Thank you.
I'm looking at my own union and the experience twenty years ago during the previous crisis in the steel sector. At that point, the union and the industry created the CSTEC bipartite organization to discuss the need for retraining for unemployed and employed workers. At that point, we had the support of the federal government, and it was a very successful experience.
Today the federal government has devolved to the provinces a lot of their training, and then people say the federal government cannot do much on the issue of training and retraining.
We think that first the federal government has to re-engage in training. This is too important to just say, “It's not my responsibility.” Secondly we have a few ideas about how this could be done.
First, we think the EI system could be revamped and used for training, allowing employed and unemployed workers to collect benefits during training. This is important. We have experience doing this, as in the apprenticeship model, where people collect their wages through EI while attending school. We are suggesting to you the same model for training and retraining.
Secondly, we think that Quebec's model of a training levy of 1% on corporations that don't do training is an excellent model to study and repeat nationally. Again, this is not a punishment; it is making sure you do proper training. And it is not that much money; it is 1%.
Finally, we support the sector council's agenda that the federal government is doing. But at the same time, we think that without some monetary support through EI or some tax levy, the sector councils that are in place cannot do much, because there is no lever mechanism. You can research, you can study, and you can talk about it, but until you get some dollars to really do it on the ground, there is not much you can do.