in which we do so.
From there, we move on to our sustainable workforce and green building.
On the second point, net-zero targets have to involve Ontario and Canada changing how much energy we do consume. How are we going to make the changes in our construction industry to facilitate this? Individual construction projects involved will vary in scale and size from massive dams and other hydro projects to potentially small retrofitting in individual homes, so to speak.
Added together across the country, the total volume of work will be massive. Given the sheer volume of future work, it can't be assumed that we will have the skilled workforce necessary to do the work that needs to be done, and therefore we need a real plan, with government help and support, to make sure we have the workers we need. We need a well-trained, fairly paid cohort of young Canadians and new immigrants. It's no secret that we're facing a huge shortage in the skilled workforce. This is currently putting a strain on our industry, and it will only become more difficult over the next five years as we see, according to BuildForce Canada, up to 160,000 retirements across the country.
We also need a sustainable workforce. For example, in the city of Toronto where I live, there are many undocumented workers insulating homes for cash. We need to put an end to that underground economy, which impacts and hurts workers. The government's in a real position to make sure this will happen.
A sustainable workforce will have the technology and techniques to be able to build a more energy-efficient Ontario. Mass timber, for instance, involves using timber more prevalently in major construction projects, as opposed to other non-renewable building materials. Building with mass timber will not only support immediate areas where the infrastructure is being built, but also communities across Canada that harvest and manufacture timber products. With our abundance of resources and innovation, Canada has an opportunity to be a world leader in this technology, and we call that a symbiotic relationship between the urban centres and the resource-based communities and indigenous communities across our country. We can really be a leader in that, and that opportunity exists before us.
Federal funding needs to be targeted to achieve a fair and equitable Canadian energy transformation. We need requirements on sustainability and training for future infrastructure projects to ensure that we are supporting green building, in addition to the future generation of a Canadian skilled trades workforce.
I want the committee to be aware that we are an interested partner in that. I speak not just for carpenters. If I look at the industry, I see that the partnership and the potential collaboration is huge. Recently, one of our better-known architects in the country, Don Schmitt of Diamond Schmitt Architects, wrote an editorial pointing out that industry and architecture and construction cannot wait on regulators to make a green economy. Right there, that's a solid position from the industry recognizing that we can play a leadership role.
With the committee's work and the work of the government, we can be real collaborators in terms of the transformation to a green economy.
With that, thank you very much. We look forward to an opportunity for dialogue and questions.