HANSARD

and

Printed and Published by Nova Scotia Hansard Reporting Services

STANDING COMMITTEE ON HUMAN RESOURCES

Mr. Keith Colwell (Chairman)

Hon. David Morse

Mr. Alfred MacLeod

Mr. Chuck Porter

Mr. Charles Parker

Ms. Joan Massey

Mr. Clarrie MacKinnon

Ms. Diana Whalen

Mr. Leo Glavine

In Attendance:

Mrs. Darlene Henry

Legislative Committee Clerk

Mr. Gordon Hebb

Chief Legislative Counsel

WITNESSES

Nova Scotia Home Builders' Association

Mr. Michael Senz

President, Central Nova Local

Mr. Paul Pettipas

Chief Executive Officer

Ms. Sherry Donovan

Communications Director

Atlantic Home Building & Renovation Sector Council

Mr. Michael Montgomery

Executive Director

Mr. Peter Greenwood

Board Member/Vice President, Clayton Development

HALIFAX, TUESDAY, MAY 29, 2007

STANDING COMMITTEE ON HUMAN RESOURCES

9:00 A.M.

CHAIRMAN

Mr. Keith Colwell

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please. I'd like to welcome everybody here this morning and welcome to our guests. We are going to make some appointments before we start your presentation, so I will go around the table with our members to do introductions.

[The committee members introduced themselves.]

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you. We will start with the appointments and the first one we have is with Community Services Round Table on Early Childhood Development. Do I have a motion on this appointment?

HON. DAVID MORSE: Mr. Chairman, I would be pleased to nominate Sandra Doucette as a member of the Community Services Round Table on Early Childhood Development.

MR. ALFRED MACLEOD: I second it.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.

The motion is carried.

The Department of Education, Apprenticeship Board. If there are no objections we will move them en bloc. Any objections? I would entertain a motion to move the people to be appointed.

MS. JOAN MASSEY: Mr. Chairman, one little comment before we vote on that one. I did notice that there were 13 males and only two females who applied, and I was a bit surprised because it was the Department of Education which I would have thought would have had more of an even application, but anyway I just wanted to throw that out there.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Maybe if I could make a comment on my past history before I got involved in politics. Unfortunately - and I'm only saying this from an employer's standpoint - it is very difficult to get women to work in the trades, and hopefully we will see more and more in that and, as that happens, hopefully we will get more women applying to the boards. I'm just saying that as a former employer, I don't know who applied and who didn't, but it is a well-taken point.

Is there a motion on these names?

MR. MACLEOD: Mr. Chairman, I so move that Donna Bonner, Norm Kemp, Paul Price, Tori Munroe and William Carroll be appointed to the Apprenticeship Board.

MS. DIANA WHALEN: I second it.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.

The motion is carried.

The next one is the Department of Environment and Labour, the Resource Recovery Fund Board. Is there a motion?

MR. MORSE: Mr. Chairman, I so move Rick Ramsay for Chairman and member of the Resource Recovery Fund Board.

MR. CLARRIE MACKINNON: Seconded.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.

The motion is carried.

The Department of Finance, Gaming Corporation of Nova Scotia, will we move those as a group?

MS. MASSEY: Mr. Chairman, that was another one where there were a lot more males than females who applied. I think we just have to keep always looking at those numbers and I know we are doing something to try to move ahead, but . . .

MR. MACKINNON: I think there were 11 males and three females.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Is there a motion?

MR. MACLEOD: Mr. Chairman, I so move Merlin Fownes and Gordon Gillis for the Nova Scotia Gaming Corporation.

MR. MORSE: I second those nominations.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.

The motion is carried.

The next one is the Department of Health, Health Authorities, District 2 - South West Nova. We will move those en bloc - any objection to that? Hearing none, is there a motion?

MR. MORSE: Mr. Chairman, I so move Debra Ann Boudreau, George Masters, Karen Mattatall and Gerald A. Pottier as members of the District 2 - South West Nova Health Authority.

MS. WHALEN: I'll second that.

MS. MASSEY: I just would comment that the current board composition, I believe, was 10 males, but there are two females being appointed and one of the appointments here today is a reappointment, so, again, just pointing out it is top heavy.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Very good point. I think when we go through our process for advertising, as we've talked about already and approved, we should really stress that, that the committee work on that a little harder than we have because these keep coming forward.

Is there any further discussion?

Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.

The motion is carried.

Next is District 8, Cape Breton Health Authority, is there a motion?

MR. MACLEOD: Mr. Chairman, I so move Louise Smith-MacDonald.

MR. MACKINNON: Seconded.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary, minded, Nay.

The motion is carried.

The next one is the Health Research Foundation of Nova Scotia. We will move these en bloc?

MR. MORSE: Mr. Chairman, I so move Colleen Elliott as Chairman and member; Dr. Jean Gray as Vice- Chairman and member; Joanne Gallivan as member; Frances Hinton as member; Brian MacDougall as member; Peter MacLeod as member; and Peter Mullen as a member - all of the Health Research Foundation.

MS. WHALEN: Seconded.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.

The motion is carried.

The next one is under Service Nova Scotia and Municipal Relations, Certified General Accountants Association of Nova Scotia.

MR. MACLEOD: Mr. Chairman, I so move Lantz Siteman to the CGA of Nova Scotia.

MS. WHALEN: Seconded.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.

The motion is carried.

The next one is Treasury and Policy Board, Voluntary Planning Board of Nova Scotia. We will move those en bloc - any objection to that?

MR. MACKINNON: Mr. Chairman, I would move James B. Henley, Dr. Daniel MacInnes and Dr. Teresa MacNeil as directors.

MR. MORSE: I second those nominations, Mr. Chairman.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.

The motion is carried.

Is there any further business on appointments?

[9:15 a.m.]

MR. MORSE: Mr. Chairman, if I could just make the comment that having been on both sides of the appointment process, there is sometimes a perception out there that there are copious numbers of people who would like to volunteer for all of these agencies, boards and commission positions. I can tell you as a minister now of a number of departments that quite often it is difficult to even get one volunteer in some cases, and that certainly does limit your choices as minister, and I felt that it was important to get that on the record because the public should be aware that it is not that we are necessarily turning down qualified female applicants, it is that there just may be a lack of applicants, male and female, period.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Minister Morse. Any further comments? Thank you very much, members. The next thing we are going to go to is Residential Construction, our guests here today, to make a presentation. I'm going ask if you would first introduce yourselves, let us all know who you are and we can go from there.

MR. MICHAEL SENZ: My name is Michael Senz.

MR. PETER GREENWOOD: My name is Peter Greenwood and I'm here representing the Atlantic Home Building & Renovating Sector Council. I am currently a board member of that sector council; I'm also past president of the Nova Scotia Home Builders' Association; and in my real life I am vice- president of real estate for Clayton Developments Limited.

With us here today from the sector council is our new Executive Director - just one month in the job - Michael Montgomery, to my right. Also with us is Paul Pettipas, who is the CEO of the Nova Scotia Home Builders' Association, and Paul's assistant, Sherry Donovan.

Michael, by the way, is the current president of Central Nova.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Welcome again today and if you would like to start with opening comments and then we will go to questioning by our members.

MR. MICHAEL SENZ: Good morning and thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today. My name is Michael Senz and I am president of the Central Nova local of the Nova Scotia Home Builders' Association and, as well, I am the chairman of the association's training and education committee. Basically I am going to go over a few items and provide you with some background on the Nova Scotia Home Builders' Association.

We are the voice of the residential construction industry in Nova Scotia. For more than 50 years the Nova Scotia Home Builders' Association has played a key role in promoting quality, choice and affordable housing for all Nova Scotians. Under the umbrella of the Nova Scotia Home Builders' Association there are four locals: Central Nova Home Builders' Association; the South Shore Home Builders' Association; the Cape Breton Home Builders' Association; and the Annapolis Valley Home Builders' Association. Together, we represent over 300 member firms made up of professional builders, renovators and developers, and many other stakeholders in the construction industry.

The first point I would like to touch on today is the home construction market in Nova Scotia. According to a report issued by Alex MacDonald of CMHC, Nova Scotia's residential construction industry accounts for 20,000 direct and indirect jobs and over $600 million in direct wages. To add to this, the new home and renovation market has a combined value of over $2 billion. This is a significant amount of money and jobs for an industry to contribute to the economic growth of the province.

As an association, we are continually looking at ways in which we can further advance the level of professionalism of everyone involved in the industry. Without a licensing program for the industry, this is a difficult task. However, as an association, we are committed to improving the energy efficiency of new homes in the province and are working towards increasing the number of contractors who are trained in the R-2000 program to meet the needs of the province for increased energy efficiency. From March to April of this year we, as an association, trained 81 students, builders and industry professionals with our two-day R-2000 course. Our association offered the training to various community college second-year carpentry programs at no cost. Training courses took place in Sydney, the Annapolis Valley, and Halifax.

A major challenge for the residential construction industry is the shortage of skilled workers in the province. This challenge is magnified because of the lack of a structured occupational licensing program in Nova Scotia. An occupational licensing program would provide clear direction of a career path to people on how they can progress through the industry. Without training and employment qualifications through occupational licensing, hiring a professional contractor is really a hit or miss act, which creates further challenges for those who are dedicated and committed to raising the level of professionalism within the industry.

Without a formal licensing program, our association has a voluntary certification program for its builders and renovators. This program requires participants to undertake various training and safety courses and provide client and supplier references before they are able to be labelled as a member of this voluntary certification program. The challenge with this is that only those who want to become involved actually take the time to complete the requirements. This still leaves serious gaps of differentiation between professionals who are reputable and the contractors who are not.

You mentioned earlier about women in the trades and women's representation. Another way that we looked to combat this shortage of skilled trades was to develop a Women's Council within our association, with a key focus on attracting young women to the industry. We will be looking at ways to work with groups such as Techsploration and Skills Canada Nova Scotia to help further this initiative.

Another major challenge in the industry straight across the province is the affordability of housing. In 2006 the average cost of a new home in HRM was $306,000 and the forecast price for 2007 is $327,000. This is just not an issue for the Halifax area, but it is being seen across the province. For example, according to CMHC's presentation at the association's technical conference in January, the average MLS sales prices have all seen an increase between 6 to 11 per cent, with the exception of the South Shore area, which saw a slight decrease over the 2006 figures, after a large increase the year before of 12 per cent.

