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Construction is important by virtue of its prevalence in Canada; it is one of the most common types of employment held by men, employing approximately 1.4 million people. Its ubiquity, in addition to its connection to growth in other sectors, has meant that the construction sector is closely followed by governments, who often view construction employment as both an indicator of growth and a source of economic stimulus.3 Despite this, however, labour scholars have paid less attention to construction than to other sectors of employment. Though there is a sizable literature on health and safety and on gender in the construction trades, research about contemporary labour relations is notably sparse. Undeniably, conducting research on construction workers and unions is challenging. The mobile and fragmented character of the construction industry makes recruiting interview participants difficult, and labour unions are often secretive and reluctant to share information with researchers. Unions in the sector also have a mixed history, on the one hand giving voice to workers' concerns and providing for worker protection, while on the other hand supporting right-leaning governments, promoting business unionism and creating divisions between unionized and non-unionized workers and skilled and unskilled workers. Understanding the complexity of the industry, both its organized and its unorganized elements, is thus a demanding research endeavour.

Employment opportunities figure prominently in the private agreements between First Nations, Inuit and Métis governments and the resource companies who want to develop on their territories. Resource companies and Indigenous leadership alike often see employment opportunities as a key way that local communities can benefit from resource-related development. Many early agreements, however, provided for entry-level positions but not for training that would lead to meaningful work that is well compensated for Indigenous communities. As a result, employment provisions in agreements often strive to provide greater detail about access to training and movement into higher skilled positions. Access to training is particularly critical in the construction sector, since jobs are short term and range from unskilled positions that have no upward mobility to registered tradespersons, foreman and superintendent positions. This report offers a detailed examination of how a negotiated agreement facilitated the training and employment of First Nations workers in the construction phase of the Lower Mattagami River Hydro River Project (LMRP) from 2010 to 2015.

Using Statistics Canada's 2011-2016 Labor Force Surveys, this paper examines the spatial dimensions of precarious forms of employment (PFE) in Canada. We first compare different PFEs across a range of geographies including national, provincial, census metropolitan areas and urban/rural areas. The results show that different PFEs exhibited distinct spatial patterns across space and scale. Second, using logistic regression models, results show that patterns in PFEs were reinforced by factors such as immigration status, gender, age, education, and income. These models further confirm that spatial variations in PFEs were robust even when controlling for socio-demographic and socio-economic effects. Taken together, these marked spatial patterns advances our understanding of the spatial divisions of precariousness in Canada.