Thank you.
Good afternoon, committee members. I bring greetings from the beautiful province of Nova Scotia as well as from Merit Canada's national president, Terrance Oakey.
Merit Canada was established in 2008 as a united national voice for eight provincial open-shop construction associations. Its 3,500 member companies directly employ over 60,000 Canadians, and its member organizations administer the largest multi-employer benefit program in Canada's construction industry.
Over the next decade, Canada's construction industry will have to attract at least 320,000 workers or face serious shortages in the labour supply. While the industry is dedicated to training and recruiting Canadians for the construction industry, it has become clear that this strategy itself will not suffice.
It will be necessary to augment the human resources of the construction industry by having immigrants with the required skills and experiences. However, current immigration regulations disproportionately favour immigrants with academic qualifications and give insufficient weight to professional skills and achievements. As a result, less than 0.2% of immigrants admitted each year into Canada are skilled construction workers or construction industry professionals, even though the construction industry employs more than 8% of Canada's labour force.
When I first heard Minister Kenney publicly comment on the expression of interest model adopted by Australia and New Zealand, I knew our industry was about to change for the better. While Merit supports more unemployed skilled Canadians filling jobs in high-demand sectors across the country, we recognize the importance of a more efficient and productive system that will better screen, process, and mobilize foreign workers who possess the skills Canadian companies require.
The fact is that jobs are available and employers cannot find skilled workers to fill these jobs. It is estimated that Alberta will need 115,000 additional workers in skilled trades over the next 10 years. In Nova Scotia—and while this may seem elementary compared with the aggregate data—we will need to fill 7,000 construction jobs over the next decade. In a declining population of fewer than one million people, you can imagine the Herculean effort it will take to fill this need, especially when we start building Canada's next fleet of naval ships.
Nova Scotia must accomplish this with the highest percentage of seniors in the country, 16.8%, and a net international migration of only 122 immigrants as of July 2013. Interprovincial net migration of people is also a concern. For 11 of the last 15 years, when net interprovincial migration has been negative, it has been negative for 14 years for the 15 to 19 age group, and it has always been negative for the 20 to 29 age group. We need to get younger, stronger, and better trained. The expression of interest model will help in that process.
For this reason, Merit Canada supports the expression of interest model. We believe the program will improve the quality of skilled workers through its pre-application stage followed by an application by invitation to the best candidates. These candidates will provide vital information about their skills and experience, and they will be ranked, sorted, searched, and processed in an expedited manner.
We know that the current criteria for assessing economic-class immigrants are heavily weighted towards managerial, professional, or entrepreneurial skills and education, as opposed to technical or trade-related skills and education that might be in greater demand. For example, to gain the maximum 25 points in the educational component of the point system requires a Ph.D. or master's degree and at least 17 years of full-time study. In comparison, an applicant with apprenticeship training and at least 12 years of full-time study would be awarded only 12 points.
We know applicants to the skilled trades program will not have to meet the criteria of the point system used for the rest of the federal skilled worker category. It is expected that the new program will instead give weight to applicants who have a job offer in Canada, can prove they recently worked in the trade, and can show that their occupation falls within the federal trade classification system.
The EOI model will do a much better job of involving employers in selecting the immigrants we need as permanent residents so they can come here with jobs prearranged.
We know that some prospective immigrants still living abroad might be intimidated by the idea of finding employment in Canada. The EOI model helps to take this element out of the equation, letting Canadian employers do the work of contacting candidates directly. This is an opportunity for employers and provinces to harness the skills and human resources they need to meet labour demands in all industries.
I have long been a strong advocate of encouraging employers in the private sector to be part of the solution. They must see this as an opportunity to work closely with their provincial partners to better access and employ the skilled workers in the pool. Working with the new expression of interest division will be paramount to the program's success. It is imperative we address these needs now. As Minister Kenney has said, this is the future as opposed to the past.
Of course, employers and provinces will have questions about how the program is deployed. They will ask how will an employer access the pool? What are the priority criteria for each respective province that has existing nominee programs in place? These are all great questions, and hopefully in the coming weeks and months they will be answered through the final rounds of consultation being prepared by government.
Members of the committee, again I thank you for taking the time to listen to my presentation. I proudly represent our association, and I'm happy to answer any of your questions.