Maybe I'll respond to a couple of those items.
Talking about communication, I support that 100% in the sense that we don't do enough of that in trying to convince young folks to come into the industry. I think the bigger problem and the issue that exists is retention, keeping these young folks who come into the apprenticeship programs for longer periods of time.
We have found through our experience, and I'll speak on behalf of the oil sands industry, which I represent, and the large employers that are part of that, whether they are construction employers or owners of the oil sands projects themselves, they recruit and keep apprentices on a long-term basis, an ongoing basis, on a 12-month approach.
In a typical construction industry, the contractors who work on these owner sites are completely dependent, obviously, on the nature of the work that's coming up. It's very cyclical. As everybody in this room knows, construction work can be very cyclical. Putting aside the residential and commercial aspects of the business that exist, on the industrial projects, the nature of the work is such that it does happen between different periods of time.
The owners, then, by the same token do employ a significant number of apprentices and have over the years. As a matter of fact, the three large owners who I represent through ACTIMS and CISAA—Suncor, Syncrude, and Shell—are all significant owners in Alberta in the oil sands business. Along with that, they do have a significant portion.... I could go into statistics. I have all kinds of paperwork here, but I don't think we have enough time to do that. But outside of that, I believe that the contractor side becomes a bit of a challenge, of course, because if there's no work available, they have to reduce the workforce, and if they have to reduce the workforce, obviously people do get affected by that.
Unfortunately the way our system is set up at the present time, there is no particular requirement to keep certain levels of apprentices, if you know what I mean. If you go through first year, second year, third year, fourth year, we don't currently have a mechanism that says that you will keep x number of first years, and x number of second years, third years, or fourth years.
Those are the issues we face. Those are structural issues that need to be addressed probably at the provincial level, obviously. Apprenticeship is provincially driven from that perspective. However, I do believe there is an opportunity through the federal government, through that process, to have a dialogue and to create an atmosphere that allows for that kind of mobility between different levels and for some opportunities for retention.
I'd like to touch on one point that Madam Charlton made about the Hamilton situation, where you have large employers who manage to keep their apprentice labour force on for longer periods of time. I believe that still exists. As a matter of fact, within the large organizations, it still occurs. We've seen many folks graduate from the apprenticeship programs at the large owners' projects. We're talking not about one or two or three but about hundreds of people who have gone through that system. The same folks today are either working in journeypersons' jobs that exist or they're working in jobs that are associated with creating jobs through their own businesses, etc. A lot of that does go on.