Sunday, August 27, 2023

Creating Healthy, Safe, and Livable Communities

Ontario is going to depend heavily on skilled construction workers in the coming years to restore, expand, and improve our cities and towns

Newsletters Ontario Construction

By Ian DeWaard, Ontario Director

This past summer, I had the privilege of representing CLAC at the annual conference of the Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO). For 4 days, more than 2,000 delegates from 443 Ontario municipalities convened to discuss common issues and meet with Ontario’s MPPs and provincial bureaucrats.

Issues that topped the agenda for elected officials included housing supply, transit, healthcare, and municipal infrastructure. What struck me most this year was just how intertwined CLAC members are with the priorities of Ontario’s cities.

Your work was on display throughout the AMO conference. Members are building supportive housing for people at risk of homelessness. In the host city, London, members are part of two of that city’s largest-ever transit projects, the Adelaide Street underpass and Victoria Street bridge.

Across the province, members are building and expanding water and wastewater treatment plants and pumping stations and updating utility transportation networks. At one presentation, hosted by NAC, an innovative project delivery model that members have been part of across Canada was featured, demonstrating how cities can achieve on-time and on-budget project delivery.

And, of course, from Windsor to Oshawa, from Fort Erie to Barrie, members are delivering the ready-mixed concrete that is essential for municipal infrastructure and housing developments. All in all, it was an impressive collection of CLAC projects on display, and it’s a point of pride that your work is a catalyst for vibrant, healthy, and fast-growing municipalities.

We continue to hear that municipalities are struggling with depressed municipal assets and a backlog of infrastructure update. They also have explosive population growth, fuelled in large part by immigration.

In 2022, Ontario’s population grew by 484,800. If this trend continues, it will mean adding the equivalent of close to two new cities the size of Toronto over the next 10 years.

CLAC’s unique and progressive approach to collective bargaining, and our collaborative approach to labour relations, means that our workplaces are well suited for the work ahead. Individualized collective agreements, in which members have real input and impact on how those contracts are negotiated, create an inherent flexibility and adaptability that nonunion and Building Trades contractors don’t experience.

CLAC members tend to stay with their employers for longer periods of time than is the case with other unions, which, among other things, can lead to effective work teams that can achieve higher quality and more efficient output.

Our multiskilling approach to work and training enables members to develop and use a greater range of skills and to travel more freely—something that other unions don’t allow because of the craft jurisdictions and hiring hall obligations. As well, CLAC contractors tend to offer higher overall earning potential.

Ontario is going to depend heavily on skilled construction workers in the coming years to restore, expand, and improve our cities and towns. CLAC members are already serving their communities in important ways, and they will continue to be integral to creating healthy, safe, and livable cities for tomorrow.

Creating Healthy, Safe, and Livable Communities

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