I think what we call the technical colleges—as you said, Okanagan College in British Columbia, the British Columbia Institute of Technology, the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology, the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology, and so on— play a very important role in training the workforce. If you look at the one slide that I had, 55% of the workforce in the construction industry are in trades. The trades do everything from installing lighting to equipment to all kinds of things. They are the ones who need to be trained, so the technical colleges are very well positioned not only to bring the new workforce on as well as the existing one but also to upgrade the skills in this workforce. It's very important.
I think the government has the opportunity—I apologize because I don't recall the exact name of the department that looks after investing in education and training and so on—to support that in identifying what those gaps are, and then investing in the curriculum that could be developed depending on the types of trades involved. I would suggest that the unions, and also the associations, need to be involved as well. Then they could deliver and support training consistently across the country, because it's not only about specific knowledge; it's about skills.
Also, I think people with new skills, more advanced skills, can also make a way better living in that profession than maybe they could have before. "Sustainability" is a term we use for buildings, as is “high performance”. How do you design high-performance buildings? The trades play a critical role there.
Yes, invest in colleges, technical colleges, and use your federal departments for human development and resources to meet the challenges in that area.