Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you very much, everyone, for being here today.
It seems to me we have a couple of challenges here. The first challenge we have is how we get high school graduates to consider going into post-secondary education and training for these jobs that we know are more prevalent in the future economy. Mr. Knight had mentioned this earlier. Let's not call it trades; let's come up with some new, sexy name, but something to push people into that because we know those are the jobs of the future.
So we have one group of people who are recent graduates from high school we're trying to move in. As I see it, the second group we have—and I'd like each of you to comment on this and whether or not you think there is any difference or whether we treat them the same—are the people who come into my office every so often, who had one career, who were working somewhere for ten years. Now they no longer are able to work in that area because the business has shut down, the economy has changed. They may have been highly trained in a certain area, but unless they have to pick up the whole family and move to Alberta, they want to keep working in Mississauga, where I am from, but they're no longer able to work in that area. So how do we re-educate them? How do we get them back into a program that would allow them to utilize some of the skills they already have or perhaps augment or improve what they have so that they can move into working in another company in Mississauga that is desperate for highly skilled workers? And I've met with those employers too.
Do you see a difference in approach between high school graduates versus second-career or retraining opportunities with people who are older and already have experience in the workforce? Is there a role for the federal government to play more so than it's doing now in those areas, while obviously still respecting our friends in the provinces?
Whoever wants to go first, go right ahead.