Transport Committee on June 18th, 2025

[Finn Johnson, Director of Government Relations and Communications, Carpenters' Regional Council]

Thank you, Chair, and thank you to the members of the committee for the opportunity to appear before you today.

My name is Finn Johnson, and I'm the director of government relations and communications for the Carpenters' Regional Council, an affiliate of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America. The UBC represents nearly 75,000 members of the carpenters' union in Canada, working across a wide range of sectors within the skilled trades, including carpenters, drywallers, millwrights, scaffolders, concrete formworkers, pile drivers and many more professions within the construction industry. Our members are at the forefront of building and maintaining the critical infrastructure Canada relies on, including energy projects, hospitals, schools, mining projects, homes and more. Our union also prides itself on delivering industry-leading training at our 42 training centres across Canada.

Canada is at a critical juncture in our country's development. To meet our economic potential, we need to build. This is an area our members know more about than most. By fast-tracking these projects, we will be creating good jobs for working people. When unnecessary red tape holds up construction projects, our world-class workforce is underutilized, sitting on the out-of-work list with the inability to contribute their skills to what Canada needs—infrastructure development and housing.

Beyond tradespeople, nation-building projects have the potential to be mobilized to grow Canada's workforce, leading to career opportunities for workers that didn't exist previously in regions where these projects are happening, including in rural and indigenous communities. As new projects begin, our union engages in targeted outreach within the communities where the work will take place, ensuring that the benefits of these developments are directly felt by local workers and apprentices. We have a proven track record of this, including partnering with Saugeen Ojibway Nation on our building futures program for work in Ontario's nuclear sector and through many other programs like it.

Canada is anticipated to face a severe labour shortage in construction over the next decade with 20% of the existing workforce retiring. Tackling this issue will require us to break down barriers for out-of-province workers to access this work. We're called journeypersons for a reason. Careers in our industry require us to travel for work.

Many people don't believe there is a labour mobility problem in construction, given the nationally recognized Red Seal standard. However, that only applies to those who have completed their apprenticeship and passed their Red Seal exam. This does not encompass those who are still completing their apprenticeships or aren't within a registered apprenticeship program.

Our union has already broken down interprovincial barriers for all the technical training we deliver at our 42 training centres, so if you're doing a scaffolding course, no matter where you are, it's the same curriculum. However, for safety training, each province still requires workers to meet its respective standards prior to beginning work after moving from another province, even when that individual has an up-to-date certification for the exact same training. This means lost wages while waiting for courses, paying third party training fees and repetition of existing knowledge.

One of our members, Craig, is a journeyperson carpenter from Ontario who moved to Fort McMurray for a project. Although he was fully certified to work in Ontario when he moved, and Ontario's safety certification standards are among the highest in the country, he was still required to complete four eight-hour courses before starting work in Alberta. These courses cost him hundreds of dollars in addition to the lost wages he incurred while waiting for certification over that one-week period.

The solution isn't simply adopting the lowest common denominator for safety training across provinces. This would create a race to the bottom, as some provinces don't actually mandate safety certifications to work on job sites. The requirements are entirely employer driven. We want a race to the top, with the national safety standard being the gold standard. A harmonized national health and safety framework will create a mobile, efficient and safe construction workforce.

We are in support of Bill C‑5, and we look forward to continuing to be part of the conversation as Canada reduces barriers to labour mobility for construction workers and accelerates timelines for shovel-ready projects, which will create good jobs for our skilled trades workforce.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Mr. Johnson.

Next, we'll go to Mr. Schumann. You have three minutes, sir.

[Steven Schumann, Canadian Government Affairs Director, International Union of Operating Engineers]

Thank you.

On behalf of the International Union of Operating Engineers, I'm pleased to be speaking on Bill C-5. Our members build and maintain Canada's infrastructure. They help construct our nation's hydro dams, mines, nuclear plants, solar farms, wind turbines and pipelines. In short, we build it all.

Recently, our members have worked on the TMX, LNG Canada, Line 3, Churchill Falls, Bruce, the Darlington SMR, Site C and the Coastal GasLink.

