If you want to know who to thank — or in the case of Quebec, who to blame — for much of the skilled-worker training ideas contained in the federal budget, fix your gaze on Canada’s largest construction union.
For several years, the Building and Construction Trades Department of the AFL-CIO union, which represents half a million skilled workers in Canada, has been sounding the alarm about the looming shortage in tradespeople that is rapidly coming down the pipe.
Last week, the Conservative government made it clear that it heard these warnings and is acting.
“The federal government consulted with a lot of people and we certainly participated with giving them numerous ideas about how to ensure that this country can keep growing and building into the future,” said Christopher Smillie, senior government-relations adviser for the Canadian Building Trades of the AFL-CIO.
“Nothing is ever perfect, but since when has a federal budget had so much in it about skilled trades?” he asked.
“This budget is kind of Nirvana for a group like ours that represents these skilled workers,” added Smillie.
By Nirvana, he doesn’t mean the rock group. He means it’s a little bit of heaven to finally have its often-ignored warnings about the desperate need to direct more Canadians into the building trades heeded. Indeed, Smillie says reports indicate that unless decisive action is taken now, Canada will face a shortage of 300,000 skilled tradespeople by 2017. Try building the Keystone XL pipeline then without all those labourers such as carpenters, electricians, pipefitters, plumbers and welders.
Finance Minister Jim Flaherty announced the Canada Job Grant that could provide $15,000 or more per person “to ensure Canadians are getting the skills employers are seeking.”
Up to $5,000 will be provided by the federal government, with another $5,000 each from the province or territory and the employer.
Smillie says this makes sense and will avoid job-funding from winding up in a province’s general revenue fund or toward training more workers in fields where there are no jobs.
“It means that people will be trained for specific jobs, which is a good thing. By attaching the money to an employer, it means the worker will be trained for a job that actually exists. It’s about time this kind of common-sense approach was implemented,” said Smillie.
Indeed it is. Of course, the usual suspects are carping. Quebec claims this is an attack on its sovereignty.
“This is an economic sabotage exercise,” complained Quebec’s finance minister, Nicolas Marceau. “It’s worse than being abandoned. If they’d simply left us alone, we’d have been happy enough, but they didn’t even do that. They’re not leaving us alone — they’re attacking us.”
It remains to be seen if your ordinary unemployed factory worker in Quebec cares about provincial jurisdiction if he or she can get retrained in a high-paying job that actually exists, rather than a hypothetical one.
As Flaherty said in his budget speech on Thursday, expanding educational opportunities and skills training won’t be enough to meet the workplace demand that will continue to grow as our economy expands and baby boomers retire.
“To that end, we will continue to reform our immigration system to make sure Canada is the first choice for skilled workers from around the globe, so that the best young people who come here to study can remain afterwards to ‘try Canada out,’ rather than be kicked out to apply from abroad to stay in Canada.”
Immigration Minister Jason Kenney says this is the right approach.
“In the past, the foreign students who graduated from universities or colleges would have to leave the country if they wanted to stay permanently,” he said. “They’d then have to apply and get to the back of a seven- or eight-year-long queue, which was ridiculous, because they had degrees that would be recognized by Canadian employers and they had perfected their English or French language.”
Smillie says his union and many industries and businesses have been sounding the alarm about the looming skills shortage for a long time.
“It’s gratifying that government has finally acted to get people into paid training programs that result in real jobs, not make-believe ones that lead to the unemployment line.”
Imagine that, a Conservative government working closely with big labour. Could this be the start of a beautiful relationship?
