Thank you, Mr. Chair.
My name is Bob Blakely, and I am here on behalf of Building and Construction Trades Department.
Mercifully, I will continue in English.
Helmets to Hardhats is a program we have launched as a public-private partnership. Last January 6, in the boilermakers' union hall in Edmonton, the Prime Minister of Canada brought together a group of people who were going to launch an initiative to find ways to give transitioning Canadian Forces veterans, serving reservists, and disabled veterans careers in Canada's construction industry.
At 14% of GDP and 8% of all direct employment, construction is one of the high-paying, high-challenge, high-skill occupations in this country, and there are positions that are in demand.
The lead of the Government of Canada was followed up with a cash donation, so did the Government of Alberta step to the plate with money, and TransCanada Pipelines stepped up with $1 million over five years. That money is being matched and sweat equity is being put in by the Building and Construction Trades Department, and by a number of our employer partners and their absolute alphabet soup of various kinds of trade associations across the country. The objective is to get people good jobs in an industry that matters for this country.
We've launched the initiative. We've incorporated a not-for-profit corporation. We've established a board of directors. We've gone out with a request for proposals to create a website—a significant portion of the initial intake for people into Helmets to Hardhats will be through a web portal and through a website. We're looking to get initial staffing with an executive director and an administrative assistant.
In the interim, we've had some limited but significant successes actually placing people with companies that are looking for apprentices, or looking for people who need or want to access a job in construction.
At CFB Edmonton we've had a number of people go into the boilermakers. At CFB Esquimalt through the Vancouver Island building trades, we've had people who have gone to work in the shipyards, because it takes the same skills to build a ship as it takes to build a house—with a lot less wood nowadays, but that's neither here nor there. And the base in Toronto, a number of people have gone into the pipe trades.
These have basically been through local arrangements that we've made through the TAP program—the transition assistance program—as veterans have left, with assistance from Veterans Affairs Canada and with assistance from the various apprenticeship boards across the country, and we're finding ways to match people with apprenticeships.
In some cases, people leave the Canadian Forces with a full skill toolkit. The 500 series trades, all of the construction trades, the hull mechanics from the navy, some of the engineering trades, and the people who keep tanks running are the same people who keep heavy equipment running, so some of those are pretty easy transitions.
We're trying to find a way to build a good skills translator, which takes the skills someone learned in the Canadian Forces and puts them into a placement that would fit a) their interests and b) some of the skills they have.
We were a while in convincing government that this was something that was worth doing, but we certainly realized, together with our employer partners, a long time ago that there is an enormous resource in people who have served in the Canadian Forces. They are generally fit, they are drug free, they have self-discipline, and they understand to show up at 7 o'clock in the morning with their personal protective equipment on, their boots laced up, and ready to go to work. We want to maximize that in our industry.
Generally speaking, we've been successful in everything we've touched so far. We have a model in the United States, which is also called “Helmets to Hardhats”, and is also done through the building trades there, and a number of other programs we're looking at that are going to give us some direction. There is, for example, through the plumbers union, something called the VIP program, Veterans in Piping, where people who are going to leave the American forces go to Camp Pendleton, the marine base in the U.S., and for the last four weeks of their enlistment, someone shows them how to thread pipe, how to weld, and some basic use of hand tools in the plumbing trade. So when they go home, they have a start on an apprenticeship.
So we're looking for some of those things to do. We have a concept. We have a number of partnerships, and we're looking forward to being able to put veterans of the Canadian Forces to work in one of Canada's best industries.
I'll respond to your questions in due course.