Labour mobility is an essential part of building a stronger and more integrated economy, but it must not come at the cost of safety or the quality or value of skilled trades. Recognizing credentials across jurisdictions only works if standards are aligned and enforced. If we begin to recognize training and certifications that do not meet the same high standards, we risk a race to the bottom, so we must expand and promote the Red Seal trades. The credentials of a worker in one jurisdiction should be transferable to another only if the training and testing are equivalent in both scope and quality.

Bill C-5 must ensure that only the highest standards of skills and training are recognized when workers travel between provinces and territories. We support Bill C-5's goal of speeding up project delivery, but let's be clear: Faster is good only if the benefit flows to Canadians. If these changes make it easier for companies to bring in foreign labour or bypass Canadian suppliers, the result will be fewer good jobs and lost opportunities for the people who live here. This is not the way to build a stronger economy. Bill C-5 should be amended to include protection for Canadian jobs, safety and standards.

There is also the potential for Bill C-5, if amended, to open the door to meaningful careers in the skilled trades. There is a real opportunity to engage youth, women, indigenous people and other under-represented communities who are often overlooked or discouraged from entering the trades. That needs to change. With the right investment and supports, this legislation can help a new generation of workers access stable, well-paying careers in the skilled trades.

To try to build an inclusive workforce, the federal government needs to include a requirement that all projects in the national interest, as outlined in Bill C-5, be subject to community benefit agreements or project labour agreements, especially if funded with federal dollars. British Columbia has already shown how this can work.

The B.C. infrastructure benefit model ensured that large-scale public projects prioritized local hiring, provided apprenticeship opportunities and included equity targets for indigenous people, women and others who were often left out of major builds. While the percentages of indigenous and female participants in construction in B.C. were at 6% and 5% respectively, under the BCIB model of community benefit agreements, the B.C. government was able to increase these participation levels to 14% and 8%. They also guarantee fair wages, benefits and safe working conditions for all workers on the project.

These agreements also provide certainty and accountability, and help strengthen Canada's workforce by making apprenticeship and training an integral part of every major project. Over the $14.7 billion in projects covered by these agreements, 92% of the workers were B.C. residents and 31% were trainees and apprentices. Of these apprentices, 14% obtained their journeyperson status while working on these projects.

We ask the committee to recognize the importance of protecting labour standards, supporting Canadian workers and opening the door wider for those who have historically been under-represented in the trades through project labour agreements or community benefit agreements. Bill C-5 can be a powerful tool in building an economy that works for everyone, but only if it is backed by clear requirements and a strong commitment to Canadian workers.

Thank you for this opportunity. I welcome your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much Mr. Schumann.

Next, we'll have Mr. Cyr.

You have three minutes.

[Jeffrey Cyr, Managing Partner, Raven Indigenous Outcomes Funds]

Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee, for the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss Bill C-5.

My name is Jeff Cyr. I'm the founder and managing partner of Raven Outcomes, an indigenous-led fund manager and private capital investor focused on investing in the well-being of indigenous communities by transforming how capital flows into meaningful initiatives and projects. We finance outcomes, not just programs, ensuring every dollar is tied to measurable results in areas such as housing, clean energy, health and employment.

Our model is grounded in accountability and self-determination. Indigenous communities lead every stage of the process: defining the problem, co-designing the solution and implementing the project. Funding is provided up front by private and philanthropic capital; governments only pay once independently verified results are achieved, like lower energy bills, better housing and improved employment. In essence, outcomes finance is a results-based investment strategy that empowers indigenous leadership and community-driven solutions.

Raven Outcomes was created in response to a clear message from communities. We know what works; we just need funding to respect our ways, and you've heard a bit of that today and in the previous panel.

As Canada's first and the world's only indigenous-led outcomes fund, we were built to address this need and are committed to consultation, partnership and the inherent right of self-determination. In considering Bill C-5, I echo the words of National Chief Woodhouse Nepinak, who stated Monday before the Senate committee of the whole that “Deep consultation involves a two-way exchange of information sharing accompanied by substantive dialogue.”

Through our work at Raven Outcomes, we have seen first-hand how consultation and partnership with individual indigenous communities not only leads to better outcomes for these communities, like jobs and economic development, but can also ensure the government achieves its own goals, such as accelerating the development of major national projects. The government's duty to consult is essential. We firmly believe that better outcomes will be achieved when governments and project proponents engage with indigenous communities early in the process. By partnering from the outset in collaboratively developing community-driven outcomes, projects can align both local priorities and national goals. Meaningful engagement and community input into agreed-upon outcomes is absolutely critical.

