Canada can't build the homes, pipelines, ports, transmission lines, and clean economy projects it's promised without the people who actually swing the hammers. And in B.C. and Alberta, the overwhelming majority of those people work open-shop.
That's the core message in Merit Canada's federal pre-budget submission, filed this week on behalf of ICBA, ICBA Alberta and four Merit associations across the country. ICBA is a proud Merit Canada affiliate, and our members in B.C. and Alberta employ tens of thousands of the open-shop workers who keep the West building.
The numbers tell the story. Roughly 75% of Canada's construction workforce — more than 1.2 million people — works outside the traditional building trades union framework. BuildForce Canada says we need to recruit and train 380,000 net new apprentices by 2035 just to keep up with retirements and growth. You don't hit that number by funnelling federal training dollars and tax credits through one slice of the industry.
Merit Canada's submission makes four straightforward asks of the federal government:
1. Let the Workforce Innovation Fund train the whole workforce. Federal training dollars should follow the apprentice, not the union. An apprentice learning her trade at an open-shop employer is no less Canadian, and no less needed, than one learning at a union shop.
2. Reform the Union Training and Innovation Program. Right now, UTIP eligibility is effectively locked to union-affiliated training providers. Rewrite the rules around demonstrated training capacity and apprenticeship outcomes — and add $15 million over three years through a dedicated open-shop / employer-led stream.
3. Strip the prevailing-wage requirement out of the Clean Economy Investment Tax Credits. Right now, contractors take a 10-point haircut on the credit unless they mirror Canada's Building Trades Unions collective agreements — even if they already pay above-market wages and benefits. There is no climate reason for that. Tie the credit to emissions performance, not to a union pay scale.
4. Require open, fair, and labour-affiliation-neutral tendering on every federally funded construction project. In Alberta and B.C., where open-shop is the dominant model, closed tendering walks past most of the available capacity. Fewer bidders means higher prices, longer timelines, and worse value for taxpayers.
None of this is anti-union. It's pro-apprentice, pro-competition, and pro-taxpayer. If Ottawa is serious about housing, major projects, and a clean economy built in Canada, the federal toolkit has to reach the workers and contractors actually doing the work — not just the ones with the right affiliation on their paystub.
Read Merit Canada's full pre-budget submission HERE.