We believe there's a good opportunity here for the Government of Canada to show leadership. Provinces have jurisdiction, but there are many interjurisdictional barriers, as we mentioned.
We need a national vision. The national vision is to equip every Canadian with the skills they need to participate in the economy. There are a thousand ways we can approach this. There are a thousand opportunities. But we need a national vision, specifically to trades professions.
We use second-class language to describe the individuals who enter these professions. I do not use the words “skilled trades”. I talk about “trades professions”. I say that a plumber who makes $200,000 a year is as much a professional as an unemployed lawyer.