Madam Speaker, let me talk about severance pay, since I know a lot about severance pay and EI. It does not get people one dollar more from employment insurance to get severance. EI claws it back, dollar for dollar, which means they do not qualify, so that is a non-starter.
Let me just quote for the member what the Association of Community Colleges in Canada said about the training programs, “We do not have the places.” They do not have the infrastructure in place to accept all those folks that perhaps the money would help, if the government can get it out the door fast enough. The problem is, if we look at the last program, the money did not get out the door.
If the government did get the money out the door, we would simply have folks lined up at community colleges waiting to get in. That is what the community colleges said. They said that they needed $7.4 billion, of which they expected the federal government to come up with $3.4 billion, to help them build the spaces to get those folks in and retrained. What they did get instead was $300 million this year and $200 million next year, which by my count is a shortfall of about $2.9 billion.
It seems to me we will have people lined up outside community colleges waiting to get to those seats to be retrained. Standing and saying “we will”, does not get it done.