Finance committee  Thank you very much. I'm here on behalf of the Canadian Labour Congress, which is the national voice of 3.3 million unionized workers in Canada. Our affiliated unions' members work in virtually all sectors of the Canadian economy, in all occupations, and in all parts of Canada.

Finance committee  Yes.

Finance committee  Absolutely.

Finance committee  What I said is that the changes to the minimum withdrawal benefit the wealthy mostly, and allow people who have benefited from tax deferral at the front end to then again avoid tax at the rear end. What I'm saying is that benefits wealthy individuals, and you've done nothing that

Finance committee  Who are higher income—

Finance committee  That's in their best interest to do so.

Finance committee  It is in my best interest to provide advice that would benefit all workers, not simply workers that have had enough income to invest in RRSPs.

Finance committee  That's kind of irrelevant to my point. My point is you've done nothing for low-income workers.

Finance committee  As we mentioned, there was an opportunity here to mandate that employers use apprentices for any infrastructure building that government does. Part of the problem is that third-year apprentices are much more expensive than second-year apprentices, so employers will hire first-yea

Finance committee  Absolutely, because the Red Seal and the Blue Seal are also issues in terms of labour mobility across Canada, which is another issue that this government has raised. Having that quality training and those opportunities for those workers to get those skills that are transferable i

Finance committee  Thank you. On behalf of the 3.3 million members of the Canadian Labour Congress, we want to thank you for the opportunity to present our views today. The CLC brings together workers from virtually all sectors of the Canadian economy, in all occupations, and in all parts of Canad

Finance committee  Exactly. That's a fantastic example that we use a lot. The sourcing of the Toronto subway is from Bombardier. It kept 500 jobs in Thunder Bay. Those are permanent, good, well-paying jobs. We also say that investment in renewable energy itself would create one million jobs and l

Finance committee  We are partners with the Green Economy Network and have a paper that talks about one million climate jobs. We propose a three-pronged approach that is using public procurement to increase investment in transit. We are losing the ability to have local procurement at the provincial

Finance committee  Yes, absolutely. For the past three or four years, I think, the Canadian Labour Congress has been calling for using taxes to raise more revenue to make public sector investments in the common good. Again, that's to shift to the economy of the future that we're going to be needing

Finance committee  That's true. If you look at the geopolitics going on right now in oil-producing countries like Russia and countries in the Middle East and at the decision of OPEC to increase supply, absolutely it looks as if the reason for the price of oil is global political instability, and th