Mr. Speaker, first, people have to accept that they are always better off working than they are collecting employment insurance benefits. If they accept that they are always better off when they have a job, we need to have a government program that supports people through training and employment.
Last year, people saw us make a landmark deal with the provinces across the country for the labour market agreement, a $500-million fund from the government coffers to support connecting people to jobs and ensuring that they have training.
We have changed that now. We have established what is called a Canada job grant. The Canada job grant allows employers to put some skin in the game, hire someone who does that training, and then the labour market agreement kicks some money in for that training. That allows the employee to train and get skills for a job they know is going to be there at the end of the training.
We are now negotiating with the provinces on a much larger fund, the labour market development agreement, which is a $2-billion fund in terms of training. One of the goals we share with the provinces is that we need to ensure we have access to people for training sooner after they lose their jobs, so they can more quickly get back to jobs.
This is why we are putting an emphasis on connecting people to available jobs and training. We also have to ensure that people who are currently on benefit apply and attempt to get work when they are collecting that benefit. They will be better off in the long run. Those are the priorities that our government has put in place.