Because of concerns raised by members over Employment Standards legislation in May, the Labour Deputy Minister sat down with ACA leadership on June 1 to explain what the Employment Standards changes would mean to the industry.

The government responded to ACA concerns and indicated that no changes will be made to construction industry provisions in the regulations that currently exist (e.g. rules for calculating banking of overtime hours, termination pay, vacation pay and calculating general holiday pay).

Any changes to existing regulations will only be made after consulting with affected industries.

There is a plan to review any longstanding permits issued to industries (including any issued to the construction industry) to see if those details should be incorporated into an industry-specific regulation.  The intent would be to ensure that any special rules that are needed for industries are in the regulations so that employers would not need to apply for a permit.  If any such permits exist, affected stakeholders would be engaged in those conversations.

On Thursday June 1, ACA Chair Paul Heyens, Executive Director Ken Gibson, Policy Analyst Jonathan Williams, and Kent Dietrich met with Jeff Parr Deputy Minister of Labour. The meeting was highlighted with a discussion surrounding the new Employment Standards changes and how it will affect the industry. This was in part a response on the concerns ACA expressed last week around the new legislation.

The meeting was cordial and ACA was told that current construction specific regulations would remain in place and any changes or additions to the regulations would only be done after consulting with industry.

Alberta Infrastructure (AI) released their fourth quarter report of contracts management and prompt payment on May 25, 2017.

For the production of the contract related information in this report, AI pulled from their contract management system the number of contracts awarded during the quarter and noted the payments made to those contracts.  At this time there is no audit but there is some administration to ensure they are capturing the correct information.

Fourth Quarter Prompt Payment report