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We Make It Move

Message from the President
Greetings,
The challenges facing our transportation system are enormous. Climate change,
the future of oil, and globalization are already reshaping how we move and the
machinery that moves us. Dramatic changes lie ahead, and workers, including
100,000 members of our union working in transportation and manufacturing
transportation equipment, will be deeply affected.
Our transportation system is simply not meeting the needs of Canadians, and we are not prepared to
meet the challenges ahead. We need a made-in-Canada transportation system that is the most
efficient, accessible, green and safe in the world. To achieve this goal we must face the issues head
on, put forth a vision for the future, propose real solutions, and work to build momentum across the
union and within broader movements to win the change we need.
Our union has a proud history of activism on transportation. In 1992 we adopted our first statement
on transportation, highlighting the need for public decision-making, challenging deregulation and
privatization, and noting the urgent need to address a relatively new issue at the time: climate change.
Since then, we have bargained workplace environment committees and education programs,
challenged governments to endorse climate change agreements and corporations to reduce emissions,
pursued expansions to public transit, spoken out on the need for better passenger rail and ferry
services, and for stability in the airlines.
We’ve been at the forefront of demands to transform the auto industry through green initiatives and
to sustain our nation’s ability to build transport equipment. And throughout we’ve always recognized
that in order for workers to make progress we must forge our own ideas, and create our own solutions,
independent from government and corporate agendas.
Our vision for sustainable transportation is a continuation of this activism and work. It reflects input
from across the union and the urgent need for action. The challenges are complex and there are no
easy solutions: fundamental changes are needed. The way forward does not end with this document,
it will require ongoing dialogue, creativity and activism.
I encourage you to read this statement, discuss the issues in your Local Union and with your co-workers,
families, friends, and neighbours, and participate fully in our efforts to build a truly sustainable
transportation system. Because when it comes to making progress, we really can make it move.

Ken Lewenza
National President
CAW-Canada

We Make It Move

A Vision for Sustainable Transportation

TRANSPORTATION – IN ALL ITS FORMS – IS ESSENTIAL
to our social and economic well-being. How we
commute to work, get to school, spend our leisure
time, where we live, how our cities and towns are
built, and how we link our communities in this
vast country are all deeply dependent on our
transportation system.
Transportation shapes every aspect of our
economy. Consider the amount of transport
involved in what we buy every day – our food, our
clothes and the household goods that come from
far and near. We spend 15% of our household
income on transportation. Throughout our history
the expanding reach and speed of transportation
has shaped this country.
Canada is a world leader in building the
machinery that makes transportation systems
work. If it moves by road, rail, air, or sea, we
make it: cars, trucks, buses, subways, streetcars,
locomotives, railway cars, airplanes, helicopters,
and ships. These industries are key to our nation’s
economic success.

By every measure our transportation
system is critical. And yet everything
about it needs to change.

Each day 657,000 Canadians go to work to
move people or things, and another 156,000
spend their working hours building transportation
equipment. These workers directly generate $64
billion worth of economic activity each year —
5% of all output. The value of these activities is
important in its own right, but of course
transportation extends much further — the rest
of the economy, and all of society, would grind to
a halt without it.
By every measure our transportation system is
critical. And yet everything about it needs to
change.

Transportation Must Change
THREE

MAIN FORCES ARE DRIVING THE NEED FOR

change in transportation. Each is powerful on its
own, but as they overlap and reinforce one another
the need to forge a new vision, and prepare for the
future, becomes more urgent than ever.

Climate Change
Citizens, scientists, and activists around the world
agree that we stand at the precipice of damaging
and irreversible climate change caused by our
addiction to fossil fuels. Urgent action has been
needed for many years, but so far our governments
have failed to bring about binding international
agreements with aggressive emissions reductions.
Canada’s record is among the worst.
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In Canada, transportation is responsible for more
than 25% of carbon dioxide emissions, the main
culprit behind climate change. Canada’s overall
emissions continue to grow, and transportation is
emitting more greenhouse gas than ever. If we are
to have any hope of heading off an environmental
catastrophe we must make big changes now.

Peak Oil
To make matters worse, the insatiable use of oil in
industrialized countries is being replicated in
developing nations, where surging growth is
deepening carbon dependence. There is growing
agreement, however, that the world will soon, or
has already, reached peak levels of oil production,
and that supplies are starting to run out.
Dwindling supplies, from much dirtier sources like
Alberta’s tar sands, at vastly higher prices, are in
our future.
The price of oil swings wildly and remains near
record levels set just before the financial crisis,
and many experts see dramatically higher prices
ahead. Imagine, for a moment, the impact of a
rapid doubling of oil prices on our transportation
system, and for the industries making
transportation equipment.

