Human Resources committee  —because it's easier. On a lot of jobs and construction projects in Toronto, English is not the language of the workplace. You struggle if you don't speak Portuguese or Italian in certain trades.

Human Resources committee  It's a real problem trying to get that. I don't want to diminish the commitment that people should make to Canada. I'm just saying that the commitment could be demonstrated in a different way from the ability to read or write English.

Human Resources committee  Yes, and I think that's one of the things I was trying to stress in terms of what we and our employer association partners would do if we could. They're not going to be universities or anything, but we would set up temporary facilities in key countries—Portugal, Ireland, Italy, w

Human Resources committee  Just so we're clear, the four weeks is before they go on a job site and when the union pays them. Then they go 10 weeks, and the employer pays them for on-site work. At the end of the 14 weeks, right now just under 75% of the women who started at the beginning are signing up for

Human Resources committee  We certainly offer rudimentary English language training for our members, and we encourage them as best we can to take advantage of opportunities in communities in Toronto—there are a lot—to learn English. We have one problem, and I'm sure Mr. Martins and Mr. Vaccaro can talk ab

Human Resources committee  What we offer is experiential-based learning. Our apprentices learn from our journey persons. As our journey persons increasingly retire, we can't just turn on the tap. There has to be somebody to teach those apprentices, over their four years, the best practices of our trade, an

Human Resources committee  I want to stress what it means to me. Is it working? It works well for those students who sign up for their OYAPs, Ontario youth apprenticeship programs. By grade 12, it's often too late, and that's when we start getting them. We have to encourage the value of the trade all the w

Human Resources committee  Yes, we talk to them all the time. They stress that they want to emphasize skills training, the trades, apprenticeships. It's an ongoing problem, and I'll tell you this. Every guidance counsellor in every high school in this province went to university. Virtually none of them did

Human Resources committee  —in this case, the GTA.

Human Resources committee  Do you mean where to put people up to live?

Human Resources committee  As far as I know, they have done nothing.

Human Resources committee  I'll answer that in terms of the ICI, and to a certain extent I'll flip the question back to you. A lot of the ICI construction, the infrastructure construction that's going on in the GTA, is government funded. For the Eglinton Crosstown, one of our major transit initiatives, w

Human Resources committee  Yes, but these are—

Human Resources committee  I'll give you a brief answer.

Human Resources committee  I will answer the question, but I just want to make sure everyone's clear on what I said earlier in response to a question about whether we are willing to bear some of the costs. When I say “training”, what our associations are willing to do is to make sure that people have the b