“I want the House to pass this bill. It makes it easier for skilled trades workers to move and work across different provinces without losing their certification. This will help fill job shortages, especially in rural areas, while still respecting provincial rules and safety standards.”

“Mr. Speaker, before I start talking today about Bill C-266, I would like to first take a moment to thank all the wonderful people in South Shore—St. Margarets. It was wonderful to be back home in the riding over the summer, getting out into our communities, meeting with constituents, listening to their concerns and celebrating the incredible work happening across the south shore. It was also a real privilege to help deliver some exciting investments to our communities, including $6.2 million to the Lunenburg Opera House and over $15 million to Hawboldt Industries, which received the Davie contract. Of course, I loved getting out to meet our students in the Canada summer jobs program, where young people are gaining valuable experience, building confidence and contributing to their communities. I want to thank everyone who opened their doors, shared their stories, invited me into their workplaces and to their community events, and reminded me every day why I am here to serve. I am grateful to be back, and I am excited to bring the voices of South Shore—St. Margarets to Ottawa. I am pleased to rise today to speak on behalf of Bill C-266 and to the importance of making it easier for skilled trades workers to take their skills, experience and hard work with them wherever opportunity exists in this country. I would like to thank my colleague, the member for Richmond East—Steveston, for the bill. At its heart, the bill is about something very simple: opportunity. It is about making sure that if a Canadian has the skills and training to do a job in one province, unnecessary administrative and regulatory barriers do not prevent that person from doing the same job in another province. Bill C-266 proposes the development of a national framework on skilled trades and labour mobility. The objective is to reduce barriers, improve credential recognition, identify those equivalencies between jurisdictions and find, as I said before, opportunities to harmonize certification processes. Importantly, this is not about Ottawa telling provinces how to regulate their skilled trades. It is about governments working together. It is about provinces and territories, industries, unions, apprenticeship organizations, indigenous partners, employers and training institutions sitting at that same table and asking one very practical question: “How do we make it easier for Canadians to work?” That question matters enormously in a country as large and diverse as Canada. I come to this conversation with a very different professional background from many of the members of the House. Before becoming a member of Parliament, I was a teacher. I spent many years working in the education system, including as a high school principal. One of the things that experience taught me is that when we talk about workplace development, we cannot start at the point where someone wants to get onto the job site. We have to start much earlier. We have to start with the young people. We have to start with the students sitting in a classroom wondering what kind of future is possible for them. We have to start with the young person who is incredibly capable with their hands and who can build, fix, design, operate, and solve problems but who might not see themselves already reflected in a traditional academic pathway. We have to make sure young people understand that there are many different ways to build a successful life here in Canada. A good education system should not tell every student that success means following the exact same path. It should open doors, and that means universities, colleges, apprenticeships, skilled trades, entrepreneurship and technology. It means creating opportunities. There is a theme here for young Canadians to develop skills that are valued in their communities across this country. I represent South Shore—St. Margarets. It is a beautiful riding, but it is also a riding that knows very well the challenges that come with being rural. Young people have enormous potential. We have people who are working in construction, transportation, marine industries, forestry, fisheries, energy and manufacturing. I could go on. We have small business owners who are looking for workers, and there are communities that need housing. Infrastructure needs to be built, and we have employers who tell us that finding people with the right skills is one of the biggest challenges. At the same time, we have young people who are asking themselves whether they can build a future in the community where they grew up. That is an important question, because if a young person has to leave their community to find opportunity, sometimes they never come back. What does that mean to a rural community? It loses more than just a young worker. It loses volunteers, parents, future business owners, coaches and community leaders, and we lose people who would eventually become the next generation of teachers, tradespeople, nurses, entrepreneurs and public servants. Therefore, when we talk about building Canada’s workforce, we have to talk at the same time about building strong communities. That is why labour mobility matters, but it is also why education and training matter. I am a former member of HUMA, which completed a study on youth employment. One of the lessons that came through very clearly is that young people do not experience the labour market in the same way that many of us did growing up. There are young people who are ready to enter that workforce but cannot find the first opportunity. There are young people who have the education but not the experience that employers might be looking for. There are young people who need access to training, and, most important, there are young people in rural and remote communities who face additional barriers simply because of geography. There are many young people who have the