July 31, 2006

Trades want numbers of unemployed

PATRICIA WILLIAMS

staff writer

TORONTO

The Provincial Building and Construction Trades Council of Ontario has called on the Construction Sector Council to conduct a study into the number of unemployed construction workers in Canada.

The council, which represents unionized workers in the industrial, commercial and institutional sector, told Prime Minister Stephen Harper that such a study should be carried out “prior to importing skills from abroad.

“They will find (that) numerous Canadian construction workers in this country are unemployed and underemployed,” council business manager and secretary-treasurer Patrick Dillon said in a letter dated July 25.

CSC Executive Director George Gritziotis told Daily Commercial News that the council has begun to address this issue through its labour market information program. But he agreed that more needs to be done.

“We need to drill deeper to get more of a local and regional flavour and also look at the issue of under-employment,” he said.

Dillon wrote to Harper in response to the Canadian Construction Association’s (CCA) recent call for reform of the immigration system to facilitate the entry of construction workers on a permanent, temporary and seasonal basis.

CCA said this needs to be done to meet an “unprecedented” demand for labour.

“Some basic analysis of Canadian needs is required before accepting an apparently simple solution,” Dillon said in reference to the CCA’s statement.

“First and foremost, a determination must be made of the nature of the (forecast) shortage of skilled labour. Is it a temporary regional shortage or is it a true national issue?

“Once a determination has been made, some basic principles must be applied in addressing shortages.”

“To simply go after foreign workers will create serious problems.”

Patrick Dillon

PBCTC

Dillon said these are:

• Attracting unemployed and underemployed Canadian youth to the construction trades.

• Providing tax and other incentives for unemployed and underemployed Canadian workers to meet regional skills shortages.

• Utilizing strategic immigration to meet specific skills needs.

• Using temporary foreign workers to meet peak employment needs for a specific time frame for a specific area.

“In the current situation, we should be placing more emphasis on the first two principles,” Dillon said. “To simply go after foreign workers will create serious problems at the first (economic) downturn.”

In an interview, Dillon said the council does not have statistics on the number of unemployed tradesmen in the province.

“But I can tell you that there are unemployed tradesmen in Thunder Bay, Kingston, Belleville, Windsor and the Niagara Peninsula.”

In its letter to Harper, CCA said demand for labour is outstripping the supply that can be produced domestically.

According to the Construction Sector Council, approximately 150,000 people will be needed by 2014 to meet impending retirements alone.

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