Veterans Affairs committee  People have this idea that the only thing you need to know to be a plumber is that some things roll downhill and payday's on Thursday. It's actually wrong.

Veterans Affairs committee  No, the trade secret is: don't chew your fingernails, but I'll have to kill you now that I've told you that one. The truth of it is that our jobs are complex. We need people who are prepared to apply themselves. If someone is prepared to apply himself—and we wash out about 50% o

Veterans Affairs committee  The truth is the military veterans that we've brought in, we don't lose any of them.

Veterans Affairs committee  The $150,000 is it. We have had some discussions with the Department of Veterans Affairs. Once we get the website up and once we get an executive director in place, we're going to sit down and talk about some potential for other programs. But until we're actually up and running,

Veterans Affairs committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. My name is Bob Blakely, and I am here on behalf of Building and Construction Trades Department. Mercifully, I will continue in English. Helmets to Hardhats is a program we have launched as a public-private partnership. Last January 6, in the boilermakers

Finance committee  Certainly. As it sits now, if one is going to access certain programs, you get a certificate from your employer--I think it's a T2000 form--where the employer certifies that you're getting this for short-term work, that it's for this period of time, and that you've had some compe

Finance committee  Am I a bit frustrated with this? The short answer is yes. If you look at it, you'll see that there is enough work in the future for the next 10 years in Canada for the workforce we have, plus the workforce we're going to need to attract to keep the numbers up to a critical mass.

Finance committee  Sure. We frequently get people who are in a skilled trade and have an injury that would preclude them from being able to.... Let's say an iron worker has an injury to their lower limb or to their back and can no longer climb on the steel. Finding a way to modify the work so they

Finance committee  What if they modified the workplace in order for somebody to be able to access the work?

Finance committee  The federal government runs the red seal program. I would like to see it expanded to more trades. I believe we have 54 trades now. Probably another 15 trades would significantly benefit. That would benefit not just our industry but a number of stationary industries that use the s

Finance committee  We're there right now. The fact that there was no work in Alberta, Ontario, or Atlantic Canada in the eighties and the nineties means that we didn't invest in apprentices. We are now paying the piper for that. The integration of nearly 300,000 new workers into the construction

Finance committee  I'm talking more about the short term. If you look at the long term, there's a program under the Income Tax Act under which you can claim the cost of a move. If you look at the short term, at those guys who are in for 28 days and out for seven or whatever, most of what they're d

Finance committee  Yes.

Finance committee  They'll be coming to Argentia to go to work.

Finance committee  Honestly, Brian, my pitch for the last six or seven years has been, give us a grubstake so we can get the guy to work. That didn't go over very well with the last three governments, so I changed tack a little bit and said, let's try the tax credit idea. You're exactly right: th