Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you all for appearing this morning.
I have a question for the Atlantic Provinces Community College Consortium. We had a quick chat. I'll share with the others what we talked about, and that was that the economic downturn that we witnessed in 2008 provided us with an opportunity to do something extraordinary. I remember serving with the chair in industry, and whenever there were requests from colleges or universities, we reminded them we were not involved in bricks and mortar. However, this opportunity was presented to us, so as a government we recognized that we needed to invest to help create jobs and stimulate the economy.
One of the decisions, as you said, was KIP. I know in my hometown of Chatham, we have two colleges, St. Clair College and Ridgetown, which is actually part of Guelph University. There were three major projects. One was done through another means, but the significance of those projects, the ramifications, I think, are used.
I agree with you wholeheartedly that we need to stimulate the economy and improve by educating our workforce.
You must have these statistics, but currently--I think this probably falls in line with a lot of the things that Ms. Smith-MacDonald was saying too about the need for education and training--do you identify certain areas so you can tell students they are crying for women in this area, or young men or whatever? Have you identified those areas and what is going to be right? It just seems to me to be common sense that if we need to help somebody who needs a job now, we train them for jobs that are needed right now, but if they're entering the workforce, there's good promise to suggest going into a particular field because in five years' time this is where it's going to be at.
Have you done that? Can you share with us some of those findings?