Human Resources committee  Very much so. Some years the ski hill operators just don't get going in southern Ontario. I imagine this winter was an awful one for them.

Human Resources committee  No. This is a consistent time series. In fact, we go out of our way to make sure that both the GDP and labour input are measured in exactly the same way in Canada and the U.S.

Human Resources committee  I don't think I said there were differences in the way it was measured; in fact, just the opposite. I think I was saying they're very consistent. These are produced to be comparable. In fact, when we produce the Canadian data, we produce the U.S. data and put it in the same Stati

Human Resources committee  No. That's why it starts in 1976. There was a change from 1975 to 1976, but since 1976 it's been fully comparable. There's a slight difference in comparing Canada and the U.S., because we include 15-year-olds and the U.S. just picks up at 16. Since younger people always have high

Human Resources committee  You mean in geographical terms?

Human Resources committee  We have not measured that.

Human Resources committee  Certainly. In fact we saw a good example of it this winter in the west. The oil and gas rigs couldn't get out. They need the land to be frozen to roll these big trucks over. You're not just driving down the 401; they need frozen muskeg, or whatever, and they didn't get it in Janu

Human Resources committee  No, but I'm sure we could calculate that.

Human Resources committee  I agree, most of it is going to be summer. It's fishing and things like that.

Human Resources committee  We certainly do have data on that. It generally showed a decline, particularly when you could take your CPP benefit at age 60 instead of 65. That seemed to trigger a long period of decline. It's on the bottom of slide 8, the median age of retirement. Recently it has been stabi

Human Resources committee  If I understand, I think we've strayed from the seasonal worker with this concern about part-time work. I think your point, if I understand it correctly, is that because of the shift in the labour market that's creating more term and contract jobs, not enough income and people ar

Human Resources committee  We don't know the correlation between the two, or how much this is contributing to EI.

Human Resources committee  Given that EI regulations vary by region, it would have to be done at a very detailed level. One thing I'd also caution you about, concerning the increase in temporary and term and contract work, is that some of it is institutional change in the labour market. There's no doubt th

Human Resources committee  Generally, we've seen weak youth labour force participation rates over the last few years. There seems to be quite a regional divide on it. In particular, we've seen some declines out in western Canada and increases in the east. Was the second part that you wanted addressed the

Human Resources committee  I'd be surprised. There has to be some subset to that, because overall the labour force has been increasing. The participation rate has been increasing generally since 1996; it's not just something that happened last year. There must be some specific subgroup in there.