Globalization
How are jobs outsourced half way around the
world? How are goods that used to be built here
now imported so cheaply? What allows employers
to ask workers to undo a half-century of progress
to match wages and social conditions on the other
side of the planet? Transportation plays a key role
in globalization.
Social progress in developed economies has been
constrained by the three-decade-long project of
“neoliberal“ globalization. Standing in complete
contrast to global relations built on mutual support,
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economic development, and solidarity, the
neoliberal model is based on unregulated “free”
trade, dramatically reduced roles for governments in
the economy, and a blind faith in the efficiency of
markets. In developing nations, this model has
driven growth based too much on export instead of
on building a diversified economy.
This kind of globalization hinges on a number
of ingredients, including international trade
agreements, new institutions to enforce them, the
projection of military power, and central to this
model is the availability and expansion of cheap
transportation designed to serve this project.
Challenging globalization is, in part, about
turning our transportation system away from this
model, and instead ensuring that it is focused on
domestic needs and developing our economy
based on different principles.

This is far too important to leave to
private decision-making.

For all these reasons — the shape of our daily
lives, the future of our communities, heading off
environmental catastrophe, the direction of the
economy and prospects for social progress — we
need to care about what kind of transportation
system we have.
We’ve seen where our transportation system is
headed, and it needs to be shifted to new
priorities. Clearly we need a plan, and this is far
too important to leave to private decision-making
without public input and oversight.

Transportation is a
Workers’ Issue
CAW

MEMBERS ARE NOT JUST WORKERS: WE ARE

citizens who care about the society we live in, the
health and direction of our economy, the
environmental legacy we leave for our children,
social progress, and a fairer society. The union’s
role extends well beyond the bargaining table.
Along with our allies in social movements and civil
society, the labour movement is among the few
sustained voices that can challenge the views and
interests of private capital.
The transportation sector is central to our
union. We represent nearly 50,000 people working
in all modes of transportation — trucking, public
transit, taxis, school buses, freight rail, passenger
rail, airlines, air navigation, aircraft maintenance,
ferries, lake freight and, short-sea shipping — in
every region in the country, and in the private and
public sectors. We also represent 50,000 workers
who build transportation equipment in the

automotive, heavy-duty truck, off-road truck, bus,
light rail, locomotive, aerospace, and shipbuilding
industries.
Together, these transportation and manufacturing sectors represent half of our union’s
membership. What happens to shape the future
of transportation will clearly affect the whole
country — but it will affect our members first,
and the most directly.

What happens to shape the future of
transportation will clearly affect the whole
country — but it will affect our members
first, and the most directly.
The changes we need are vast and far-reaching,
yet too often workers are wrongly portrayed as
being a barrier. When it comes to addressing the
challenges faced by our transportation system, too
often we find ourselves boxed in, defending a
broken system as we fight to preserve our jobs. We
need our own vision and guiding principles, and to
offer solutions that provide hope that another way
is possible.
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The State of
Transportation Today
OUR TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM HAS EVOLVED AND
expanded dramatically over the years. Today there
are more cars, roads, highways, public transit
systems, freight on trucks, freight on rails, flights,
and ships than ever before, and we’re doing
everything faster. This expansion was possible
because of the hard work, dedication, and
ingenuity of workers in transportation, and those
building transportation equipment.
Yet our transportation system is failing in many
important ways, and we’re clearly on the wrong
path to addressing the most fundamental
challenges ahead.
The central feature that shaped the kind of
transportation system we have today is
deregulation, which took on momentum in the
1980s. This deregulation push was combined with
the withdrawal of public participation through
Crown corporations in the railroad, airline, and
marine sectors. Citizens and their representatives
have been increasingly pushed to the margins in
order to release the supposed efficiencies of
private decision-making driven by profit, and an
ever-deeper integration into a neoliberal global
economy. Consider just some of the ways this
system is not working:
• Canada committed to reducing our greenhouse
gas emissions under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol,
yet our emissions have actually increased since
then, and emissions from our transportation
system have grown by 19%.1
• Our urban centres are increasingly gridlocked.
The wasted time and fuel have been estimated
to cost up to $3.7 billion per year.2 Commute
times have grown to among the longest in the
world in our three largest metropolitan areas —
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Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver. (In Toronto
the average daily commute is now 80 minutes,
the worst in a 19-city global study.3)

In every case these examples of a failing
system highlight a retreat from public
control and decision making.

