On your first question about government funding, I think it's critical that the federal government participate in training, whether or not it's transferring money to provinces or territories and then letting them work the money through the system. The federal government has always supported apprenticeship in this country, and I assume it'll continue to do that. There's no doubt we've got to ramp up our apprentice intake. I think across Canada in the next 10 years in the skilled trades we're going to lose 20% of our work force. That's the number that's been put out by.... I'm not sure what group put it out. Maybe it's the Construction Sector Council or something.
Apprenticeship is paramount. We have to get at it. We've been sitting on it for a while. A lot of people have been telling us about trade shortages for five, six, and ten years, and we didn't really believe it. We saw it two years ago. We're seeing it today, including places in the north, where I had just assumed it would take more funds to do the training. It's just a more expensive place to do business. We see that in the construction costs in the north.
As far as diversification is concerned, I know what you're saying. How many times are we going to cut this pie? We've only got so many workers to go around. I think that's a challenge to us to get our work force up. I think we can do it. I think some of the people who have let us down in pursuing skilled trades are the high schools. I think we've got to go back past the community colleges. They don't teach trades anymore. We don't even talk about trades in high schools. Trades always used to be an option. You go to university for two years and when you fail, your dad gets you a job at the plumbers' union. It's not the case anymore. We're getting the ones who were going to go to university.