Unifor is Canada's largest union in the private sector, representing 320,000 workers from coast to coast to coast. Unifor members are present in key industries where the energy transition is already underway and the frontlines of the profound impacts of the current trade war with the United States.
The unravelling of our trade relationship with the United States compels us to act decisively. The chaotic diplomacy of the Trump Administration should encourage Canada to build up economic capacity where Canadians possess both agency and an existing industrial base to rely upon. This capacity‑building goal dovetails with the inherent purpose of the Sustainable Jobs Action Plan (SJAP).
The SJAP held much promise when it was introduced, both as a means to chart a viable course towards net‑zero that would maintain good union jobs and as a way of bolstering the strength of Canada's economy through social dialogue and worker‑led strategies. Unfortunately, progress on implementing this promise has been too slow, leading to doubts about whether priorities for the SJAP and Sustainable Jobs Partnership Council will be maintained under the current federal government.
In the lead‑up to the consultations on just transition legislation and what would eventually become the SJAP, labour unions across Canada had called for the development of robust industrial strategies to develop a whole‑of‑supply chain approach to restoring manufacturing capacity in Canada, underscoring the need to address the energy transition while fostering sustainable, good union jobs. Despite this longstanding call for government to play a more active role in shaping a net‑zero economy, creating quality jobs, and developing a helpful new vocabulary and policy positioning for industrial policy interventions, governments at all levels are moving slowly to deliver industrial strategies designed to reach the long‑term goals of the SJAP and ensure that the economy is more robust in the face of external shocks such as the current trade war with the United States.
The current trade war has also highlighted the need for the SJAP to broaden its scope. Unifor continues to underscore the importance of addressing not just the energy sector but other key industries, including automotive and aerospace manufacturing, forestry, metals, mining, transportation, utilities, etc. Moreover, economic transformations will come about not only due to the need to mitigate carbon‑intensive emissions but also due to other environmental protections, e.g., to protect biodiversity, which means expanding the concept of transition.
The SJAP must further prioritize the maintenance of existing jobs, especially good union jobs, rather than simply understanding just transition in the context of a shift to new jobs in new sectors. Unifor has emphasized the distinction between compensatory strategies, which aim to mitigate the negative impacts of job loss, and transformative strategies that aim to keep workers employed while helping their workplaces successfully adapt to the transition. Both types of strategies are needed to foster sustainable jobs. A clear example of the importance of both strategies can be seen in Unifor's Keep it in the Pipe campaign developed by Unifor's Energy Council, which aims to simultaneously preserve good union jobs in the energy sector while generating new employment opportunities and reducing carbon‑intensive methane leaks.
As outlined below, these principles should inform a transformation of the government's approach to charting out a path for Canada's economy in an environment marked by a high degree of uncertainty and rapidly evolving trade linkages. The SJAP should play a core role in setting out the markers for success. Industrial strategies that clearly map out realistic economic and environmental goals must be tied to an overhaul of labour market forecasting and a targeted training system based on anticipated labour demand. Delivering on the promise of sustainable jobs ultimately entails government taking on a more active role in concert with both unions and employers to build a responsive, less US‑dependent, more economically and environmentally sustainable Canadian economy.
To advance opportunities for your region/sector and Canada more broadly, what should the 2026-2030 Sustainable Jobs Action Plan prioritize for the next five years? What foundational actions are needed for long‑term success, including to ensure the sustainable jobs legislative principles are applied across government?
In the current context — marked by a major commercial conflict with our largest trading partner and export market — sustainability and sustainable jobs must take on new meaning. Foundational actions must include the establishment of new commercial and ecological sustainability parameters informed by rapidly changing economic and industrial conditions on the ground to help realize the Plan and the Act's original intent.
- First, Canadian industry must transform its decade‑old, outdated understanding of how to leverage our wealth of natural resources and quickly move to reduce its over‑reliance on a predominantly US‑bound, low value‑added, commodity‑based export approach.
- Second, Canadian industry must also reinforce its commitment to extract and transform natural resources according to the highest environmental standards available, keep net‑zero objectives in clear sight, and strive to achieve reconciliation with First Nations.
Unifor firmly believes this overarching strategic shift should be considered a central tenet of the SJAP and that its potential outcomes must positively reflect some of the key priorities identified by the government regarding "supporting Canadian workers and their communities in the shift to a net‑zero economy and to help foster the creation of well‑paying, high‑quality jobs," as well as "establishing a new trade relationship with the United States, strengthening relationships with allies, and expediting projects in the national interest."