• There is simply not enough public transit, and
what we do have is underfunded and too
expensive, even though demand is strongly
outpacing population growth. The Canadian
Urban Transit Association highlights a deep
spending deficit, and notes that $53 billion is
needed over the next five years just to fix
existing infrastructure, replace equipment, and
proceed with already planned expansions — let
alone develop new public transit systems.4
• Global oil speculation has driven up gasoline
and diesel prices by more than 75% over the
last decade — three times higher than the
level of general inflation.5 Road transport
industries have faced soaring and wildly
fluctuating fuel prices requiring endless

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surcharges and wreaking havoc on their ability
to plan and operate. Owner-operators bear the
brunt of these price shocks.
Fuel use could be cut in half for every type of
new car and light truck using existing
technologies: hybrids, more efficient engines,
clean diesel, electric vehicles, piston
deactivation, stop-start motors, continuous
transmissions, lightweight materials and low
resistance tires are all available now. Most pay
for themselves in fuel savings in a few years. Yet
the widespread adoption of these technologies
has been stalled by leaving it almost entirely up
to markets and business-as-usual profit making.6
Canada’s airlines are in constant turmoil. The
legacy of deregulation and privatization, and
the resulting over-competition, has left a
wake of unstable and bankrupt companies —
more than 25 airline bankruptcies in Canada
over the last three decades, combined with
fewer services and far higher costs on lesstraveled routes.
Our governments continue to award major
contracts for the supply of transit vehicles,
passenger rail equipment, ships and military
aircraft to offshore manufacturers rather than
buying domestically, or insisting on Canadian
content and equivalent offset work in Canada7.
Finding ways to better export oil and other
unprocessed natural resources is the main focus
for public policy on transportation
infrastructure. We’re building ocean-front
“gateways,” and aiming for NAFTA “highway
corridors” to better link Canada into its role as
a global provider of resources. These efforts
will only tie us ever deeper to the oil economy,
causing our dollar to soar and killing off our
manufacturing and other industries.8

• Cheap global transport, working in tandem with
our open-door trade policies, has helped turn
Canada into a net importer of manufactured
goods. Four million new vehicles were imported
into the NAFTA region last year. And Canada saw
a record $81-billion manufacturing trade deficit,
where we had balanced trade a decade ago.9
• Everywhere across the transportation system, and
in the manufacture of transportation equipment,
workers in Canada are facing downward pressure
on wages, working conditions and health and
safety, the growth of precarious work, threats to
outsource jobs across the globe or to low-wage
competition next door, diminished rights to
organize and growing government interference in
free collective bargaining.
In every case these examples of a failing system
highlight a retreat from public control and
decision making. Our experience clearly shows
that leaving key decisions about transportation in
the hands of the market has failed.

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Principles to Achieve our Goal
Our goal is to create a made-in Canada transportation system that is the most efficient,
accessible, green and safe in the world. Given the road we’re on and the scope of changes
required, the first thing we must do is recognize that fixing this will require big changes,
and will take a lot of time. Workers cannot do this on our own — nor should we try.
We need the combined energy and talents of the labour movement, environmental activists,
social justice and civil society groups and urban development advocates.
The barriers to the progress we seek are, at their heart, political. Through articulating our
vision and a set of principles, and mobilizing among our members and in our communities,
we can forge the alliances and build the movements necessary to win change.
Four over-arching principles must guide our actions. Canada’s transportation system must be:

1. Environmentally Sustainable
We are looking over the precipice. We must move away from oil and toward
sustainable energy if we want to minimize our environmental impact. We must
adopt a strategy of reducing inefficient and unnecessary transportation,
shifting to more sustainable modes of transportation, and dramatically
improving the environmental performance of all modes of transportation.

2. Recognized as a Public Good
Transportation is essential to our social and economic well-being and must be
designed to serve public needs. The transportation needs of citizens and
communities and the imperatives of sustainable economic development
simply cannot be met by profit-driven private decision-making. Governments
must play a leading role in transportation through public transit agencies and
Crown corporations. And where the private sector is involved, services must
be ensured through regulation: the roads, the rules governing railway rights
of way, the airspace, and the seas are in the public domain and their use
comes with obligations.
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3. Made-in-Canada
Our transportation system must support local manufacturing, building to
the highest environmental standards. When public investments are made in
urban transit, passenger rail, ships and aircraft we must ensure that there
are buy-Canadian and domestic content rules. Private sector use of Canada’s
publicly-owned transportation infrastructure must come with an obligation
to support local manufacturing. And we must orient our transportation
system away from the priorities of globalization.

