I would make some additional points outside of what Jim said but including what Jim said.
You, sir, were talking about the proverbial high school dropout. There's also the traditional term, “youth at risk”. There's a new acronym I would like to introduce to the committee, and it's called NEET: not employed and not in education or training. This is a new HRSDC word.
The fact is that colleges, including CEGEPs, are able to respond to those needs. That's not our bread and butter, but we can certainly do it. Those solutions have to be place-based and in the community, so community organizations play a big role.
Last week we heard about YMCA programs, mentorship, job shadowing, and showing the student or the dropout what they could do. I'll give you one specific example from out in Vancouver. There are the same challenges in many urban areas.
We have in the inner-city schools in Vancouver high dropout rates—drug-related dropouts, families, etc.—and BCIT is using rehabilitated people who'd previously had exposure to the Hells Angels to go into those high schools and say, “Come for six weeks and shadow us. Look at the kinds of things you could do.” It's called the trades discovery program, and we are getting huge success rates. No one is funding BCIT for that, not the provincial government and not the federal government. They're doing that because it is their commitment to increasing access to post-secondary.
There are myriad stories like that around the country. We need to harness that for what it says. There is good work being done.