To recap, the residential construction industry is a viable and active contributor to the economic development in Nova Scotia. There are still a large number of challenges that need to be addressed, to ensure that the industry not only remains strong but so that we can attract and keep people within the province. Through continued training opportunities and occupational licensing programs and maintaining affordable housing choices, we will be able to successfully meet the housing needs of Nova Scotia. Thank you very much for your time.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much for your presentation. It's a very important industry to all of us in the province.

I'm going to depart a little bit from what we've been doing in the past. I had some complaints at the last meeting that all our members or all caucuses didn't get an equal amount of time, so I'm going to split it up equally between the caucuses this time, like we do in the Public Accounts Committee. I'll just ask the members in each caucus to decide how they want to share their time. So have I got any questions to start with here? (Interruption) Okay, sorry about that.

MR. SENZ: I think Peter will delve more into the occupational licensing part of it so there might be some questions that are answered.

MR. PETER GREENWOOD: I think it would probably make more sense if I said a few words first.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Sure.

MR. GREENWOOD: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. On behalf of the board of directors of Atlantic Home Building and Renovation Sector Council, I'd like to thank the committee for the opportunity to address you here today. The Atlantic Home Building and Renovation Sector Council - that's hard to say - we've enjoyed a long and successful partnership with

Service Canada, with our provincial government and industry, in supporting the human resource development needs of the home building and renovation sector in Atlantic Canada.

Our sector council has been around since 1991 and we partnered with industry and government on many strategic projects and delivered more than 650 courses to more than 7,000 residential construction workers throughout the Atlantic Region. The purpose of the sector council is to serve as a human resources and labour market sector council for the residential construction industry in the Atlantic Provinces. Of course we do work very closely with the home builders associations as well, we have a lot in common. But more specifically, the council works to build the leadership and organizational capacities of the residential construction industry in the region and to address the common human resource development and supply needs in this home building sector.

Through the council, the residential construction industry has an effective and responsible voice on human resources issues with federal and provincial governments and the public and private educational and skills development systems. The council contributes directly to improving access to education and skills development and to employment in all segments of the sector. The council has a board of directors that reflects representation of the major subsectors in the industry, including construction, renovation, subtrades, manufactured housing, warranty and insurance providers. We also have representation from the home builders associations.

Just a little bit about our industry; Michael spoke about it. In Canada our home building industry engages $70 billion in capital annually and employs over a million Canadians. Our industry has led the Canadian economy as a whole for the past several years. In Nova Scotia, as Michael mentioned, we employ over 20,000 directly and indirectly and create over $600 million in wages. Our industry shapes much of the fabric of our community day by day. We've generated the largest single source of individual household wealth in our country and in our province. Make no mistake, we are a very important industry to this province and, make no mistake, we do take very seriously our responsibilities as an industry - we have a lot to improve upon.

We understand that we need to improve housing quality. We understand that we need to provide better customer service. We need to increase job safety. We need to mitigate the environmental impacts of our work. We need to eliminate the underground economy. We need to attract more people to our industry; we need to train them better and ensure an adequate supply of skilled labour for our sector. We need to ensure that our people do have stable and sustainable futures in our industry and we need to better protect the consuming public. In short, we have to professionalize our industry. We've got a long way to go, we intend to do something about it.

Since 2001, the Atlantic Home Building and Renovation Sector Council has undertaken several strategic initiatives to assess the composition, nature and evolution of the

residential construction workforce in Nova Scotia. The principal and the recurrent finding from these efforts has been the need for the introduction of a mandatory provincial licensing and certification program for contractors and trade workers in our industry. The residential construction industry is still largely unregulated. To accomplish our industry goals we need to change, we need to modernize the regulatory environment for residential construction and encourage the development of a more professional home building industry. There is pressing public interest in improving housing quality and expanding consumer protection in this field.

Our industry wants our government to enact legislation to establish a residential construction commission and that commission will be responsible for the licensing of residential contractors and renovators. Our professionalization action plan - and you've got copies of that in your materials and there's also a copy of Building for the Future, which is a nice little summary. That action plan proposes an industry-driven, government-validated mandatory licensing program. In addition, you will read in there that we are advocating the implementation of new approaches to training and certification of trade workers to meet the specific needs of our sector.

This is an initiative the sector council and the Nova Scotia Home Builders' Association have been working on for some 15 years. There is now a climate of acceptance for the introduction of mandatory licensing. We've done some solid work to support this initiative, extensive surveys and, again, some of that information is in your package. Two major industry conferences have been held and there's been extensive research and consultation with industry.

The survey work that we've done, professionally-done survey work, shows consumer and industry support. Approximately 70 per cent of the general public and 70 per cent of builders and renovators support mandatory licensing. Mandatory licensing, by the way, is already existing and emerging in other provinces, states and countries and there are several examples of that.

The licensing model that we're proposing is a self-regulation model. All the bylaws and regulations would be formulated by a commission. The commission would be an Act of government but that commission, not the government, would be responsible for the bylaws and regulations. The government is needed to create that legislation. After that, the industry takes over and the government steps aside. This is a model that we've followed, it's been very successful in the real estate industry and we believe that it is a model that could work for the residential construction industry.

All home builders and renovators will eventually have to have licences. Those building their own homes would not need a licence, so if the person wants to go out and build their own home, they are more than welcome to go out and do it, but if they are building a home for somebody else, they would have to be licensed.

[9:30 a.m.]

We would propose that to get a licence you'd have to pay a small fee; you'd have to show that you can offer a new home warranty, you would have to take regular training updates, just as you do now if you're a member of the Atlantic Home Warranty, and you'd have to have safety training.

Initially, everyone who is in the residential construction business will be licensed under a grandfathering provision. After the initial phase, all home builders and renovators would have to show a level of competence in home building or receive some level of training before they are licensed.

There are four key reasons why we need to do this: (1) first and foremost, consumers need protection. There are too many scam artists out there pretending to be home builders and renovators and they are frankly ripping off consumers; (2) we need to combat the underground economy. Builders and renovators working for cash are not only stealing by not paying taxes, they are leaving consumers potentially liable for shoddy work, worksite accidents and unpaid subtrades; (3) we need a more stable industry. We need to be able to offer our employees stable and rewarding jobs, with opportunities for ongoing training and advancement and we need to attract more people to our industry and train them better, to ensure an adequate supply of skilled labour for our sector; (4) finally, we need to do a better job as home builders and renovators. We need to improve housing quality, provide better customer service and increased job safety. A self-regulated industry will help us improve that.

I could go on talking about this but, in conclusion, I just want to say that our industry believes that mandatory licensing for residential builders and renovators is important for our province. We want to be proactive to ensure that it happens, on terms developed by industry and government in a collaborative fashion. Mandatory licensing will make our industry more professional, it will provide greater protection for homeowners, it will reduce underground economic activity and improve worker health and safety on our job sites. The time is right for industry and government to work together to implement our proposed action plan. Thank you very much.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you. I had no intentions of cutting you off, I didn't realize you wanted to make a presentation. I'm very pleased that you did because you did bring some very important information forward. The first questions will be from Mr. Parker.

MR. CHARLES PARKER: Okay, I just want to clarify then, we, as a caucus, have so much time is it?

MR. CHAIRMAN: Yes, we'll divide it up equally three ways, among the three caucuses.

MR. PARKER: Our time is first, for what length of time?

MR. CHAIRMAN: Why don't we start with a 10-minute round by everybody.

MR. MACKINNON: Mr. Chairman, on a point of order, procedure, would it not be better to have 10 minutes per member present, rather than dividing it by caucus?

MR. CHAIRMAN: We can go through this procedural wrangle afterwards when we are not holding our guests up, but in the Public Accounts Committee that is the way it is run, each caucus has a given amount of time. If you want to change that we can discuss it after the meeting.

MR. MACKINNON: Other committees operate differently, okay, thank you.

MR. PARKER: I want to start off by thanking our guests for coming and it is certainly a very timely topic this time of year, coming right into the heart of the construction season. I guess at one point, Mr. Senz, you mentioned that costs are going up, home prices are increasing and I think you mentioned somewhere between 6 per cent and 11 per cent was the increase this year. Is that supply and demand? Is that the actual cost of building materials and labour? Is it land cost or what is driving that increase?

MR. SENZ: I guess a group of all those items that you hit on. Labour is increasing because there is a shortage of labour, waiting times are there so people are able to charge that extra dollar for labour. Materials have also increased, as well as land costs.

MR. PARKER: I think you indicated it didn't go up on the South Shore, so is supply and demand part of this equation as well?

MR. SENZ: Yes, it is, but as I mentioned as well, last year there was a significant jump in the cost and from that point it has decreased a few percentage points.

MR. PARKER: So it is a combination of things from the sound of it?

MR. SENZ: Yes.

MR. PAUL PETTIPAS: My name is Paul Pettipas and I'm involved in this as the CEO. Part of it is, we have the dubious distinction in HRM of having the highest percentage of class fees, taxes and charges in Canada at over 20 per cent. So if you look at that in this realm, a house that is $300,000 should in effect be $240,000. All three levels of government have done their part to make that 20 per cent. Part of what we're seeing, and it is now starting to flow into the rural areas, is capital contributions, development charges, the municipality says, we need the money. When they do that it doesn't affect the developer, in the end it affects you, the home buying public, so part of that, sir, is the fact of fees, charges and class.

MR. PARKER: And that is especially prevalent here in HRM more so than elsewhere in the province?

MR. PETTIPAS: The others are catching up.

MR. PARKER: Okay, I just wanted to start off with that. Another question is around what particular trades are we most short on? There are a lot of trades that go into building a home, what are we most in need of at the moment?

MR. SENZ: All the trades are suffering right now with the influx of workers moving out West. We are seeing shortages right across the board, we're talking carpenters as a large one, plumbers, electricians, drywall hangers and tapers, those are your key trades right now that are suffering the most. If you want to get down to it, electricians, I feel, are the largest, but it is a huge influx of trades right across the board. You can't really nail it down to one specific trade, everybody is suffering right now.

MR. PARKER: Is it because too many of our skilled tradespeople are going to Alberta or is it we are not training enough to fill the gaps that are needed?

