Just briefly, social investment, or investment in early childhood education, or interventions in what you suggested, are investments in the future because lessons cost down the road. If you want to look at cost-effectiveness, then we know that in terms of investing in education, you're not investing in prisons down the road, in certain ways in the long run. So it's a question of how do you make sure that with early childhood education and any dollars spent there in terms of making sure a child gets adequate nutrition and nourishment and grows up in a home where these needs can be met, you're paying less down the road? That has to be borne in mind. One thing about getting employers involved in education and training, we know that in most organizations people at the top are more educated, are the ones who are more apt to get more education later on, not the people at the bottom getting basic skills or education.
But we've also seen a structural adjustment in our economy. We've seen it move away from longer-term and permanent jobs, particularly in manufacturing, toward short-term, contingent, or contract positions. And we find employers have less commitment to reinvest in those workers if they're poaching them from someone else or hiring them for a short period of time. We've seen a huge migration of workers from my province to Alberta. And we're training them or they train themselves, and they're going elsewhere. We really need a pan-Canadian solution because structural changes in the economy and the growth of things like call-centre jobs has put the onus on employees who may already be poor and already less successful, whether they be women or not, to get that training, and having fewer funds to do so. Since the economy has changed, those investments by employers aren't there. It may have been the case when you had a longer-term strategy for industrial development, whatever. So we may need to look a strategy that uses our resources to reinvest in long-term employment, rather than precarious employment, which we've seen the growth of.
That's part of the equation. Certainly out-migration means that provinces like P.E.I. have many people leaving and going where there are jobs, but they're not permanent or full-time jobs. They're contracts for a short period of time. And that creates added burdens on both those areas. That's why we need a really strong national solution. But also, investment in people just means you're going to pay less down the road in other types of costs. And that has to be kept in mind.