That's good. Thank you, Chair. I appreciate that.
I gather that there will be a significant addition of $20 million a year, over three years, for the targeted initiative for older workers, as well as an expansion of the qualifying cities or communities that are most vulnerable. I would expect and encourage Monsieur Lessard to get behind the budget and support it, if no other reason than that, because I know he's been a champion of that area.
It's good to see that you've approached the issues relating to job losses and layoffs in a three-pronged attack that deals not only with the issue of layoff or losing a job, but also retraining and skills upgrading. I gather the total funding, including what's in the budget, is over $8 billion, a significant amount of injection.
I know there's also been a concern about the two-week waiting period. There have been broad consultations with various stakeholders across the country, and the choice has been made to add five additional weeks of benefits, at a fairly significant cost, which seems to be what Canadians wanted. But with respect to the two-week period, I have a quote here from someone who said there's a lot of churn in the labour market in that two-week period, and almost 2% of jobs change every month just in the normal course of events.
So the two weeks is there for a very good reason, and if you're going to extend benefits, it may be, as Canadians have said, better placed elsewhere. Do you agree with that statement or assessment, or do you want to amplify it, if you could, Mr. Thompson?