MR. SENZ: That's part of it right at this point in time, there's a lot of influx of workers going out West but right across the country everybody is feeling the pinch. I sit on the national training and education committee for the Canadian Home Builders' Association with representation from each province. That is our number one priority right now on our plate with that committee, the shortage of skilled labour.

We are working closely with the community colleges to try to attract new people to the trades and that is another key issue, a lot of people were always pushed toward the university side and steered away from the community colleges. We are trying to press that point right now. Halifax, last year, actually held the Canadian Skills Competition right here within the HRM. We had a huge turnout from people to come look at that event and try to attract attention to the school trades.

MR. PARKER: As an MLA, one issue that I run across from time to time is when young people have been in my office, or their mom or dad brings it to my attention, they have their first job, they are working at Convergys or somewhere and they're getting $10 an hour and of course, they have a car, a car payment, an apartment and are barely making ends meet. They would like to go to be an electrician or a carpenter but they can't afford to quit their job and because they're not eligible for EI, they're not available for any training dollars. They can't take that training they need because they need to keep their job to pay their bills, so they are sort of in a Catch-22 situation. Do you see any way around that? I know there are young people who go right out of high school and go to community college and that's fine, but it is the young person who is 20 or 25 who is caught in the bind. They would like to take

training, they would like to be a tradesperson, but they really can't get any help to do that. Would anybody like to address that issue?

MR. SENZ: I think one way to look at it is sometimes when there is a student loan or whatever, once you get out of that queue you can't get back in again. I think governments can look at, if people want to get back in to train themselves we have got to look at it outside of the box and provide those loans they need. I think in the past, as Michael stated, we all seemed to want to send our sons and daughters to university; that was, don't be like me, I'm in the trades but I want you to be better. Now we are finding in London, bricklayers are making £200,000 a year, it has caught up over there and I think we are seeing that. I think a simple answer is, we have to start thinking with a little more flexibility to get people back into the workforce, we can't allow them to stay in that box.

MR. PARKER: That might be an idea to go to London, it sounds attractive. It is the person who has been out of school for a few years, is in the workforce with maybe not a lot of skills, but just can't afford to get back out of it. There is no training help for that person and it is a real problem for a lot of those people. We need tradespeople and we have people here who would like to take it but somehow we're not matching the two up that they can get the skills they need.

MR. SENZ: I think maybe one of the most important things is getting into the high school level first before they go out and try to take that first job and get the stigma away from going into the trades and promoting more into the high school level when kids go to the guidance counsellors and talk to their teachers, that the teachers and guidance counsellors aren't steering them toward the university degrees and get that stigma away from the trades as a second-class kind of job, where it is really not. As Paul mentioned, wages across Europe, skilled trades are very well paid and very highly recognized within their communities, it has always been that way and that is something that we need to adopt over here.

MR. PARKER: How much time do I have, Mr. Chairman?

MR. CHAIRMAN: About 30 seconds.

MR. PARKER: You mentioned that people can build their own homes but later on anybody else cannot. How do you prevent somebody from building a house, living in it for two years and then selling it?

MR. GREENWOOD: That's an interesting question and other jurisdictions have dealt with that question, in particular, in B.C. where they have mandatory licensing. That mandatory licensing in that province came about as the result of a leaky condo crisis; it was really forced on the industry by government. They have dealt with it and other jurisdictions that have mandatory licensing have dealt with it in a way that if the home is sold within a five-year period, then the home builder has to provide a warranty of some sort to the person

they are selling it to. That would be what we would propose and we would suggest we need to look at the best ways to deal with that.

One of the things came out very clear in our studies when we went out and spoke to the public and spoke to home builders, and that is the God-given right of the people of Nova Scotia to build their own home should they choose to do that. We felt that is untouchable, that is important. Our only concern is when somebody builds a home and then decides to sell a home that might be very poorly built, we have to protect that consumer buying that home down the line, so a warranty of some sort would be necessary.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Ms. Whalen.

MS. WHALEN: Welcome this morning, it is a very important sector, as you say. It is quite staggering when you look at the level of employment that is directly related to your industry. We often hear about indirect employment and impacts, but yours is direct employment and direct dollars into the homes of Nova Scotia. That is very impressive and certainly is a good thing for us to turn our attention to and see how we can maintain the standards of the industry and also meet the other needs of protecting consumers and so on.

I was very interested in your introduction of the idea of a mandatory occupational licensing program, I guess is the name. Did you say that British Columbia is the only province with such a program in place or are there others?

MR. GREENWOOD: No, there are others. The Province of Quebec has mandatory licensing, actually Ontario now has mandatory licensing, their licensing is a little different, it goes through Tarion, their home warranty program. So everybody building a home in Ontario has to be registered and licensed with Tarion, an offer of warranty, so it is a similar situation. New Brunswick is looking at introducing legislation and Saskatchewan is well along in it. There are many states that are doing this and several parts of Australia that have mandatory licensing for both home builders and renovators.

MS. WHALEN: So the trend is clear and we should be moving in that direction as well. One thing I hate is to see Nova Scotia always be the last to adopt something, so I hope we can move it ahead a little bit quicker. I notice you have in the brochure a timeline for the introduction and we are behind schedule, I think.

MR. GREENWOOD: We are behind schedule.

MS. WHALEN: I'm hoping you can tell me, the initial intent was to have legislation before us last Fall?

MR. GREENWOOD: Yes.

MS. WHALEN: Can you tell me where the discussions are within the departments that you need to liaise with in government?

MR. GREENWOOD: We have had discussions with the government caucus. We have done presentations to the NDP caucus, as well. Actually, we are waiting for the new Leader to be in place before we approach the Liberal caucus. The government caucus chose at this time to defer on our request, however, we have discussed with Minister Muir the possibility of sending our proposed legislation to the Legislative Counsel for preliminary drafting and have some support for that in the NDP caucus and the government caucus. That is where we stand at this point, we have a lawyer retained to do some preliminary work for us before it goes to Legislative Counsel.

[9:45 a.m.]

MS. WHALEN: Certainly today in your presentation both of you brought in some very compelling reasons why we should move toward this and I'm sure we will get more as we do the questioning. I think it is important that we have it for particularly the consumer protection side and again, to create a career path for young people so that they will want to stay here. I can say, having come from the recent Liberal leadership, that is the biggest question people are asking right across the province, how can we retain young people and how can we give them occupations and life skills here so that they can stay. Your industry is obviously going to play a key role in that, so I think that is very important and I hope to hear more this morning about how we can go ahead with that.

I wanted to ask you about the retraining of existing workers because one of my concerns when you get to mandatory licensing and requirements for the trades - and we ran into this under the recent apprenticeship bill that came through at the Legislature - was the concern that many of the people working in the industry don't have the literacy skills or the confidence to sit exams and maybe meet the requirements that we might put in place. Has that been an issue when you are talking nationally to other groups? Are you aware of that as an issue?

MR. SENZ: You have to take it into perspective with what they do in the other provinces. A lot of these things were dumped on industry and industry didn't have a say in what was going to happen to them and how they were going to be regulated. Those types of things were not addressed, especially in B.C., where government forced it down our throats, basically, and came up with a fee structure in order to become licensed. That is what we do not want here, we want to work with government and we want to work with industry in order to make that a viable solution for us here and make sure that our people are trained properly and accordingly to standards we put in with the licensing agreement. So it has been looked at here very much in depth.

MS. WHALEN: So you're looking for a more collaborative model before it is just sort of forced upon you?

MR. SENZ: Yes.

MR. GREENWOOD: If I could just add something to that. Right now any member of the Atlantic Home Warranty has mandatory retraining and that has been done for the past several years by the sector council. Now it is being done in house primarily by the home warranty folks, but that could be a member of the Atlantic Home Warranty which probably, 70 per cent of the home builders in this province are, there is mandatory retraining right now.

MS. WHALEN: So it is beginning.

MR. GREENWOOD: Yes.

MS. WHALEN: So it's beginning. One of the things in your smaller brochure, Peter, related to the literacy. It actually talks about literacy and perhaps on-the-job training. Is that something you are pursuing because on the educational side in Nova Scotia, and in fact in Canada, about 40 per cent of the population don't have full literacy skills that we would expect. I'm wondering if there are any initiatives to offer that on the job or any incentives available from government to maybe encourage companies to do that?

MR. GREENWOOD: I can't speak to that, Diana. Because it's in there, it is certainly something we recognize as a serious issue. We are trying to tackle so many things here and right now our priority, if you will, is the licensing aspect of it.

One of the things I did want to remind you of, too, is initially, for this mandatory licensing, occupational licensing or whatever we call it, our proposal is to have it grandfathered. That isn't necessarily covered off in this book. The grandfathering aspect of it was something that when we first spoke to the provincial government, to the Conservative caucus, there was really a concern about that and we changed our position on that and said initially we would look at grandfathering everybody who is in the industry and moving to qualifications thereafter. So I just wanted to make that point, it is important.

MS. WHALEN: Did you say that there was resistance to a blanket grandfathering of everybody in the industry?

MR. GREENWOOD: No, that's where politically we felt it was important to go. Ideally we would like to see everybody have required courses to ensure that there is a minimum standard for all home builders and renovators. That does present a problem politically, not only in our industry but also with provincial governments, so we felt we would back off initially and look at a grandfathering across the board.

MR. PETTIPAS: If I might comment, one of the things about our industry, and someone asked it earlier, the average age of a contractor in Nova Scotia is about 53 or 54; a bricklayer, 58. In my previous life I was a builder-developer for 35 years. I had tremendously skilled people who worked for me who came from the old school, that you left school when you were in Grade 7 or 8 or 9 because it was presumed that you were not the educational type, you're going to be a tradesman. We have to respect those people. They are basically the backbone of this industry, so the whole thing that we looked at about grandfathering is that there can't be an exclusion of a whole generation.

Now the new generation basically is coming in with Grade 11, Grade 12 and whatever, but that generation that exists now are some of the most skilled people we have and a lot of them have taken courses on their own. So our thing is, we have to work with them. They will not be excluded, they can't be.

MS. WHALEN: No, I do appreciate that and, as I said, the discussion around the apprenticeship changes really did focus on those people who might be lost, who couldn't take the test but yet are clearly qualified and that any of us would be happy to have them do the work for us, we trust them but they can't perhaps make the switch to a new grading or an assessment model. So I certainly do appreciate that and, as you say, with the skills shortage already, we don't want to eliminate people from the work force at this point in time. What we want to do is ensure quality and those aspects.