Early involvement also enables work to begin at the community level while broader approvals are under way, ensuring time is used efficiently. We're not waiting for two years or five years; we are starting work now and demonstrating the government's immediate commitment to fulfilling its duty to consult. This approach can lead to the government meeting its goal to expedite national projects, a goal that we fully support, but this can only be done with deep and meaningful dialogue with impacted communities and agreed-upon outcomes to benefit each community.

The Carney government has stated that it is committed to advancing economic reconciliation through reforms that enable indigenous-led initiatives and address the long-standing inequities. Appropriate consultation and partnership, as in the outcomes finance model that we use, can ensure that indigenous communities see real economic and social benefits at the local level while being part of national efforts.

Through our work with indigenous nations such as Peguis First Nation, Brokenhead Ojibway Nation and others where we have done direct investments this year, we have seen that when communities are empowered to identify and address their priority issues and see real benefits, it creates positive ripple effects for all Canadians by driving greater investment in both the indigenous and broader Canadian economies. That's why we're working to scale a new model of investing through a proposed national indigenous outcomes fund—a smarter, more accountable way to deliver on national priorities in true partnership with indigenous communities.

Thank you for your time, and I'm happy to respond to questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you, Mr. Cyr.

Next, we'll go to Chief Sunshine.

You have the floor, sir, for three minutes, please.

[Chief Sheldon Sunshine, Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation]

Thank you. Tansi.

My name is Sheldon Sunshine. I'm chief of the Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation in Treaty 8 territory, in what is now northwestern Alberta. I'll limit my comments to part 2 of Bill C-5, the building Canada act.

Our ancestors entered into the treaty with the imperial Crown in 1899, before Alberta existed. The Crown guaranteed our ability to continue our way of life if we agreed to allow you into our territories and share our lands. Our ancestors would never have imagined these new levels of government, the impacts on our people and how Canada has implemented its side of this relationship.

The rate at which this legislation has gone through Parliament is unprecedented. The House has no studies, has not heard from experts and has not weighed evidence, and now we're in a fast-track committee. Crown obligations to first nations can't be fast-tracked. This is why, as drafted, this legislation will only cause delay, regulatory uncertainty and litigation.

The first issue with this bill is the absence of consultation. Canada is legally bound by the principle of free, prior and informed consent, FPIC. FPIC is more than an FYI, but we didn't receive even an FYI with this legislation. We received notice from a corporate entity while the Prime Minister met with premiers and industry executives. Now we learn, through the newspaper, that there is a plan for an advisory committee to manufacture consent and to again exclude the rights-holding first nations.

You then talk about economic reconciliation. If the government had wanted to work with first nations, they would have handled this legislation rollout better. We are afterthoughts. We still have not been informed of which projects are on the wish list. We suspect that for us it's more oil and gas pipelines, data centres, and coal and nuclear projects. All have devastating impacts on our rights.

The second issue with this legislation is that it will cause the federal Crown to breach its obligation to us in three important ways.

First, the federal government will unlawfully delegate power to exempt projects from federal laws, including the Indian Act. This usurps the House of Commons and the Senate, and breaches the federal Crown's obligation to us.

Second, this bill will create a situation where federal requirements are deemed to be met regardless of impacts. This is unconstitutional. The mention of consultation in this bill does not fix that. The consultation provisions give a minister discretion to decide if we must be consulted, and only if they decide we will be adversely affected. The bill does not mention the corresponding duty to accommodate. FPIC is MIA.

Third, the federal Crown is breaching its obligation by abandoning us to defend against Alberta's impotent regulators. Our land has already been heavily impacted by provincial green-lit development and the consequent climate change, to the point where we were almost wiped out by catastrophic fire in 2023, when we lost 39 buildings. We still have members who have yet to return home.

Our territory is more than 90% taken up by conventional oil and gas, forestry, agriculture, urban expansion and Crown landfills, all rammed through with little, if any, consultation from the province. In Alberta we're forced to deal with industry proponents when the province has an obligation to consult with us. The entire consultation regime is unconstitutional. It's unworkable. We receive hundreds of requests to consult on new projects every year. Alberta gives us $110,000 for this work. This is deliberately inadequate to respond. We can't keep up.