As Unifor members know well, employers can innovate and they possess the capital needed to invest in an effective transition that can both preserve and generate good union jobs. However, industry leaders have often proven to be slow or reluctant to change their business models to the detriment of the environment, our collective needs, and ultimately, Canada's economic resilience and competitiveness.
In a challenging fiscal environment and with increasing scrutiny of public investments, we believe the best way for government to engage industry and assist with the development of new sustainable production streams that will benefit Canadian workers and support good union jobs is through priority‑oriented, robust long‑term policy and regulatory action.
Such priorities and the identification of the most desired outcomes should be informed by structured sectoral social dialogue processes that take inspiration from ILO's just transition principles. These processes must remain dynamic, with ongoing monitoring and shared assessment measures.
With regard to Canada's natural resources and its manufacturing base, Unifor continues to strongly advocate for the development of high value‑added production streams; nurturing of stable supply and value chains with an emphasis on preserving national oversight; and increased leveraging of our domestic demand and diversification of our export markets.
These goals are intrinsically linked to the sustainability agenda that informs this consultation. Ultimately, Unifor is calling on the government to send a clear signal to Canadian industries on what its economic and ecological sustainability goals should be. The Canadian government should strive to communicate these priorities clearly and create an environment conducive to fostering best practices from both an economic and environmental standpoint, underpinned by a consistent focus on environmental sustainability and economic resilience.
Acting on these priorities, industry can direct its capital and follow its own strategic objectives, but it will do so in an environment that better reflects Canada's long‑term economic goals and the collective well‑being of Canadian workers. The SJAP can play a pivotal role in establishing such guidelines and fostering the kind of inclusive conversations on policies and regulations that will advance these goals.
To give a concrete example of how such guidelines might take shape, one can look to the forestry sector.
Forestry faces an existential crisis from the 45% U.S. duties and tariffs imposed on Canadian lumber. The sector typically follows less‑than‑optimal commodity price cycles that have resulted in repeated bouts of industry slowdowns that have negatively impacted forestry workers and their often forestry‑dependent communities.
However, the sector also holds immense potential for manufacturing a variety of high value‑added products while also being a renewable resource key to decarbonizing construction. Over the past decades, most policy actions related to this key sector have been limited to managing its decline. Canada can, and should, do better by adopting an ambitious embodied carbon policy framework (including transformative changes to the Canadian Building Code) to massively boost domestic utilization of lumber, mass timber, and engineered wood products. This policy‑dependent outcome can offset declining export access to the U.S., secure good‑paying unionized jobs in rural communities, further our climate objectives, and contribute to economic reconciliation with First Nations communities.
The same type of strategic pivot can and should be explored through the SJAP for a whole host of impact sectors, from auto to aluminum to energy. This should be a key aspect of the work pursued under the Plan.
The short‑term, reactive, often fragmented model we have been pursuing has shown its limits. Ultimately, Canada needs to reset its approach. Reacting to the U.S.-led Inflation Reduction Act and investing in clean technology was warranted, but it simultaneously revealed the limited depth of our strategic long‑term industrial development model as Canada continued to play catch‑up. This needs to change, especially as we face consequential net‑zero and ecosystem preservation challenges.
How do you or your organization currently access and use labour market data, including for future energy planning? What challenges do you face in doing so and what types of data are most valuable to your work or decision‑making? (e.g. geographic level, industries, occupations, demographic groups, other forms of disaggregated data)
While Unifor does not utilize labour market data for future energy planning, we currently publish a monthly review of labour market performance called Labour Market Insights (https://www.unifor.org/resources/labour-market-insights), which relies heavily on Labour Force Survey (LFS) data, including the public use microdata file (PUMF). However, key elements of the LFS survey, including labour market in‑ and out‑flows, job‑to‑job transitions (e.g., labour market "churn"), and visible minority group and immigration status data are unavailable through the PUMF. More granular industry categories beyond the 2‑digit NAICS code level are also absent from the PUMF, which requires purchasing custom tabulations from Statcan to access sub‑industry level data along key variables such as union density.
While sampling errors are an issue at more granular levels, this data should be made available to the public so that more precise determinations about labour market conditions can be made. Labour market and job flow data should be made easily accessible through monthly updated Statcan tables, while a wider range of labour market variables along visible minority group and immigration status demographics should be published and included with the LFS PUMF.