I have a little bit more time, don't I? Just a tiny bit.

MR. CHAIRMAN: 20 seconds.

MS. WHALEN: That doesn't do well, especially those who know me, 20 seconds doesn't do. We'll have another round, so I'll pass it on and wait.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Morse.

MR. MORSE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just picking up on the importance of recognizing everybody's abilities and respecting them for those abilities and the concept of grandfathering, which I think is absolutely crucial here because the last thing in the world we want to do is wake up some day and discover we've just made our skill shortage worse by virtue of putting in some sort of licensing program that excludes people who are quite competent in everything but examination. There's clearly a recognition on the industry's part that that's not their wish.

There's a lot of interesting material here this morning and it brings up a lot of questions. The first one, last year it cost $307,000 to build a new home in HRM - what's this, a 3-bedroom bungalow or a split entry?

MR. PETTIPAS: That's an average of all of the new houses sold in HRM. Some would be a little under that, some would be in the $400,000 to $600,000 range. It would be very difficult now to get a serviced lot in HRM under $100,000. Peter is in that business. If you can get a house for $307,000 on the peninsula of HRM, I would suggest you're doing well. I would suggest, on the average, some in the outskirts, the lower-priced, have really pulled that down to the $307,000. In the city, Peter, closer to $400,000?

MR. GREENWOOD: Sure.

MR. MORSE: Quite easily, and 20 per cent of that is made up of assorted government fees and it is less outside of the capital, which means that at least a portion of that is specific to HRM.

One of the controversies that generally percolates to the budget tables of the various municipalities around this time of year, when they're trying to figure out how they're going to balance their budgets, is the deed transfer tax. It's, I think, in maybe half of the municipalities?

MR. CHAIRMAN: All the municipalities.

MR. MORSE: All municipalities have access to it but not all municipalities have made use of that provision. I know that it is a hot topic in Kings County, it is a hot topic in the Town of Kentville and the arguments come out as to whether there's any real service that's being provided to the homeowner that now has to come up with this extra 1 per cent or whatever amount.

The flip side is that for all those who are already there who have invested in the municipal infrastructure, this is a way for them to get some tax relief by having the new homeowner pick up some of the cost of that investment in municipal infrastructure.

I'm curious, what is your take on the deed transfer tax? Does the association take a position?

MR. PETTIPAS: The deed transfer tax has been around, I don't think it's any more than an irritant. What our association sort of has a problem with is when HRM has a sewer redevelopment fee which the new home purchaser pays on the building permit and then they bring in a capital cost contribution for the sewage treatment, which adds another $800 to a single-family dwelling. So the fact is, as Councillor Uteck stated at council, you're double-dipping.

The sewer redevelopment fee is used to fix existing, and we're saying new homeowners shouldn't fix existing. The capital cost contribution part is correct, it's for long-term. I think what happens is, it is the pecking order, the feds download to the provincial, the

provincial downloads to the municipality. When the municipality looks around, it is only the homeowner left and it is the new homeowner who seems to take the brunt of it because it is sort of an easy point.

To me, deed transfer tax is there, it's a fee to sort of have that whole system work. The problem gets into other things and that's where you get capital cost contribution sewer redevelopment and as long as there's a difference, as long as the municipalities can show us, as an industry, this is clearly for new construction, we don't have a problem with it. It is where you've got the mix, the sewer redevelopment where if you did a building permit, you would be paying for some repairs on Gottingen Street and you could be living in Bedford. That, to us, is incorrect. It should be that a beneficiary pays.

MR. MORSE: I can see, Mr. Chairman, that our guests are well acquainted with all the various fees and can speak to them with some authority.

On the subject of labour shortages, just what is the differential between, say, the east and the west, for a carpenter?

MR. SENZ: In terms of pay scale? Again, it depends on what part of that particular province you're in. I mean you're looking now at Alberta, that is just an exorbitant situation right now where supply and demand is just gone AWOL with the oil industry, so they're at the top end of the pay scale.

Right now, take a carpenter, for instance, here in HRM you're looking anywhere between the $15 and $20 an hour range, that's depending on work experience and the length of time with the particular company they're working for. You move over to B.C., I mean you're dealing with the cost of living, you're dealing with a different type of clientele and that sort of thing, so they're particularly around the $18 to $25 an hour range, so it varies. But it also varies within that province from community to community, depending on where you're at, where you're located and what the market is at that time.

It's a big jump from one side of the country to the other but that's something that professionalization will bring to Nova Scotia. You're getting rid of that underground economy which is driving our prices down because it's competition. We have to compete with the underground economy and they're not paying their fair share. We are and we're getting dinged with all these fees and extra costs and we have to keep competing in order to keep our work there. So Paul has showed me here in Calgary it is anywhere from $32 to $36 an hour, so you know the biggest thing here, I believe, is professionalization and we'll be able to solve a lot of that problem within keeping our people here with that.

MR. MORSE: I would be very interested to see what the cost of living, adjusted real wages were across the country. That's really the pertinent question for the tradesperson who is looking to settle and perhaps raise a family and $35 an hour sounds great in Calgary, as

long as everything else is the same, but if you're not able to build a house for less than $400,000 within an hour's commute of your average work site and you were to factor in the cost of travel and what it takes out of your day, it might quickly erode the value of that $35 down to something that conceivably could be comparable to what you'd get in the rest of the country and maybe enjoy . . .

MR. GREENWOOD: A better lifestyle.

[10:00 a.m.]

MR. MORSE: Yes.

MR. PETTIPAS: The problem we have, though, is that at our national meetings this weekend, we were talking about the HST and the two representatives from Calgary stood up and said, could you explain to me what HST is? That's the problem we have. We can say this and we are getting some people coming back but when we compare it, it still makes sense for a lot of our young people to go out there and to sort of do this for two or three years and get that nest egg and come back. The problem is, we have to get them to come back.

There are some good signs. I've been getting phone calls from people saying, what's the work there? Is there work for me if I come back? We work with them to come back but still, when you've got our high rate of taxation, we sometimes have difficulty competing.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much. Your time has expired.

Mr. MacKinnon

MR. MACKINNON: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I am delighted to have these distinguished people with us today. What I want to put forward, the comment was made about being last is bad and that there are compelling reasons to implement. I'm wondering if, in fact, there are small operators out there, one-, two-, three-person operations, who are lobbying for this. Are there situations that exist where there are a lot of small operators in villages, in towns, that they're not scam artists and if they were, they wouldn't be there, right? I mean is there anything here that this is big versus little or urban versus rural, and the request for the mandatory legislation?

MR. GREENWOOD: No, we see this as a rural and an urban issue. If anything, it's probably more important in the rural areas. In the urban areas the builders - and let's call a spade a spade - 65 per cent to 70 per cent of the new housing starts in Nova Scotia occur in the HRM. We tend to have, on average our builders tend to be larger, in terms of the number of homes they do. What we're proposing is applicable to the larger builders as much as it is to the smaller builders.

There are so many good builders who have no warranty, no training, but they build darn good houses. They're not the ones we're concerned about. The ones we're concerned about are the ones you read about in the newspaper, the renovator, the home builder who six months later there are serious problems and he has skipped town - and there's no way to go back on that person - and declared bankruptcy or whatever.

We've all heard the stories. There hasn't been one recently in the news but whenever there is, we hear this time and time again, there's got to be better consumer protection. Really that is the cornerstone of what we're proposing here, protection for the consumers because right now any one of us could go out, buy a pickup truck, buy some tools and call ourselves a home builder and go out and build a $500,000 home for somebody, with absolutely no training.

I can't get my hair cut by somebody without knowing that they have a certificate on the wall, and it's not right.

MR. MACKINNON: So this, in fact, it's not just new homes, it's renovators as well, right?

MR. GREENWOOD: Yes.

MR. MACKINNON: So it goes down to a one-person operator who is out there. When we talk about the underground economy, I've been involved with my wife in building a house - not myself but having small operators build a house - and we've been involved over the years in renovating three homes and it was always small, local that we used.

We talk about having lived in or having owned a property in Cape Breton for seven and a half years, the underground economy, unfortunately, is what is keeping some tradespeople around in that area and in other areas of the province. It's very unfortunate and I don't condone it but, by the same token, it's a way of life in a lot of rural areas. I'm not being negative on this, I'm just trying to dig and see if it is good for rural areas, as well as HRM.

MR. SENZ: When all our marketing research was done, we polled the entire province and, surprisingly, most of our numbers that came back were more positive from the rural areas than they were from the urban areas. So it is something that the people want, as well as the contractors. The research that we did was not just within the home builders' association membership, it was well out of that realm and that's where we got our most response from. So it is something that we've definitely looked at and the figures and the facts are there to back it up with the research that we've done.

MR. MACKINNON: You talk about a small fee, do we have any idea what that small fee would be?

MR. GREENWOOD: We have a business plan, we did a lot of work on the business plan. Initially we see the fee, when we've got several different models. This is getting into the detail but the model that we believe can work would look at an annual fee in the $400 to $500 range for licensing. That would support the commission and would support going forward.

MR. PETTIPAS: If I can make a comment on the underground. When we comment on the underground and our whole Get It In Writing campaign, we never focus on the individual because the individual could be the friendliest person in town. What we tell people is, you have to make the choice, here's the risk. You're not going to get a written warranty, you're not going to have things in writing if something happens, so make the choice. We have not, as an association, sort of attacked the individual. That doesn't work because the gentleman in the underground could be your father, could be your mother, could be your brother. It's just the risk you take when you hire someone.

We get these stories all the time - I gave someone $5,000 to do this and it wasn't completed, now how do I get it completed? Well, if there's no contract, it's pretty difficult. So it is not the individual.

MR. MACKINNON: And certainly the big scams were not done by the local village tradesperson. The big scams in B.C., condo-wise and so on, were fairly good-sized companies. Those were company scams.

One thing that is perhaps a little bit off topic but you people would be very familiar with, is how this new migrating of properties is affecting - I was dealing yesterday with a situation where a migration took place and we're sort of getting away from the surveyor application somewhat and putting it more in the legal realm, right? Are you running into problems with the migrating of property, because you must be doing so much of this with companies?

