Yes, you make a good point. In construction there really is no workday. It's when the work is done that you can go home. I live in Kanata. To get to Kanata these days you have to drive through a night work crew. If your employer says to you, “We're building a road this week and we're doing it between 2 a.m. and 6 a.m. every day for the next three weeks, so it's 21 days on and 6 days off”--it is a very challenging work schedule for anybody. For example, for megaprojects in Alberta you physically have to go and live in these employer-provided camps.
Your question was about whether laws can help. At the end of the day, if there is a regulatory regime in place that encourages the training and encourages the development of future workers, that can't hurt. Are there laws? I can't really comment on your question about day care, but at the end of the day it comes down to the schedule of work. If I have to work 21 days on and 6 days off in a month because that's when the work needs to be done, I have to go and do it. For those 21 days I'm working 12-hour days and I'm welding pipe the whole time.
Is there a set of laws in a province or a country that can help with that kind of thing? I don't know, but at the end of the day you need a regulatory regime that promotes training and promotes building a workforce.