Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Good morning, everyone, and thank you all for taking time out of your busy schedules to be here with us.
This is an important study, because this is ensuring that we have a system, across the country, we hope, that will encourage more people to consider apprenticeship and that will encourage more employers to participate and to hire through an apprenticeship system.
I'm glad Mr. Lendsay talked about the age difference. I hope that some people will see apprenticeship as a second career opportunity. They may be in their 40s, and whatever they thought they were going to do at age 20 isn't the same as at age 40. This is an opportunity for them to retrain and get back into the workforce. That's how I see the apprenticeship program.
Yes, I think we have a challenge getting younger people to consider apprenticeships, to consider the trades. You've all talked about changing parents' mindsets. I'm the father of daughters who are 13 and 9 years old. We're going to have to have the conversation eventually about what their career path will be. A couple of people have talked about how we can get more young women looking at the skilled trades. I think that's a challenge we have as well.
I want to start by asking about the challenge regarding employers and whether any of you have specific ideas of things we could be doing to get more employers on board to participate in apprenticeship programs. Apprenticeship is employment. I think in most apprenticeships—you can correct me, if I'm wrong—the employer pays a salary while the person goes through the apprenticeship program. They are hiring somebody to participate in this program.
What can we do to encourage more employers to participate? We know that 80% of the people in this country work for small business. What do we do? Do you have any specific suggestions for us, things we can look at as a federal government by way of providing incentives or looking at ways to encourage more companies to hire apprentices?
Mr. Chairman, whoever wants to jump in can respond to this. It's probably the only question I'll get in, so I'll leave it at that.