:
Good afternoon, Chair, members of the committee, and fellow hostages of the committee. It's been since October 27 last year that I had the honour to appear.
Of importance in my personal life, I'm a father now and I grew a grey whisker.
Voices: Oh, oh!
Mr. Christopher Smillie: In my professional life I'm here to talk about skill shortages. Skill shortages and foreign credential recognition are interrelated, so my remarks will start where I left off in October. Some of you will recognize some of the material, but that's not a bad thing.
We're the Canadian building trades and we represent 14 international construction unions that represent more than half a million skilled trades workers in Canada, and more than three million in the U.S. We work with major and small construction contractors in Canada that do business with the same energy companies in Alberta, Newfoundland, B.C.,Saskatchewan, and everywhere in between.
Canada, in our view, is entering a critical phase in our labour market, mainly due to retirements, an under-performing training system, and a projected unprecedented economic demand. There's more energy investment slated in Canada's economy than ever before, and more than the current labour force will be able to handle.
The major project management office website lists dozens and dozens of major resource projects on the horizon worth almost half a trillion dollars. My calculator wouldn't handle the zeros. Every billion dollars spent in the energy industry means about 2,000 direct and immediate jobs in construction, and 2,000 in other industries for three years. This is great news for the workforce, if as a country we plan and execute a plan properly.
It has been forecast by the Construction Sector Council, in their “Construction Looking Forward” report that was just printed about 15 days ago, that by 2018 we'll need about 200,000 new skilled trades workers. I'm going to give you a quick breakdown, as you can all read the report I'll table afterwards.
Their supply-side estimates break the annual change in the labour force into four components: retirement, mortality, new entrants, and mobility. From 2010 to 2018, construction employment is forecast to rise by 180,000 jobs. Added to these demands are replacements for retirements of 189,000, and the loss of 26,000 workers due to mortality. There are 169,000 new entrants from the Canadian population to meet these needs, leaving a recruiting effort to find 200,000 new construction workers from other industries and outside Canada. If this isn't a call to action for the committee I'm not sure what is.
Today I'll run you through five practical policy fixes we think would work for Canada. Hopefully the committee will take them into consideration.
First is support for industry groups and companies that train young Canadians in construction. Second is labour market development agreements and getting policy value for money through these development agreements. Third, incent people and employers who hire them into Red Seal apprenticeships to move through and graduate in a reasonable amount of time. Fourth, the industry needs help with workforce mobility. Fifth is access to good, reliable, real-time, industry-sourced labour market information, like the Construction Sector Council stuff, and a temporary foreign-worker program that makes sense and is practical.
I'll give you a quick background to bring you up to speed, for those who didn't hear my pitch in October. The key players that regulate the skilled trades in Canada are the Canadian Council of Directors of Apprenticeship; the Red Seal Secretariat, which is in HRSDC; and the provincial apprenticeship and licensing bodies. The key funder of provincial labour policy is the federal government.
So let's get into my first topic: support for industry groups and companies that train young Canadians. The business case for hiring an apprentice has been laid out quite clearly. I refer the committee to a study by the Canadian Apprenticeship Forum released in 2006. It concludes that every dollar spent on training returns $1.38 to employers. So hiring and training apprentices makes money for employers. We often have difficulty placing young people, and young people face many barriers to getting hired by contractors in construction.
Community colleges are another deliverer of curriculum. Some of the training they deliver includes pre-apprenticeships to actual Red Seal trades. Both training sources deserve public and private support to address the skills shortage issue. Did you know that the building trades in Canada receive no public money, and we train 80% of Canada's construction apprentices?
The federal government can help by having a procurement policy that includes clauses and commercial terms for construction companies requiring a training plan and apprenticeship hiring. Shell Canada has been very successful in its approach to this situation. Perhaps the committee would consider talking to our industrial partners in this regard. It might be a neat idea to tie Minister Oliver's regulatory reform package to training a workforce for the future, so that on large energy projects Canadians are assured we're training a construction workforce for the future.
I'm not preaching socialism or tied aid like last time, just practical solutions so Canada can reap the benefits of these large-scale industrial projects. Maybe this kind of policy could help the minister's battle with the radical environmentalists as well.
My second topic is value for money and labour market development agreements, LMDAs. LMDAs are a huge opportunity for the federal government to show leadership in the skill shortage situation. These deals give the provinces money, in what is basically a fully devolved process between the federal and provincial governments. The labour market development agreements make the federal government the writer of cheques. Why not use them to shape skill shortage and training policy?
