Madam Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise in the House today to speak to the motion before us, Motion No.190.
I want to start by laying out exactly what the motion is asking for, so that people can be clear on what is being discussed.
The motion directs:
That the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities be instructed to undertake a study on the labour shortages of the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area, to consider, among other things, (i) the challenges associated with a lack of skilled workers in the construction industry, (ii) possible recommendations on how to increase construction skill development in the region, (iii) analysis of the Atlantic Immigration Pilot initiatives as a model to address the skilled worker need in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area; and that the Committee report its findings to the House within six months of the adoption of this motion.
Therefore, I want to be clear that we will be supporting the motion at second reading because we believe there is value in doing a study about labour shortages at committee. We will of course re-evaluate our position once the study is completed.
I have a question, which I have asked before. Why was it necessary to bring this to the House as a motion? Why could it not have been done and introduced at committee?
I also have to wonder why the member sponsoring the motion has limited, as the previous speaker noted, the scope of the study to just the GTA and Hamilton areas. It seems to me, especially given the lack of data available on labour shortages in Canada, that a more ambitious Canada-wide study might be more useful and appropriate.
In doing my research in preparation to speak to this motion, I did speak to individuals involved in the construction industry in the area under consideration and found that they might have a view quite different from that of the sponsor of the motion. I spoke with several representatives of the building trades in the area, and while they would welcome any study on labour shortages in their industry, they are somewhat skeptical of this motion. Their view is that the supply of workers is not the problem, but rather the supply of employers willing to pay a fair wage. It is also the view of workers in the industry that there need to be incentives, good wages and benefits to attract workers to fields like construction and skilled trades, and that in the region defined in the motion, this is even more critical given the cost of living.
I certainly hope that the committee will invite the building trades unions to be part of any hearings or study that would take place, as they have a great deal of knowledge and expertise with the issues under review.
It is my view that we should consider the need for front-line services so that job seekers and employers needing workers can connect. I think we need to consider the importance of providing training and training opportunities, especially in the fields and industries where there might be a shortage of workers. It would also be helpful to look at how the federal government could work in partnership with the provinces to invest in education and training in skilled trades.
Of course, ensuring that skilled workers are available to meet labour demands is a responsibility the government should take very seriously. A more sustainable and equitable solution would be to see Canadian workers, employers, unions, educational institutions, and federal and provincial governments working together strategically to meet our labour force goals. We have repeatedly urged the government to collect better data to properly assess the labour shortage. Some industries and some regions are far more affected than others. It is not the same across the country and across sectors.
We welcome another study at committee, as it would be an opportunity to shed light on the labour situation. We need to make sure that employers focuses on providing fair wages. As I said earlier, it is unclear whether Toronto and Hamilton are experiencing labour shortages in the construction industry. We cannot allow employers in Ontario simply to have another source of cheap labour only to avoid their responsibility to spend on training and wages. The onus should be on the government and employers to first invest in training and offer more desirable working conditions and wages to workers before looking to migrant workers to fill jobs.
In reference to having the committee look at the Atlantic immigration pilot program as a model, I would urge caution and would suggest that there are economic reasons why we should oppose the reliance on solving skilled shortages through immigration alone. We need to put an emphasis on training and education of our domestic workforce where there are high levels of unemployment, both regionally as well as in many aboriginal and, in particular, ethnocultural communities.
Importing skilled labourers must be combined with the development of a strategy for training and developing future skilled workers in Canada to respond to future labour shortages. While we clearly support economic immigration, we should be wary of a narrow overreliance on immigration as the sole solution to our skills shortages. A better solution would rely on immigration along with developing the skills base of domestic labourers.
Motion No. 190 proposes to study the pilot program as a solution. As of March 2017, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada started accepting permanent resident applications through the Atlantic pilot program. Unlike other initiatives, employers are not required to obtain a labour market impact assessment for jobs offered within the pilot program. The Atlantic program is an employer-driven program, so the employers are the ones who are seeking the foreign nationals to work for them. While this program offers better outcomes than the temporary foreign workers program, it has not been able to attract the numbers of workers expected. Additionally, we would want to confirm that there are shortages before omitting the labour market impact assessment.
It is important to remember that Conservative government actions had distorted wage markets to the point where lower wages will give Canadian workers a further disincentive to seek training. Specifically, they announced that employers can pay temporary foreign workers in high-skilled occupations up to 15% below the market Canadian wage. Before this change, employers had to first attempt to hire Canadian workers at the market wage. If they were not successful, they were committed to hire a temporary foreign worker at below market wage. This gave employers an incentive to not post a job paying anything above a market wage.
The change would add an incentive to post high-skilled jobs at below market rates. In the short run, this would mean a larger supply of labour competing for jobs paying lower wages. In the long run, it would likely put downward pressure on the market wage, which would drive down wages for all workers in high-skilled jobs. Facing the prospect of lower wages, Canadian workers would have less incentive to invest in training or education. This in turn may make it even easier for employers to import temporary foreign workers due to the lack of available Canadian labour.
The issue of labour shortages is very important. More study and more data collection are needed to properly assess the situation. Having more information about labour shortages would be useful, so we in the NDP support a study at committee.