trades, but they also need a pathway to put those to work, and that is what the bill would try to do. The last point is particularly important, because when we talk about the skilled trades, we talk about how we can train people. We encourage through apprenticeships, we invest in education, and we can help young people enter the workforce, but if unnecessary barriers prevent these workers from taking their skills where they are needed, we have not solved that problem. We have simply moved the problem, kicking the can down the road. Canada’s workforce needs to be flexible. A worker in Nova Scotia might have an opportunity in Alberta, a worker in Quebec might have an opportunity in British Columbia, and a worker in Newfoundland and Labrador might have the skills that are desperately needed in other parts of the country. All Canadians should be able to make these choices. That does not mean we eliminate the safety standards. It does not mean that we lower training requirements. It does not mean that we undermine provincial authority. It does not mean that every certification system needs to be identical. What it does mean, though, is that we should be asking whether these differences between jurisdictions are genuinely necessary or whether they come from simply creating duplication and the old red tape that we talk about a lot in the chamber. Bill C-266 takes a framework approach to this problem. It proposes mapping equivalencies across jurisdictions. It proposes identifying opportunities for harmonization. It proposes modernizing certification processes, and it proposes bringing the right people together to have these conversations. That is important because the young people who understand these barriers best are the ones who encounter them. Unions also understand the importance of safety, wages and working conditions. Provincial regulators understand their responsibilities. Indigenous communities and organizations have important perspectives on workforce development and economic participation. Governments have the responsibility to bring these voices together. I also want to emphasize what the bill would not do. It would not override provincial authority, and that matters. Provinces and territories have important responsibilities when it comes to training, certification and labour market regulation. These responsibilities must be protected. The strength of the bill is that it would recognize that reality but would also recognize something else, which is that the labour market does not stop at a provincial border.”

“I want the House to pass this bill. It makes it easier for skilled trades workers to have their qualifications recognized across all provinces so they can move and work where they are needed.”

“Mr. Speaker, it is wonderful to be back in this place with my colleagues after an important summer of conversations in our communities. One of the conversations that came up quite often was from young people from different parts of the country who were in my riding of Vancouver Granville and from some of my constituents who had been travelling across the country over the summer. The theme that kept coming up, particularly from some of the folks in the skilled trades, was that they would love to be able to work in other parts of the country. In fact, I was speaking to a young man from Montreal who said that he would love to be able to work in British Columbia for four or five years, but his credentials are not recognized. This is something that a lot of us hear in our communities from Canadians from coast to coast to coast who want to work in different parts of the country and be able to use the skills they have obtained and the education they have. This is what my friend from Richmond East—Steveston aims to solve through his private member’s bill. This bill is really about three things. It is about modernizing, harmonizing and streamlining credential recognition across this country. We spend incredible amounts of time training people in this country across the provinces in the skills and trades we need from coast to coast to coast, yet barriers created through regulations sometimes make it difficult for folks to take advantage of that and truly celebrate being able to work anywhere in this country. We know there is a need for qualified professionals to work where their skills are needed, and this bill would help to deliver on our commitment to break down internal trade barriers and recognize that Canada can give itself, as the Prime Minister said, “far more than anyone else can take away.” When we think about this moment for Canada, we recognize that we are being challenged by our neighbours to the south. We have opportunities presented to us through global partnerships, through increasing trade and through looking at how we develop our sectors here at home. One of the most important elements of that is ensuring that Canadian workers have the ability to work in whatever part of this country they desire, using the skills and knowledge they have and ensuring that their credentials are recognized across this country. It seems very simple, and indeed it is. It is a concept about which any of us who are proudly Canadian would ask, “How we can make sure that skills obtained in British Columbia are transferable to Quebec, Ontario or Atlantic Canada, and vice versa?” If we are serious about economic development in this country, increasing productivity, building the infrastructure we need and competitiveness, it is private members’ bills like this one and decisions like this that will help propel our economy forward. We all know that improved labour mobility ensures that skilled labour shortages, particularly in the housing and infrastructure sectors, can be addressed. For those who have concerns, this bill is not about overreach, but rather about coordination and collaboration. As the member for Richmond East—Steveston has said, this bill would help allow a young person trained in Ontario to be part of the national shipbuilding strategy in Vancouver, or vice versa. When we think about what we are doing, we are spending time, effort, energy and