Again, I'm not talking socialism or tied aid from the federal government, but how about getting value for money in these multi-hundred-million dollar deals that the federal government signs with the provinces every five years? Let's make sure we're getting value for money and ensure that the provincial regulators are planning for their labour markets in the future. Instead of giving provincial governments carte blanche to do yet another study or another website that tells us what we already know, let's set a path and show leadership on LMDAs. It might be a good start to addressing skill shortages.
There are currently no policy objectives tied to labour market development agreements. If the federal government were serious about skill shortages, it would include these measures—and not more websites or gimmicks for a quick-fix, but hard dollars for provinces and groups that train people in identified occupations needed by industry.
Third is the need to provide incentives for people and the employers who hire them. In construction we have a problem, and by extension, in the greater economy there is an issue. We have a problem with lots of registrations in red seal trades by people who, quick as a flash, never graduate. There's a small incentive to move through years one and two with the apprenticeship incentive grant, AIG—and for that, our organizations are thankful, but there is nothing for years three or four. There is a graduation grant. In total, it's a few thousand dollars over the course of a training cycle. An average construction apprentice is making $50,000 to $60,000 a year. This person can make a few thousand dollars in overtime every week. The incentive grant pales in comparison to what's out there in terms of work. These folks can work forever as a second or third year apprentice and never move through the system and graduate. In construction you're limited to a ratio of apprentices to journeypersons on a work site. If you never increase your number of journeypersons, you can never grow the number of apprentices.
We need real incentives, maybe by using a time limited system in the red seal program for someone to obtain their red seal. The federal government has a vested interest in the provinces graduating more journeypersons. Maybe this is another thing that could be linked to the labour market development agreements, for example, that you must graduatexnumber of journeypersons per year to remain eligible for LMDA funding. Maybe hard dollars could be provided to companies that graduate apprentices and have a track record of doing so, or maybe increased tax credits could be provided to employers who graduate journeypersons, whatever the committee thinks.
Fourth is the issue of the mobility of the construction workforce. Canada still doesn't have a system to facilitate the mobility of the construction workforce. The Standing Committee on Finance—which is really tired of hearing from me on this—has probably heard it said 30 times that our industry is dying for a way to get people to where the work is, or at least that the industry is very eager to have a system to assist with the costs. Did you know that Suncor and CNRL are catching up to WestJet as Canada's second largest airline? They have fly-in and fly-out programs for our members and others, the folks who go to the oil sands, depending on who needs people the most and who's offering a fly-in and fly-out that month.
Still, there is nothing for regular commercial construction, institutional construction, and the folks who will soon be travelling from southern Ontario to the Ring of Fire, if we ever get there. The confluence of energy projects coming down the pike, so to speak, will mean that people will be travelling farther and farther for construction work. I'm not talking about moving to where the work is, like the rest of us do. In construction, folks go to work for three weeks, three months, or three years, and they're always working themselves out of a job.
Canada needs to incent people to get on the plane and in the pickup truck. Canada needs to help defray the costs of travel to work sites. We propose a sensible tax credit. You spend $3,000 to get to work and you get a 15% tax credit, or something similar.
The revenue back to the GoC in the form of productivity and income tax paid would be tremendous. Ask any construction company or any large energy company if they would be in favour of defraying the cost of travel for securing a workforce. The answer would be yes. The draw on employment insurance would go down, as people would be working, and employers could reduce the costs of bringing in a workforce from abroad.
Our proposals and those of our partners in the oil patch, my friends at CAPP, have been shuffled to the bottom of the priority list by subsequent Ministers of Finance. Hopefully—and I'm hopeful—the current one can be encourage to assist.
Canada can help the skills shortage problem by properly incenting individuals to go to work. My penultimate solution is labour market information. In order to address the skills shortage problem in Canada, we need to make sure our labour market information is top-notch.
Recently, the Construction Sector Council lost certainty around core funding for labour market information. Does this make sense at a time when industry needs to know more about who, what, where, when, and why in real time? Why are we cutting industry-driven labour market information potential? Government and industry have spent millions setting up the LMI system at our sector councils.
I wrote this: “What is the deal with the cuts?” I wasn't supposed to say that.
This is not a case of good money going after bad money in the sector councils. Talk to the energy players. Talk to PCL. Talk to EllisDon. They all use this information, and it's a big deal to us.
Lastly, I know that discussion of the TFW program has been popular on this committee. Our organizations have been working for a while to give the temporary foreign worker program—which gives us skilled trades from the United States—front of the line status. The committee can refer to my testimony in October of last year. I talked about this at length. What a no-brainer. The Government of Alberta, the Department of State in the United States, and the White House are ready, and we still await news and action from the federal government on this one.
