June 4, 2008

CSC Labour Forecast

Construction industry alone can’t solve labour-demand dilemma, officials say

VINCE VERSACE

staff writer

Canada’s construction labour market is at its limit and with a need for 250,000 workers on the horizon, the industry cannot develop solutions on its own, construction officials say.

“The demand for workers is in the fast lane, but government and educators are in the slow lane,” said George Gritziotis, executive director of the Construction Sector Council.

The CSC’s recent 2008 Construction Looking Forward labour forecast found that 42,000 new workers were hired last year and national employment across the construction industry rose by 39 per cent over the past five years.

However, another 94,000 workers will be needed to keep pace with new projects and an additional 162,000 are required to replace retiring workers by 2016.

“Yes, immigration and temporary foreign workers will be used to help with these demands, but we need to train Canadian youth and underemployed youth,” said Pat Dillon, business manager of the Provincial Building and Construction Trades Council of Ontario.

“We need a training-capacity audit done for Canada.”

Tim Smith, vice-president of alternative financing and procurement at EllisDon, said some companies find they are trying to meet demands by training workers but when they reach their peak of training, most of the major work has been done.

“We would like to promote a balanced market with balanced long-term opportunities for workers,” he said.

British Columbia and Alberta are the nation’s labour demand pacesetters, the CSC said. New institutional and engineering projects are driving demands for workers in Western Canada.

Wayne Peppard, executive director of the British Columbia and Yukon Territory Building and Construction Trades Council, said meeting this demand must include looking at training capacity.

“In our industry, we need to know what we have and what we can develop,” he said. “We need to focus our efforts on our own capacity.”

The Manitoba labour demand landscape has also shifted over the least few years, with increased labour demand across all construction sectors. Companies are not finding available workers in the pockets they used to before, said David Martin, executive director, Manitoba Building and Construction Trades Council.

“In Manitoba we never really used to experience the peaks and valleys in labour demand, but that has all changed,” he said.

“Today it is a challenge to attract workers.”

The mobility of workers within their own province, let alone in Canada, is another key to meeting the projected CSC labour demands, Dillon said.

“There are pockets of unemployed trades people here in Ontario but our governments need to provide incentives to help them move to work,” he said.

Effective planning to reach national training goals and move workers among projects and across regions is important to meet the growing labour need, said Gritziotis.

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