MR. GREENWOOD: Certainly in our company, my answer to that would be no, we're not running into problems. I think, in the long run, the new Act is going to make things so much easier for everybody. There is a period of time here that there will be some challenges but overall, we find it's working extremely well.

I think, Paul, in terms of our membership, at the home builders' association I don't think I've heard any real issues expressed with respect to migration.

MR. PETTIPAS: We usually get feedback and this one I agree with Peter, I'm currently selling my own home now and going through that. It's going to make it much easier in the end, it'll be a better system for all of us. We've heard no consumer complaints.

I think the government did a good job on this one. There was plenty of consultation, there was some lead time and I think we've got to compliment the government here. We do throw some bricks at you but this was one where you did it right and I think it's based on consultation, not surprising people. I think the legal industry has charged a fair price. I don't say that because I'm a lawyer myself and that these guys are the greatest people in the world, it's just that this one, they're a fair price.

MR. MACKINNON: I think part of the initial problem was that adjacent property owners, there wasn't a notification requirement and I think that has come into play, at least the deal I was involved with yesterday was one where there was a problem because the competing interest wasn't notified but I understand that that has, in fact, been changed as of April 3^rd or something like that.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Mr. MacKinnon. Ms. Whalen.

MS. WHALEN: Thank you very much. Just picking up on some of the questions that have already begun, I wanted to move further on the consumer protection area. Both as a city councillor and now, as an MLA, the area that is of concern to me there is with condominiums and apartments, particularly condominiums because there's the ownership of the building. I'm wondering if they're covered under your home builders. We're talking about residential so do you cover the multi-unit buildings?

MR. GREENWOOD: You're talking about in terms of licensing or in terms of . . .

MS. WHALEN: Well, warranties, the warranties that are available and the protection and whether your members are building multi-unit buildings.

MR. GREENWOOD: The condominium buildings, it's interesting - Paul, you might jump in here. A lot of the condominium buildings now are being offered with warranties. That wasn't always the case and there were some issues with respect to Atlantic Home Warranty with respect to how they actually offered the warranty on it, so Paul, you may know more about that.

MR PETTIPAS: Part of it is there is a Condominium Act so they have sort of their own set of rules but there is warranty protection but I think it's like anything else, we tell consumers, buyer beware. Ask the right questions, have there been major repairs done? If it is an older building, is something happening? Again, no matter what we say, you've got to do your homework but there is a Condominium Act that covers that.

MS. WHALEN: Maybe I could be a bit more specific but as you know, Clayton Park riding has a lot of multi-unit buildings and quite a number of condominiums. In the last election when I was campaigning I was in different buildings and they were built by different companies and they seemed to have this similar trend that they were experiencing major

problems and major expense in repairs and these buildings were less than five years old, but they were buildings that enough of the units were sold so they were now owned by the condo corporation and it didn't seem that they had any recourse back to the original builder. My thought would be the Condominium Act isn't strong enough or there isn't other protection in place perhaps through a professional organization like yours. Has that come up at all with you because I'm sure Paul, you get calls particularly as the association?

MR. PETTIPAS: The thing is the warranty program as it stands might not be the best for condominiums because it is usually first year everything and then five year structural. Usually when you get in a major building like that you are probably going to get troubles five years plus. I think if something was looked at from the condominiums, it might be a longer, stronger warranty with maybe some holdbacks involved. I think a condominium is a different thing than a single family and it could be a longer term warranty is required.

MR. GREENWOOD: Most of the condominium developers are not members of our association. We tend to focus more with the home builders and renovators and I don't want to deflect it in any way, but I think you will find that most of them are involved with IPONS, Investment Property Owners association and UDI, Urban Development Institute.

MS. WHALEN: Maybe on another day we should invite them to the committee and we'll talk to them, but I did want to know if they were pretty much captured within your organization and they are not.

MR. GREENWOOD: No, and the other comment I might make on that too is there are condominiums sold without warranties, just as there are homes, there is nothing mandatory about providing warranties. We believe there should be and in fact, as an association, we've mandated that all of our members have to provide warranties. There is more than one warranty company and there are some that are, in my opinion, much better at providing warranties than others. The other thing is the warranties that are offered are sometimes quite limiting, they're not always a catch all.

[10:15 a.m.]

MS. WHALEN: I must say I didn't realize that it wasn't mandatory to provide a warranty, so that is another issue to look at on another day. I wanted to ask you quickly about energy efficiency in the homes. I'm not entirely up to date on this but I know the government has made an announcement saying that by a certain date we will have a certain level of energy efficiency in every home built. When the announcement was made I felt it was a little bit far off, is it 2012 or something that we will begin to reach a standard . . .

MR. GREENWOOD: It is 80 by 2011.

MS. WHALEN: I wondered how your association felt with this, perhaps that is a date that has been determined by collaboration from consultation?

MR. PETTIPAS: We worked with them throughout the process, it has gone to our board, our board supports the policy in principle. What you have to understand on this is our builders have to get up to speed on this, the industry has to get up to speed. What we said to government is, let's bring it in over a time period that we were all comfortable with. We also said to them, in the first couple of years don't even worry about the number, whether it is a 72 or 76, let's just get a label so consumers can compare. As a matter of fact, I'm going to a meeting after this where that will be brought up, but we think the government is in the right direction on this one.

It doesn't make sense to us that there shouldn't be a means of comparison when you buy a new home. You can compare many things but you can't compare the energy efficiency and again, what it does is it brings up the professionalism and has a standard that when people go to buy a home they have further protection that their system, their insulation, their heating system, they can compare it and say, 67 is the basic, it is the code but maybe I want to go in this house across the street which is the same price but has a 72 or 76, or I might want to go to R-2000 which is 80. The good part about it is you get your money back.

I live in an R-2000 home. What I paid to make that R-2000 I get back every month in energy savings and I don't know about you but if I can keep my money away from big oil companies and whatever, I'm quite happy.

MS. WHALEN: Are you suggesting it should be something that maybe is a mandatory requirement when you're selling a home that you list its energy efficiency?

MR. PETTIPAS: That's what in the end it is going to be, that you are going to have to have a label when you sell a new home. We think, as an association, it is a step in the direction for consumer protection and choice.

MS. WHALEN: Could we start having the label on it now even though we haven't gone to every new home being built at that level?

MR. PETTIPAS: I manage the EnerGuide for New Houses program and we are pushing ahead in training people and making it available. We have one in East Bay, Alfie, and I know that is up in your neck of the woods and it's quite a distance away but we have said we will do every part of this province on the voluntary now, and that's what we're doing. We're up in Ingonish, we've done them; we've done them as far as toward Yarmouth, so everyone in Nova Scotia now has the availability to have their new home rated.

MR. GREENWOOD: If I could just make a comment on that, as a philosophy the Home Builders' Association has believed that the market will help to drive this and we're

seeing that in a big way right now. As a matter of fact, our company has just announced that as a result of this provincial government's announcement, we've made a decision that starting with our new phases, it will be a requirement in our subdivisions that all homes have an EnerGuide rating - not a minimum, no, but that they have a rating. So any home built in there before you get your occupancy permit, you will have to prove that it has been EnerGuide rated and there is a rating. In effect, just as R-2000 has helped improve the quality of homes over the last 25 years, the EnerGuide rating will do the same thing. So we believe in the market driving that to a large extent.

MS. WHALEN: Well that's good. I think that's good to be conscious of the importance of this, from the environmental point of view.

If I have a minute, I want to ask you about the impact of HRM's development policy. It seems to be restricting development outside of the core areas and how that's going to affect housing costs. That's a big concern, affordable housing is a big concern for us everywhere.

MR. PETTIPAS: It has, in some cases, doubled the price of land. In some of the rural, suburban areas prices have gone from $35,000 to $70,000. In serviced areas they've gone up tremendous amounts. We've tried to work with HRM on this but whenever you bring in a moratorium of any kind, you sort of have some problems. We've been able to get them to expand some of the restrictions they put on but if you look at a graph of how prices have gone in HRM since that time period, it's basically a line that's going straight up. It has adversely affected the affordability of housing in HRM.

MR. GREENWOOD: If we polled our home builders in HRM and said what are the biggest issues, there would be two. One would be, and they would probably be of equal concern, one would be a lack of skilled trades and the second would be lack of availability of serviced lots in HRM.

Most home builders are working under-capacity because they could be building more homes, they can't get enough serviced lots, they can't buy them. That's as a result of HRM development policies.

MR. PETTIPAS: But one of the biggest things, and I hate to say this to our rural constituents, but we did a presentation in the Valley and CMHC showed the graphs and after 2003, which coincided with HRM's moratorium, prices went up in the Valley and went up on the South Shore because people are going. If you have 100-Series Highways, you can't tell people where to live. If I want a 2.5 acre lot, I will get in my vehicle and I'll drive on the 100-Series Highway and I'll go where I can get it.

So the fact of the matter is you can't just say HRM, it's affecting the other areas and their pricing is going up, a tremendous price increase in parts of the Valley.

MS. WHALEN: Well, it's an important factor . . .

MR. CHAIRMAN; Your time has expired. Mr. MacLeod.

MR. MACLEOD: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I want to thank our guests for being here today, I found their presentation interesting and I've got a few questions. It might sound negative but I just want to get some clarification, I guess. This first one is not negative. I just want to know, if I was a young person today and I wanted to become a tradesperson, what would I do? How would I get in? I've got a son who is 17 and will be 18 in July, he's not going to go to college. I keep telling him that he should become a plumber because everyone still has to go to the bathroom, it doesn't matter how much money they make.

MR. SENZ: I guess like I said before, the biggest thing is the stigma behind the trades, like there's the student councillors steering our kids in the wrong direction. What he should do right now is go to the community colleges and talk to those people and get the information he needs.

As well, we work very directly with the apprenticeship program and with community colleges through the association, as well with the sector council. I sit on many boards within the community colleges, as well as on Skills Canada Nova Scotia, which is another body that goes in and works with youth in the school systems delivering the message of skilled trades to them. They don't specifically talk to a specific trade but they just get that general message out there.

It's hard. We talked earlier about career paths and with professionalism there will be that career path. Right now it's kind of hard to tell a child to go into the skilled trades if that path isn't laid out in front of them. That's one of the major problems that we're facing right now and to tell a child to go and get into the skilled trades, sure, go and do it but then what? That's the exact same question that we're trying to face and trying to deal with. So it is a Catch-22 kind of situation here, you're going to need one to do the other and vice versa.