resources to ensure that we are training workers from coast to coast to coast. We announced that we would be modernizing and boosting apprenticeship training in this country to expedite Red Seal certification, with over $330 million in funding over five years. We are digitizing the Red Seal program, introducing online exams and digital logbooks and securing credentials to reduce certification timelines, including by creating a single national registered apprenticeship number. We are also expanding union training and innovation programs to enable union-run training centres to upgrade facilities, expand capacity and invest in modern equipment. These are all steps that require us to work together across the federation. These are all steps that work toward building a Canada strong. When we look at the future of this country, we know there is an imperative right now to build our east-west economy. We know there is an imperative to be able to trade across this country, to have workers move from any part of this country to another to work, and to ensure that what is getting built in one part of the country benefits the country regardless of whether it is in one province or another. That happens by ensuring that when we are building a one Canadian economy, the workers who reside at the heart of that one Canadian economy have the mobility they need, and the time and effort that have been put in and the investments that have been made through tax dollars so these workers are well-trained are put to good use in the parts of the country that need those workers the most. That mobility must be as seamless as possible, and the flexibility of movement must be there for Canadians. It should not be easier for a Canadian from British Columbia or Quebec to move to a different country. It should be easy for them to move across this country to do the work they want to do in helping to build this country and build our economy strong. The realities workers face right now are real. Workers across this country, whether they are working in the softwood lumber industry, in manufacturing in Ontario or in smelters, are challenged. They are looking for ways for government to step up and make their lives easier. One of those ways, I believe, is for them to find and get work anywhere in this country and use the credentials they have without the onerous process of being certified again. People have put in the time, effort and energy to train up. It is not their fault if through tariffs an industry or a sector is hit hard in a particular part of the country. It should not be their fault that they cannot move to another part of this country where a job is available, only to know that their credentials will not be recognized because of a system that prevents that. This bill would enable those barriers to come down. It would enable those workers to take on more, to serve this country through their work, to be taxpaying citizens, to help boost the economy and to build the things we need in this country. This is on us. We have powers in this legislature, in this place, to make these changes and make the lives of Canadians better. The changes that are being proposed are real. They are meaningful, and they are a process of collaboration. They are about collaboration and working together. They are not about overreach. They are not about taking power away from provinces. They are not about diminishing regions. They are not about minimizing anybody’s ability to feel like their province or region matters. It is quite the opposite. They are about ensuring that the regions, provinces and territories that need workers can attract those workers, that those workers can thrive, that those workers have mobility and that they have the freedom in this country to truly participate in the economy. That is not a lot to ask. It is not a lot for workers to ask. It is not a lot for Canadians to ask of us, and it requires us to come together. It requires us to work with labour unions. It requires us to work across jurisdictions. It requires us to hear one another through that process. What it boils down to is doing the thing that Canadians have asked of us, not just of this government, but of all parliamentarians. It’s about doing the things that are required to build a strong economy, to reduce the barriers that currently prevent workers from doing the things they need to be able to do, to promote businesses’ ability to hire, to enable businesses to contribute to the economy, to reduce the barriers and friction that businesses are currently feeling and, most importantly, to ensure that we are building a truly east-west economy in this country and that workers are at the heart of it. We know that the north-south economy right now, with our partners to the south, is hard. It is difficult. Relations are strained. We all know that, but it is an opportunity for us to make sure that moving across this country east to west or west to east is easy, that we give Canadians the tools they need and that we give Canadians the types of decisions from this government and in this Parliament that allow them to move freely and work freely across this country. That is incumbent on all of us. This is the moment to put aside the “yes but” way of thinking about things and look at the world by saying “yes and”. Yes, we can do this, and we can protect workers. Yes, we can do this, and we can protect regional economies. “Yes and” is how big things are going to get built in this country, acknowledging that not everything we have in our path forward is perfect. We will build by working together, by reducing barriers across provinces and territories and by ensuring that workers from coast to coast to coast have the ability to be mobile and use the skills and credentials they have, whether it is in British Columbia, Quebec, Atlantic Canada, the Prairies or the north, and can move freely and work freely to build the country they want to build, to build here and to have jobs that pay well to put food on the tables for their families. This is something we can and must do, and I encourage all members of the House to support this bill.”

