As you know, we're still in the pandemic. There are thousands of Canadians who have yet to go back to work and who may not have a job to go back to when this pandemic is over. All of these measures announced yesterday are going to be critical.
The $15 minimum wage is really important in the federal jurisdiction. It provides leadership at the national level. Equally, there are a lot of workers in the federal jurisdiction who will benefit from this. A good number of them work at airports across the country that have been struggling. As you know, we didn't have a federal minimum wage in the code, and this is, I think, foundational for building forward as it's indexed to inflation. We can debate that, but I think this is really important. We certainly have been campaigning in the CLC for quite some time to establish a national minimum wage.
On the extension of the other program, the CERB, and the extension of benefits going forward, it's critical that workers are able to access benefits on a continuous basis. Again, I know there's a recognition that this pandemic may not be over in September, so we may have to look at those benefits again. There are a lot of Canadians who would have been in abject poverty had we not had those benefits to begin with to support these families and individuals. It's critical that we recognize those realities as we go forward.
The training program is going to give a lot of workers who have been laid off and likely know they may not be going back to their jobs.... It would be good if they could start accessing training to gain additional skills, so they can hopefully improve their job market capacity. An opportunity may come in some new form if they have new skills.
There's also some training recognition for young people in the budget, which is very critical. As you know from the 2008 recession, it took young people a good part of eight to nine years to get out of the double digits for unemployment. The measures announced yesterday are really important. We're going to need to connect young people to be able to access those training and apprenticeship programs, so that we can help give them a bright future going forward.
We're obviously supportive of most of the measures announced yesterday. We recognize that these will be critical to give workers some certainty that they're not going to lose their benefits overnight. A critical part is for us to innoculate Canadians and, more importantly, get the spread of the virus under control, so that we can reopen the economy. There's nothing like having a real job to go to. I think it will give people fulfillment.
Also, some of the investments in infrastructure are critical for the kind of Canada we need to meet our climate change challenge. I very much like the retrofitting announcement for businesses and for homes. It's really going to create a lot of jobs and it'll help families do their part to deal with climate change challenges while equally reducing their heating bills going forward.