Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I have three areas of questions. The first one is on employment insurance and training programs. The second one is on immigrants and our immigration policy and our workforce. The third area is on the infrastructure--transportation and public transit.
On the first one, recently TD Economics said in one of its reports that because of the changing labour market realities, it's leaving a large group of the labour force uninsurable under EI and a complementary set of programs is urgently needed to fill the gap. One of the recommendations from the recent report that came out, Time For A Fair Deal, is that we need to reform EI so that your workers would actually get coverage.
In big urban centres like Toronto, where I'm from, only 22% of the workers get coverage. The rest of the money goes elsewhere, as you have noticed. I understand your suggestion that it should really be an insurance program. When they contribute to an insurance program, when they need it, the workers should get it. That's my number one question, whether that is an area that needs to be changed.
The second area connected with it is that the money the workers and employers put in could be used for a lot of the training programs that we all know are needed. One of the other recommendations that came out is that we know that a lot of the training programs, such as apprenticeship programs, mentorship, job coaches, and on-the-job training, are all filled to the brim right now. We desperately need more skilled labour, especially in the service sector, because if they don't get skilled, given how small a population we have, we're never going to be productive.
Should we not spend some more of that EI money, both back to the workers--aside from your first three recommendations, reducing the premium and all that--and also do really clear labour market targeted training so that we can get the workforce we need.
We can talk about immigrants in a few minutes. That is the first area of my questions.