The Bank of Canada has also published a labour market dashboard since 2021 that tracks a number of key monthly indicators to gauge the labour market's recovery from the COVID‑19 pandemic, including some custom calculations such as the job separation rate and market tightness. Given their utility to assessing the health of the labour market, these indicators should be made permanently available through Statcan and expanded so that industry‑level and demographic variables can be specified for each indicator.
What data and information should be a priority for the federal government to analyze or collect to better track existing and future gaps in low‑carbon skills and occupations, and related training?
As Unifor noted in our 2021 submission to the federal just transition consultation, the federal government must improve data collection at the industry and sub‑industry levels to improve sectoral labour market forecasts, while conducting more surveys with employers regarding existing and expected labour shortages and skills gaps.
The need for a broad‑based skills and labour shortage assessment applies not only to burgeoning low‑carbon industries and workplaces but should form part of a broader active labour market policy — accompanied by training and employment insurance (EI) reforms — that aims to improve labour market outcomes for workers and students across the entire Canadian economy.
We further noted in our 2021 submission that what is required to address future skills gaps is a detailed inventory of existing and required skills for particular job roles in high‑demand industries, including those that are anticipated to grow in the future. As outlined below, targeted training based on granular labour market data and empirically grounded predictors of labour demand is required to guide workers to where the jobs will be and to address current skills gaps.
While improving labour market data collection, tracking, and analysis formed one of the ten pillars of the Sustainable Jobs Action Plan, the federal government has yet to meaningfully tackle the absence of reliable skills and jobs gap forecasts.
Unifor also called on the federal government to provide financial and logistical support for site‑specific transition assessments, which would help to determine the most viable path to the implementation of lower‑carbon technologies and operations for key emissions‑intensive industrial sites and installations, while maintaining the existing workforce. The federal government should establish a tripartite body consisting of labour unions, employers, and government representatives to identify key sites where such assessments should be performed, while relying on the frontline knowledge and experiences of both workers and employers regarding day‑to‑day operations. The federal government's recently announced Workforce Alliances may provide a platform for this work, but the terms of reference of the Workforce Alliances should make provision for these sector‑wide, future‑facing assessments.
What are the strengths and weaknesses of existing federal skills training programs to fill specific existing and future skills gaps in critical sectors, including energy, natural resources, low‑carbon and resilience‑enabling sectors? What models or mechanisms do you consider to be the most effective solutions?
Unifor has often highlighted the incoherent and disjointed nature of Canada's skills training programs, which are often remarkably difficult for workers and jobseekers to navigate. As noted above, not only is there an absence of reliable jobs and skills gap forecasting, but also a structural failure to link targeted, forecast‑based skills training to an overarching active labour market policy that would emphasize on‑the‑job retraining while also supporting unemployed jobseekers through more robust EI benefits.
The government has previously touted the importance of one‑stop‑shops for jobseekers and floated the idea of a Sustainable Jobs Training Centre. Such facilities are needed to ensure that existing and future skills gaps can be effectively addressed, but the federal government must also do more to streamline the wide array of diverse training programs and credits currently available to render them more coherent. For example, instead of the Canada Training Credit — which provides insufficient funding and is not based on any assessment of anticipated jobs or skills demands — EI should be reformed to provide robust income replacement to workers who are enrolled in training programs for identified in‑demand jobs and skills.
Unifor supports the Union Training and Innovation Program (UTIP) as a key measure for addressing future skills gaps, including the growing demand for skilled trades across major industries. UTIP funding should be increased while the purview of the program should be expanded to include regional peer‑to‑peer union support for both union and non‑union workers that require assistance with job search and retraining, career counselling, and mental health supports. Unifor's success developing regional action centres, particularly within the auto sector, has illustrated the importance of peer‑to‑peer supports for successful job transitions.
The federal government's announcement in September of a $50 million investment in its online job tools included some promising measures such as matching applicants to jobs based on their skill profile and a mechanism for employers to highlight applicants' skills gaps (provided that employers in fact make use of this utility). However, it simultaneously takes us further down the road of incoherence through an online training platform that once again puts the onus on applicants to navigate the skills training maze and figure out for themselves which skills will be in demand. The integration of AI and private job‑search companies into this modernization process along with a tacit approval of AI‑enabled recruitment is also worrisome, particularly in light of well‑established tendencies for AI and recruitment algorithms to replicate systemic forms
