Thank you, sir.
I was a bit stunned to hear the labour specialists console each other by saying that the job losses in the manufacturing sector would soon be recovered since people are managing to find other jobs, probably outside the manufacturing sector. It's a bit like being happy about your ship running aground because you get to have a nice rescue boat.
Currently in the industry, there are holes that can't be filled. If you talk with the people in the printing business, for example, they'll tell you that there are press operator jobs at $125,000 a year that they can't fill because the technical schools aren't meeting their needs. They can't convince young people to go into their industry. As a result, the expansion of those businesses, which are often small and medium enterprises, is slowed by their inability to find the personnel they need.
In the trucking industry, we're told that Canada is short 40,000 truckers to meet demand in the coming years. However, wages aren't rising, even though we're short 40,000 workers. The economic supply of people who might join the industry isn't there.
Does that have any relation to the fact that a monopoly is currently being established in Eastern Canada with a revenue fund that is strangely similar to that of organized crime in New York? I hope not, but it troubles me. When you're short 40,000 employees in an industry that doesn't raise wages in order to get them, it may be because there's a baseball bat behind that.
My question is this: Do we have an adjustment problem between the school systems of our provinces in general, and Quebec in particular, and the manufacturing industry? We mostly offer jobs to young men, while our school systems are increasingly oriented toward meeting the needs of female students, young women.