Transport committee  I think that's an activity that would happen after the fact. A whole lot of work would go in a year before a minister would come to Parliament and say this is what's happened. I think the reporting function is to try to create accountability and keep focus on those activities, bu

Transport committee  Just quickly, I would put those into two buckets. The first bucket would be economic benefits. The second would be social buckets. Then you'd have to break it from there. In the economic bucket, you'd talk about how and what you want; and then in the social bucket, it would be wh

Transport committee  If the contractor is required to do certain things by the purchaser of construction, you can be darn sure that they're going to meet the terms of that contract. If we put in consideration of things like apprenticeship ratios or even something as simple as a training plan, you can

Transport committee  This is the start of a conversation—

Transport committee  You asked me a question, so let me finish it.

Transport committee  This is the start of a conversation about this issue and I think the Ontario legislation was one way to go; this is another way to go. The Government of Canada could put in government legislation on this, if it so wishes. Frankly, the minister could table legislation tomorrow on

Transport committee  I couldn't possibly speak for what the government wants, but as a stakeholder, we think this is an important first step, even having the contractor partners at the table today. I think it would be important to ask the Government of Ontario what their opinion has been so far. This

Transport committee  Definitely. At the end of the day, the number one comment from small construction contractors—we've agreed on this before—is that the FTE, the full-time equivalent, isn't there to train. They don't have the ability to do so. Maybe we can get innovative. For example, in German

Transport committee  I'll give you a current state and a future state, to be practical. Currently, if a construction company wins a bid, they call us to say they need 400 carpenters, 25 welders, and 36 bricklayers. That's an after-they-win-the-bid situation. If this bill passes and some sort of matri

Transport committee  Sure. You do that up front, too. You have conversations with contractors on an ongoing basis about underprivileged youth in downtown Toronto who need access to apprenticeship programs. You can constantly talk about funding those kinds of training programs. We have the Hammer Head

Transport committee  Yes, briefly. In Ontario, the experience so far has been positive because we're talking about these issues. In addition, we have two metrics that are improved. In 2016, thus far in Ontario, apprenticeship completions are up. There's a public policy issue where we have lots of r

Transport committee  I have a comment.

Transport committee  We support a weighted and upfront matrix. I want to caution the committee, or caution folks who are thinking about this is, that the issues that local communities face in downtown Toronto are different from what they face in rural Alberta, and are different from what they face

Transport committee  The government can do whatever it wants. There was an attempt to do something like this during the build Canada plan. The Minister of Infrastructure at that time promised to do something and then decided not to, in the end. There was a process undertaken between Infrastructure Ca

Transport committee  The statistic that 19% of Canadian companies hire an apprentice is a general statistic on Canada. We need to do better in this country to improve that number. The number in construction is actually higher than 19%. It's more in the 30% range, the percentage of construction compan