4. A Place for Good Jobs
Our economy needs good jobs that deliver a fair standard of living, provide safe
working conditions, a measure of security and give workers and their families
access to full participation in family and community life. Good jobs can only
be ensured by enhancing workers’ rights to organize and guaranteeing free
collective bargaining. The building of a truly sustainable transportation system
has enormous potential to create employment, and we must ensure that the
creation of good jobs is a central outcome of all transportation initiatives.
These principles are our guides — only through implementing them can we build a
sustainable transportation system, be environmentally responsible, create good jobs, and
develop our domestic industry. Through them, we can bring about the long-term
transformation that we need, and advance solutions to address our most immediate concerns.

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Sector-Specific Issues and Solutions
TO ACHIEVE A TRULY SUSTAINABLE TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM WE MUST MOBILIZE AROUND PRACTICAL
AND IMMEDIATE MEASURES, AND ADVANCE LONGER-TERM SOLUTIONS.
Each part of the broader transportation system
must deal with its own unique circumstances. But
the entire system faces the common fundamental
challenges of climate change, the future of oil and
the effects of globalization. These forces will
continue to drive dramatic change across every
mode of transportation, and in the manufacture of
every kind of transportation equipment.
To confront these common challenges we can
draw upon our shared understanding — building
a truly sustainable transportation system will
require a stepped-up role for smart public policy,
stronger public input, and greater public
investment, oversight, and control. Experience
shows us that deregulation and private decisionmaking simply don’t work.
Finding the way forward will require the efforts
of many, and hearing from many voices. These
are the solutions offered by the people who build
the equipment, and keep the system running,
every day:

Road Transportation
CARS, TRUCKS AND PUBLIC TRANSIT ON THE ROADS MAKE
up the largest transportation sector in Canada.
And it also home to some of our most urgent
problems, including rising greenhouse gas
emissions, climate change and urban congestion.
Canada has the capacity to address these
challenges and transform road transportation. Our
highly-developed automobile, truck, bus, and
transit vehicle manufacturing industry can be
harnessed to tackle these problems head-on, with
unique, made-in-Canada solutions.
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CAW in the Sector:
• 60,000 Members:
20,000 members driving cars, trucks, buses
and transit vehicles, and 40,000 members
building them.
• We Drive it:
Major road transportation employers include:
Coast Mountain Bus
First Student
Blue Line Taxi
Grand River Transit
Reimer
Brinks
TST Overland
MacIntosh Air Cab
Waste Management
Canada

DHL
B.C. Transit
Veteran Cab
G4S
Allied Systems
Stock Transportation
CN Transportation
Airline Limousine

• We Build it:
Major road transportation manufacturing
employers include:
Chrysler
General Motors
Paccar Trucks
Nova Bus
General Dynamics
Lear Corporation
Flex-n-Gate
Magna
A.G. Simpson
Westcast

Ford
New Flyer Bus
Orion Bus
Prevost Car
Bombardier
Johnson Controls
Dana
Woodbridge Foam
Cooper Standard

Solutions:
• Double Canada’s national fuel-efficiency
standards for new vehicles from the current level
of 8.6 litres/100 km (27.3 miles per gallon) to
4.3 litres/100 km (54.5 miles per gallon) by
2025 under renewed Passenger Automobile and
Light Truck Greenhouse Gas Emission Regulations
matching proposed U.S. standards.
• Make major investments in fleet renewal of
private vehicles through a “cash-for-clunkers”
program to get oldest and least efficient
vehicles of the road, tied to purchases of
domestic-made vehicles.
• Adopt far-reaching vehicle end-of-life disassembly and recycling regulations and programs.
• Make major investments and expansions in all
modes of public transit: buses, light rail,
subways, regional trains and ferries.
• The federal government, in consultation with
provincial and municipal governments, must
adopt a National Public Transit Strategy
providing for federal funding mechanisms, a

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permanent investment plan, improved access
and strengthened long-term funding.
Ensure that every mode of public transit meets
the highest standards of accessibility for users
of all abilities through the retrofit of existing
equipment and infrastructure, and the design of
future expansions.
Ensure that public transit funding is strengthened
to provide free access for students, seniors and
the unemployed; and for all riders on official
smog days.
Strengthen workers’ successor rights to move
with their jobs and collective agreements
when contracted public transit services are put
up for tender.
Improve job quality by strengthening workers’
rights to choose union representation, and by
placing greater limits on the ability of governments to interfere in free collective bargaining.
Make major investments in separated bike lanes
and related infrastructure in the core of our
urban centres.

