I can say really quickly that happily, I haven't had to collect unemployment insurance for quite a while, but I can remember when I went to trade school, and you're exactly right. Half the time you were there for eight weeks—and for us, sometimes it was ten weeks—and you finally got your unemployment insurance at about week nine. It was two and a half months, and that was for somebody who was not making a whole lot of money to begin with. You have to remember that an apprentice is making 40%, 50%, and 60%, graduating up to 80%, through his first to fifth terms. Especially for a second-year apprentice who isn't making a whole lot of money and may now have a family and have all kinds of outside influences going on, getting EI in a timely manner would be very important.
I don't know how many times, when I sat on a joint apprenticeship committee in another life, that an apprentice would say, “Look, I can't afford to go to school.” These are our apprentices; they are making roughly double what a non-union apprentice would make, and they don't have enough money to go to school, so I can imagine what it's like for the other ones. I think it's very often easier to go drive a truck or find a job that's paying more than that is at the time and not mind going through. An apprenticeship, as I said, is an investment.
I know that when I took a job, it was for a small amount of money, but I knew that at the end of the day it would be a valuable career. At the same time, I had friends who were going to sweep the floor in Stelco for twice as much money as I was getting, and it was that much harder to do.
I won't take up any more time on it, but yes, we do like tax breaks too, by the way.