Rebuild Canada’s workforce NOW

Canada’s labour crisis is threatening our future growth.
It’s time for action.

More people are leaving the job market than entering it. This is the tightest job market Canada has seen in generations and it’s pinching all sectors. Nearly 1 million jobs are unfilled. Despite significant investment by the industry to attract and retain Canadian workers, over 81,000 positions remain open – an all-time high!

The federal government has an ambitious growth plan – one that includes repairing, maintaining and retrofitting aging infrastructure while also building for future climate resilience. But even the best laid plans can be derailed without the workers we need to keep us on track. This means that the essential infrastructure projects that 38 million Canadians rely on every day risk being cancelled or delayed.

Training takes time and we need workers now. It is vital that we turn to immigration and temporary foreign labour to help alleviate the choke points created by the workforce shortage.

We are calling on all levels of government to:

1. Remove bias in the immigration point system
   An influx of immigrants is needed to keep the economy healthy, but Canada’s existing policy isn’t helping the construction industry. We need to remove the bias and award more points to applicants with experience in trades or as construction labourers.
   
2. Match skills where needed
   Many skilled newcomers arrive to Canada and cannot even work in their field of expertise. We need to put their skills to work and expedite the recognition of their training and credentials. The federal government needs to work with provinces and territories to ensure skills matching is well aligned between jurisdictions, and properly funded and supported.
   
3. Update the Temporary Foreign Worker program
   The Temporary Foreign Worker program needs to be reformed to ease the recognition of credentials, reduce approval periods, offer more seasonal worker permits, and waive processes that hinder migration.
   

The bottom-line: Infrastructure investment benefits all Canadians.

The construction sector is essential to creating and maintaining the essential infrastructure Canadians rely on every day – from schools we send our kids to; the hospitals that care for us; and the roads, bridges and trade corridors that connect our communities not only to each other, but also to the global marketplace.

Policies that promote and utilize the skills and experience of immigrants and newcomers will help build the workforce the industry needs to build a better Canada for all.

Your contacts at the Canadian Construction Association:

About

Across Canada, CCA represents more than 20,000 member firms drawn from 63 local and provincial integrated partner associations. CCA gives voice to the public policy, legal and standards development goals of contractors, suppliers and allied business professionals working in, or with, Canada’s heavy civil, institutional, commercial and industrial construction industry.

The construction sector is one of Canada’s largest employers and a major contributor to the country’s economic success. The industry, 70 per cent of which is made up of small and medium enterprises, employs more than 1.4 million Canadians and contributes 7.5 per cent of Canada’s Gross Domestic Product.

---