Yes, and I think the government has done quite a bit over the last number of years, but it tends to not be focused on all the right areas all the time, and that's fine; everyone has different priorities. There are really three challenges that the sector faces, and some of the programs help, but they don't help holistically.
I'll give you an example. The government has invested in a strategic innovation fund. It's a hugely important fund to drive investment in Canada, but it really only addresses the large investments of large multinational companies. That was the original design of it. There is no investment support program for everyone else, as a very specific example.
If you're looking to do half-a-million-dollar investment in manufacturing capacity in Saskatchewan, in southern Ontario or in New Brunswick, there really isn't much in the way of programs. There are some through the regional economic funds, but not at the same type of level and direct investment supports that the strategic innovation fund would see, so there are some really good programs out there, but they're not as comprehensive as they need to be to make the impact that we need to see.
That would be one very specific example. Other things like the training and skills issues, which are huge.... Mr. Fast asked about women. We've been doing a lot of work around that, like tax credits, and have called for things like tax credits and training. The federal government has put in place and has had for a number of years employer-driven training programs, but a lot of the more recent programs have gone directly to employees. The problem is that, if you're not supporting the investment through supporting training through the companies, it's very hard for the companies to invest in the technologies and do the training at the same time. We need much better direct support programs to get the training, and we need to continue and expand some of the ones that are there, including some of the excellent apprenticeship programs that have been put in place over the last couple of years.
There have been some good things. I'm certainly not going to sit here and say nothing's been good. There have been some very good things, but often it just kind of falls a little short.
The biggest thing, though, overall, is that we firmly believe Canada needs to set in place targets for growth. We should be setting, as we've seen in other parts of the world, specific targets for growth of what we want our sector to do and how we want to grow it and then measure change over time and address those changes. Just saying we want to do something, without measuring the change, tends to just leave the programs that maybe aren't meeting the end results that Canadians want or that the government itself wants.