Thank you for your question.
The approach that the government has taken recently in thinking about the overall supply of labour has indicated that we really need to focus on domestic talent and the transition to a new digital economy, an economy that expects people to be comfortable with technology and with significant amounts of information and data, and to work in very different ways. It's putting pressure on the education system and on employers to ensure that they have good intake systems and effective work-integrated training programs.
My colleague outlined some of the initiatives that ISED is responsible for. Colleagues from Employment and Social Development, who will follow, will be able to speak to some of those initiatives. The idea of being able to bring in highly specialized talent is a key pillar of the global skills strategy, which colleagues at Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada could also speak to. However, you are exactly hitting on the core issue, which is, one, that the number of people is really important and getting as many people into the labour force as possible is critical for overall success; and two, to make sure that there is a marrying up of the skills and the training.
I would like to highlight a couple of very small programs, but very important ones, that are at the crux of the inclusiveness of the innovation agenda. We'll be rolling out some programs over the course of the fall with respect to accessible technology, development of technologies used by people who may have some kind of impediment in terms of accessing the Internet because of technological barriers.
A digital literacy program we're rolling out will be looking to help ensure that excluded groups, whether it's people who have language difficulties, newly arrived Canadians, or people who maybe aren't as comfortable in the digital world, get some of the training they need so that they are more confident, comfortable, safe, and secure doing things such as ongoing training, banking, or health care services online.
As well, we're looking to further some of the work that the government can do with respect to STEM training for younger students, as well as for post-secondary students.