In P.E.I., EI part 2 has very limited funds for people in terms of what they can access. Since the mid-1990s, $10 billion has been cut from what the Government of Canada was investing in skills training, and there's a lack of employer investment in skills training. Therefore, these federal government cuts in training have been really disastrous.
We know there has been $3.5 million for the LMPAs. Previously $125 million was allocated to workplace skills strategies, $30 million over three years for the National Literacy Secretariat, $25 million over three years for the training centre and structure plan, as well as new LMPA funds. These are really vital, because only workers can access these training funds, and EI part 2 is one of the few things available in P.E.I. for workers to get access to training. Otherwise, they have to go back and retrain themselves at their own expense, and many of them aren't in a financial position to do that because they're living in poverty or aren't able to access student loans. Even those who do go through student loans are saddled with a $30,000 or $40,000 debt at the end of their training. So this is really vital.
We say there's a skill shortage in Canada, and employers aren't paying. Of all the OECD countries, our employers are paying less in terms of retraining their own employees. So we need to have government play a real pan-Canadian role. Canadians are moving from province to province. So obviously lots of our workers in P.E.I...we're training them, they're training themselves, or P.E.I. is training them, yet they're going elsewhere in the country because of low wages in P.E.I.