Thanks for that question.
I think you pointed to a pretty big challenge in trying to provide that right balance of getting individuals to have the incentive to look for work and to keep a job, and then trying to figure out what the best game plan is going forward. That's a really complex issue.
I think the government is trying to proceed on various fronts on that question. I think one is on making sure that individuals have an incentive to take work and then stay at it. We have an initiative the government introduced about 18 months back. It's called “Connecting Canadians with Available Jobs.”
The initiative there was to try to make sure that, on the one hand, individuals have the labour market information to be able to look at what jobs are available to them, and then at the same time to set out the obligations for unemployed individuals, to make sure that if they do lose their job, or leave a job, governments look at this carefully to see if they are making active efforts to try to find work or to keep work. We ask them to keep a record of that, to keep a journal, and to say, “These are the things I'm doing to try to find a job.” We describe exactly what kind of job that individual should be prepared to accept. That incentive structure I think is there increasingly to make sure that individuals are keeping a job and looking for a job.
I think you're absolutely right in terms of thinking beyond that to ask, “Is it any job or is it the right job?” I think this is where we're looking at both the LMAs and the LMDAs to ask if we can have a better match for the individual and the job market, and also for the job that's going to be there a few years out. Yes, you need good labour market information, but you also need employer involvement. Employers do have that medium-term perspective in terms of saying that there's an LNG project, and three years out, this is who they're going to need for it, and five years out, this is what they're going to need. We need to try to partner up with employers to make sure that we and the provinces and territories are training people for the jobs of tomorrow that are going to be there—and the good jobs.