this post was submitted on 09 Apr 2024
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Construction labour in Canada is near 100% utilization in Canada. There is no glut of qualified construction tradespeople just sitting around waiting for funding. So on its own without qualification the answer to your question is approximately zero more homes than would otherwise be built.
We should prioritise immigrants with construction skills then. There should be some within the hundreds of thousands of applicants.
Why are we not training more construction workers? Do they expect the immigration growth will bring the houses with them?
If you look here, you'll see that all the trades involved in housing construction are on the list for fast-track immigration already.
As for training, we may find that it's more the number of people leaving the trades that is the problem. It's not that the pay is bad, exactly, but it's an industry extremely prone to boom/bust cycles. People leave for jobs with some sense of stability. Increasing unionization and enhancing EI might be more cost effective than funding more training.
Having done it m youth it is also very hard on your body. Not everyone can do it for decades on end as injuries can pile up. My father was an electrician for 30 yrs but eventually his knees gave out on him and his hands. He used to have forearms like Popeye but now has difficulty gripping anything because of repetitive injury to his thumbs.
Thats interesting, wasn't aware of the cyclical nature! I thought that construction happens all year round? Or is it due to poor staffing?
Construction is heaaaavily influenced seasonally. Thats obviously largely dependent on the field of construction (ie residential, commercial, heavy construction, underground, factory, etc)
A large number of the contractors I work with either lay everyone off, or fully shut down over the winter. As soon as things start freezing, construction costs skyrocket. Daylight hours mean fewer working hours (unless you want to provide sufficient lighting, which is another expense), quarries and pits close, concrete requires winter heat and heating for the first 3 days to sufficiently cure, etc.
Additionally, construction is very boom/bust, where the rest of the economy impacts how much work is available for them. Right now, theres a huge demand. But go back and theres been two or three big slow downs in the residential construction industry in the last 15 years, which pushes people to other jobs (as mentioned by the other poster). When the economy is slow, there's less investment in infrastructure by corporations, meaning there's less demand for factory/commercial construction, and the host of trades that go with it.
Trades are a specific job that often have lots of working experience, so when a good quality tradesperson leaves, its hard to get the experience and knowledge to replace them effectively.
Very interesting! Seasonality is interesting, I assumed construction could still happen in winter, but higher cost definitely makes sense in terms of effectively reducing it to a minimum level.
Sad that economy plays a big role in terms of essentially laying off a lot of workers (forcing some to quit the industry). I wonder if that also applies to the manufacturing and car industry too
Wouldn't that be due to the weather?
True but there are other ways to spend money that doesn't involve having more construction happening at once. For example, buying land to be used for non-market housing. This one taken seriously would dry up the whole 73B already. Buy already built properties, give more financial incentives for multi-family housing, etc. There's a long list of things of expensive solutions waiting.
Send that money to provinces tied to strict usage rules towards transit oriented development and non-market housing. For example, Translink needs funding and expanding mass transit is one way to improve the housing crisis.