Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I thank you for raising that issue. Our labour market or job situation today is totally different from what it was 10 or 15 years ago. Back then, if you'll recall, we were in a recession, with way too many people for too few jobs. All of our support systems were built on that basis. Now we're facing just the opposite: we've got too many jobs for too few people. So there are a lot of things we need to do. We need to get more people with the right skills in the right place and we need to enable them to have mobility. Right now there are a lot of barriers to people moving from one province to another to find work because their credentials don't get recognized.
Our government has done several things already in this regard. Number one, we brought in the apprenticeship incentive grant, which will help students get into the skilled trades. We've also got the employers apprenticeship incentive tax credit, which will encourage employers to hire apprentices. There's the tools tax credit as well. In terms of increasing skills, we've done a lot of work on post-secondary education. We're launching a foreign credentials recognition and referral agency, one that will allow our immigrants to get to work in their own areas of specialty sooner and will help people with the right skills to find out they should be coming to Canada and that there are opportunities here for them, and that we'll welcome them.
As well, we brought in the older worker program, because we believe that older workers who have been displaced by plant closures and such in vulnerable communities need and deserve our help. We don't want to retire them early; that would be taking much talent out of the pool, and we can't afford that as a nation. We need to try to give these people the skills and tools they need to get re-employed, to be productive members of society. As well, I'm working very closely with my colleague, Minister Solberg, the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, so that we can increase and make more efficient the temporary foreign workers program, so that we can get people here from outside the country to fill those jobs so that all of the projects and programs for which these skilled people are needed can go forward. If we've got people who want to invest in infrastructure and projects in this country, we need to make sure they have the labour skills they need to make this happen.