I'll take it first, and then I'll turn it over to my deputy for a few more details.
Yes, you're absolutely right. What we want is more people in the trades. We want more interest in the trades earlier on. We need to reverse the generational stigma around pursuing a career in the trades. This is obviously a burning desire for me as the Minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Labour, but also as the mom of a young man in trades. Trades are some of the best middle-class jobs in our country. There's a shortage of skilled workers for 65,000 trades positions in our country.
Obviously, the previous government didn't invest in unions. As a matter of fact, they introduced a whole bunch of union-busting legislation. They were no friends to organized labour or to the trades, so for us, this is about reversing that. We're doing that by ensuring that we invest in the women in apprenticeships model, so that we bring more women into the trades, by investing in pre-apprenticeship strategies, so that we can get people into the idea of trades before the apprenticeships, and by investing in union training. We know that unions actually do some of the best jobs in terms of training the next generation of skilled tradespeople, whether it's for equipment or innovation, in terms of bringing people into union-based trades.
We are going to continue that work. We have more to do, for sure, but I think we're on the right trajectory now. We're talking about the trades in a more positive way. We're working with organized labour. The skilled trades unions are an important partner in this country, not just to build up the next generation of skilled tradespeople but also to protect those good-quality middle-class jobs we talk about all the time.