Thank you, Madam Chair.
I'd like to thank Minister Raitt and Minister Finley for being here today.
I just want to take you out west for a little trip to Alberta. With our resource-based economy, we've been hit pretty hard with this downturn in the economy. Our unemployment rates are some of the highest in the country. Even last month, when some of the rest of the country was coming around, there were more people looking for work in Alberta.
One of the estimates I've heard in the last month or so is that as we move forward and this turns around we're going to need 80,000 skilled workers in Alberta alone. In order for Alberta to return to the economic engine that it was and to be a net contributor to the equalization payments in this country, which I'm sure many of the provinces around this table enjoy, we are going to need that.
Minister Finley, one of the programs you have is this apprenticeship incentive grant. You indicated that 143,000 Canadians have received help to get into the program, plus a completion grant. Is this something that's sustainable, that we're going to be looking at over the next number of years to get these trained people we're going to need as this economy starts to chug--as it has already--out of this recession? Will it help us get back to the spot where we were at one time?