Merit provides industry-leading benefits, quality education, and unwavering advocacy to meet the needs of our members.
Enhance your employees’ well-being with portable benefits tailored exclusively for the open-shop construction industry and its partners.
Sharpen your skills and stay competitive at Merit College of Construction. High-quality education and scholarships that encourage a skilled, competitive and robust construction workforce.
As provincial policies continue to shift, we stand firm in our mission to elevate Canada’s open shop construction industry. Our mission is to develop a regulatory and business environment that not only supports open shop principles, but a spirit of open and transparency in the construction industry as well.
Merit’s Board of Directors exists to ensure all actions, policies and initiatives are always member driven.
We are proud to represent this industry. We believe our members deserve to have access to the best health benefits, training, human resource tools and unwavering advocacy, so they can achieve the highest level of growth.
Merit National provides comprehensive group health benefits, training, human resource tools and unwavering advocacy to support the needs of the construction industry across Canada. With over 1,300 member companies who employ more than 40,000 people from coast to coast to coast, our focus is to ensure that every one of our members is set up for success.
Since we first opened our doors in 1986, our mission has always remained the same:
To support the development of open shop construction and advocate open shop values by encouraging sound business practices, while also contributing to the training, career development and overall well-being of construction industry workers and their families.
This mission is what inspires us every day to ensure our members always know they’re our top priority.
Merit was created with the belief that good values inspire great results.
Member Focus Ensure needs are always met through exceptional value and service.
Integrity Be honest and always do the right thing.
Transparency Support open and fair competition.
Recognition Acknowledge and reward outstanding performance.
Objectivity Support open and fair competition.
Our wide range of services are based on five fundamental principles:
North America’s construction industry was highly unionized causing excessive work disruptions, jurisdictional disputes and escalating costs.
Fifty years ago, the open shop movement was essential in getting people to work and continuing to build important infrastructure. Beginning in the United States, open shop migrated to Canada by the early 1980’s, where it was well-received. In some areas, like Alberta, they occurred virtually overnight.
This movement was vital in improving North America’s highly unionized construction industry, which caused unnecessary work disruptions, jurisdictional disputes and escalating costs.
A critical piece of open shop was Merit Alberta’s creation of the hour bank benefit plan, which was developed to accommodate the transient nature of construction employees between companies. To improve open construction even more, Merit Alberta also created the College of Construction so members could access the very best managerial and construction training programs available to improve their workforce.
We are proud to announce Merit’s Mental Health Strategy.
This program will keep mental health at the forefront for Merit members, their employees, and families.
We have made available to our members resources to assist in navigating mental health issues in the workplace and at home.