Good afternoon, and thank you for the question, MP.
We at the Canadian Chamber talk a lot about demand-side labour market information. It's not very, for lack of a better word, sexy or attractive, but this is the missing piece to a lot of the workforce puzzle. I only caught some of the previous comments as well, but, for example, for the labour force numbers, a lot of detail and work go into those—kudos where kudos is due—but that's only on the supply side of the story. That's not the demand side, unfortunately. A lot of the data that comes in is already dated and looks back instead of forward. Help on that workforce planning, particularly for the demand side, would be appreciated.
We talk about—and we can split some hairs here—jobs without people and people without jobs, so there needs to be help facilitating that. That's what we we call matchmaking, and in the first instance what is required is analysis. Do people have the skills and it's just that they're not getting to the right jobs? Is it a question of labour mobility issues here in the country, with, where jobs are located and so on and so forth, or is it the need for upskilling and re-skilling?
What I will say is that we have heard about a lot of pilot projects going on across the country in different areas, and those are great as a start, but I think the issue of scaling and helping and replicating is one that we're really going to have to examine going forward.
Thank you.