It's a big problem and we're trying to work with it, trying to get that path developed for the kids to go into but the opportunities are there and we have to make it aware to them that Nova Scotia is a very viable place for them to stay and work and can make a good living at it. So to go to the community college, find out the information you need, contact our office and we can send you in the right direction as well.

MR. PETTIPAS: They often have Career Days where your son or daughter can go for a day at the community college and sort of get acclimatized. I think it's like anything else, if the parents are sort of receptive to it, that's a huge step in the right direction. I know when I was growing up, it was always oh, you don't want to go into the trades, you want to go to university.

Now we have parents coming to our events asking us, how can I get my son or daughter, and I think it's great that the community colleges have these open houses, Skills Canada Nova Scotia have these Career Days, we've done Career Days and we've introduced some of the young people who are builders.

The other thing we've done is we've had a lot of our high profile women members, and we do have women who have been our president or whatever, because young women really don't want to talk to men, they want to talk to successful women. If we can do that, Suzanne Bona of Scotian Homes, Tamara Barker Watson of Whitestone Developments, when we bring them to events, the young women in the room now have a role model and that, to us, is what we have to do. It can't be Mike or myself being a role model for a young lady, we have to show them that this isn't an old boys network.

I always get a kick out of people saying, well isn't there lifting? I was in the business 35 or 40 years, I didn't do much lifting. You hire people to do that, you hire cranes, you do that. Our industry is not just lifting any more, it is skill, it is building energy efficient, it's using advanced equipment. So I would say if you take your son down to Marconi Campus, walk him around, introduce him to some people and show him that hey, this is something that could be viable for you, I think, Alfie, that what you've done is give him really the incentive they need and you support them and that's what we need, we need support from parents.

MR. MACLEOD: Just to go a little further, I guess I'm wondering if the number of seats that are available with the community colleges, what kind of attraction is there to them? Are they filled every year? Is there a waiting list?

MR. SENZ: There is in some trades, there are waiting lists, but that's as well something that we have to develop with the community colleges on offering more seats. I mean it all comes down to budget and the almighty dollar for them. They can only put on so many programs with so many students and that's their budget. So we're working with them.

There's a lot of members of our association who sit on different trade organizations within the community colleges to get those numbers boosted as well with the apprenticeship side of things. Another major hurdle when you indenture with a company is the ratios that are allowed by Apprenticeship Nova Scotia for companies to take on apprentices. That's a huge obstacle, especially in the plumbing and electrical trades. You're indenturing a student on a one-on-one basis with a journeyman tradesman and to this day and age that's not feasible for us. You have to raise those ratios to one journeyperson to three apprentices. It's limiting the companies to take on employees. You're not allowed to hire any more apprentices unless you have a certain amount of qualified journeypersons on staff. So that's another block that we have to overcome that's been brought up as well.

MR. MACLEOD: I'm a little confused because you started off saying that the way this is going to work better is to make sure that people are well trained. Now you're saying that the fact that they're making sure that people are well trained is a hindrance to where you want to go. I mean if you're training someone to be a plumber or an electrician and it's one-on-one then that's a good ratio for that person to get a good education. You put three to one and all of a sudden your electrician is an overseer and he's not doing any work. So how can you tell us if that's the right way to go, when you're saying that the quality is where the effort is supposed to be?

MR. SENZ: You can still get quality with a higher ratio level. The way that the trades work now, if you're working one-on-one with an apprentice, that apprentice is not doing things that he is getting - I guess, his hands-on is not as much as what it would be if you're having three apprentices on-site because you can send that apprentice off, teach him to do one thing, get him to do it; you can work with another apprentice to teach him to do something else and move. You can switch those apprentices back and forth.

If you're limiting companies with hiring, you're limiting the kids to be able to find jobs, so you're stopping that route right there and then and those kids are dropping out of the apprenticeship program because they can't find jobs because the companies can't employ them, so you're hindering yourself in that aspect. It's not quality of training that you're hindering, that's the way I see it. You're not limiting the quality just because you're having another two. What you're saying as well is, why is a teacher in a classroom allowed to teach 30 students instead of three? So it's the same aspect, that journeyperson is more than capable of handling more than one apprentice on-site.

MR. MACLEOD: But then the journeyperson is becoming a teacher and he's not doing the work.

MR. SENZ: That is the whole role of a company that takes on apprentices. That is the biggest step that we have to take to get more companies to hire apprentices. If the company does not take on that responsibility, as industry, to train our next generation of people, who is going to do it?

[10:30 a.m.]

MR. MACLEOD: You said that there were a number of people across the province solicited to find out how they felt about this. You have four locals; was there one area that was more enthusiastic about making this . . .

MR. GREENWOOD: We didn't do it through the home builders' association, it was done outside of the association. We do have reams of extensive results. It seemed to be - and I'd be happy to run through them with you, but it seemed to be - pretty much across the board in that 70 per cent acceptance range. There were a lot of people and there will always be a

lot of people who will be resistant to change and that's very true in our industry. There will be 30 per cent of the people , and there are 30 per cent of the people, who will say wait and see, let's have a look and we really don't like things changing but generally it was across the board.

We polled people from the association, we polled people outside the association, we had focus groups around the province with various groups, various subtrades. So it was a good sampling, it was done professionally and it was done not by the sector council, we hired an outside firm to do it so it is objective in that sense.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Mr. MacLeod. Ms. Massey.

MS. MASSEY: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is really an interesting topic and I think, Paul, you're really energized by it all, I can tell.

MR. PETTIPAS: Well, it's an industry that every day I get up there's something different and it's an industry that I'm glad to say is really adaptable to change. I mean when I was in the business years ago, women were a non-factor. Now we've got women leading our association at times, on construction sites and whatever. So I think we're very proud of the fact that without legislation or whatever, our industry has been gender-friendly and it's going to get better because that's the philosophy of our board and people like Sherry Donovan, who is my communications person, is on that women's council and they're getting into talking about bringing families together for events and that's very important because if we can get families in for events, they can see what we do. So yes, I'm excited, I like this industry.

MS. MASSEY: Well, it's nice to hear somebody come in who is really excited about maybe moving forward, and certainly a 70 per cent sounds like buy-in on your survey, bodes well for the future and if we're talking about other provinces that have already been doing this sort of thing, I know Nova Scotia, we always seem to be sometimes 10 years behind what's going on somewhere else - and that's a good thing in some ways because we want to protect certain things that we do have and not lose them, but at the same time we do need to move forward. So I think it's going to take some imagination by our government to help us do that.

I just wanted to sort of lay out a couple of things that I was hoping I could get into in my big 10 minutes, but in case I don't get to them I just want you to know the things that I really find interesting. I'm interested in how this is going to affect the amount of accessible housing for disabled people in Nova Scotia and the amount of affordable housing that the government is going to hand over some money to maybe get some of these buildings underway; women in the industry and how are we going to bring in women in the age bracket of the 40s and 50s who maybe have never been in the work force - are we going to bring them on board? How is this industry going to deal with the population decline so that maybe

the new building growth will be taken up by renovations to help our seniors stay in their homes?

I'm interested in a little bit more explanation on the licensing program - and I'll go into that later - and then the fourth or fifth thing is really the out-migration of youth. So I think what I'll do is I just wanted to make a couple of comments on the out-migration of youth and, really, we've already touched on that. But if we're losing literally thousands of our tradespeople to other provinces - and I've actually had friends of my 18-year-old son sitting at the kitchen table with me and talking about moving out of Nova Scotia because they wanted to move into a trade and if you're talking about a difference between $15 an hour and $32 an hour for carpenters in HRM versus Calgary, that is huge for a young person. They don't have a family, they don't have babies, they're not even thinking about buying a home yet, it has not entered their mind - they're thinking about I want a car, I want a bit of pocket change and there's no problem for them to move out there, away from mum and dad, for a couple of years.

That's exactly what's happening and it's very sad to see, so I just have to say that. Of course that night when I sat around the table I tried to convince them to stay here, but it certainly is an issue in my neighbourhood.

The topic of women in the industry, I'm really happy to see that was in one of the presentations this morning because I think that's so important. You were here earlier on when we did the ABCs and you can see how women, it's an issue with us and we do have a subcommittee that is trying to deal with the issue of there's less women applying to be on agencies, boards and commissions in this province. Anything that your industry can do to bring women into positions of sustainable work to support the families is great.

One of the things that I think affects women going into any kind of post-secondary education or trades education is the lack of daycare. I know the Akerley Campus has a daycare facility and that is chock full, from my understanding, all the time. So that is something - I know it's not in your hands, a lot of the things we're talking about you don't really have control of and that's why the government is here to listen, I guess, to the debate on the issue. So anything you can add to what other things you're doing - maybe Sherry has some comments that she might like to make.

MS. SHERRY DONOVAN: One thing that we have done over the last six months is implement the women's council for the Nova Scotia Home Builders' Association, which has been endorsed by our provincial council. Our first meeting was a bit of a strategic planning session to find out what is our purpose of the council, and the council has come up with a mission statement to promote women in the industry and to show the benefits that women can provide to the industry as a whole. One of our key mandates is to work with the youth and to attract them to the industry.

We had a presentation by Techsploration at our last meeting, at the beginning of May, and are very encouraged to see how we can fit in and become mentors for young women and work within the high school. Like Michael said earlier, it is really key to get in at the high school level and show them that this is a viable industry, that there are opportunities and that we want you to be a part of our industry. So that is something that we are working on.

MR. GREENWOOD: You might just explain Techsploration, I think it is a wonderful program.

MS. DONOVAN: Techsploration is a group that works with high schools and such and they go in and show the different trades and technologies that are available, to introduce young women to different trades and technologies. They do work with young men as well, but their focus is on attracting young women to the industry. There is a great presentation and we really look forward on how we can become mentors and really show the benefits. There were over 30 women at our last council meeting which, out of an industry that represents over 300 companies, it is a good step. We will be looking at new venues I'm sure in the future because there is huge interest in growing that community.

MS. MASSEY: When you go into the high schools, do the Grade 10 students see what you are offering? Is it Grade 12, or what grade is it?

