Supporting a bill that would bring transparency to union funds

Guest Column | Jim Laurence
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It's been a year since Merit Canada - the voice of Canada's open shop construction sector - ramped up its efforts to make its voice heard on the national scene.

Those efforts are already having an impact, with changes that will benefit everyone in construction moving forward.

One of our key challenges is building a level playing field for construction companies – one where union affiliation or the lack of it isn’t a roadblock or an express lane to getting work.

At its core, Merit Canada wants the best bid to get the job.

Merit Canada has been supporting South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale MP Russ Hiebert in his efforts to pass a bill that would bring transparency to union funds.

If the bill is passed, unions will have to make public their finances. This transparency includes assets, liabilities, expenses and salaries of officials.

That would bring them in line with charities and Aboriginal organizations, which get federal tax treatment similar to unions, but with much more transparency.

The proposed changes in Hiebert’s bill go a long way toward restoring the rights of workers to know and control how their dues are spent and that’s good for unionized companies. It would also empower workers to make more informed decisions about their preference for representation.

We’ve helped build support for this important legislation and we’ll keep spreading the word across Canada.

Transparency is important in union funds – just like skills training and needs are so important to building a construction industry ready for tomorrow.

Merit has seen results on this front with the defunding of the old Construction Sector Council (CSC) late last year.

When it came to the CSC’s main task, collecting information on construction labour trends, the body was a failure.

The makeup of the board did not reflect the construction industry, and the information it collected failed to meet the needs of the vast majority of the industry.

Our organization is playing a key role in the next step – working with a construction stakeholder group to help design a system that gets our industry the Labour Market Information (LMI) it needs, while at the same time making sure that information meets the needs of all construction companies. That market information is key because it helps drive government policy makers to develop programs and services that will now serve the entire industry.

Another key component in making sure construction has the pool of skilled workers it needs is immigration.

Over the next decade, we’re going to need at least 320,000 construction workers across Canada and our industry training can only meet part of that.

That’s why Merit Canada is lobbying the federal government to make sure immigration policy meets the economic needs of our country. We can do this by making the skilled trades a desired class of immigrant.

Current regulations favour immigrants with high academic qualifications over those with professional skills and achievements.

Less that 0.2 per cent of immigrants admitted each year into Canada are skilled construction workers or construction professionals, even though the construction industry employs more than eight per cent of Canada’s labour force.

Merit Canada is working to have the federal government fix the process so the construction industry can bring in the skilled immigrants we need. All these issues and more will be front and centre when Merit Canada brings together the open shop construction family at our biannual conference.

Companies from across Canada and the U.S. will get together for the 7th International Open Shop Conference slated for May 31 to June 1 in Ottawa. They will talk about the issues our industry faces and how we can tackle them together. More information is available at Jim Laurence is the chairman of the board of Merit Canada, the national voice of Canada’s eight provincial open-shop construction associations and their 3,500 member companies and 60,000 employees. Send comments or questions to editor@journalofcommerce.com