Honourable senators, there is quorum. As clerk of your committee, it is my duty to inform you of the unavoidable absence of the chair and deputy chair and to preside over the election of an acting chair. I’m ready to receive a motion to that effect. Are there any nominations?

Senator Clément Gignac.

Are there any other nominations? It is moved by the Honourable Senator Smith that the Honourable Senator Gignac do take the chair of this committee.

Is it your pleasure, honourable senators, to adopt this motion?

Hon. Senators: Agreed.

Agreed. I declare the motion carried.

(Acting Chair) in the chair.

[Translation]

The Acting Chair: Good morning, everyone. Thank you, Madam Clerk.

My name is Clément Gignac, I am a senator from Quebec. I have the pleasure of chairing this meeting in the absence of our chair.

I’d now like to ask our colleagues to introduce themselves, starting on my left, please.

Rosa Galvez, independent senator from Quebec.

[English]

Jane MacAdam, Prince Edward Island.

Senator Tony Loffreda, independent senator from Montreal, Quebec.

Larry Smith, Quebec, home of the Grey Cup champions in Montreal.

Elizabeth Marshall, Newfoundland and Labrador.

[Translation]

Senator Dagenais, from Quebec.

The Acting Chair: Honourable senators, today we resume our study of Bill C-241, An Act to amend the Income Tax Act (deduction of travel expenses for tradespersons), which was referred to this committee by the Senate of Canada on June 8, 2023.

[English]

We have the pleasure to welcome Tomi Hulkkonen — I am hoping that I am correctly pronouncing your name — Business Manager for the local Carpenters Union and South-West Ontario Area Manager for the Carpenters Regional Council. Welcome and thank you for accepting our invitation from the Standing Senate Committee on National Finance.

Maybe you could start if you have any opening remarks. After that, it will be followed by questions from around the table. Welcome.

Good morning. I’d like to thank the honourable senators for allowing me the opportunity today to appear before committee as a witness in your study of Bill C-241.

My name is Tomi Hulkkonen, and I’m a representative of the Carpenters’ Regional Council, a council of trade unions comprised of all the locals of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America across Central, Western and Northern Canada. In total, the United Brotherhood of Carpenters represents over 70,000 men and women of the carpenters’ union who work in the trades all over the country.

Today, I stand before you as an individual tradesperson. My family and my birth country of Finland are several generations of tradespeople: brick masons, mechanics, carpenters and electricians. I came to Canada at a young age, but worked in construction during my summers overseas while in high school and learned to love working with my hands and solving problems.

As a tradesperson myself, I’m especially proud to speak to the committee about the impact that this bill will have on the lives of my fellow tradespeople.

I believe the argument in favour of passing Bill C-241 can be broken down into three key areas: parity, cost and mobility for current and future skilled tradespeople.

The skilled trades industry is one of the only industries in our country that does not cover travel expenses over large distances for employees as it relates to their work. Salaried employees across Canada can enter a claim under the Income Tax Act and be compensated for part or all of their work-related travel expenses, and for food, lodging and transportation.

This policy is effective for workers across most industries as travelling for work in other industries is usually for extended periods of time and across longer distances that rule out the possibility of commuting by car. However, our industry is unique in that many tradespeople, especially in rural parts of Canada, are required to travel to job sites over 120 kilometres away from their ordinary place of residence on a daily basis to get to and from work. By nature of being in this industry, tradespeople go where the work is. Certain regions have more employment opportunities than others at certain points in time, and this changes with levels of infrastructure investment. Once a project has finished being built, they will begin working on the next one, often in a completely different area.

Even if a tradesperson were to remain with the same employer for their entire career, it’s conceivable that they could work on tens or even hundreds of job sites over that duration across multiple regions.

Although some workers will regularly fly in to perform work in isolated communities for two to three weeks at a time on what are known as “camp jobs,” the vast majority of the work in our industry involves travel, which actually requires travelling to and from the job site on the same day. This doesn’t meet the current eligibility conditions set out in the Income Tax Act or fall under the temporary relocations that the Labour Mobility Deduction for Tradespeople applies to.

This is regular daily work for many, and the cost to them is excessive. Compensation for tradespeople working regularly in regions outside their place of ordinary residence would bring parity for skilled trades workers. They are essential to Canada’s economic development and the least they expect is to be recognized as such alongside other industries. Our elected and appointed officials enjoy these benefits, just as I enjoy them today. The people who build our country should enjoy them too.

