Human Resources committee  I think the point that's been made is quite important. With the literacy skills, particularly on the part of trade qualifiers, for example, we found in some studies that trade qualifiers do much worse on the Red Seal exams than apprentices. The success rate for apprentices is relatively high on the Red Seal exams.

Human Resources committee  That's correct, yes.

Human Resources committee  We can trace the labour force in great detail using the labour force survey over at least 20 years. The trades have been a stable, and modestly declining, if anything, part of that labour force for at least 20 years. The statistics are readily available from the labour force survey and from tables published by Statistics Canada.

Human Resources committee  I have a couple of brief comments. Acknowledging what John has just said, the reality is that in most trades there is substantial financial payoff to certification, and that can be demonstrated. It's not clear that's obvious to people, and it's not true in some trades, by the way.

Human Resources committee  My sense is that it's less of a problem now than it was in the past. As others have said, a large number of people in the trades have high school or less. Right now, however, almost everyone graduates from high school. Going forward, my sense is that lack of high school education is likely to be far less of a problem than it was historically, when people found their way into the trades after dropping out of high school, say.

Human Resources committee  Thank you. Some of the things in my initial comments have already been said, so that will help shorten things a bit. I have a few quick comments on the trade labour force itself. I think you all know that it's around 11% to 12% of the total labour force. What's less clear perhaps is that it's stable and perhaps marginally declining.