Natural Resources committee  Thank you. Good morning, Chair, members of the committee, fellow witnesses—it's Larry's first time—and guests. It's my pleasure to come to you today to try to give you a “tip of the spear” view of what pipelines writ large mean to regular people in Canada, what they mean to job

Natural Resources committee  Thank you for your question. The apprenticeship system in Canada relies on employment. In construction it's not a system whereby young people sit in a classroom for four years. For a construction apprentice, it's basically the same in the 14 industrial trades; it's 80% on-the-j

Natural Resources committee  Thanks for your question. Not to be overly partisan, the experience in the skilled trades thus far, with windmills and solar-powered farms and the like, the green or the alternative project, shows they're not huge job creators, and in some cases in New Brunswick we've been figh

Natural Resources committee  Absolutely. I think some sort of overarching framework is required. Our organization has views similar to those of industry, and I think you're bang on. That's exactly what we need. At the end of the day, we have vast resources in our country. We have to figure out a way to move

Natural Resources committee  The national assessment we rely on would be the stuff that came out from CIRI. We haven't done a membership survey or an analysis per se. Based on past experience, we can estimate the number of person hours that would be associated in the renewables section. It works out to appr

Natural Resources committee  There are two stages of jobs. Let's talk first about direct jobs, and then related jobs. If Keystone were to go ahead today, there would be about 3,000 to 3,500 construction jobs in Canada in this section from Hardisty to the U.S. border for three seasons. The direct constructi

Natural Resources committee  Canada's apprenticeship system writ large has approximately 250,000 people currently registered. That includes construction, hairstylists, bakers, anything that's considered a registered Red Seal trade. There are about a quarter of a million folks, and each year Statistics Canada

Natural Resources committee  Right now the labour supply is tight. We need to train as many Canadians as we possibly can. We need to get them into apprentice programs to address workforce shortages. Between now and 2017, the Construction Sector Council estimates there will be something like 320,000 construct

Natural Resources committee  Sure. We don't have any other areas in Canada where you can look around and there are 25,000 people learning a trade. I view Alberta as a global classroom for Canadians to learn an apprenticeship trade. It's also a place where foreign workers come to work. When the Canadian labou

Natural Resources committee  Any type of closure at an industrial plant that requires ongoing maintenance has an impact on work hours. So if you have 36 refineries across Canada one year, and then the next year you only have 15—which I think are the numbers—over time it absolutely impacts work hours associat

Natural Resources committee  If the question were, would we prefer a refinery or a pipeline, it's kind of a false choice. The building trades and the folks who go to work every day don't have a lot of control over which projects are chosen. It's about filling the need of employers and filling the need of ind

Human Resources committee  Good afternoon, Chair, members of the committee, and fellow hostages of the committee. It's been since October 27 last year that I had the honour to appear. Of importance in my personal life, I'm a father now and I grew a grey whisker.

Human Resources committee  In my professional life I'm here to talk about skill shortages. Skill shortages and foreign credential recognition are interrelated, so my remarks will start where I left off in October. Some of you will recognize some of the material, but that's not a bad thing. We're the Can

Human Resources committee  Yes, sir. I have 30 seconds left. It's a no-brainer to look at a system to give front of the line access to U.S. workers. Before I conclude, I'll note that I had a large number of my members on the Hill yesterday talking about Bill C-377. Maybe they met with you. The bill is

Human Resources committee  I have to say that if you could give me a brief description, I might become familiar with it.