We have—
I'm Francis Bradley, a vice-president at the Canadian Electricity Association.
[Translation]
The Canadian Electricity Association is the national voice in matters of electricity in Canada. Across the country, our members provide day-to-day electricity production, transportation and distribution services to industrial, commercial, residential and institutional clients. All industry stakeholders are represented within our association: vertically integrated public utility companies, energy dealers, manufacturers and suppliers of equipment, technology and services. They see to a reliable electricity system.
[English]
The renewal of Canada's electricity infrastructure is the number one priority of the electricity sector and of our association.
[Translation]
Most of Canada’s electrical power grid was built over 25 years ago to serve a population of 20 million inhabitants. And yet today, that population consists of over 34 million people whose lifestyles are increasingly dependent on electric devices.
[English]
A recent Conference Board of Canada report projects that an investment of $347.5 billion from 2011 to 2030 is required to meet electricity demand and to power Canada's future. The labour requirements to accommodate this investment in electricity infrastructure will exert additional pressure on an already tight labour market. The electricity industry will not be able to rely on recruitment from other sectors, as these will be facing similar labour challenges. Competing industries such as the oil sands can bid up compensation, whereas utility compensation is capped by regulation.
In response to the HR challenges faced by our members, and in collaboration with HRSDC, the Canadian Electricity Association undertook a labour market study in 2004, which led to the launch of the Electricity Sector Council in 2005 under HRSDC's sector council. My colleague, Michelle Branigan, will talk a little bit about what the recent LMI studies have found.
:
Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, honourable members, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for the opportunity to speak here today.
I'm the executive director of the Electricity Sector Council, whose mission is to strengthen the ability of the Canadian electricity industry to meet current and future workforce needs for a highly skilled, safety-focused, diverse, and productive workforce. The ESC is one of the few industry organizations without an advocacy mandate, and our efforts to be inclusive and objective in serving the broader needs of the sector is considered to be one of our key strengths. We provide human resource and workplace development support to workers employed by the electricity and renewable energy industries, and related co-generation, energy efficiency, and manufacturing and service consulting industries.
The Electricity Sector Council has taken a leadership role in the development of strong, credible labour market research. An extremely high participation rate in our LMI data research lends weight and credibility to the data produced. Currently, the electricity sector employs over 108,000 people, the majority of them highly skilled workers. Our most recent labour market information research published this January reports that employers in the electricity sector will have to recruit over 45,000 new workers—almost 48% of the current workforce—by 2016. The report shows that baby boomers comprise 36% of the existing electricity sector workforce. By 2016, all but the youngest boomers will have reached age 58 and likely have the 30 years of experience needed to qualify for a full pension.
We do have a notably lower average age of retirement. It's 58 versus 61 for the overall economy, and 66% of staff do retire once they are eligible. In fact, 25.4% of current power system operators are expected to retire in 2016, and almost 20% of supervisors of electricians and electrical power line workers are expected to retire at the same time.
In addition to the need for replacement workers for pending retirements, new human capital is required to support the transformation of the system as new technologies are integrated into the grid. Advances in technology are also changing the skill profiles of employees.
The available workforce will not meet these labour requirements, and employers need to look for and attract new recruits. There needs to be an increasing focus on targeting under-represented groups such as immigrants, women, and aboriginal people. Francis referred to the massive infrastructure requirements of the industry. We cannot replace the main infrastructure for the system without making an equal investment in human resources. Human resource investment should be seen as equivalent to capital investment and not as a cost.
Thank you.
:
As you can see, many issues relate principally to new demographics, the emergence of a new generation and the transformation of Canada’s grid.
We understand that you cannot resolve all these issues with a wave of a magic wand.
[English]
But there is one issue I'd like to bring to your attention that could be considered low-hanging fruit, so to speak, and one that, with your help, could be addressed with relative ease.
As you're likely aware, the National Occupational Classification, or the NOC, is the primary and nationally accepted federal government resource for information on Canada's labour market. A joint initiative between the HRSDC and Statistics Canada, it organizes over 40,000 job titles into 500 occupational groups and descriptions.
[Translation]
Based on the current classification, electricity sector occupational titles can be found in several groups and subgroups of the occupational structure.
A relatively simple administrative adjustment, consisting of bringing together the electricity sector professions under the NOC’s “electricity sector” grouping, would be very useful for our members and, above all, for qualified persons seeking employment in our sector.
