In British Columbia and Alberta there is a dire, dire need for anybody in the construction industry. Anybody on our waiting list of those 500,000 people, any of them who are plumbers, electricians, drywallers, or who can pick up a shovel, will have a job waiting for them at good pay. Our first priority should be to increase the number of people we can get into Canada to deal with our labour shortage.
But I understand what you're saying about outcomes; outcomes are important. I don't think, though, an adequate comparison can be made looking at 1980 numbers and 1996 numbers. It's 2006; these are 10-year-old numbers, so they're pretty much meaningless where we are right now, and even from that standpoint we're talking about their level of income after one year here. After one year here, if you start on a job site, you start moving lumber, and you move up as your skill develops. I would suggest that the department take a look at where they are after three years, after five years, after ten years, and I would suggest that those numbers are going to ramp up significantly.
So what statistics or what benchmarks are you going to use to judge the success of outcomes?