OPED: Ahead of the curve; Manitoba’s workforce model
If you read past the headlines, the federal government’s spring economic update is doing something more consequential than announcing $6 billion in new skill trades spending.
It is redefining what counts as a “ready” project in Canada.
For years, readiness meant permits, financing, and procurement lined up.
Increasingly, it now includes workforce.
That shift is not always reflected in the debate here at home.
In Manitoba’s legislature, Opposition Leader Obby Khan has focused criticism of the Manitoba Jobs Agreement on cost and burden to contractors. That framing is familiar, but it risks missing the larger change underway and sending the wrong signals out of Manitoba to Ottawa.
The federal conversation has already moved beyond whether workforce requirements should exist. The focus now is on how to build them directly into project delivery.
The federal government is explicit about this direction. The spring economic update emphasizes scaling skilled trades capacity, strengthening apprenticeship pathways, and reinforcing the direction set through the Building Canada Act.
That legislation tied projects in the national interest to outcomes that include good-paying, unionized jobs. The update moves that from principle toward implementation.
This shift is happening in response to a real constraint.
Canada is entering a period of sustained capital investment, with major infrastructure, housing, and industrial builds all competing for the same limited labour pool.
Ottawa is planning for that demand, recruiting and training tens of thousands of new tradespeople, but there has always been a disconnect between workforce policy and project delivery.
Training happens in one stream, procurement in another, and too often projects move ahead without a clear answer to a basic question: who is going to build this?
That question is no longer theoretical. It is now shaping federal policy.
This is where Manitoba’s approach stands out. The Manitoba Jobs Agreement was designed to connect public infrastructure spending to workforce outcomes in a direct and enforceable way.
It embeds apprenticeship requirements into projects, creates consistency across complex job sites, and provides a framework for labour stability at scale.
It is not a concept or a pilot, it is already operating across Manitoba’s public builds.
That matters, because much of the national conversation is now catching up to that model.
There is significant focus right now on modernizing apprenticeship, expanding access, improving completion rates, and strengthening pathways into the trades. All important.
But construction apprentices do not train in theory. They train on job sites. Without a steady pipeline of work tied to training expectations, those conversations do not translate into results.
By anchoring apprenticeship directly to public projects, Manitoba has created a system where training happens as part of delivery.
That is a practical model of modernization, and it aligns closely with what Ottawa is now trying to achieve.
Through the MJA, Manitoba already has key pieces of that system in place: a mechanism to integrate apprentices at scale, a consistent approach to labour across sites, and a framework that reduces the uncertainty that often slows large projects down. That positions the province differently — more advantageously — whether that is fully recognized yet or not.
The debate in Manitoba, driven in part by large construction associations, continues to centre on cost. That framing is increasingly out of step with where federal policy is heading. The spring economic update makes clear that Ottawa is not just funding projects, it is building a workforce strategy alongside them.
This is not abstract for Manitoba.
The province is advancing a pipeline of schools, health facilities, and major capital builds that will require sustained workforce capacity for years. The difference is that, under the Manitoba Jobs Agreement, procurement is already integrating workforce development. These projects are being used to train apprentices, stabilize labour, and build the workforce needed for what comes next.
That is exactly what federal policy is now trying to establish at a national level.
As Ottawa moves to prioritize and fast-track major projects, readiness will matter more than ever. Not just regulatory or financial readiness, but workforce readiness. Manitoba has already begun aligning its system with that reality.
The question now is whether industry will continue to treat workforce requirements as a constraint — or start recognizing them as a competitive advantage.
Tanya Palson is executive director of Manitoba Building Trades.