By the Numbers:
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20 million cars and light-duty trucks on the road.
770,000 heavy-duty trucks and buses on the road.
416,000 kilometers of paved road.
38,000 kilometers of highways.
1.8 billion annual trips by urban transit riders.
18 million trips by inter-city bus passengers per year.
303 billon kms driven each year by cars and light trucks.
213 billion tonne-kms of freight moved by for-hire trucks.
2.1 million cars and light-duty trucks built each year.
10,000 heavy duty trucks and buses built each year.
$26.5 billion annual output from road transportation.
$17.8 billion annual output manufacturing road equipment.
504,000 employed in road transportation.
109,000 employed manufacturing road transport equipment.

Sources: Transport Canada, Transportation in Canada 2010; Statistics Canada, CANSIM Tables 379-0027, 281-0023

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• Ensure full-consultation, and industry impact
assessment, in the development of new fuel
efficiency and green-house gas emission
regulations for heavy-duty vehicles.
• Institute fleet renewal programs in the for-hire,
private and owner-operator freight trucking
segments to offset costs and speed transition
to much more fuel efficient vehicles.
• Better regulate entry of new firms into trucking to limit the negative effects of
over-competition, coupled with stronger
standards for labour practices and safety to
prevent competition from driving down working conditions.
• Adopt stronger regulations governing the
armoured car industry to ensure that firms are
sufficiently qualified, and to better safeguard
worker and public safety.
• Establish a made-in-Canada energy strategy to
control the development of Canadian energy
resources and set stable long-run prices for oil
and gas that reflect real economic and
environmental factors – not global speculation.
• Adopt rigorous “Buy-Canadian” policies for
transit purchases of buses, streetcars and
subways by all levels of government that

Greenhouse Gas:
• Passenger cars and light-duty vehicles emit
85,000 Mt of green house gas per year (kt CO2
equivalent)
• Heavy-duty vehicles emit 45,000 Mt per year.
• Road transportation as a whole is responsible
for 19% of Canada's greenhouse gas emissions.
• Emissions from road transportation have
risen by 11% since 2000.
Source: Environment Canada, National Inventory Report:
Greenhouse Gas Sources and Sinks in Canada, 2011

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include strong Canadian content levels and
requirements for Canadian final assembly.
• Require Canadian machinery content in major
resource and mining projects to maximize
value-added spin-offs from our own resources.
• Target public support for investments in
manufacturing toward building the next
generation of the highest efficiency cars,
trucks, buses, streetcars, aircraft and ships.
• Implement trade policies that favour the longterm development of the local economy, and
managed international trade, over more
unregulated globalization.

Rail Transportation
OUR RAILWAY SYSTEM HELPED DEFINE THIS COUNTRY,
and it creation was a major contributor to
Canada’s earliest economic expansion. Today,
however, the sector is badly in need of a major
overhaul. Passengers need access to high-speed
inter-city trains and greatly expanded commuter
train service. And freight service needs to be
better regulated to ensure a high quality of
service, safer operations and fair pricing for
businesses and communities dependent on rail.
Canada has a proud history of manufacturing
railway equipment. We must strengthen this
sector by safeguarding our existing manufacturing
capacity and expanding our manufacture of highspeed trains, greener freight locomotives, and more
efficient rail cars and other rolling stock equipment.

Solutions:
• Better regulate freight pricing, service levels
and rail safety to protect communities and
industries dependent on rail carriers.
• Immediately commit to building a public
high-speed passenger rail network in the
Windsor-Quebec City corridor, and between
Calgary and Edmonton.

• Expand all inter-city and regional passenger rail
services and establish dedicated passenger
tracks in high-traffic corridors.
• Ensure that VIA Rail funding for improvements
to infrastructure and equipment is used to
improve passenger service, and is not geared
toward enhancing investor interest as a move
toward privatization.
• Resist privatization of remaining public railways,
VIA Rail and Ontario Northland Railway, to
ensure that they remain in public hands.
• Adopt buy-Canadian and domestic content
rules for inter-city and regional passenger rail

CAW in the Sector:

By the Numbers:
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46,000 kilometres of railways.
272 million tonnes of freight moved per year.
4.4 million VIA Rail passengers per year.
64.1 million annual passengers on
commuter rail in Toronto, Montreal and
Vancouver.
$5.4 billion annual output from railways.
$213 million annual output from related
manufacturing.
32,000 employed in railway operations.
3,500 employed in the manufacture of
railroad equipment.

