At RESDAC, we put a lot of stock in an integrated approach, whereby we look at the technical skills of a particular trade and we blend the learning of essential and generic skills in with them. In the tourism sector, for example, if someone is taking a course in housekeeping, we use the technical aspects to help them develop numeracy. If they have to measure quantities of soap in millilitres, they will be taking training in mathematics. That is what we call the integrated approach.
At the Coalition, we are service providers. Each year, we train about 3,500 francophones in Ontario using 40 service points. We had not really explored the integrated approach a lot. As part of the research that RESDAC has undertaken, we have just obtained funding for a pilot project in Ottawa and in Toronto. As a result, we are training 60 people in three tourist-sector trades: housekeeping, front-desk staff, and banquet servers. There are nine weeks of technical skills, into which we have blended four weeks of essential skills and three weeks of training in employment courses.