Thank you.
I just want to address something. When you were talking to Mr. Morrissey, you mentioned how sometimes we need to be on the ground with constituents or stakeholders or that type of thing, and I would actually argue that we should be doing that all the time, every time we are in our riding.
I think if we did a lot more of that, or more members of Parliament did that, we would see how legislation like Bill C-69 is actually very detrimental to a lot of the ridings in Canada, coast to coast; it doesn't matter where. I think being able to see the work that is done and what Canadians are doing and how they're putting food on their table.... For example, the oil industry uses tons of different trades.
It's interesting for me...and we've discussed this before in this committee, when we studied youth employment. Being younger, I do fall in the millennial generation, and where I'm from, going into the trades is encouraged, because they are high-paying jobs. Kids are encouraged to get a job at a shop sweeping floors, which turns into something else, whether it's mechanics or welding or carpentry, whatever it is. That's encouraged where I am, in my part and region of Canada.
The second thing I want to touch on is that you made mention of destigmatizing the trades, and it's been talked about a couple of times. How do we change the perception and destigmatize the trades, when your leader, the Prime Minister, makes a comment about a gender-based analysis for rural construction workers? How does that help promote women, promote men, young boys, whoever it is, into those trades, when they hear comments like that from the top of the country, the leader of the country saying things like that? I've had many constituents contact me, very upset and offended by that statement, because that's not who they are. These are construction workers who are going into places like rural Saskatchewan or Manitoba and working on roads, or doing infrastructure on bridges or ferries or whatever it is.
I'm just wondering how we destigmatize that, when it's coming from the top of the top in Ottawa.