Human Resources committee  Good evening, Chair and members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to address this committee and the government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic. My name is Robert Kucheran. I'm the chairperson of Canada's Building Trades Unions, an organization representing 14 international unions that represent over half a million highly skilled and highly trained workers in the construction, maintenance and fabrication industries in Canada.

International Trade committee  There are two things, and one you picked up on. It has always been a challenge if you have a market that tends to be so unbalanced between us and Mexico—and even in the States it can be unbalanced in certain areas—because just invites more of an underground economy, which is very alive and well, in certain sectors more than others.

International Trade committee  We're getting there. We're not quite all the way there, but we're getting there. The more we raise the standards in other places, the better we are to be able to compete in Canada. We have a great apprenticeship system in Canada, a great accreditation system, and that system more or less matches the one in the U.S., so there's quite a nice transfer of skills and knowledge, at least from us and the United States.

International Trade committee  Thank you very much. My name is Robert Kucheran. I'm the chairman of the executive board of Canada's Building Trades Unions. We're the voice of over 500,000 skilled Canadian construction workers, members of 15 international unions who work in more than 60 different trades and occupations.