Human Resources committee  I will certainly follow up. There's no doubt I will. It's not going to be a doctoral thesis, I can guarantee you. It's not a national school. It's a strategy. We have worked before on creating some.... You were talking about a national strategy on poverty, I think. It's to bring the players together to say we have examples of programs that are going on in B.C.

Human Resources committee  I have had the privilege of meeting with you and I know that in fact, in your own work, you've already offered those opportunities to young people. I think the first thing we need to understand is what the problem is. Why are employers not...? I'm sure they have many issues and many problems, but until we understand what we need to do to make it a....

Human Resources committee  Yes, I am a little passionate about this issue.

Human Resources committee  So it has to be developed by Canadians. I'm sorry.

Human Resources committee  I'm going to come back to your question about what a strategy looks like. The bottom line answer is that nobody has the perfect solution, but we do need to be able to identify one, and there are pockets of excellence from which we can begin. What are the components in the strategy that have worked in other countries?

Human Resources committee  Of course. There are models, and we need to bring the stakeholders together to say what is already working, ask how we build that into a structural approach that really does engage the critical people, and then build it together. It's a very big question and I'm having trouble answering it in thirty seconds.

Human Resources committee  We need to identify are all those pieces and identify why employers aren't really engaged. That was brought up by Emily. Why are they not providing on-the-job training? What do we have to do to give them the incentive to do that? That's a piece of the strategy.

Human Resources committee  I have to write a paper on this, apparently. It's the key question. Countries have done school-to-work transition strategies. It's not rocket science, but there are multiple pieces to it and multiple players in it. One of the biggest gaps in the transition is the transition from school to work.

Human Resources committee  It's somebody who really helps you take a step towards optimism, and we need to have help to make that happen.

Human Resources committee  Sorry.

Human Resources committee  Wow! Our focus in our field is on helping people navigate learning and work. I agree with you that we have not had a focus on the issues of seniors, because they are not necessarily accessing the labour market any more. There is, however, a whole movement called third age career development. which we have not been very active in but which is looking at how you meaningfully engage seniors.

Human Resources committee  One example that we did work with—again, it's in New Brunswick—was with social assistance. We worked with single mothers who were interested in the future of their children, and they were offered workshops that would help them become coaches for their children to get them out of social assistance.

Human Resources committee  I think one of you mentioned the importance of encouragement and mentorship. It all ends up being the same thing.

Human Resources committee  It's Lynne.

Human Resources committee  Thank you, Mr. May, and thank you for the opportunity to be here this morning. I represent the Canadian Council for Career Development, which is a voluntary coalition of leaders in career development from all provinces, who help Canadians of all ages to navigate learning and work successfully.