Further, not having recourse to compensation is placing an undue burden on our skilled trades workers. The cost of food, lodging, gas and repairs associated with travelling long distances all add up. For far too long, these workers have been paying out of pocket for these expenses.

My oldest son Theo is a carpenter apprentice who went to work on large projects in northern Ontario when work slowed down at home. He had to drive almost 1,000 kilometres each way and was out of pocket for his food, vehicle expenses and lodging, with no way to recuperate these costs, just to be able to work. His story is similar to thousands of tradespeople today and many who are not able to financially justify these additional costs.

Tradespeople are building the infrastructure that will take our country forward. From solving Canada’s housing crisis to building the infrastructure necessary to facilitate a green energy transition, this work is essential for all current and future Canadians. The status quo is prohibitive to the skilled trades and has the potential to prevent much of this work from being performed.

Finally, it is necessary to consider the need for increased labour mobility and the impact this has on solving Canada’s skilled trades shortage. To build the infrastructure our country needs, the movement of tradespeople across regions is necessary. This is essential for both people travelling to larger metropolitan areas for work as well as those required to perform work in remote locations.

In rural communities, there are often limited work opportunities for tradespeople that live there. Local projects are infrequent, and to fill in these employment gaps these workers need to travel large distances outside their community. Failure to do so will result in the loss of their primary source of income and this places rural Canadians at a huge disadvantage. It is also a deterrent for people in smaller communities from getting into the skilled trades if the travel required to perform work is prohibitively expensive. The ability to write off travel expenses will increase accessibility to newcomers joining our industry.

The same can be said in the reverse for workers in larger areas who are required to travel to smaller communities to build infrastructure projects there. These jobs include hydroelectric dams, mines, schools, hospitals and other essential services in isolated communities that desperately need access to them.

Infrastructure targets, such as the federal government’s goal of connecting 100% of Canadians by 2030, cannot be expected to be achieved if our workers have to pay out of pocket to perform this work. We cannot afford to leave rural communities behind by making the work there inaccessible due to cost.

As you can see, I’m strongly in favour of Bill C-241 being passed. For decades, our industry has been underfunded, and we are seeing the consequences now as we lack the workers to build the infrastructure Canada so critically needs. I encourage the committee to come together in support of this non-partisan bill to help the skilled tradespeople who build our country by giving them parity with other industries, reducing their out-of-pocket cost to perform essential work and increasing their mobility while boosting accessibility for the next generation to get into the trades. Thank you.

[Translation]

The Acting Chair: Thank you, Mr. Hulkkonen, for your opening statement.

I’d like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the presence of our colleague Senator Pate, who has just joined us.

[English]

Good morning.

We will now proceed to the question period.

I’d like to point out to senators that they have five minutes for the first round of questions. There will no doubt be a second round.

I ask senators to put their questions directly to the witnesses and for the witnesses to answer succinctly.

The clerk will notify me when time is up.

Thank you, Mr. Hulkkonen, for being here this morning. Your opening remarks were excellent and you answered almost all of my questions, but I still have a few more.

You mentioned that you represent 70,000 members. When we had the Department of Finance officials here, we were interested in getting some data from them with regard to the 2022 amendment, the mobility tax credit, and they couldn’t provide us with any data as to how many people took advantage of it and how many people maxed out at the $4,000.

Do you have any information on your members in terms of how extensive the use of the 2022 amendment was?

I don’t have access to that information now. When people do their personal taxes, I’m not usually notified of what they fill in. If there are questions on that that our members have, I would answer them, but at this point, I don’t have any data.

Okay. So you don’t have any sense as to how extensively it was used or nobody commented on the $4,000 maximum amount? Because that would be changed in Bill C-241.

The only comment I had was from a member who worked in northern Ontario and said the $4,000 didn’t get him very far.

Okay. That’s a good comment.

We all see where flights are priced today and the cost of fuel and travel. It won’t get you very far.

You touched on it in your opening remarks, but what will this bill do for your members that the 2022 amendments to the Income Tax Act didn’t do for them? I’m just trying to get a comparison as to how beneficial this bill will be for your workers.

First of all, this is a tax deduction that doesn’t have a limit. I can tell you personally, from my own son, he was out of pocket probably about $15,000 with no way to write that off. So it’s a huge thing, especially for an apprentice coming up in a trade, to be able to recuperate those costs.