Following this empty consultation, authorizations are already fast-tracked through Alberta regulators. We have a saying that Alberta has not seen a permit it doesn't like. The Alberta Energy Regulator is fully funded by the same industry it regulates. Industry in turn monitors itself. For this reason, it is called a captured regulator. For example, CST Coal spilled over 1.1 million litres of toxic tailings into the Smoky River upstream from us and received a $22,000 fine. Further north, Imperial Oil spilled 5.3 million litres of tailings into the Athabaska River basin and received a $50,000 fine.

These grossly inadequate sanctions are just one form of inherent racism that we face. The breach of federal duties cannot be rectified through loan guarantees for us to buy into projects that will ultimately destroy our land and people. Is this your view of economic reconciliation, meaning that we must abide by Canada's economic project as willing investors instead of participating as treaty partners? This is the same troubling language that the Alberta premier uses. We expected more from this government.

To be clear, we reject this legislation in its entirety and the process that has been concocted to get us here. Simple amendments cannot solve the deep treaty and rights violations contained in this bill.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Chief Sunshine.

We'll begin our line of questioning today with Ms. Stubbs.

Ms. Stubbs, the floor is yours. You have six minutes, please.

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to all the witnesses for being here today and for this testimony.

Mr. Cyr, I thought maybe I would start with some questions related to your business. I thought you might want to expand on the model that you do deploy to get through full consultation. I especially noted your comments on the importance of defining terms up front, defining your goals up front, and then early and ongoing engagement to ensure that objectives are met.

I wonder if you might expand on your own model and apply it to Bill C-5 for people who want to see successful outcomes and the construction of big major projects done in a good way.

[Jeffrey Cyr]

I will just start with a little bit on who we are.

I'm one of the founders of Raven Indigenous Capital Partners—private capital, venture capital, two or three funds, and investing in businesses. What I discovered in that process is that we weren't really addressing community need. It's a good model. It does certain things, and certain economic activity comes out of it. However, we were getting calls, particularly from communities saying that they had problems to address and that the capital was not showing up in the right way. That means that it's either government programs or grants, which is usually limited, puts you in a box, and doesn't really do the thing that you need it to do; or private capital, which is pretty extractive, especially on natural resource projects. You need a different way of approaching it.

What Raven Outcomes does is collect.... We pool private capital and some philanthropic, as well, if we need to do pre-development work. However, we go into the community; we build a relationship. Frankly, it's all about the relationship at the end of the day. In building the relationship, we hear about what the community's priorities are and what its needs are. We bring disparate actors together. We often have an indigenous solutions lab where we can problem-solve it. You also get to know what the community's assets and strengths are and where the real capacities need to be built. You're not guessing from the outside looking in; the community is telling you. Then, when you understand what their priorities are, you can understand how to construct projects around those, projects that, at the end of the day, you actually want them to lead. When a community owns a project, has the ownership of it—the deep, personal ownership of it—the successful execution is nearly guaranteed. When you run across problems, like once-in-a-century floods, which happened to us in one of our.... We were doing geothermal, on-reserve residential housing. It happened. We were able to adjust with them, to actually help them, because we had existing stock and supplies that we had purchased and put aside to put into other homes. We could be helpful. It was a relationship, and it was deep engagement.

My comment, in the context of Bill C-5, is that major national projects are great, but relationships start today, frankly. You need to build them from the ground up, like the chief indicated. You need to have deep conversations and actually build the path, the road map, where you then have multi-billion dollar projects that can be executed with local willing partners, and they actually help you adjust projects. Project planners are great, and engineers are great, but when you get into the reality of being inside the community, you might need to adjust how these things are executed. Our model is predicated on relationship first, money second.

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

Thank you for mapping that out. It seems completely understandable to me, then, that Canadians are raising concerns that there wasn't early consultation either in the construction of this bill or on the objective that it seeks to achieve, particularly with rights and title holders.

You have spoken about trust.

