Too many, says Isabelle Rinfret of construction and real estate management company Arvisais, based roughly 95 kilometres northeast of Montreal, in Louiseville, Que.But to comply with the rules, she had to hire an interior systems installer to move the partition, a plasterer to smooth out the surface, and a third person to paint the wall.
“We have needs that are growing in Quebec: housing, hospitals, roads, infrastructure, industrial projects,” Boulet said in an interview. “We need to help our capacity to build to meet these needs, and that happens by meeting two challenges: first, a larger workforce and second, more productivity.” The Canadian Housing and Mortgage Corporation, meanwhile, estimates the province will need to build more than 1.1 million additional housing units by 2030 in order for housing to be as affordable to average income households as it was in 2004, the corporation said in a September report.
“I totally agree that decompartmentalizing certain trades would enable us to gain in productivity,” she said in an email. “With additional training or experience, a single person who could, for example, do carpentry and plastering work could ? be part of the solution to the labour shortage.” However, Boulet’s proposal has drawn criticism from CSD Construction, a union that represents almost 25,000 Quebec construction workers. It argues greater versatility between trades would place an unfair burden on labourers while threatening work site safety and construction quality.