I think I appeared before this committee a year and a half ago when those reforms were first announced. We supported the reforms in general. I know there are some specific elements of it that have caused people some problems. Some of our members have concerns over some of the reforms that were put in, in terms of seasonal employment and the ability to retain those workers year round. I know it's a big problem in parts of Quebec and northern Ontario, and into the east coast, in particular.
But, in general, we didn't really think the reforms that were announced by the minister at the time were over the top. We think trying to use the system to get people to train for the jobs of the future is a good way to invest money. To get people to travel...I think an hour is where the limit is. How exactly that works, I think, is still up in the air a little bit. You hear different stories in the media. But I think we generally have been fairly supportive of requiring those people to make that commitment to try to find employment.
Directly related back to the reforms to EI and what we're talking about here under the LMDAs, what concerns me and I think our organization the most, though, is what people are training in, and the careers of tomorrow often aren't related to actual jobs that exist. I don't know exactly how you make that match better, but people can go through training and retrain for new careers, but if there's no....
As an example, you could take someone, say, in New Brunswick and say, okay, they are unemployed. We're going to train them to be a welder. If there are no welding jobs in New Brunswick, what's the point in doing the training in the first place? I think one of the things that have been frustrating for employers is that people who are going through these retraining exercises aren't really even coming out with the skills that are needed in the local economy in a lot of cases.
The data available in terms of labour market data for what companies need is lacking in a lot of cases so employees can't make the right choices for training. Companies can't make the right choice on who they are going to hire because they don't know who is available locally. So it's a combination of problems here, and hopefully this can start to address it. But it's multi-faceted. It covers everything from EI to the Canada Job Bank, which I know is undergoing some reforms as well. So it's a big, interconnected problem.
I hope that answers your question.