ICBA to Ottawa: New Federal Trades Money Must Reach the Whole Industry

CALGARY – The Independent Contractors and Businesses Association (ICBA), Canada's largest construction association, is welcoming the federal Spring Economic Update's $6-billion, five-year skilled trades plan – but is calling on Ottawa to make sure the new money reaches the approximately 75% of Canada's construction workforce who do not work for a building trades union.

“The diagnosis is right and the dollars are serious – this is the most ambitious federal trades plan in years,” said Chris Gardner, ICBA President and CEO. “The $400-a-week training grant, the $5,000 Red Seal completion bonus, the $10,000 hiring incentive for small business – every contractor in our membership can use those tools the day the regulations are written. ICBA sponsors more than 3,100 apprentices across B.C. and Alberta, so we have a front row seat what the challenges are and what needs to be done. But federal training money has a long history of flowing through one channel and missing most of the industry – and that problem hasn't been fixed.”

The Update's $331-million training-infrastructure stream names only one delivery vehicle for new training capacity: the Union Training and Innovation Program (UTIP), which by federal design supports “union-based apprenticeship training” only. Open-shop contractors, accredited private training providers, and the colleges that deliver the bulk of trades training in Canada are shut out. The Update gestures at “employer-led training pathways” but assigns them no named program and no budget line.

“This is the structural issue Ottawa has to fix before program rules are written,” said Gardner. “Open-shop employers train the vast majority of Canada's apprentices. About 85% of construction workers in B.C., and 88% in Alberta, are not affiliated with a building trades union. You cannot ‘Build Canada Strong’ by funnelling training infrastructure dollars to one slice of the industry. If we are to train the next generation of builders to build the ports, hospitals, schools, roads and homes, federal training dollars need to be distributed fairly across the apprenticeship training spectrum – public and private technical institutions, vocational schools, employers, unions including those not affiliated with the building trades, and students.”

Mike Martens, ICBA Alberta President, said the West has the most at stake. “Alberta has tens of billions of dollars in major projects under construction and 266,100 Albertans already working in the trades,” Martens said. “The Carney government is counting on that workforce to deliver homes, energy, and infrastructure. Open and fair access to federal training money is how you scale up. Closed labour models favouring building trades unions are how you fall behind schedule and over budget – we've watched that movie play out in B.C. for nine years.”

ICBA is calling on Ottawa to take four steps before Team Canada Strong program rules are finalized:

• Confirm that the new training grant, SME wage subsidy, completion bonus, and enhanced Labour Mobility Deduction are available to every Canadian apprentice and employer regardless of union affiliation.
• Reform UTIP so eligibility is based on demonstrated training capacity and apprenticeship outcomes – not labour affiliation – and create a dedicated open-shop and employer-led training stream so new dollars reach the providers training the majority of Canada's workforce.
• Strengthen the Apprenticeship Job Creation Tax Credit – frozen at 10% of wages and a $2,000 per-apprentice cap since 2006 – by lifting the rate to 15% or the cap to $3,000. It is the one universal employer-facing federal apprenticeship incentive that reaches open-shop firms at scale.
• Pair domestic training with smarter skilled-trades immigration. Even the most ambitious training pipeline takes five to seven years to produce a journeyperson, and the federal government's own projection is a gap of more than 20,000 trades workers per year.

“Ottawa has finally moved with serious money and the right diagnosis,” said Gardner. “The job now is making sure the rollout matches the rhetoric. We've been making this case for years on UTIP, on the apprenticeship tax credit, on open-shop access. We're at the table and ready to help.”