The organization representing Canada's construction industry wants Ottawa to retool its immigration points system to favour immigrants with construction skills to prevent a looming and potentially debilitating shortage of skilled and unskilled labourers.
Traditionally wholly supportive of grooming the domestic workforce from within, the Canadian Construction Association (CCA) has changed tactics as acknowledgment that domestic workers can't fill all the trades positions that are required by industry, says Jeff Morrison, the group's director of governmental and public affairs.
"An immigrant with a BA in philosophy has a better chance of getting into Canada than a guy with poor language skills but who has decades of construction experience," Morrison says.
The CCA is collecting information from industry and beginning discussions with the federal government about some of the steps that must be taken to ensure the country has enough skilled workers to meet building and construction needs.
"I think it's safe to say one of those steps we're going to pursue is a change to the points system ... to put more points towards demonstrable skillsets in construction," Morrison says.
The CCA also will urge Ottawa to expand its programs that bring in workers for short periods of time.
Canada's skilled-trades shortage is expected to reach critical proportions in 2011 when it's forecast that the country will require immigrants to fuel all of its net labour force growth.
A number of provinces are already feeling the crunch, Morrison says, especially Alberta because of oilsands development and the Vancouver area, where pre-Olympics construction is booming.
"It seems almost every day we're hearing stories ... about problems they're facing with the lack of labour, from the perspective of longer completion times, of cost overruns," he says.
The most visible example was when the Vancouver Organizing Committee recently announced it needed another $120 million in government funding because of cost overruns on 2010 Winter Olympics projects.
The overruns, says Morrison, were due entirely to labour shortages.
Western Canada isn't the only part of the country that's feeling the crunch. Because it's drawing labourers from the rest of Canada, other provinces also are suffering, Morrison says.
Naomi Alboim, a professor at Queen's University School of Policy Studies, points out that the points system was changed several years ago because it too heavily favoured people with university educations.
Nonetheless, Alboim says that a sector-specific component should be created to help legal entry for those people who don't meet the criteria of the points system.
"Part of the problem with the undocumented workers in the construction industry is that people have come in to satisfy a particular need and the door has been closed, so they've come in through the windows instead of through the doors," she says. "There's probably a good rationale to establish a program that allows them to come in from overseas."
Alberta and Manitoba have already taken such steps. They have entered an agreement with the federal government that allows them to develop criteria based on labour market and employer needs to bring in skilled labourers whose trades are in real demand but who may not fill all the criteria under the points systems.
"A huge number of people don't come in that way, but it's expanding," Alboim says.
It has been estimated that as many as 300,000 illegal immigrants are working in this country.
Immigration lawyers and consultants expressed public outrage last month that illegal workers are being deported as the new Conservative government began taking steps to drop an amnesty plan introduced by the previous Liberal government. They warned the deportations could heavily damage the country's booming construction industry, which represents 9.5 per cent of Canada's total gross domestic product, according to figures from the Greater Toronto Home Builders' Association.
Alboim says one of the main reasons Canada faces a skilled-trades shortage is because of a lack of intelligence gathering.
"We're quite terrible as a country at forecasting skill shortages, which is one of the reasons we get into this type of difficulty from time to time," says Alboim.
A case in point was during the technology boom, when Canada trained and brought in too many information technology specialists.
George Gritziotis, executive director of the Construction Sector Council (CSC), says he is worried that the CCA will focus too much of its lobbying efforts on getting Ottawa to change the points system.
"Let's not put all our eggs in one basket," he says. "I know that net growth in the workforce is going to come from abroad, but satisfying the skilled needs of the industry through immigrant workers is just part of the solution."
The national organization recently launched a national skilled trades forecasting system to anticipate what tradespeople will be required, as well as when and where.
The main mission of the CSC, which was established in 2001, is to address construction industry human resources issues through partnerships within the industry.
If more immigrant workers are going to be brought into the country, Canada needs to know where their skills are required and that their skills are indeed needed here, Gritziotis says.
"Let's not just do this blanket supply-side thing where we bring lots of immigrant workers in," he says. "Let's target the jobs that we bring them into and let's make sure we ensure we're looking at other solutions at the same time."
The council conducted a study in 2004 that assessed foreign-trained worker credentials in the construction industry. It revealed a number of barriers in the Canadian construction industry for foreign-trained workers, including:
* Little co-ordination between the many players in a complex system where there's little interaction between industry and government on immigration and credential issues. That makes the process difficult to understand and navigate.
* No close co-operation between industry and government in the apprenticeship system when it comes to issues related to immigrants, foreign credentials and experience recognition.
* Little information about the trades available to tradespeople who are considering immigrating to Canada.
* No organized method to review trades credentials as there is for regulated professions.
* Lack of language skills, affecting workers' capacity to become certified in the trades.
The council has begun to address some of these problems. One such measure is the creation of a pilot project with the BC Construction Association that provides job coaches to immigrant workers. It also has an assessment tool that allows the province to assess the skill levels of people and put them into appropriate training programs for entry into jobs.
The council is also working with each province's apprenticeship authority to examine the assessment tools being used in each province so that a national assessment tool can be developed and rolled out across the country. Language training and culturalization also are being discussed.
Gritziotis concedes that changes to the points system should be examined, but says Canada's home-grown labour force must not be ignored, especially since Canada wants its young people to find trades jobs when they enter the workforce.
"We also have Aboriginal youth, which still is the fastest growing cohort of youth in our labour force today, so we have to be very thoughtful and sensitive in how we do this," he says.
"Let's make sure we don't compromise other supply-side solutions for the industry and in particular that we make sure we address the need of bringing Canadian youth into this industry with the same kind of fervour and resources as well," Gritziotis says.
(Frank Armstrong can be reached at armstrong@businessedge.ca)