Sources: Transport Canada, Transportation in Canada 2010;
Statistics Canada, CANSIM Tables 379-0027, 281-0023

• 13,000 members:
11,000 members operating and maintaining
railways, 2,000 members building
locomotives and railway equipment.
• We Operate it:
Major rail transportation employers include:
Canadian National Railway
Canadian Pacific Railway
VIA Rail
Ontario Northland Railway
McKenzie Northland Railway
Savage Alberta Railway
Hudson Bay Railway
• We Build it:
Major rail transportation manufacturing
employers include:
Electromotive Diesel
Bombardier
Griffin Canada

Greenhouse Gas:
• Canada's railways emit 7,000 Mt of green
house gas per year (kt CO2 equivalent)
• Railways are responsible for 1% of Canada's
greenhouse gas emissions.
• Emissions from rail transportation have not
changed since 2000.
Source: Environment Canada, National Inventory Report:
Greenhouse Gas Sources and Sinks in Canada, 2011

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purchases, and for freight rail carriers as a condition of private use of use of rail corridors.
Make major public investments in intermodal
infrastructure to better integrate rail, marine
and road transport.
Re-orient public investment in rail transportation
infrastructure away from the priorities of energy
and resource export, and toward local
development.
Adopt measures to improve the fuel efficiency of
all rail transport, and toward the electrification
of rail from renewable sources where feasible.
Improve job quality by strengthening workers’
rights to choose union representation, and by
placing greater limits on the ability of governments to interfere in free collective bargaining.

Air Transportation

Solutions:
• Reject further “open sky” policies with other
countries that will mean more deregulation and
destabilization of the industry.
• Re-negotiate existing “open skies” and “blue
sky” policies with other countries to ensure
better reciprocity and address the large trade
imbalance in air travel.
• Better regulate service levels and pricing for air
travel to small- and medium-sized locations
through strengthening the Air Canada
Participation Act.
• Make a significant public equity investment in
Air Canada to stabilize the national flag carrier
and support the pursuit of public policy goals.
• Put regulatory limits on overall capacity
growth to reduce the deadweight loss of excess
capacity and moderate the sector’s boom-andbust pattern.

OUR AIRLINES CONNECT COMMUNITIES LARGE AND SMALL
in this vast country – for some it is the only link.
And air travel is also our main passenger
connection to the wider world. But years of
deregulation have created an unstable industry
where bankruptcies are common and the future is
always uncertain. Service has been cut back and
smaller communities find themselves at risk of
losing further air links. Despite this, Canada
remains a world leader in the provision of air
traffic control services – our safety record is the
best in the world – and we must ensure that this
service is not allowed to degrade through
unsustainable low fees or exposure to unnecessary
economic risks. Air transportation remains a key
contributor to greenhouse gas emissions and
climate change and must improve its performance.
Our highly successful aerospace industry can lead
the world in the creation of new, greener aircraft
and technologies.
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CAW in the Sector:
• 25,000 members:
15,000 members operating airlines and the
air navigation system, and 10,000 members
building aerospace equipment.
• We Operate it:
Major air transportation employers include:
Air Canada
NAV Canada
Jazz Air
Aeroplan
GTAA
Handlex
ASP Security
First Air
• We Build it:
Major aerospace manufacturing employers
include:
Bombardier
Pratt and Whitney
Boeing
Bristol Aerospace
CMC Electroniques
IMP Group
Cascade Aerospace Heroux Devtek

By the Numbers:
• 49 Canadian local-service airlines with
scheduled service.
• 75 foreign airlines with scheduled service
to and from Canada.
• 34,000 registered civil aircraft.
• 1,867 land, water and heliport airports and
aerodromes.
• 103 million passengers through the nation's
airports per year.
• 41 control towers and 58 flight service
stations.
• 5.8 million take-offs and landings per year.
• 1 million tonnes of cargo worth $100
billion per year.
• $5.8 billion annual output from air
transportation.
• $6.7 billion annual output from aerospace
manufacturing.
• 92,000 employed in air transportation.
• 37,000 employed in aerospace
manufacturing.
Sources: Transport Canada, Transportation in Canada 2010;
Statistics Canada, CANSIM Tables 379-0027, 281-0023
NAV Canada