[English]
Mr. Chair, in conclusion, thank you for the invitation to appear today and for the opportunity to speak to the challenges faced by Canada's electricity sector in regard to skilled worker shortages. We look forward to your questions.
Thank you to the witnesses for being here today.
Mr. Smillie, the last time you were here, I did hear you. I discussed with some of my colleagues and my government mobility across our borders with the U.S. I also was in the U.S. talking with some congressmen about this. They were quite interested and weren't aware of it.
There are border negotiations going on. In part they concern the mobility of labour across our borders. An area in which your organization could help is in pushing on the other side of the border. I think we're doing our part as a government here in Canada. We may not be seeing enough support among those we're talking with.
That's just one observation.
I agree with your comment that there's not enough being done; we have a big problem here. But there have been some great successes, and we've heard so in this committee, in training of aboriginals in the mining sector in Saskatchewan and in the diamond mining in the Northwest Territories.
There have been some great successes with good policy. It's not just a website by the department; there have been some good things done by the government on the need for skills training. But it is such a monumental challenge that we're facing that we have to look at better and more innovative ways.
I mentioned a couple of days ago to our witnesses that the average age of workers who are entering apprenticeships is 26. We need to get people before age 26. One of the innovative things happening in my constituency in the Okanagan involves the Okanagan College's Salmon Arm campus. The trades association and the school district are working together, taking students out of grade 12 and putting them on a project. They build a house right from the foundation. They do the plumbing; they do the electrical; they get a little bit of everything. This has been going on for 10 years. The first ones to complete the first year got their first year of apprenticeship, but also they had six offers of jobs in Vancouver—and I live in the Okanagan. So it's a great program.
My question to you is: is your organization working with those institutions to try to capture the students? One thing we find is that the biggest challenge is that the education system is painting a picture suggesting that you have to go to university to be successful in life. I'm a certified journeyman carpenter, and I can tell you—not that I've done a lot of it—that it's a very rewarding area to work in. In certain situations it can be very lucrative, too.
:
Thank you for your question. I didn't mean to be critical about the Canada-U.S. thing. We're still waiting, and I understand.
In terms of your question, we do work with local high schools across Canada. It's an issue, however. When I went through high school, there were no shop classes. Those are all gone.
There's been a change in the way that some provinces deliver high school curricula. In Oakville, Ontario, where I grew up, it was out of the system. We can go to the high schools and talk, but there is no practical stuff for the kids to do, and so your example is a great one, where a community organization or a community college is doing that sooner.
In Germany, for example—I think I talked about this in October—they have a decision-making process whereby you're either going to university or you're going to learn a trade. It's very regimented. As a result, they have a very successful system: there's a big supply of skilled workers. So it's really about our country, which goes to your comment about everyone having to go to university.
We're getting folks getting apprenticeships after they go to university. That's fine. There's nothing wrong with that, but we need to get to them sooner—I would say even before high school. We should be introducing folks to this in elementary school. This is not something the committee controls, but provincial governments have the jurisdiction over this sort of thing. This is what I'm talking about when I say the federal government has a role in determining some of these policies rather than just being the writer of cheques in LMDAs.
These LMDAs can be used to address some of these practical things. Now, it's not as easy as I make it out to be, but these are some of the things I'm trying to get across, including that we should be doing it sooner.
:
Mr. Chair, the Canadian Construction Association would like to thank you for the opportunity to present here today.
Our organization represents the non-residential sector of the construction industry, so we build everything except single-family dwellings. We build Canada's infrastructure.
Our industry employs close to 1.3 million Canadians. We're one of the largest, if not the largest, industrial employers in the country. One out of every 16 working Canadians earns a living in the construction industry. Construction accounts for about 6% of Canada’s GDP, amounting to more than $150 billion worth of economic activity annually.
About 90% to 95% of the construction firms active in the construction industry are small businesses by anybody's definition. The vast majority of these businesses are Canadian-owned and family businesses.
We have what amounts to a perfect storm challenging our industry. It has to do with labour supply and skills supply. There are two major factors. First, we have unprecedented high demand for construction services, and this is projected to go on for a full decade if not two decades. The Global Construction 2020 report published in March 2011 by Oxford Economics predicts that Canada’s construction market will be the fifth largest in the world by 2020, behind only China, the U.S., India, and Japan. And there are some economists who believe we are going to surpass Japan.
To give you an idea of what that means in output, by 2013 total construction investment in Canada will likely surpass $300 billion, which is double 2004's total in less than 10 years. Projects are becoming larger and more complex. Because of the high demand coming from the resource sector, there is more work in remote areas, where there isn't always the infrastructure to support that kind of development.
