Thank you for the question.
Again, we can make some studies available on this, but I think I can, with confidence, think of two or three studies on private sector or workplace training. One of the most recent, I believe, was by the Conference Board. These suggest that in Canada we tend to have less workplace training than other countries. I think our performance has improved somewhat in recent years, but it still does not place Canada in step.
It's probable that some of this relates to the structure of our economy, both the sectoral composition as well as the fact that Canada has a great deal of small and medium-sized enterprises, which obviously have less capacity to offer workplace training.
The second phenomenon about workplace training that is troublesome--and I believe it's referenced in one of these decks here--is that it seems that people who are already well educated and already in a relatively strong employment situation are more likely to receive workplace training than those in more vulnerable jobs or those who have lower levels of education.
One of the thrusts of our workplace strategy is to promote essential skills in the workplace. If you've had a chance to peruse the deck, you'll see it's quite striking that there are about 9 million Canadians of labour force age who do not have the requisite level three in literacy and numeracy that they will require to succeed in the knowledge-based economy. One of the strategies the department has is to promote literacy and numeracy, what we call essential skills that employers are looking for in the workplace, and we're making some efforts in that regard.