Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you very much, witnesses, for coming out this morning. We certainly appreciate it.
I'm very interested in the skill shortages, the issue of skill training. I come from a region where we don't have an unemployment problem; we have a skills problem. We actually have more jobs than there are people. I know that it's unique. Certainly we want to bring every community into the equation when we're discussing what we're going to do as we move forward.
Certainly, as I'm looking at the numbers, it seems a large proportion of Canada's citizens get a post-secondary education. Approximately 44% of Canadians between the ages of 25 and 64 have some type of post-secondary education. But as we look at the numbers of companies or businesses that are investing in on-the-job training, we find that Canadian businesses are behind the eight ball. Compared to even the United States, Canada is investing $825 per worker, whereas in the States they're at $1,135, so certainly we're behind there. I know that in my own case, my formal education was important to my moving forward. Certainly it's very important to have on-the-job training because that then makes me capable of doing the job that I'm doing.
I'm just curious as to whether you've identified any way of bringing employers into the equation as we look at skills training. Specifically we know that the female population is more likely to engage in on-the-job training than is the male population, so I can identify this as a possible way that we could bring females into training. It's something that traditionally, according to the numbers, females are much more likely to engage in than males, and it's an opportunity for females to increase their ability to be educated. So I'm wondering whether there are any ideas as to why we're behind compared to other countries including the United States, and what we can do to bring ourselves up to their levels. It doesn't even have to be the levels of the United States, but they're ahead of us, and they're our neighbours. I'm wondering if there's any idea as to how we can move forward and make the changes.