Thank you, everybody, for your presentations.
This is something we have been hearing about for a long time. When I look back at my vast career, I remember a point when I delivered pizza for two separate companies. With one company I was actually on their payroll. With the other I wasn't; I was considered a subcontractor.
Part of what I think we're trying to accomplish here is that we absolutely need to start to define what precarious work means. In the case of being a driver, has the company decided it's in their better interest to pay me not as a regular employee but just as a driver? They don't have to worry about payroll. They don't have to worry about taxes. They don't have to worry about anything else. When I start to look at precarious work, that's what starts to come to my mind. How many situations are we presented with, and that have evolved to where we are today, where if you have a set of tools, you can be considered to be a contractor? But are we doing this to avoid our responsibilities? I get that business has a role to play, but we also have to make sure, as governments, that our policies and our legislation support our people. It has to be both. If they're not paying taxes or they're not being taken care of with employment insurance, for instance, then that's a disservice to all Canadians.
Having said that, I have a couple of questions. One is for the CFIB.
I get why people want to hire outside contractors, but why not train in-house? In Toronto right now we have a massive problem because we don't have any contractors to build. Why not create an in-house training program rather than always hire out?