Thank you very much, both our guests by video conference and our guests here, for your presentations.
I'm sure you're aware by now that what the committee has heard consistently is education and training, education and training. It's a consistent theme from almost every witness who comes before us.
I've got an article here called, “The skills for our success”, and it's actually based on some work that was done in Australia. It is dealing specifically with apprenticeships, but it talks about a couple of things that they did. They invested in pre-apprenticeship programs. They encouraged prospective workers to enter the skilled labour market later in life, and that's often the case in aboriginal communities, that they're coming back to the workforce later in life. They had a single, nationally organized and recognized system with government-run vocational education centres. And then they go on to talk about the government making a 43% increase in funding for science and research in innovation, and that filtered down to skilled workers who made their new ideas profitable.
This same report also quotes the fact that the Canadian Federation of Independent Business indicated that 34% of companies feel they have a shortage of skilled labour, and 38% said their businesses had already missed an opportunity because they couldn't access labour. And in the same report, it quotes the Conference Board of Canada, which cited a report on Dofasco for its ability to create clear and easily accessible training paths into skilled trades.
I wonder if the Conference Board of Canada could comment on what you see that gets in our way of making that long-term sustained investment in education and training—and it includes the K to 12 system, because, as others have pointed out, if they don't graduate then you can't get them into trades and certificates, and other programs.
What prevents us from doing that?