Thank you.
I guess the easy answer to whose responsibility it is would be that it is everyone's, I would think. Part of the problem is that we now have a huge issue of a workforce that needs to be much more adaptable and mobile, but unfortunately, a long time ago, before any of you probably were sitting in Parliament, the federal government gave that responsibility of training to the provinces, which made it much more difficult for the issue of national standards. What we need more of is a workforce that is much more mobile and adaptable, and we need credentials in a lot more skill sets than just the trades.
This is not a very well known fact, but the biggest trainers of journeypersons in Canada are the construction unions themselves, who do it on their own, train their own members to do the work they need to do. Some of the worst trainers of apprentices are governments in all forms—municipal, federal, and provincial—whose employees and workforce have very few apprentices in the system.
I sit on a round table for workforce skills with the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters, and we're working very hard to try to identify ways in which we can adapt the system to train for the needs of the day and be able to do it. Our community college system, which trains apprentices, is at maximum capacity right now. If people need apprentices to go forward, we're going to have to start to adapt to train those apprentices in a much more exclusive fashion.
Yes, I agree with you, there are some employers, including airlines, who will use the fact that they don't train and don't upskill their workforce to find another workforce that would find their way into Canada and work for less money.