Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Ministers Raittand Finley, and your senior officials from the ministry, for being here today. As members of this committee, we appreciate the work that is done in the various departments and we appreciate your being here to discuss the supplementary estimates and some of the main goals of the departments.
Probably Minister Finley would be the best to answer my first question. As we all know, the labour force is changing quite a bit. The jobs people had 10 and 20 years ago are certainly not the ones we're seeing today. Recent figures are even suggesting that Canada's labour force growth will probably be at its lowest level over the next 10 years as a result of our aging population.
Many provinces in Canada used to rely heavily on the manufacturing industry, for example, and have more recently been transitioning to a point where an entirely different skill set is required in the next generation of workers, so I'm curious, Minister: can you elaborate on the work the department is doing to prepare Canadians for the jobs of tomorrow, both through investments in youth programs and through some of the other training initiatives?