Will election lead to harmonized safety regulations and greater labour mobility?

With the 2025 federal election underway, major political parties are proposing initiatives that could reshape how Canadian companies do business across provincial borders.  

One key promise is the harmonization of health and safety regulations across provinces, to enable skilled trades workers to travel more easily to work and to encourage companies to take on projects in other provinces. 

For Canadian employers and HR professionals, this shift could significantly alter compliance strategies and workforce planning. 

According to Stephen Shore, partner at Littler in Toronto, the current patchwork of differing provincial regulations often forces businesses to seek costly legal and compliance advice before expanding into new provinces. If harmonization efforts succeed, companies like construction firms could bid and work across Canada more easily, opening new markets without the significant front-end burden of provincial compliance.  

“I think by harmonizing health and safety standards, that's one way among many others to make it easier for Canadian companies to perform work in other provinces,” he says, “without the upfront costs of understanding and preparing themselves to be compliant with local health and safety regulations.” 

Cooperation challenges but strong incentives 

Shore also noted that while the idea of harmonizing health and safety regulations is promising, implementation could face challenges.  

“There are certainly some provinces who have created obstacles to inter-provincial trade, to protect their local companies and their local economies.” 

This highlights a potential hurdle: some provinces may resist harmonization to protect local businesses. Nevertheless, Shore was optimistic that current economic pressures may push governments toward cooperation, especially if federal incentives are included. 

Plus, full harmonization may not occur uniformly, he reasons. 

“There's probably not going to be total alignment between how Alberta approaches a subject matter and how Quebec approaches a subject matter,” he says as an example. However, with motivated cooperation spurred by trade uncertainty with the U.S., he believes that significant progress can be made. 

 “I'm not going to suggest that there's such marked departures from one province to the next that it couldn't be done.” 

Employer opportunities and increased competition 

If successful, harmonization could open doors for ambitious employers – at the same time, Shore warns that local companies might face new competition from outside employers who were previously deterred by regulatory barriers.  

This could intensify competition across sectors like construction, manufacturing, and energy, potentially lowering wages as well. 

“Certainly, we're trying to level the playing field so that companies from other Canadian jurisdictions may be able to participate in those economies,” he says. 

“There's going to be opportunities for them if they want to be ambitious about it, to take their expertise into other parts of Canada without having so much front-end costs or front-end policy consideration.” 

Increasing workforce mobility 

A key related shift to federal-level health and safety regulation harmonization will likely be greater worker mobility, which Shore posits will likely be the future of labour in Canada — regardless of which party is successful in 2025. 

“Increased labour forces, increased mobility of labour, I think is just going to be the change that employers are going to see, based on a number of factors,” Shore says, explaining that workforces are likely to become more geographically flexible, allowing skilled tradespeople to take jobs across provinces more easily than before. 

Beyond health and safety harmonization, credential recognition for skilled trades workers is also gaining political momentum, with every federal platform (except for the Bloc Québécois) making some sort of promise around expanding credential recognition. 

Shore explains, “Ontario has a very developed system of skilled trades in which certain skilled trades have to be licensed or ticketed, and others don't. That's going to differ from province to province.” 

He notes that protectionist policies have traditionally slowed credential portability across provinces, but recent economic pressures might push change.  

“But as we face this more urgent economic threat caused by the tariffs and the restrictions on cross-border trade, international cross-border trade, I think we're just going to see more ease with which credentials are going to be recognized across provincial borders, and the ease with which credentials from foreign jurisdictions are going to be recognized.” 

Wage pressures and apprenticeship investments 

While an increase in available labour could theoretically lower wages, Shore suggests that investments in apprenticeships and training programs could help balance the labour market.  

“Obviously from a supply and demand perspective, an increase in the supply of skilled trades workers, one might expect that to create a downward pressure on the on a local wage rate,” he says.  

“But there's also lots of incentives being poured into apprentice programs.” 

These investments may help offset the impact of a growing labour supply by providing incentives for workers to stay and develop their skills within Canada. 

Ongoing role of unions 

All major parties appear committed to supporting union-led training initiatives, according to Shore, with Conservatives notably being more pro-union in messaging than usual.  

“The Conservatives have been outwardly trying to get ahead of potential objections that unions or supporters of the labour movement might have, around perceptions that Conservatives would not be union-friendly, or would be adverse to unions,” he notes. 

Similarly, Shore observes that the Liberals have pledged to double funding for the Union Training and Innovation Program, making it a permanent feature. 

“I think both parties are not far off from one another when it comes to those types of signals to the unions, the institutional unions,” Shore says. “That they will be supportive with some funding for some of their innovation work.”