There are two parts to this. The first one I'll take on is training, and it's a big issue. There are two parts to the training. One is just overall training. Companies today.... From the questionnaire that we're doing of our members right now, over 60% of respondents spend in the neighbourhood of 3.5% to 5% of their annual sales right now on training. So it actually is a fairly significant portion to training. That could include everything from health and safety training to skills on the job, technical training, to language training. So it's a variety of training. But a lot of training does go on today.
In terms of the part of it on apprenticeships, a lot of companies—and most companies, especially in smaller communities outside of the major centres—are directly involved with community colleges to work on apprenticeship programs, so it's a big part of their ability to attract new workers into the workforce. The problem tends to be the length of time it takes to get an apprentice approved for on the job. It can be years in some cases. It's not good for the employee or the company itself, so I know there are some things that need to be done there to improve and streamline the apprenticeship programs.
On the last piece, on the aboriginal or other under-represented pools of labour being put in the labour force, the reason I mentioned the aboriginal population is because it has a fairly significant unemployment rate; in fact, it's quite a massive unemployment rate, especially in males between 18 and 35, which is really the hardest part of the workforce in order to attract people in.
Our organization in Manitoba, for example, runs an aboriginal inclusion program with the first nations community across Manitoba where they actually do educational information sessions to make sure that aboriginals are aware of the job opportunities in places like aerospace and bus manufacturing and some really high-tech things, and do everything they can to bring them in. It still is very difficult to bring enough of them in to fill the needs.
I can think of one member company that even sits in the middle of an aboriginal community that needs to build another plant to meet the demands of the oil sands; however, even with the 25% unemployment rate in the local aboriginal community, they still can't get enough skilled workers or workers period to be able to build. So it's a big problem, and a lot needs to be done in that area.