Mr. Speaker, I would grant that the member is misinformed about the Canada job grant and its impact on the labour market agreement, which is $500 million in annual federal transfers to provinces and territories for skills development and job training for individuals who have been unemployed long term or who have never been employed.
In fact, the Canada job grant agreements that we have signed in principle with all 13 provinces and territories permit the provinces and territories to fund their portion, the public portion of the job grant, from any source of funds. The source of funding is not restricted to the labour market agreement, which the Conservative government introduced in 2007, I remind the member. There was zero LMA funding and zero programming of that nature prior to the government's creation of that program.
It would be nice to hear a little thanks from the member if he thinks those are good programs, and also recognition that they are completely unaffected by the Canada job grant agreement, which seeks to increase the private sector investment in skills training.
I am with the unions on this. I am where the NDP should be, which is thinking we have to find ways to get employers to put more skin in the game in training. That is what the job grant does, by leveraging more investment from private sector employers.
Does the member not agree that it is a good objective? Does he not also agree that it is a good idea to try to get employers to nominate people for training where they are offering them a guaranteed job at the end of it? Surely he is willing to admit that there has been too much training for jobs that do not exist and training for the sake of training, and that we need some reforms in this area.