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Just as the reform of the construction industry announced by the CAQ last spring is beginning to be implemented, Labour Minister Jean Boulet is back with a second bill in the same sector. The man who admitted he wanted to bring more unskilled labour onto construction sites now claims to be concerned about the quality of new construction.
But the Minister is no novice to such politicking. Here's an overview of his career, which leaves little room for doubt as to the true interests he defends within the government.
A friend of the “chambers of commerce”
Prior to his election as Member of Parliament for Trois-Rivières, Boulet spent several years in the upper echelons of business in the Mauricie region. He was President of the Trois-Rivières Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Chairman of the Trois-Rivières Regional Hospital Foundation and Vice-President of the Trois-Rivières Port Authority.
Before becoming a Member of Parliament, he was a member of the Board of Directors of Lavery, one of the largest law firms in Quebec between 2015 and 2017. In 2018, while Boulet was entrusted with the Ministry of Labour, his former colleague Anik Trudel, director of Lavery, was appointed to the Board of Directors of the Board of Trade of Metropolitan Montreal (CCMM).
In the years that followed, Jean Boulet would be a guest of honor at several CCMM galas and conferences. The latter would praise several of his projects, including the “grande corvée”, a program launched by the Minister in 2019 to encourage young people to join the workforce.
During his first mandate, one of Boulet's major issues was the labour shortage. The Minister's solution: increase the use of temporary foreign workers (TFWs). Between 2021 and 2024, their number doubled in Quebec. In 2020, the Minister had boasted of “adding trades to the list of simplified processing for TFWs to benefit businesses in Montreal and throughout Quebec.”
Then, in 2022, during a brief stint as Immigration Minister, he claimed that 80% of new arrivals neither work nor speak French. This claim was quickly disproved, however, and Boulet was forced to relinquish the immigration ministry.
Accelerating construction, but at what cost?
In 2023, Boulet was tackling the construction industry. His major reform aims to speed up the pace of construction, notably by weakening working conditions in the industry. In a speech to the CCMM, he explains, “I'm interested in simplifying certain labour laws in Quebec, adapting them to the new realities of the job market.”
That same year, a close associate of Jean Boulet and the CCMM, Audrey Murray, was appointed President and CEO of the Construction Commission of Québec (CCQ). Previously, she had been President of the Commission of the Labour Market Partners (CPMT). In this role, she frequently collaborated with the Minister of Labour and the upper echelons of Quebec employers.
Last year, following the announcement of the construction reform, the CCQ launched a pilot project to recruit labour abroad. These recruitment missions to countries such as Tunisia and Colombia target trades in which, according to Murray, Quebec “has really significant deficits”.
In addition to attacking working conditions in the field, the law was denounced by the unions for posing the risk of degrading the quality of new construction. The Minister's response was Bill 76. This bill aims to ensure the quality of new construction by imposing more inspections on building sites.
However, the bill stipulates that the contractor must contract out inspections to an engineer or architect of his choice. The contractor's freedom to choose the inspector therefore opens the door to significant conflicts of interest.