Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
We'd like to thank the committee for providing the Canadian Construction Association, or CCA, as it's known by its acronym, with the opportunity to appear before you today. My name is Michael Atkinson, and l am the president of the association.
CCA is the national association representing Canada's non-residential construction sector. We have some 20,000 individual member firms from coast to coast to coast. These people build everything other than single family dwellings, including our nation's public infrastructure. Collectively we are more than 64 local and regional associations across Canada, and some 10 affiliated partner associations, including one which I believe appeared before you last week: Merit Canada. I'm also happy to be here with our colleagues from the Progressive Contractors Association of Canada. Their members are mostly, if not all, members of our organization as well.
I should say right from the start that we represent construction companies regardless of their labour relations affiliation. We represent unionized contractors who have collective bargaining agreements with the traditional building trade unions. We represent contractors who have union affiliation with CLAC, and we represent contractors who are non-union. We represent all of those organizations under one umbrella.
Canada's construction industry strongly supports fair and open competition in the procurement of all public sector contracts. From our perspective, public procurement should never contain preferential policies that favour one type of contractor over another based on their labour management policies, the region of origin, or any other form of arbitrary preference. A fair and open tendering process provides the public owner with the widest variety of choice in pricing, thereby ensuring the highest rate of return on scarce taxpayer dollars.
It is from this perspective that l say today that CCA member firms oppose the use of any limitations on the tendering process other than those that are technical in nature or compulsory due to applicable prevailing legislation or laws. Similarly, we are opposed to the use of federal funding to support own-force infrastructure construction and maintenance by public entities unless the work is awarded based on a level playing field in a truly fair and open competitive tendering process.
For this reason, we strongly support the inclusion of language in the soon to be negotiated federal-provincial infrastructure funding framework agreements that prohibits the use of federal funds to support projects awarded under unreasonable preferences, or exclusionary tender policies, or are awarded directly to public entities without the benefit of a truly competitive tendering system. The one caveat is with regard to the situation where the limitations are required by applicable prevailing law.
Moving to red tape, Mr. Chair, which is also the subject of this committee study, we'd like to help stretch infrastructure dollars under the new Building Canada plan by ensuring that the changes to environmental assessment, the kinds of practices that were used on the stimulus program, for example—and with the new environmental assessment reforms that have been introduced and are now in law—are strongly supported, because they reduce needless overlap. We're talking about there being no need for the federal government to have a duplicate process of review or assessment or otherwise, for situations in which provincial jurisdictions, or jurisdictions that are closer to these projects, perform environmental assessments that are up to the standards expected for those projects. We expect to see the kinds of good lessons that we learned on the stimulus program, and indeed that have been enshrined in the new environmental legislation, used on those projects to ensure certainty and timeliness.
Similarly, we believe that the use of the expedited application processes that were used under the stimulus program should also be adopted. We heard how in many cases municipalities and other entities under the stimulus program had one-page application forms. The red tape, if you will, and the bureaucracy that was normally associated with trying to get a project approved under one of those programs, was very much fast-tracked so that, as the expression goes, we could get shovels in the ground very quickly. We would like to see the kinds of lessons we learned there continued in the infrastructure programs.
Reducing red tape shouldn't be limited just to the Building Canada plan. We also see scope for the elimination of red tape on federal infrastructure projects that could yield similar cost savings.
One example is industrial security clearances. Contractors today are required to obtain industrial security clearances for their firms and their employees on federal government projects, from each of the government departments they are working for. Since ultimately CSIS and the RCMP do all the clearances, a single clearance should suffice. However, what we have found in some situations is that there is no recognition or reciprocity between departments on these industrial security clearances; hence there's duplication, uncertainty, and cost added to our industry to bid and work on these projects.
We understand measures are being considered that would address this, but they can't come too soon from our perspective.
We're also concerned about the red tape costs and burden that may be added to federal projects if measures announced in the recent federal budget aren't done with full consultation with the industry, in particular the measures to engage or promote apprenticeship on federal construction projects and to encourage other levels of government to do so through the Building Canada plan.
While we absolutely agree with the intent of the program, which is to get more apprentices trained and apprenticeships completed, we want to ensure that the measures put in place are not arbitrary, but are meaningful, effective, understood, and certain so they do not create an unneeded barrier or additional red tape for contractors participating on those projects.
Finally, Mr. Chairman, there's one other issue when it comes to competition, and that's with respect to public-private partnerships. All P3s are not publicly funded. An unfair competitive situation has arisen with Canadian contractors participating on P3 projects here in Canada. It has to do with foreign companies being able to use their export credit agencies to help them obtain letters of credit or other kinds of liquid security required by long-term lenders on projects here in Canada.
Our members have been able to take advantage of Export Development Canada's domestic powers. You'll recall this was a temporary measure that was introduced as part of the stimulus program. There are now proposals to restrict access by Canadian firms to those domestic powers. We believe that will significantly limit the ability of Canadian firms to compete on a level playing field with foreign construction firms on major P3 projects that are eligible for EDC domestic financing, because they will have their export credit agencies in tow when they compete on those projects.
Mr. Chair, I'm going to stop there. I'd be happy to answer any questions.