We’re in the home stretch of the election campaign and the parties have released their platforms. Below are key promises from each major party related to the heavy civil industry:
Conservative Party of Canada
Read CPC’s full platform here.
Canadian Energy and Resources
- Create a National Energy Corridor to rapidly approve and build critical infrastructure and end our energy dependence on America so we can stand up to Trump from a position of strength. This will fast-track approvals for transmission lines, railways, pipelines, and other critical infrastructure across Canada in a pre-approved corridor entirely within Canada, transporting our resources across our country and to the world while bypassing the United States.
- Repeal the ‘No More Development’ Law (C-69), which makes it impossible to build the mines, pipelines, and other major energy infrastructure Canada needs.
- Repeal the West Coast tanker ban (C-48) so Canada can build new LNG terminals to export Canadian energy overseas, ending Canada’s economic dependence on the U.S.
- Unlock arctic ports, approve oil exports from Canada’s Arctic ports, and expand the Port of Churchill to extend the shipping season.
Critical Infrastructure and Transport Links
- Create “Shovel Ready Zones,” which are pre-permitted so projects can break ground immediately.
- Fix Canada’s ports by streamlining regulations and permitting, reforming borrowing caps, pre-authorizing future development zones, exploring container shipping on the Great Lakes, extending the shipping season at the Port of Churchill, and reviewing the hours-of-work regulations for smaller ports.
Domestic Industry and Innovation
- Bring the Premiers together to slash exceptions in the Canadian Free Trade Agreement and boost interprovincial trade within 30 days of taking office.
- Introduce a Free Trade Bonus that rewards provinces that lower the trade and labour mobility barriers that cost Canada’s economy billions.
Support Labour and Trades:
- Pass the Tax Fairness for Travelling Workers Act to allow full tax deductibility for travel.
- Work with the provinces to harmonize health and safety rules across jurisdictions to protect workers everywhere.
- Reinstate apprenticeship grants and streamline EI for apprentices.
- Create a Trades Toolkit for high schools.
- Require banks to recognize apprenticeship credentials for RESP eligibility.
Liberal Party of Canada
Read the LPC platform here.
Canadian Economy
- Unleash free trade in Canada, by Canada Day, by tabling legislation to eliminate all federal barriers to interprovincial trade and labour mobility, and to remove all federal exceptions under the Canada Free Trade Agreement.
- Reduce red tape and require all relevant federal departments to undertake reviews within 60 days on steps to eliminate outdated or unnecessary rules, reduce duplication or overlap with provincial rules, and streamline the administration of rules and the delivery of regulatory decisions.
- Protect Canada’s economic sovereignty by unlocking projects that grow the economy.
- Build new trade infrastructure that connects Canada through the new $5 billion Trade Diversification Corridors Fund, including ports, railways, airports, highways, and other trade-enabling infrastructure.
- Build the Arctic economy with more ports, highways, railways, and energy infrastructure, with a focus on dual-use infrastructure that grows our economy, reinforces our partnership with Indigenous communities, and secures our sovereignty.
- Build out Canada’s east-west electricity grid, a nation-building transmission project developed with provinces, territories, Indigenous partners, and stakeholders.
- Provide disaster mitigation and recovery funding where infrastructure that connects Canada is affected.
Buy Canadian
- Deploy a made-in-Canada procurement strategy that prioritizes, whenever possible, Canadian suppliers and supply chains, and limits bidders from foreign suppliers to bidding only on what governments have agreed to in Canada’s Free Trade Agreements.
- Establish Buy Canadian standards for federal infrastructure funding, including maximizing Canadian steel, aluminum, and forestry products.
Arctic Sovereignty and Prosperity
- Invest in Northern infrastructure, including a new hydroelectricity project and other energy projects, so that people have access to safe, reliable energy; improve housing stock, accelerate housing development, and meet growing housing demand.
Defending our Economy
- Maximize Canada’s steel, aluminum, and critical minerals – from exploration to battery production – to seize this economic opportunity, create higher-paying jobs, and build the strongest economy in the G7.
Building New Markets for Canadian Goods
- Build trade-enabling infrastructure to diversify our trade away from the United States, create new jobs, and build a one-Canadian economy.
New Democratic Party of Canada
Read the NDP platform here.
A Stronger and More Independent Canada
- Overhaul Canada’s procurement policies with a Build Canadian, Buy Canadian plan, including banning American companies from contracts if Canadian workers can do them.
- Identify shovel-ready infrastructure projects – roads, bridges, transit, community projects, and healthcare capital – and get building, with union workers using Canadian products like steel to get it done.
- Boosting investment in infrastructure now will help keep people working, stimulate Canada’s economy when it most needs a boost, and leave communities better off.
- The NDP would also start work on an East-West clean energy grid – a major country-building infrastructure project to deliver affordable, clean, and secure energy to people and businesses across the country.
- The party also promises to Construct for Canadians by eliminating inter-provincial trade barriers, including harmonizing environmental and health and safety standards.
Supporting a Green Economy
- New Democrats are committed to a Build Canadian, Buy Canadian Plan to boost Canada’s domestic economy and create a stronger and more independent economy.
- As part of this plan, the NDP would develop sector-specific industrial strategies for energy, mining, manufacturing, buildings, and transportation, with workers at the table every step along the way, with the goal of accelerating Canada’s clean energy transition and attracting new investment in communities across the country.
- The NDP would provide additional support to train more workers for tomorrow’s green economy. The goal will be to support good, new jobs in clean industries and support the decarbonization of essential industries like steelmaking, cement-making, transportation, and others.
- Local communities should receive the economic benefits and jobs from low-carbon projects. Community Benefits Agreements between community, labour, governments, and employers for all federally-funded infrastructure projects will ensure communities get what they need to prosper.
Fiscal Approach
- Investing in infrastructure in the short term will help keep people working and help minimize the economic downturn.
- This countercyclical boost will have a significant multiplier effect due to the slack our economy is experiencing, created by the trade war.
- Investments in housing, clean infrastructure, renewable energy, and Arctic infrastructure will also help ready our economy for a strong recovery.
- These investments are aimed at supporting Canada’s longer-term project of reducing economic exposure to the United States.
- As part of the NDP Build Canada Plan, the NDP will increase the federal government’s capital investment budget by $10 billion per year, investing in Canada’s productive assets, including ports, rail, highways, and Arctic infrastructure.
To read the CCA roundup of Week 4 of the federal campaign, click here.
The CCA has launched a Construction for Canadians campaign to put the need for federal investment in infrastructure at the forefront of the election campaign. To see the CCA initiative, click here.
