Mr. Speaker, I will briefly answer my Liberal colleague. He is talking about a tool to help deal with a labour shortage. We are offering him a tool worth $100 million a year.
In many companies, especially in my riding, if older workers had had the opportunity to leave first when half the workforce was laid off, and the employer had kept the younger workers, some of the older workers could have worked part-time to train the younger workers and make them more productive. The older workers could simply have stopped working until their retirement.
Now we have a shortage of specialized labour. Why? Because we are not giving young people the opportunity to train. A program like this one would give them that opportunity. Older workers, not younger ones, would be the first to leave the company. The younger ones would stay and form a productive workforce for the future, until the company recovered after boosting its productivity and competitiveness.
This is an ideal tool, especially for the regions, and we need to use it. The Liberals did not understand this before the Conservatives came to power. We hope that the Conservatives will be more on the ball.