So have you, Chief Sunshine. Thank you for being here today. Given the many points that you have made, are you also concerned about the fact that there are no clear definitions of national interest? There are no definitions of criteria for either projects or communities. We have been told by the AFN National Chief that, so far, rights and title holders and treaty people—and the people in the Treaty 6 whom I represent remind me all the time that we are all treaty people.... Can you expand on your concerns on the lack of consultation with rights and title holders? How can the government actually do that to get to the objective it says it wants to achieve?

[Chief Sheldon Sunshine]

You know, I haven't been in this position for very long; it's been three years. From what I've witnessed over the last three years and from what I've been watching from afar over my lifetime, we have this understanding of what treaty is as first nations people. I think that's where the disconnect is with the governments. They have a written text that they'd like to follow and not what was promised to us at the beginning of this treaty. When we take a look at some of these discussions that are happening provincially or nationally with regard to some of these major projects, we see that they're talking about the amount of revenue or the number of resources that these projects are going to utilize. When we're listening to this stuff, it's coming from a place where we're ownership. We should be included in some of these discussions. I think that's a missing piece here, whether it's a provincial government or the federal government. We have to get back to that understanding. Who was here when contact was made? Our people were here. I think we have to get back to the discussion on ownership and having a real partnership.

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

When you observe this bill, which has massive sweeping federal powers for the federal government, and for all kinds of legitimate reasons indigenous people in Canada are right to be skeptical and to question sweeping authoritarian decision-making powers by politicians, do you, at this point, in terms of Bill C-5, have trust that the government is going to accomplish what it is telling Canadians it wants to do, with consultation and consent among indigenous peoples, so that these major projects can be built in a good way?

[Chief Sheldon Sunshine]

I think the key word there is “trust”. Over 125 years, or even before contact, we've always been trusting people, but we're losing that trust. I was on earlier, listening to the grand chief, and he mentioned that loss of trust. When we saw this legislation come in the manner that it did, it started actually eroding that trust. We thought we had something going, having discussions at different tables, but now we have this being pushed through. In the legislation they said they're going to work with first nations, yet this legislation is being pushed through without working with first nations.

I got this notification from our grand chief to respond within seven days. I actually got it a couple of days late because there was some issue with the email. When we see those types of things, we don't see that trust.

We're willing partners. We're not against business development as long as we're included in it. We see prosperity in our province and in our territory, yet we're not participating. Why is that? It's because things like this are getting pushed through.

The consultation process in Alberta is the same way. We're just there as a check mark to make sure that our hunting and trapping rights are protected, yet they're missing that piece of who owns the land. Who were the original inhabitants of this land? When I see these things...that's where I come from.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Chief Sunshine.

Thank you, Ms. Stubbs.

Next we go to Ms. Nguyen. The floor is yours.

[Chi Nguyen, Liberal, Spadina—Harbourfront, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for joining us this evening. I know it was short notice to be here. It's a really important conversation and opportunity to build forward for the country, and, of course, your perspectives are really helpful for our reflections this evening.

Mr. Cyr, I recognize the innovation and leadership work that has come through your approach. You talked about the role that consultation and partnership play for those positive outcomes. Can you expand a bit further, in terms of the community benefits and all of the other pieces that are at play, when it's not just money on the table and that relationship piece is at the core of how you're approaching community challenges?

[Jeffrey Cyr]

Sure. I'll do my best to describe it. I can probably provide a hard example. Maybe that would be helpful.

We recently moved forward on an investment in the Brokenhead Ojibway Nation, which is in the central Manitoba area, close to the lake, to do 100 geothermal installations in residential homes and to retrofit the homes at the same time. It is probably the most complicated area to work in: on-reserve residential housing, which is community owned.

As we started to engage with the community and unpack what they wanted to do—it represented an investment of about $7.5 million on our part—the community stepped forward and said, “With this, we would actually like to build the social enterprise where we can be a clean energy installer, hire our own people and build the company.” They have a very good development core, so they have some experience with it, and we would provide our expertise to help them build the social enterprise, along with the capital to do the actual work. They are marketing their services not only to their own nation, but to other nations.

The other thing that's happening is that you're hiring your own people. You're taking them off social assistance. There are all kinds of government savings in the long run, to be honest. You're also creating a velocity in the local economy, which is what happens underneath major projects. There's this big thick middle, where economic activity really happens with SMEs. It's a way to generate change.

