I'll give you two comments on that.
This is a bit of my New Brunswick perspective, but one thing we're finding is that people are quite interested in what I call the popular trades. If I ask the group here to name five trades, my guess is you'll tell me carpenter, plumber, electrician, and you might get to car mechanic, or something like that, and you might come up with a fifth one. You'll probably get three or four, for sure. In society it's the same way.
Kids, parents, schools are all saying to go into a trade, and there are four trades, when in fact there are 55 Red Seal trades and then there are 200 different trades across the country when you look at all the different provinces and territories.
My first comment would be that maybe the demand is not for electricians; maybe it's for instrumentation technicians, ironworkers, bricklayers, insulators, or welders. There is a whole range of other trades that people aren't necessarily familiar with.
My second comment would be that it may be there is a demand but we can't match the apprentice with the job. There is a need right across the country to come up with a better way of doing it.
Right now there is an option in Ontario, called apprenticesearch.com, a website that's trying to connect apprentices with employers and vice versa. Apprentices can post that they're available and post their resumé and that sort of thing. Employers can go to the website and look for people and post opportunities at the same time.
There are two pieces. One, it may have been that there is not demand in those top three or four trades, that it's in the other 50. Two, it may be that we're having a hard time connecting the opportunity with the apprentice.