Thank you. It's great to be here.
Thank you to the witnesses for their testimony today.
I'd like to start off by reiterating what my colleague said right at the outset, which was that “spending...is not a result”. I want to specifically ask about training skilled workers around some of the comments made by Mr. Brown from ESDC. The reason for this is that in my home province of Ontario we phased out coal some years ago. Nuclear is an important part of the electricity generation going forward, and I know that there are incredible shortages in terms of skilled workers, whether that be boilermakers or linespeople, etc., in order to help generate that electricity.
My observation would be that the Ontario government, under the leadership of the labour minister there, Monte McNaughton, has done all the heavy lifting in terms of attracting workers to the skilled trades. The references you made in your testimony to one federal program, which was going to create 3,500 skilled workers, seem to be at a snail's pace compared to what's going to be needed. In Ontario, it has been estimated that one in five jobs by 2025 will be in the skilled trades.
Maybe you can comment on that, or there may be others in the regional development agencies who also have a perspective on that.