In the longer-term picture, it's always about working with very young people, elementary school and up, on the value of trades and telling them that these are good jobs. Oftentimes, many of these trades are very technological. They are skilled jobs, where you're making good pay, and you're making a difference.
In the shorter term, what we need.... I spoke about the second career program; I was proud of it. There were all sorts of hiccups and warts and all of that, but one of the things we learned is that you really need to have the employer, the training institution, and the laid-off worker really working closely together. In the second career program, we asked people to come forward and say, “Look, I want to be skilled in area X, and here is some evidence that some hiring is going on”. That evidence, as I recall, was a few job ads and things like that in the paper.
One of your colleagues asked about infrastructure programs and major construction programs. We need those employers saying, “We need the following trades. We need them now. The jobs are available.” When people get a better sense of what a trade involves, get a sense that there's a good paying job at the end, and there is a way in.... We have a post-secondary system that is so out of date that sometimes if you show up in October and say, “I want to be a plumber or a carpenter”, you may be told, depending on the institution, “Well, you have to come back in January”, or “You have to wait a year”, even though you came six weeks earlier. That's the sort of thing where it's nimble, everyone's working together, and I, as a laid-off individual can say, “Hey, you know what, here is a direct route. I don't have to bang my head against the wall and wait six months or go here or go there”, and it moves through.
It's a lot of work, but it's going to be a huge payoff. Certainly, the trades is one area where we can see great growth.