Sure. Some of the thinking around this is that the government.... First of all, the private sector does hire tradespeople, but it doesn't do a great job of hiring apprentices and doing training, so it becomes the net poacher of talent from really small business, where 77% of all apprentices are being trained in companies with fewer than 100 employees. There is training going on, but fewer than 20% of all employers are doing the work in an effort to develop the entire skilled trades pipeline.
Meanwhile, government is putting huge amounts of money into maintenance and construction contracts through procurement and infrastructure. There is an opportunity here to ensure that maintenance and construction companies that can train are able to train apprentices with the skilled tradespeople who are required on those jobs, if they are given an incentive to do so.
One of the best ways, at least as an on-ramp, would be to consider looking at a points-based system. We know that, when the work was given for West Block rehabilitation, for example, a piece of that contract did include points that were given to contractors who could show that they were going to hire and train apprentices on the job.
I recognize that there is some concern about what kinds of additional requirements that would put on employers, but I think that this is a soft on-ramp. Let's look, first of all, along with price and capacity, at whether we are hiring and training people as we are building bridges, hospitals, and schools across the country.