Q – What are some of your priorities as President and Chairman?

The motto of MCAC is “Building Smarter Together,” and I think this really captures what we are trying to achieve as the national voice of the mechanical contracting sector in Canada. Our industry is so broad with so many stakeholders; but if we can provide the tools and the resources to collaborate and connect with stakeholders, we can help our members work smarter, and better.

In terms of priorities, as our members know, the issue of prompt payment has remained at the forefront for our association for several years. We have seen some tremendous progress at the national level on this file, and we are seeing that momentum at the provincial level as well. With a new government now elected, we will continue to work hard at the federal level to see the required regulations, including adjudication, put in place to ensure prompt payment is the norm in our industry.

With that being said, our association is also exploring how we can better serve our members across Canada. The needs of our membership are shifting, as are the ways our industry operates. As a national association, we must continue to be proactive and enhance our value to ensure our members see MCAC as an essential resource.

I truly believe that as an association, we are well positioned to respond to the needs of our 1,000 members across Canada, and I am looking forward to what the future of our association has in store.

Q – What are some of the most important issues affecting MCAC members?

We have already mentioned prompt payment as an important issue for our members, but what we are hearing from across the country are a variety of other issues impacting MCAC members. Some of these issues include labour shortages, access to quality education and training, quality of design documents, new contractual provisions impacting our members, and new innovations and technologies that are entering the marketplace.

None of these issues are small, and it is important that we continue to work with our partner MCAs across Canada on how we can best address them. Part of our role as a national association is to help prioritize some of these issues on a national level, and identify the key stakeholders involved so that we can deal with these issues in a collaborative and constructive way.

I am looking forward to meeting with more of our members in the coming year to hear some of their feedback on these issues, and how we can best represent our members’ interests in these discussions.

Q – What is MCAC doing to respond to these important issues?

As I mentioned, MCAC has a close working relationship with a number of like-minded and stakeholder organizations from across Canada, as well as our continuing dialogue with our partner MCAs at the provincial and zone levels.

Federally, we maintain our ongoing advocacy work, including our annual Day on the Hill to meet and discuss key issues with federal Members of Parliament. We are also actively involved in the National Trade Contractors Coalition of Canada (NTCCC) to ensure trade contractor interests are being advocated for in a collective way.

MCAC is also working very hard on several new programs, including the Women in Mechanical Construction (WiMC) initiative, and new efforts to ensure our members are kept up to date on new and emerging trends and innovations in our industry.

As many of our members know, MCAC is also proud to be known as the “Education Association” through the work of our Construction Education Council (CEC). We continue to identify new training opportunities and offer first-class seminars and programming across Canada. Since its inception, CEC has worked hard to offer outstanding training to our members from coast-to-coast, and we will continue to place emphasis on education and ongoing training for our members.

In all of these endeavours, we consistently meet with members and stakeholders to discuss how our efforts can help address the important issues impacting them.

Q – What message would you like to convey to MCAC members?

As a business owner in our industry, I am fully aware of many of the challenges and issues that our members face across Canada, and I am confident that we have the Board of Directors and national staff in place to help address these. I would encourage members to talk to your association representatives to ensure your voice is being heard, and to get involved with as many opportunities as possible at your local association. As I mentioned, our motto is “Building Smarter Together,” and I really believe that we are stronger and smarter when more of us are involved.

To that end, I want to make sure that I thank our members from coast-to-coast for their ongoing support of MCAC. It is a very exciting time for your national association, and I am looking forward to the positive progress we can make on your behalf and for the Canadian mechanical contracting industry.