Natural Resources committee  You don't need to subsidize a particular industry. One suggestion we've made to the Minister of Finance and HRSDC a number of times is that you can do it through employment insurance in terms of a travel grant. Instead of paying people for 26 weeks, or a number of weeks, you give them their money up front.

Natural Resources committee  There's no one from Algonquin College in the room, so I'll make an example of them. They have 18,000 students at Algonquin down the road, and 150 of them are in the construction pre-apprentice program. So what are we focusing on? Ontario will have the Ring of Fire, Ontario will have a new nuclear build, Ontario will have pipelines running through it, and Algonquin College, I think the fourth-largest community college in Ontario, has 150 students involved in the skilled trades.

Natural Resources committee  As long as it's her choice, I'm fine with it. I'm learning how to be a father quickly. There are inefficiencies in getting young people into the trades, realizing there's value. We've got to get that right. We can do that as a country.

Natural Resources committee  There's the inefficiency of training centres not talking to each other. There are inefficiencies in the Red Seal system itself. We have a Red Seal system in construction and in other trades that recognizes credentials from each of the provinces. We spend a lot of time applying and a lot of time trying to get more trades recognized in the Red Seal.

Natural Resources committee  I will not allow her to take something that isn't linked to where our economy is headed. She's going to have her own choices, I'm sure. But I want her to be a millwright. Not a lot of people have that—

Natural Resources committee  LMDA funding—for the other members of the committee who don't know—is the part 2 training money from Employment Insurance. You have to be eligible for employment insurance to be able to access LMDA funding or receive employment insurance. We need to spend less on administering these funds and more on putting money in.

Natural Resources committee  If we see the Energy East pipeline built, which hopefully we do, probably most of the foreign oil stops coming in and we refine more and more from Alberta. I think that addresses a lot of the job issues. The people in New Brunswick will be happy because it means the refining industry there will expand.

Natural Resources committee  Thanks. Ask anyone in Calgary their number one business risk. It's not capital; it's not regulation. It's getting the right people to the right job at the right time. How do we fix it? We need colleges in all of the provinces to start working together to get the training picture right.

Natural Resources committee  In our universe, in construction, there are pretty small numbers in the construction workforce right now. I wouldn't want to speak for the service sector or any of the other sectors, but the program is a band-aid solution for not getting the training right in Canada. We need 3,000 or 4,500 electricians yesterday.

Natural Resources committee  The national building trades have been focusing on using the program to bring the labour force in from the United States. We have a policy where it's local workers first, then provincial, then national, and then our next step is the United States. We've been working on workers in Michigan with the same skills, the same language, the same health and safety training, getting them to Alberta, to where the work is.

Natural Resources committee  In terms of competencies required to build those projects, the green energy market, so to speak, is exactly the same as traditional energy markets. You still need carpenters, millwrights, and steamfitters, so it's a nice addition to conventional energy employment. Obviously, when you're building an LNG facility or an upgrader or a refinery, the number of person hours required to build that facility outstrips putting together a few windmills on a wind farm, but granted, those windmills and those wind farms are growing.

Natural Resources committee  The third time's a charm, right? Thanks for having me back. We're the Canadian building trades; we represent about 550,000 skilled trade workers, in every province, coast to coast. I received the invitation and thought about market diversification. I talked to some of our folks.

Natural Resources committee  I would say that our top innovation—and I took a ton of heat for it internally—is that we partnered with CAP to talk about workforce delivery issues and about where we need to be to make sure that we have the workforce ready to build their projects in the future. So there's that one.

Natural Resources committee  I don't think I would be wrong in saying that a lot of our energy partners have said that as well.

Natural Resources committee  For skilled trades, yes.