Thank you, Mr. Chair.
My question has to do with areas of Canada where there is high unemployment, particularly high youth unemployment. You may be aware there is a skilled trades council called the Central Ontario Building Trades in Toronto that runs a program called Hammer Heads. It takes unemployed youth who are marginalized in society and who are perhaps turning to crime or other means of getting by. They're part of the 30% unemployed young people who exist in my riding. They take those youth and give them pre-apprenticeship training. It's done without a nickel of federal, provincial, or municipal money. It's all unions that are doing this training, and are doing it in order to deal with a huge problem of youth unemployment. They recognize that they need to do their part, but they have extreme difficulty getting the spenders of money to agree to utilize their program.
The federal and provincial governments are spending up to $10 billion on infrastructure money for public transit in the city of Toronto, and not one nickel of that money is being earmarked for training, or for apprenticeships, or for the use of that money to create jobs in high unemployment areas.
Do you think we could do better with our spending of money?