MS. DONOVAN: I know with Skills Canada Nova Scotia they work with the high schools so they go into all different levels, but from our standpoint Paul does go in and speak to different schools about the industry. We have had two committee meetings with our women's council, and we are looking at ways in which we can implement and have our women leaders also go in. A lot of our women leaders also have women carpenters on staff and such and are bringing them in to speak to the students as well, which is very important.

MS. MASSEY: I ask because I know our math scores are so poor right now in the province that if someone is thinking of going into a certain trade or post-secondary education, sometimes by Grade 10 you already know you are not coming up to that level. I know, for example, Halifax Regional School Board, this year I don't think they received the funding they were looking for for math tutors. So all these things sort of play on trying to move people - even if they want to do certain things they may not have the skills to do that.

MS. DONOVAN: If I can address that. One thing that we have also done is career fairs in which we've worked with Skills Canada Nova Scotia on that, and when they were doing their competition, we have also run our own kind of introduction to the industry as well. One thing we did last year at the Canadian competition is we showed the process of building a new house from start to finish, including energy efficiency and many different trades. We did an interactive display in which they had to stop at each of the components to actually see how the house was built - and this was junior and senior high school students

from across the province, male and female, so it was a really good education introduction, but again it is a first step.

MS. MASSEY: It is good to see you moving ahead with that. I think I read somewhere that in universities and colleges there are more women going to them now than men, so maybe some day we'll catch up with the trades, too - who knows?

One thing I did want to touch on - I don't know if somebody can make some comments - where is industry moving with accessibility for disabled Nova Scotians?

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Ms. Massey. I will accept the answer, that is an important question.

MR. PETTIPAS: I think there, as you get into some of your building permits and whatever and renovation - I know many renovators now are looking at specialty. Yesterday I talked to a company in Dartmouth that does this in homes and they are working with some of our renovators. It is also in the code, so I think that is covered, but I think what happens when you get into the smaller rural areas sometimes you have less access. In HRM you have fairly good access to that, but again it is something where if you have a large hole in the dam, which we have as an industry, and you have these smaller ones, you're trying to fix that bigger one first. We do have renovators who will specialize in that.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Ms. Whalen.

MS. WHALEN: That was actually a question that I had, so I'd like to explore it a little bit further, about the standards for disability and accessible homes. The U.K. has legislation that says every home that is built has to be barrier-free, it has to have one entrance that is barrier-free, it has to have one bathroom that would be accessible if you were in a wheelchair, and with an aging population - and, in fact, in Nova Scotia with a high percentage of disabled people, higher than other provinces for some reason, we need to look at how we can start to address that. We may be late in doing so, but it is time, so how would the industry feel about regulations that would set a better code?

MR. PETTIPAS: There are regulations now on a percentage. The difficulty is we find with some of our members who are in the multis are saying I can't rent these because people don't want them, I don't have enough people who want them. I think we have to be very careful to sort of match the market to what actually is the demand out there.

MS. WHALEN: Can I ask you, Paul, what don't they like about it? For me, as a completely able person, I can't see that that would be a detriment?

MR. PETTIPAS: Well, sometimes in the bathrooms they don't like the idea that you can't have a place underneath the basins to put items and it doesn't have the nice countertop

and some of the taps are not - if you go into a plumbing store now you will see there are some dynamite fixtures and, let's face it, a lot of people when they are going into a place want the fancier fixtures with all of the doodads. In the accessibility and some of those other items they are utilitarian, they have the big handles and whatever.

MR. SENZ: I think as well a lot of times with the codes, with accessible units, there is a whole, wide variety of things that are not made for a person who is able - if you are talking wheelchair accessibility especially. Your light switches are lower, your countertops are lower, everything like that, so you are not going to have the versatility of selling that unit, or renting that unit out is not there as easily as you would think. It is very hands-tying for a developer - if the market was there for them like Paul said and that guarantee is there for them to rent those units out, then I don't see a problem with it at all. I think it's . . .

MS. WHALEN: You are suggesting consumer preference is what is driving it. If you do what they did in the U.K., every new building is built to that standard, therefore you take out some option for other people unless they want to alter it once they own the home.

[10:45 a.m.]

MR. SENZ: Myself, being in the renovation industry - I own A&H Renovations out of Dartmouth - we find it is a very specific need that the people are looking for, so they're not looking for that generic unit that has that accessibility. They are looking to stay in the same place where they are now and convert it to what they need, and it's easier done within a new home right now than the older homes, so it's . . .

MS. WHALEN: Yes, I'm thinking of new homes.

MR. SENZ: It's not something that is as hard as what people seem to think it is sometimes.

MS. WHALEN: What I would suggest is just that the groups who lobby on behalf of the disabled, and there is about 20 per cent of our population that declare themselves disabled in one way or another for mobility, with that figure in mind, they are asking for changes in the way we do business and how we build in Nova Scotia. The Legislature had a bill before it to retrofit all of our public buildings by a certain date - I think it is quite far off in the future, 2020 maybe, but it is a concern to legislators. I just raise it today to see what your response would be.

MR. GREENWOOD: If I could just add one more thing. My experience in working with home builders is that an awful lot of home builders now in new homes are designing in accessible features. Perhaps they are not going 100 per cent accessible, but they're making the bathrooms a little larger. They are seeing that they are selling to older customers and so the market is starting to look after that on its own.

MS. WHALEN: Again, I point out how we are all aging and we have a heavy percentage of older people and we should be looking at that, just because it is good policy I think in the long run - that was one point. Under the cost of doing business in Nova Scotia I wanted to ask you about safety and Workers' Compensation, and that is probably a huge area all on its own, but do you keep track of the safety record of your members and are you looking at how - I know that your payments for Workers' Comp will come down as your safety record improves, or it should.

MR. PETTIPAS: I'm the past chairman of construction safety and I'm now on their board of directors, along with Suzanne Bona. It is an incredible expense, but I think it is a well-founded expense - that one we are not going to fight as an industry. We are always looking for ways to make it manageable because it is a cost we pass on, but we are currently working with construction safety now to get a new safety manual that is more suited to smaller builders. In the past, construction manuals seemed to always be suited to large job sites - this one will be suited to smaller groups.

We promote safety among our members, the difficulty there is on smaller jobs where safety becomes really an expensive component, it is difficult. We have to keep saying to them that you might save that money but quite frankly, if you kill someone on your job site it is $250,000 and I know that is a rather abrupt way of saying it, but if you look at the Workers' Compensation ads, they are starting to be very graphic. What's an arm worth? What's a leg worth? What's an ear worth? Sometimes we have to hit our members with a large mallet.

MS. WHALEN: That is certainly an incentive in itself when you look at the costs.

MR. PETTIPAS: So, we want Workers' Compensation to live within their means, but I don't think as an industry we would ever say, forget the safety aspects for the sake of efficiency. We have to balance the two of them on job sites.

MS. WHALEN: Can you tell me, in a general sense, are the number of accidents on the job sites going down, are you on a good trend?

MR. PETTIPAS: With the general construction safety, the last reports I have read is they have been going down. We, as a residential industry, have not been as good, we have got to get better. Part of the difficulty is we are small sites. When you get large construction sites it is sort of controllable, fenced and everything else, you are there for weeks so you can justify doing things. We have to really tell the builders and work with them to say, even if it is a three-month job you have to make sure you are safe there. The short is, as a residential construction industry, our record is getting better but it is nowhere near where it should be.

MS. WHALEN: More work to do, okay. Under the energy efficiency side again, I wondered if there has been any move from your industry perspective on things like solar

panels and those being introduced. I'm thinking specifically about California, Arnold Schwarzenegger has brought in a rule that says a million homes in California will have solar panels put on and I think he has put incentives in place to have that done. Do we have a sector that is involved with that and do they work with you?

MR. PETTIPAS: Very much so. The Habitat for Humanity home that our association built in Dartmouth last year actually had a solar panel on the roof to preheat the water. A lot of our builders are using them. There is a great little invention from P.E.I., it is a bit of a coil that goes around your sewer pipe and as the hot water flows down it heats the water coming back up to replace it, it is about $1,500, it is a great way of preheating. We have done courses at our major technical conference in January, we had speakers on solar, active and passive. Our industry adapts if the consumer is looking for it. Also I know that the government is giving incentives on some of these. There are rebates now on R-2000 of $1,000 for EnerGuide, for new houses up to 80 there is $750, but the big thing is people have to see that it is worth it and they are, they are being convinced that it is the way to go, you can save money.

MS. WHALEN: That is certainly compelling in itself, as you say, it is easy to see the savings on those aspects. I thought it was unusual to hear that Nova Scotia has the second best solar resources in the country and I was quite surprised to hear that and so it's something, I think, we should be looking at.

MR. PETTIPAS: I heard we were number one. Quite frankly, in some cases, I have been to conferences where Nova Scotia is number one in Canada, really, for using solar energy. Someone probably lied and said we were number two, I would say that number one was a bit of a liar.

MS. WHALEN: Is that number one in adapting solar energy? My figure is we are number two in the power of our sun here.

MR. PETTIPAS: Basically, my understanding is we are the best location in Canada for utilizing solar energy.

MS. WHALEN: Good.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Ms. Whalen. Minister Morse.

MR. MORSE: Am I splitting this with my colleague?

MR. CHAIRMAN: You can do that if you like.

MR. MORSE: Okay. Back to certification and this concept that there be a warranty and a certain expectation of a contractor in order to operate in Nova Scotia. What is the

breakdown across the country between the provinces? How many provinces have mandatory certification?

MR. GREENWOOD: Right now, about 30 per cent. B.C. has mandatory certification, Ontario as I mentioned through Tarion they have mandatory licensing, every home builder and renovator has to be licensed. Quebec has it, no other provinces at this point have it but as I mentioned, Saskatchewan and New Brunswick are looking very seriously at it.

MR. MORSE: Okay, so I would expect that in a short term there would be an extra cost if certification was in place tomorrow because you drive out some of the underground operators, there would be basically a temporary shrinkage of the industry's capacity.

MR. GREENWOOD: Yes, certainly it would be our intent to bring in the underground operators into the licensing system . . .

MR. MORSE: And in the long term, there should be a cost savings to the consumer because you're now not being stuck with the condo disaster in Vancouver.

If we were to bring in certification today, what would the impact be on that $307,000 home in the HRM? Do you see it as being significant?

MR. PETTIPAS: I don't see any impact whatsoever.

MR. MORSE: I would be pushing that in your messages.

