Thank you very much. I'm very pleased to be at the committee this morning to talk about this topic, and I thank the officials for their presentations.
I want to start by asking about what I see as a couple of large challenges the labour market development agreements have.
There was a 2013 OECD report that said that Canada provides the least protection of any OECD nation against job loss for part-time workers, and only the United States and New Zealand provide less protection for full-time workers. What it's really saying is that there's no incentive for employers to retrain people in the way our labour market is structured, but, instead, to lay people off at the first opportunity. That seems to provide a big challenge for the labour market development agreements if we don't encourage employers to retrain rather than lay off employees.
The second one, of course, is that only four out of ten workers are qualifying for employment insurance and, therefore, for the more intensive retraining programs. So you've set yourselves two big challenges, I think, when dealing with labour market agreements there.
My first question is, wouldn't easier qualification for EI benefits for youth and others in high unemployment regions really provide them with better access to the training they might need to avoid future unemployment?