Case Study

Iron Workers #OurWorkersOurFuture

Challenge

While Canada talks about building a stronger economy, many employers in the construction industry have been gaming the system to exclude Canadian workers. By advertising jobs at below-market rates, construction companies claim that no Canadian workers are available.

They then use the Temporary Foreign Workers Program to hire temporary non-Canadian workers at lower wages. Temporary Foreign Workers can also be abused by employers because they don’t have the same rights as Canadians or skilled immigrant workers.

Process

Burrard Strategy provided the strategy and execution of this campaign from start to finish. We worked with the client to fully understand their needs and then tailor a solution that would raise the profile of this issue with decision-makers and influencers in Ottawa. The specific tactics, channels, markets and assets deployed were always focused on two clear objectives:

• Framing this issue in a way that would make it clear that it is in no way “anti-foreigner” or racist; and
• Getting a compelling message in front of decision-makers (i.e., senior political staff and Ministers as well as the PM and Opposition Leaders) in a way that demonstrates broad support.

This was done starting in the spring of 2021 and the campaign was/will be carried across the summer months into an expected election in the fall of 2021.

Outcome

	Narrative Development: Central feature of the campaign was a TV commercial developed entirely by our team. It was written and produced to highlight the impact the TFW program has on Canadian working families.
	Content Creation: Burrard was the exclusive author of campaign content. This ranged from a website to both 30 and 60 second commercial videos, an explainer video and a host of social media collateral.
	Advertising: Burrard co-ordinated an extensive multi-platform media campaign to target the main regions of British Columbia and Ontario, including TV, online, fixed and programmatic OOH, radio and print.
	Community Engagement: Burrard organized an extensive one-to-one online, and internal engagement process with both the coalition members’ “in-house” communities as well as the broader social media community, again with a focus on political decision-makers.