What are Community Benefits Programs?

Community benefits are a tool to help local communities organize and leverage public infrastructure investments to create employment and apprenticeship opportunities. It is a “best value” procurement approach to optimize the tax dollars investment.

Community benefits increase the social impact of government and public institutional expenditures. Aligning spending with broader social and policy objectives creates benefits for those economically marginalized segments of the population. They enable a more strategic approach to procurement, by creating linkages to workforce development, economic development and environmental sustainability goals.

Various levels of government have used community benefits agreements (CBAs) to incorporate community benefits provisions in infrastructure projects and programs. CBAs help to ensure public projects are completed on time and on budget, while providing benefits to the communities in which they are built. CBAs ensure tax dollars are reinvested in local communities, and that there is a lasting legacy of experience, skills, training, and employability among the workers who built the project.

Each CBA is unique to the situation and the communities it is designed to serve.

Examples of CBA’s include:
• Requirement for a percentage of the workforce be apprentices;
• Requirement for a local workforce;
• Requirement for a percentage of under-represented groups;
• Requirement to pay a fair wage and benefits;
• Prioritization for businesses that have third-party certifications for social impact (B-Corps, Community Contribution Companies, Buy Social Canada, Living Wage Certified);
• Opportunities for local business or social enterprises;
• Workforce development and training plans.

In Nova Scotia we have a number of well-defined challenges around workforce development. In simplistic terms we have an aging workforce and under-represented groups, including women, youth and persons with disabilities experiencing higher than average unemployment or are “working poor”. The gap can be closed with education and experience.

The Building Trades has been having conversations with a number of stakeholders including those in municipal and provincial government on the importance of Community Benefits Agreements and the impact it would have on the place in which we all live and work.