Greenhouse Gas:
• Canada's domestic air transportation emits
7,200 Mt of green house gas per year (kt CO2
equivalent).
• Canada's share of emissions from international
air transportation is estimated to emit a further
9-12,000 Mt of greenhouse gas per year.
• Combined, domestic and international air
transportation account for about 2.5% of
Canada's total emissions.
Sources: Environment Canada, National Inventory Report:
Greenhouse Gas Sources and Sinks in Canada, 2011;
Jacobs Consultancy Inc., Canadian Aviation and
Greenhouse Gases: report to Air Transport Association of
Canada and NAV Canada, 2007.

• Create a tripartite taskforce on the airline industry, including labour, government and business
participation to develop long-term solutions
and viable industrial polices for the airlines.
• Enhance worker training to ensure that the
existing workforce is prepared for transitions to
new technologies and procedures.
• Improve job quality by strengthening workers’
rights to choose union representation, and by
placing greater limits on the ability of governments to interfere in free collective bargaining.
• Invest in next-generation air navigation equipment to improve fuel efficiency by allowing more
efficient flight paths.
• Ensure through public oversight and regulation
that NAV Canada charges fees that support the
growth and improvement of the safety-critical
air traffic management system.
• Ensure that NAV Canada remains focused on
its role as envisioned by the Canadian Air
Navigation Commercialization Act.
• Better regulate airport authorities and carriers
to cut fuel waste by ensuring sufficient gate
capacity, equipment and staffing of ground
personnel to minimize idling and delays.
• Regulate the number of airport ground handling
operators and set appropriate standards to end
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•

•
•

•

•

•

•

the negative downward effects of over-competition on service levels and working conditions.
Adopt buy-Canadian and domestic content
requirements for air carriers operating in Canada
as a condition for the use of public airspace.
Extend sales financing programs to the sale of
Canadian-made aircraft to domestic carriers.
Demand managed aerospace trade through
reciprocity: Europe, Asia, and Brazil must
accept imports of Canadian-made products in
return for our purchases of their products.
Adopt buy-Canadian and domestic content rules
for military and other public purchase of aircraft
and related air transportation equipment,
combined with transparent rules regulating
negotiated offset work in Canada.
Create as Canadian Aerospace Development
Council, involving private firms, all levels of
government, the CAW and other stakeholders to
design and implement a new aerospace strategy
for Canada.
Ensure that public aerospace investment
support reflects the regional distribution of the
industry, and that policies are geared toward
overall growth rather than the transfer of work
from one region to another.
Expand public investment programs in Canadian
aerospace, targeted toward building the next
generation of most efficient aircraft and
strengthening requirements that R&D support
translate into production work in Canada.

Marine Transportation
OUR MARINE TRANSPORTATION SECTOR PROVIDES ESSENTIAL
ferry services for our coastal communities and
serves as a vital freight link to the rest of world.
Moving people and freight by water remains one
of the greener modes of transportation, yet we
greatly underutilize the potential of our Great
Lakes and short-sea shipping because of the lack
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of investment in intermodal connections. Our lax
regulatory oversight hinders the development and
expansion of an even stronger domestic shipping
industry. Canada is renowned for the high quality
of our shipbuilding industry, yet for too long
we’ve lacked the public policies needed to support
and build on this legacy.

CAW in the Sector:
• 4,000 members:
2,500 members operating ferries and marine
transportation services, and 1,500 members
building ships and marine equipment.
• We Operate it:
Major marine transportation
employers include:
Marine Atlantic
St. Lawrence Seaway
Bay Ferries
Northumberland Ferries
Canadian Coast Guard
• We Build it:
Major shipbuilding employers include:
Halifax Shipyards
Kiewit Offshore Services

Solutions:
• Adopt a Canadian equivalent of the U.S. Jones
Act that would require the domestic ownership
and sourcing of ships and crews using our
waterways.
• Support the H20 Highway initiative to expand
intermodal connections to Great Lakes and
short-sea shipping.
• Protect and expand public ferry services and
implement a fleet renewal program.
• Re-establish the Shipbuilding and Industrial
Marine Advisory Committee to ensure that workers voices are heard on key policy initiatives.
• Improve job quality by strengthening workers’
rights to choose union representation, and by
placing greater limits on the ability of governments to interfere in free collective bargaining.
• Adopt buy-Canadian and domestic content rules
for public purchases of ferries, coast guard and
military ships.
• Add value to Canadian resources extraction by
ensuring Canadian manufactured content in
offshore oil and gas developments.
• Implement a Great Lakes shipping fleet renewal
program, linking public investment to the
purchase of Canadian-made ships and higher
environmental standards.