MR. PETTIPAS: I don't think so because it really isn't going to - sort of the fee itself is going to be small. It's not going to affect the material or the way you build, I think it's more of a long-term thing that we're promoting the professional of the industry and giving a career path.

You know the strange thing, and I shouldn't even say strange, I think once some of our underground economy players see there's basically a path where they can get from A to Z, I think a lot of them will actually come out because I think most of them are there because they don't see the ability to make as much money above ground as underground. If we can show them that they can have steady work and whatever, I honestly think that it'll expand our industry.

MR. MORSE: Okay, which requires more skilled labour. So how was that going to impact on recruitment and retention, and specifically, what will it do relative to the competition we're getting from other parts of the country, for our skilled labour force?

MR. GREENWOOD: Well, there will always be that competition right now. A lot of that is related to the strong markets, particularly in B.C. and Alberta.

MR. MORSE: No, but to be specific, my question is, if we were to change the dynamic here in Nova Scotia today, how will that help with recruitment and retention? I mean I would not expect you to tell me that it's going to make it more difficult to recruit and retain. Will it make it easier to recruit and retain . . .

MR. GREENWOOD: Yes.

MR. MORSE: . . . and will it be a significant assist to the sector?

MR. GREENWOOD: I think it will be significant in due course. To think that overnight we're going to have changed this industry, we won't, but part of the philosophy of this is let's make our industry a better place for people to have careers. Right now we're a very loose-knit industry, people in and out of the industry all the time. We want to create something that's much more professional - Mike talked about the situation in Europe, Michael's father was a tradesperson in Europe - that's where we want to go, that's not going to happen overnight. So to say that there will be an immediate impact from a recruitment standpoint, no, I can't say that would be the case.

MR. SENZ: Along with that, though, there are different line items that go along with the line item of professionalization of getting certification in process and one of those items is right now in the Province of Nova Scotia, you're a certified plumber, you're a certified electrician, you're not a certified carpenter. The biggest component of building is you do not have to have certification as a carpenter. You can get your certification as a red seal but it's not mandatory. So part and parcel of that, that will provide another career path for people or for kids to go into and get that certification. That's streaming along with mandatory licensing.

MR. MORSE: A red seal, could you expand on that?

MR. SENZ: A red seal basically is a designation that is written when you write your apprenticeship papers in the Province of Nova Scotia and it is written - it is a part of the program when you achieve a certain score that your qualifications here in Nova Scotia enable you to work in all the other provinces. So it is telling the other provinces that you met that certain criteria and you're allowed to work in those provinces. That's what the red seal program does.

MR. MORSE: Okay, and again, competition from other parts of the country for our skilled labour force, what is the biggest challenge, in terms of being competitive for these skilled workers? Is there still a lack of work in parts of Nova Scotia? Or is it the wages . . .

MR. PETTIPAS: I would say that seasonally there might be but that's clearly changing. I think the biggest thing, though, and I think Ms. Massey stated it, you know you're 18 or 19 years old, you're sitting in a place in Halifax or Dartmouth or Pictou or

whatever, you're reading that in Fort McMurray you can drive a bus and make $70,000 to $80,000 a year, you can get in a dormitory out there and really you have not a care in the world and hey, we've all been there. That's tough.

What we can do is if we create an industry here when that person looks around and says, do I really want to keep doing this? We know we'll lose them for two or three years but we think we can get them back, but we've got to show them that when they come back there's a career path.

When I left law school, when I left university, I could see the career path I wanted. What's happening now in Nova Scotia is it doesn't seem to us in the trades, especially carpentry, that there is a career path. I agree with Peter, occupational licensing is not the silver bullet that's going to cure everything but it's one part. That's why on the group that they work with, we have bankers, insurance, we have people in the industry because they're part of it and we want to certainly work with government, but it's just something that over the weekend I heard, if you think we're bad in Nova Scotia, we heard a report from Saskatchewan, can you imagine what they've lost? You know what they've done? They've turned it around now and said, why not live in Saskatchewan and work in Alberta? So their housing has skyrocketed because people can't afford Alberta so we have to think of out-of-the-way boxes.

We can't think of the thing, come back because we need you, we have to make it so that they look at this place as a viable place. Money is one thing but I think way of life is important. I think the choice we have to do things but we've got to get that across. I think more than anything else, if a government states things, they should be true. I think the worst thing we can do is basically say something that might not quite be true when we're comparing it because our young people are smart. You've got the Internet, you've got Google, so if we're going to say something, if we're going to say, come back because of this, we had better have our figures correct and we had better be correct.

MR. MORSE: So the work, by and large, is available in the East, in Nova Scotia, there are just things that are going to appeal to a young person until they have a chance to get out and see the world a bit and then make their decision. What you're saying is you want to work with us in government, to make sure that what we are able to offer those young people by way of an incentive to come and make Nova Scotia their home again and maybe other people who were not originally from Nova Scotia to come and settle here is, work together to put some sort of concrete career path in place so they know what they're buying into when they come back home.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Mr. Morse. That concludes our time but if you'd like to take a couple of minutes and wrap up, any last comments you would like to make, please do so.

MR. GREENWOOD: The only comment I want to make is we certainly appreciate, on behalf of the Atlantic Home Building and Renovation Sector Council and the Home Builders' Association, the opportunity to address the committee and we certainly hope to have the opportunity to work with the government in advancing our initiative. Thank you very much.

MR. SENZ: Yes, thank you very much for the opportunity to speak today. We're glad to see that there are people out there asking the right questions, especially back to the industry, and hopefully we can work together to find the answers. Thank you very much.

MR. PETTIPAS: We work with governments on a daily basis, we're certainly as an industry, not anti-government. It was a pleasure talking to you this morning. We deal with all three Parties. We're waiting for the Liberals, the new Leader, we certainly want to be able to sit down with your caucus, as we have with the NDP and as we have with the Tories. So thank you very much, we appreciate it and thanks for the good weather.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much. We've just a couple of things we want to talk about committee business. Our next meeting is June 26^th. We don't have anybody booked for that time and we don't plan on booking anyone through the summer, for July and August. We're just going to make appointments, we already decided that at a previous meeting.

Is it the committee's wish to have a witness in June, or not to have one, then? What are your thoughts?

MR. PARKER: We have some folks on our lists, do we not?

MR. CHAIRMAN: Yes.

MR. PARKER: I think if we're coming down to the ABCs, we're coming in from Cape Breton or Pictou County or the Valley, we may as well have witnesses here, it's hardly worth coming for five minutes, I mean it is what I'm thinking is to come for the two hours.

MS. WHALEN: I would say, if I could, Mr. Chairman, this committee does handle education, which is such a big issue that it would be good if we could get somebody in. I know you've got a list of possible witnesses, just to make full use of the meeting time.

MR. CHAIRMAN; Do you want to give us a list of names. If that's the wish of the committee, we can book someone for June.

MRS. DARLENE HENRY (Legislative Committee Clerk): From the last meeting, there were two on the list - the Home and School Association and the Black Cultural Centre. So those were the two that were approved at the last meeting in April.

MS. WHALEN: I'd like to make a motion that we see the Black Cultural Centre under Tourism, Culture and Heritage.

MS. MASSEY: Didn't we see them last year?

MS. WHALEN: They've never come, I don't believe, the Black Cultural Centre. Mr. Chairman would know. We had the museum.

MS. MASSEY: Oh, no, it was the museum we were talking about. We asked about them. I remember what you said.

MR. PARKER: Either one are good talkers.

MS. WHALEN: The School Boards Association, I know, has just visited all the caucuses, I believe, we have had them in, so we've had a chance to question them and I believe they've made the full rounds. So I felt it was more interesting, you know, for me to listen and learn from a new group.

MR. PARKER: Of course the School Boards Association is not the Home and School Association, it is a different group all together. (Interruption) Quite different, yes.

MR. CHAIRMAN: So the motion on the floor is for the Black Cultural Centre. Do I have a seconder for that?

MR. MACKINNON: I second it.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Any discussion on the Black Cultural Centre?

Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.

The motion is carried.

MR. PARKER: Maybe as a backup we could have the Home and School, if they're not available to come.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Okay, that would be fine.

MS. WHALEN: September is a good month to hear from the Home and School, everybody is back to school.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Morse.

MR. MORSE: Mr. Chairman, I guess the first thing I'd like to say is that today, sitting in the Chair, you drew the short straw because this was a really interesting presentation and then exchange with these organizations. By just making that comment, it doesn't immediately come up with a menu of comparable witnesses but if we could get our head around whatever led us to come up with them as witnesses, I think we should do it more often because this was probably about as interesting a session as I've ever had in a committee. There were some interesting ones back in the Public Accounts Committee, my first year and a half in the House, but I really enjoyed this today and I commend you for your stoic acceptance of your role as chairman because I'm sure you would have liked to jump in and asked a few questions.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Would I ever.

Mr. MacLeod.

MR. MACLEOD: I was just wondering if we could discuss maybe starting at 10:00 a.m. rather than 9:00 a.m. because I generally don't come up until the morning and like this morning I was on the road at 4:15 and I know that's only one but it gives me more opportunity to be home in my constituency and if we have to come for 9:00 a.m. and it's only an hour in the difference, so I was just wondering if we could do 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m., rather than 9:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m.?

MR. CHAIRMAN: It's up to the wish of the committee.

MR. PARKER: No problem for me. (Interruptions)

MS. WHALEN: I'm certainly willing to try that and I think when the House isn't sitting it's flexible so maybe we could just look at some flexibility. Let's try it.

MR. MACLEOD: When the House is sitting, we're here anyway.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Okay, so we'll set our next meeting for 10:00 a.m.

The other issue is July and August we will not have witnesses in. We have to make appointments, we'll meet for appointments only, for July and August. We'll start our meetings again in September, with our witnesses. So maybe everyone can put their mind around what witness we want for September and we can make a decision for that at our next meeting, to give our clerk time to book someone in for September, if they could do that. Maybe you could circulate the list of the people and if you have anyone you want to add to it, please add them to it and we'll go from there.

Okay, thank you very much.

MS. WHALEN: Did we get a motion to adjourn?

MR. MORSE: Yes, I would make a motion to adjourn.

MR. CHAIRMAN: So moved. We stand adjourned.

[The committee adjourned at 11:08 a.m.]