Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for Durham for his service to our country and for his comments.
Frankly, I agree with his idea of creating a culture of hiring a veteran. I do not entirely agree with the touting he did of his own government and everything it has done, because members will hear and have heard already that it could be doing much more in a more significant way.
We talked about Helmets to Hardhats earlier, and we know how much of a failure that program was: $100,000, and it hired very few veterans.
I am trying to be constructive. There is an opportunity for the government to be more engaged in this process by using what is called a “skills translator”. They are using it in the United States for a quarter of the price that the current Conservative government is spending on ads for veterans during the playoffs. For a quarter of the price it will align, interpret, and translate the skills of many of our veterans into other jobs that are out there. It links veterans in the United States with the private sector, not just the public sector, at a very minimal cost.
I challenge the member to take this idea to his caucus, to his Minister of Veterans Affairs, and encourage him to embrace this idea of skills translators, at very little cost, to help our veterans more significantly determine their aptitudes and find employment.