By the Numbers:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

67 Transport Canada administered ports.
17 federal Port Authorities.
25 major ferry services.
195 Canadian-registered vessels over
1,000 tonnes.
55 million tonnes of cargo through
St. Lawrence seaway per year.
1.8 trillion tonne-kms of marine freight
traffic per year.
$984 million annual output from marine
transportation.
$520 million annual output from
shipbuilding.
29,000 employed in marine transportation.
6,500 employed in shipbuilding.

Sources: Transport Canada, Transportation in Canada 2010;
Statistics Canada, CANSIM Tables 379-0027, 281-0023

Greenhouse Gas:
• Canada's domestic marine transportation
emits 5,100 Mt of green house gas per year
(kt CO2 equivalent)
• Marine transportation is responsible for
less than 1% of Canada's greenhouse
gas emissions.
• Emissions from marine transportation have
not changed since 2000.
Source: Environment Canada, National Inventory Report:
Greenhouse Gas Sources and Sinks in Canada, 2011

15

Moving Forward
THE CHALLENGES WE FACE ARE ENORMOUS, AND MAJOR CHANGES ARE NEEDED TO PUT US ON A PATH TOWARD A TRULY
SUSTAINABLE TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM.
The growing impact of climate change, the future of oil and globalization are rapidly shaping the future
for workers who keep our transportation system running, and those who build the equipment that it
depends on.
Winning the changes that we need will require challenging some powerful interests — there are many
who are content to profit from the path that we are on. We will need to change perceptions about the role
of governments, public policy and the limits of markets in this essential part of our social, economic and
environmental well being.
Decades of deregulation and the retreat from public decision making, investment and control have
clearly failed to build the transportation system that we need. But there are alternatives: The list of
solutions we offer is already far-reaching and others will emerge.
The history of the labour movement has shown that when progress is needed we cannot stand back
and wait for someone else do the work. We must continue to dedicate our collective efforts to engage
with our members in our workplaces, with the public in our communities and with our allies in the
progressive movements.
Renewing our principles, and proposing concrete solutions, builds upon our proud record of activisim.
Moving forward from here will mean outreach, education, mobilization, campaigns and actions – and the
CAW will be at the heart of it all. We will make it move.

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9

Environment Canada, National Inventory Report: Greenhouse Gas Sources and Sinks in Canada, 2011
Transport Canada, The Cost of Urban Congestion in Canada, 2006
Toronto Board of Trade, Toronto as a Global City: Scorecard on Prosperity, 2010
Canadian Urban Transit Association, Transit Infrastructure Needs for the Period 2010-2014, 2010
Statistics Canada, CANSIM Table 326-0009
U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Efficient Technologies, www.fuelconomy.gov/feg/tech_adv.shtml
E.g.: Vancouver subway, York buses, DND buses, BC ferries, F-15 fighters, fixed-wing rescue aircraft
E.g. Pacific Gateway strategy, NAFTA corridor strategy
Industry Canada, Strategis Database, 2011

16

PHOTO CREDIT: Vince Pietropaolo, Canadians at Work

We Make It Move

2011 Transportation Conference Planning Committee

Staff:

Chris Buckley
Robin Dudley
Bill Gaucher
Éric Gravelle
Barry Kennedy
Rolly Kiehne
Greg Myles
Karl Risser
Jamie Ross

Jenny Ahn

Director

Bob Chernecki
Nick DeCarlo

Assistant to the President
National Representative

Jo-Ann Hannah
Lisa Kelly
Bill Murnighan
Bruce Roberts

Director
Director
Director
National Representative

Local 222
Local 1917
Local 114
Local 728
Council 4000
Local 112
Local 5454 – CATCA
CAW/MWF Local 1
Local 2002

Auto manufacturing
Truck manufacturing
Road transportation
Truck manufacturing
Rail transportation
Aerospace manufacturing
Air navigation
Shipbuilding and marine
Air transportation

November 2011

Membership Mobilization
and Political Action
President's Office
Health, Safety and
Environment
Pensions and Benefits
Education
Research
Education