Citizenship and Immigration committee  To the extent that you are identifying occupations under demand or under pressure that require immediate and urgent action, yes. To a great degree, that's what's being done in other areas of immigration as well, with expedited LMOs under the temporary foreign worker program to tr

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I hope so, because we're going to need them.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  They're probably paid better too.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, we'd certainly like to see that. We'd like to see a number of other changes to the temporary foreign worker program as well, including issuing LMOs to multiple employers instead of to just a single employer on a regional basis. The temporary foreign worker program is current

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Your question is a valid one. I think that one way our industry has tried to deal with this is by having good, accurate labour market information. Heretofore, we've been partnered with HRSDC and CIC in order to produce that. You need that seven-, eight-, or ten-year look forward

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair, for the opportunity to present before this committee. The Canadian Construction Association has approximately 17,000 individual member firms from coast to coast to coast in Canada. Construction accounts for some 7% of Canada's GDP. Our members are involved

Government Operations committee  No, we haven't, but we would oppose this bill even if it had minimal impact, because it's a slippery slope. It's setting a dangerous precedent. It's bad public policy, period. In essence, it pre-selects or makes a predetermination as to what ought to be the preferred building mat

Government Operations committee  First of all, it's a bit like déjà vu all over again, as Yogi Berra said. We were before the Senate committee on agriculture and forestry, which was looking at exactly the kinds of questions you are looking at--i.e., how to enhance the use of wood products in the non-residential

Government Operations committee  I would suggest that if you are looking at an amendment to the Canadian building code, use the process that's already in place to make those changes. Don't unilaterally make a change that inhibits or undermines the processes that are in place.

Government Operations committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As you heard, my name is Michael Atkinson. I am president of the Canadian Construction Association. I'm here today not only in that capacity, but also as a member of the Coalition for Fair Construction Practices. Joining me this morning are three other m

Finance committee  Well, we're about to release a study in a couple of weeks that we did jointly with federal government contracting agencies and others on cost predictability for projects. There are a number of factors that go into that. In the construction industry, the last thing we contractor

Finance committee  I'll address the capacity concern, and it is a bit of a myth. There's no question that long term we're concerned about labour supply and labour capacity, in particular, because of demographics and the number of people who are going to be retiring. But certainly in the short term,

Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. The Canadian Construction Association welcomes this opportunity to appear before you today and share with you the views of our nearly 16,000 member firms across the country on the infrastructure measures contained in the recent federal budget. It probably

Human Resources committee  One of the concerns I have about this whole process is this. Let's say that we put the new financing toward a crown corporation in place and that we have a new rate-setting mechanism. I'm hoping that parliamentarians don't say that we're now finished with it and we don't need to

Human Resources committee  It's a very important issue. They don't want to see seepage out of the fund, even for good purposes along the way. Let's be honest, when successive ministers of finance were asked where those funds were going, it was to balance the government's books. We'd like to see it stand al