“I want the House to pass my bill and send it to committee. It creates a national plan so skilled trades workers can easily work across different provinces. Schools and industry groups support this bill because it will fix worker shortages and help build homes and infrastructure.”

“Mr. Speaker, I thank my friends from Vancouver Granville and South Shore—St. Margarets and my colleagues across the way for their passionate support for the skilled trades and workers. It is a great honour to rise in the House after a productive recess spent working closely with constituents and stakeholders. I am particularly pleased that my bill is being debated on the first day of this new session. During the recess, I took the time to visit educational institutions and trade associations to talk with them about Bill C-266, an act to establish a national framework respecting skilled trades and labour mobility. Kwantlen Polytechnic University, in my hometown of Richmond, said this bill is a step toward national harmonization and would make it easier for qualified tradespeople to move fluidly between jurisdictions without administrative friction. By modernizing how qualifications are recognized across provincial borders, the legislation would support secondary institutions like KPU to deliver training that meets the dynamic needs of Canada’s economy. Polytechnics Canada supports this bill as well, telling me, “At a time of ongoing labour shortages, improving the harmonization and recognition of skilled trades qualifications across provinces and territories will make it easier for workers to take their skills where they are most needed.” However, it does not end with educational institutions. The Canadian Construction Association welcomes Bill C-266 and the development of a national framework to modernize, streamline and harmonize skilled trade certification processes. Canada’s construction industry is held back by a fragmented internal market where labour mobility restrictions create costly barriers for workers and employers alike. These inefficiencies limit economies of scale, slow innovation and suppress productivity growth at a time when the country urgently needs to build more critical infrastructure. Unlocking internal trade requires harmonizing credentials and meaningful engagement with the construction industry to develop solutions that work on the ground. The Mechanical Contractors Association of Canada also supports Bill C-266 and its vision for a national framework on mutual recognition and labour mobility. For plumbers and electricians working across provinces, inconsistent certification and training requirements continue to create inefficiencies, unnecessary administrative burdens, cost overruns and project delays. Improving alignment and mutual recognition across jurisdictions through a coordinated national framework would support a more efficient and productive construction environment. They are encouraged by the bill’s focus on collaboration across industry, labour and provincial governments and look forward to the opportunity to contribute their expertise to this framework. Abigail Fulton, executive director of the Construction Foundation, sees first-hand the value of reducing barriers to certification and creating clearer pathways for skilled workers. Canada needs a skilled trades workforce that can move where the work is, but mobility works best when workers are supported to successfully complete their apprenticeships and achieve certification. Bill C-266 would provide an important opportunity for a national conversation about how we strengthen skilled trades mobility while building the certified workforce Canada needs to deliver housing, infrastructure and major projects. As a former aircraft maintenance engineer, I am grateful that the executive director of the British Columbia Aviation Council is fully supportive of Bill C-266, saying that it is a positive step toward labour mobility in Canada, and is reaching out to its two dozen counterpart associations across the country to solicit additional support. The time has come to complete the work that started 30 years ago on the Agreement on Internal Trade, now the Canadian Free Trade Agreement. We can no longer afford to restrict skilled trade workers to guard regional interests. Governments and regulators must come together and respect the training and experience of Canadian workers. This is about unlocking the potential of the next generation of young Canadians, empowering them to pursue rewarding careers, strengthening our workforce, growing our economy and building a stronger Canada. I look forward to seeing this bill at committee and hearing from experts on the need to harmonize credential recognition from coast to coast to coast.”