The other thing that's happening is that the community is prioritizing their elders' homes. They're making a cultural choice, which is spectacular. They're also making a choice about homes or multi-residential dwellings that they own, because if they own them and they get the long-term energy savings, they're saving on their block funding from government. They're turning around and putting that into health care, training and education—you name it. The community-wide benefits, when you can unpack and work with them on the things they want to do, are not only in the long-term resiliency of the housing stock, which we're all very concerned about in Canada.

There's a way, when you deeply embed with communities, in which you can find different angles. What we are able to do is to actually bring in more Province of Manitoba funding on doing business start-up, because that's a new business as well. We struck a deal with Efficiency Manitoba to do 1,000 more units across the province, which represents $80 million to $100 million or somewhere in there. It creates this financial momentum—the investment momentum behind it—and it's exciting in that way.

[Chi Nguyen, Liberal, Spadina—Harbourfront, ON]

It sounds like there's both: capacity-building in communities and you're able to catalyze. Would this be something that indigenous proponents might be interested in doing as nation-building work in the future? How do we scale this so that we get more of these community benefits?

[Jeffrey Cyr]

I've probably talked to 50 or 60 nations over the last 12 months about different projects. They're all interested in that. They're all interested in helping their people with better jobs, with keeping the jobs in the community so there's some stickiness to the labour and with taking that expertise and bringing it to other nations.

When they look at larger projects, they want to do exactly that with us. I think ownership is great, but there's a flurry of economic activity that happens under an IBA or under an ownership agreement, where you can really catalyze economic activity that you don't want to be missed in the process of national projects. It's good to look deeper and engage the community. What does that mean to look deeper into it?

[Chi Nguyen, Liberal, Spadina—Harbourfront, ON]

Thanks.

I wanted to ask our union friends this. If this bill is passed, could you talk a bit about measures you'd like to see taken to protect Canadian unions and labour to maximize the benefit to Canadian workers and, of course, in the context of your membership as well?

[Steven Schumann]

I'll quickly start and then flip it to Finn.

I think there are a couple of things. The promotion and expansion of the Red Seal standard will help facilitate labour mobility. It's a joint agreement between the provinces and the feds. It's a national standard, but it's regulated by the provinces.

Not all provinces are a part of it. For example, one of our trades—heavy equipment operators—is a Red Seal trade, but it's only recognized in eastern Canada. It's not recognized in western Canada. If a heavy equipment operator from Alberta wanted to come to Ontario, they would not meet the Ontario standards because they're not Red Seal.

If you want to make sure that Canadians are working on these projects, and to have indigenous people working on the projects, and also women and youth, have project labour agreements or community benefit agreements, especially on anything that's federally funded. Make sure that the government will get a bang for its buck. Also, with those things, there's an outcomes-based result: You see it.

I'll throw it over to Finn if he wants to add anything.

[Finn Johnson]

I think these projects present an incredible opportunity for the federal government to take leadership in building the workforce of our future. We know the labour shortage is going to cause an acute strain on our industry in the next 10 years, as the baby boom generation ages out of the workforce. This is a great opportunity for the federal government to embed apprenticeship minimum requirements into these nation-building projects so that we can establish a strong pipeline for the next generation to enter the workforce.

When employers call the hiring hall at the union and say they want five workers for their project, they're asking for journeypersons, because they are the ones who have completed their apprenticeship. They have the training, experience and expertise. However, if you have apprentices who are sitting at home and not able to get that experience, when those journeypersons retire, the next generation is not ready to work on those projects. They don't have the skills they need, and we need to invest in them. To build in 10% to 15% partnership minimum requirements on these nation-building projects, just as the Biden administration did in the United States under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the CHIPS and Science Act, is a step in the right direction, I think, for the federal government on these projects.

I think it goes off my friend Mr. Schumann's point here on working in partnership with the unions, potentially through memorandums of understanding or even just building prevailing wage provisions into these agreements.

It's something the federal government did in 2024 under the clean economy investment tax credits, and I think that model should be replicated here.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Lemire, you may go ahead for six minutes.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Cyr, what first nations community do you belong to?

[Jeffrey Cyr]

I actually belong to the Métis Nation, the Red River Nation of Manitoba, where David Chartrand is my president.

My home territory is in southern Manitoba, but I live in Mont-Tremblant, Quebec.