What did PM say?
A CLOSER LOOK AT TRUDEAU’S COMMENTS ON ‘GENDER IMPACTS’ AND CONSTRUCTION WORKERS
When Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who was taking part in a gender equality panel at the G20 in Argentina, spoke about the “gender impacts when you bring construction workers into a rural area,” he struck a nerve among many in a province that's bracing for potential layoffs in the oil industry.
Alberta politicians slammed Trudeau on social media for impugning the good name of oil workers. But, despite the furor, it's not clear what exactly Trudeau meant — or whether what people think he said has any basis in fact. Here's a look at how the controversy unfolded.
Q What exactly did Trudeau say?
“So, there's all sorts of shifts we're making because we know that you cannot succeed as a society if you are holding back half of your population. And looking at all the different barriers and moving forward on reducing them, on eliminating them as well as, as a government body, looking at how every different decision can have an impact on women in a positive or a negative way. Even big infrastructure projects, you know, might now say, well, what does a gender lens have to do with building this new highway or this new pipeline or something? Well, you know, there are gender impacts when you bring construction workers into a rural area. There are social impacts because they're mostly male construction workers. How are you adjusting and adapting to those? That's what the gender lens in GBA-plus budgeting is all about. These are all things that we've been doing, not to be nice or to be better or to be moral, but to be smart about getting the very best out of all of our citizens and making the very best out of our economy, because women entrepreneurs tend to make better choices than others — we've seen it study after study."
Q What did he mean?
An official with the Prime Minister's Office said Trudeau wasn't actually making the point that everyone thinks he's making — that rural communities suffer when male construction workers move in. Instead, he was arguing it's necessary for more women to share in lucrative jobs in the construction industry. Trudeau's quotes are being taken out of context, the official said.
Q How did his critics interpret his comments?
The condemnation rolled in from Canadian conservatives.
“The person who is a threat to rural Canada is Justin Trudeau himself, not the workers who build communities everywhere,” Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer said in a tweet.
Calgary MP Michelle Rempel called for Trudeau to apologize for his “out of touch characterization” of Alberta workers. “I doubt if he has ever worked a day of labour in his life,” Rempel wrote on Twitter.
Alberta's opposition leader Jason Kenney criticized Trudeau's “attack” on oil workers.
“Justin Trudeau says pipelines must go through a 'gender based analysis' because male construction workers have ‘impacts.' Darned right they do. They build things, create wealth, pay taxes, take care of their families. But this trust fund millionaire thinks they can't be trusted,” the United Conservative Party leader tweeted.
Q Wait, was Trudeau even talking about oil workers?
While Trudeau's comments were taken in some quarters as an attack on oil workers, what he actually said was that there should be gender-based analysis of “this new highway or this new pipeline,” and that construction workers are “mostly male.” So while the assumption could be made that this refers to those building pipelines, he didn't actually specify people working in the Alberta oilpatch.
Q Did Trudeau have a point?
Susan Manning, a PhD candidate at Dalhousie University and researcher with Feminist Northern Network, said it's “totally true” that there are social impacts of energy extraction projects, but they're wide-ranging and some of them are positive. There are often more jobs for locals, for example.
However, the influx of workers also means that housing — often limited in small communities — is snapped up and prices may spike. Take the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo, where Fort McMurray is located. Its average rental housing price, according to the Canadian Rental Housing Index, is $1,802 per month.
There's also some research that a spike in male workers could result in an increase in sexual and violent crimes.
Research from the University of North Dakota, for example, found that there were statistically significant increases in violence during the oil boom in North Dakota's Bakken region. Between 2005 and 2014, rates of domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking went from less than 50 per 100,000 to more than 70 per 100,000 people.
But the Post could not find similar research conducted in Alberta.
In fact, Wood Buffalo released a report in 2014, arguing that crime rates were unexceptional. The homicide rate was 0.86 per 100,000 in 2012, compared to the national rate of 1.56.
The reality, Manning said, is that there are those who benefit and those who don't when workers move into a rural town.
“Thinking about who those people are, and why that is the case, is something that's really important,” Manning said.