Thank you, Mr. Chair.
My thanks to all the witnesses for the information they have given us.
In your presentations, we have clearly seen the extent to which apprenticeship programs are an excellent way of preparing people for a career in a given trade. You also told us about the challenges you face in your areas.
In my constituency, efforts have been made to promote careers in the trades, and the effect was to increase the number of registrations in the École professionnelle de Saint-Hyacinthe.
That promotion was done in various ways. For example, all students in the public high schools spend a day in the vocational school so that they can try out various trades. In recent years, we have seen international education students now going to the vocational school after finishing high school, whereas before, they went off to post-secondary studies.
I would like to take advantage of your expertise to find out whether it would be possible to expand apprenticeship programs to non-specialized jobs. Let me explain why I want to know that.
When I visit entrepreneurs in my constituency, they tell me that employees in their companies are retiring and taking all their knowledge with them. They would appreciate it if, in the final years, when the productivity of those employees is dropping, either because of age or their physical abilities, they could pass on their knowledge to young people entering the company. They are the employees who really know to operate the equipment and the ways of working. As they are often SMEs, they do not have sufficient resources to pay the salaries of both an employee two years away from retirement and of a young employee just entering the company.
In your opinion, would salary subsidies mean that the young people and the mentors could be paired up before the latter retire? It could be a way of dealing with the situation. Other witnesses have told us that, in seven years, Quebec will have over a million jobs to fill. It is difficult to build a bridge between the available jobs and the people looking for them, especially kids who have dropped out of high school before they finish.
You are very familiar with apprenticeship programs. Is there a way to expand those programs to the kinds of non-specialized jobs, for which, in the constituency I represent, there is a shortage of labour.
I see that you are nodding your head, Ms. Robinson. So let me ask you the question.