Mr. Speaker, I have a brief comment for my colleague and a question.
My riding is primarily a resource dependent riding, fishing, mining and forestry, and we are finding that a number of economies are in transition. Changing the nature of the way the work is being done often lowers the number of people actually required to do the work.
Many people question me as to why it is required that someone is either fired or laid off in some extraordinary measure before some sort of just transition process can take place and the federal funds, to which they have contributed over a number of years of their working lives, is triggered.
They are confused as to why, when sufficient funds are in place, when known transitions are coming and when the industry is shifting, be it mining, forestry or fishing, the government has no procedure in place that would allow workers in those industries to apply for funding so they can transition out of those industries into sunrise industries as opposed to sunset.