I think maybe the difference, in terms of our approach to this, is that people need hope and people need opportunities. We see that. When things are as strong as they are, I don't know that we need to keep hammering home how bad they are, whether it be for political reasons or otherwise.
Clearly, the numbers speak for themselves. Clearly, the economy is one of the strongest in the world. Clearly, the employment rates are higher than they have been in decades. These are facts. Our poverty rates are lower, despite all the talk and the efforts to make people think they are higher than they are. Again, that's not to say we don't need to do some work on that.
When we talk about wasting time, I think it is really a question of priorities. We have before us an employability study and a poverty study to do. The C.D. Howe report clearly identified that a decrease in poverty is directly correlated with an increase in employment. It seems to me that we're already on the right track in this committee in dealing with employability and poverty—the two studies we're trying to tackle right now--which would go a long way in addressing the concerns you continually bring up.
I did want to address a few of the things you talked about. I'm interested in your wording. You used the phrase and were talking about sending people to western Canada. Nobody is talking about sending anybody anywhere. Simply allowing people to go where they want is freedom of mobility in terms of where the jobs are.
There have been a couple of reports on the news recently, and quite interesting reports, about some parts of the country--I believe I saw them talk about Newfoundland and Cape Breton. Workers have actually chosen to go to Alberta to work, have made a lot of money there, and have been able to find housing. Then they've gone home and reinvested the money they've made back into their communities. And now there's a little bit of a boom in certain areas in terms of people building houses and reinvesting in their communities and in their homes. It's an example to me of the way the system should work. I'm not sure why anyone would want to stand in the way of that. Now you have people working in their home communities to build these homes and to take advantage of the results of that freedom of mobility, in a sense.
You ask if we would take workers who are 55 years old. We'll take anyone who wants to come and work right now. We need workers in Alberta. We need people working. In fact, you talk about the cost of living being so high in Alberta. One of the reasons the cost of living is so high is because we can't find people to build the housing. So it becomes kind of a self-fulfilling situation. If we had workers willing to come, people who would choose to come and use the skills they have to help build the housing, then we'd have the housing, and the cost of living wouldn't be so high for the people coming. These are things we need to look at.
Again, just coming back one more time to the targeted initiative for older workers, and I think you used the phrase “the results of Conservative policy”, I'll point to the results of Conservative policy. There was $72.5 million in the targeted initiative for older workers, and the result is that 50% of new workers to the labour force last year were over the age of 55. It clearly points out that some of these strategies are actually working. And I never hear any credit given for that. We always hear that now we need more.
If we really want to have an impact in this committee, the best thing we can do is carefully choose among the many good priorities in this committee and make the decision to focus on our employability study and make sure we get that done. Who knows when there might be an election? I think there are four colleagues in here who might know, but the rest of us are kind of at their whim.
But let's make sure, whenever that happens, that we have this employability study done. And if we're fortunate enough to avoid an election and continue to move forward, let's get going on this poverty study. Let's hear the witnesses, what they have to say about this, when we get to that point, and let's work hard to ensure that we have a second good study to follow up on the good work we've done as a committee on the employability study.
But I think we would be best to have a vote on this motion and move on to the good things we've been working on.