To give you some idea of what I'm talking about, the magazine ReNew Canada released its 100 top infrastructure projects in Canada. For the first time, the top 30 of those 100 projects were individually valued at $1 billion or more. The top 61 of those infrastructure projects are valued at over $500,000.
The other part of the perfect storm is what's happening with our demographics. We have an aging workforce. Like most industries in Canada, we're trying to recruit from an ever-shrinking labour pool due to Canada's low fertility rate. Canada's fertility rate is about 1.58, and 2.1 is what the international economists say you need to replace your population on an ongoing basis. Canada's at 1.58; the United States is at 2.06, almost at replacement; and Mexico's at 2.3.
Last year was the first year that the baby boomers started turning 65. It just about threw me off my chair to learn that for the next decade more than 1,000 Canadians are expected to retire or reach retirement age every day for the next 10 years. The equivalent stat in the United States is 10,000 people a day.
The Construction Sector Council, in their latest labour market information report, says that our industry is going to need to attract some 319,000 new workers by 2020 just to keep up with demand and to replace those who are going to retire. It projects that about 163,000 of that 319,000 we can get domestically. Domestically, in the trades they're tracking, we'll find some coming through the apprenticeship system, some coming through the training system, and some from immigration. But the other 156,000 are going to have to come from outside the industry or outside Canada.
Now, this is not an overnight problem. We've been aware that we were facing this tidal wave for some 10 years or so, and we have taken many measures, primarily on a local, regional, and provincial basis, on a number of fronts, to try to attract more people from under-represented groups in our industry: women, first nations, and aboriginal people. Youth has been a huge focus of our marketing in that area.
Labour mobility is another aspect that we felt had to be addressed by looking at apprenticeships and basically the ability to try to provide more incentives to have people go to where the jobs are. Obviously, immigration is a key part of that. So there is no one magic bullet; there is no one magic pill here. As an industry, we focused on four or five different growth areas as a means to try to increase and enhance our future labour pool.
Now, we get to the question of the day: how can government assist or help in that area? Frankly, to a great degree, this committee has the answers. Your very comprehensive report issued in April 2008 called “Employability in Canada: Preparing for the Future” contained a number of excellent recommendations. In fact, many of those recommendations have since been put into place by governments. We would applaud a number of the measures that were recognized in that report.
I know I'm getting close to my time, so I'm going to wrap up, but I'll give you some quick examples.
One of them is providing incentives to have people who are either on EI or simply unemployed go from one region to another where the work is. One of the things that our industry has been calling for, and, indeed, this committee recommended, was to provide either some tax incentives through the Income Tax Act or some support for relocation expenses through the EI system for workers relocating on a temporary basis.
And as I said earlier, a lot of projects that we will be doing in the future in the resource sector are going to be in very remote areas, and we're going to need a workforce for a temporary time in that area. Unfortunately, right now there is not a support network to limit or mitigate the expenses incurred by workers going into areas on a temporary basis, when they still have a principal residence to maintain at home. So that's one area where we think there could be some assistance.
The second one is apprenticeship, which I heard being discussed earlier today. The apprenticeship job creation tax credit is a great initiative, as is the incentive grant. Unfortunately, the apprenticeship job creation tax credit, as recognized by the earlier report by this committee, is restricted to Red Seal trades. Moreover, it has been gutted by Canada Revenue Agency, because it made a ruling almost as soon as this initiative came out that said that if you take the tax credit as an employer, you've got to add it back into taxable income the subsequent year. I had a number of contractor members who were absolutely elated when it was first announced, who indeed engaged a number of first- and second-year apprentices, which the tax credit addresses, only to find out that it wasn't the tax incentive they thought it was. That's truly unfortunate because I think it was a good step in the right direction.
On the immigration front, a number of good announcements and initiatives have been made or put into place recently, and there's probably some more work we can do on that area.
Mr. Chair, I think I'm going to stop there and allow some of the further discussion to come up during the questioning, but I will also say that we certainly supported the work of the committee back in 2008 and a number of the recommendations in your report of that year. We would certainly encourage your resurrecting some of the recommendations that have not been acted on.
:
I want to begin by thanking you, Mr. Chair, and the committee, for the opportunity for our organization to present. It's the first time we've had this opportunity, so it's very much appreciated.
You've heard a lot about the statistics, the problems, the shortages, the growing demands, the projects that are upcoming, and the need for workers. I'm here to present the view from a youth perspective, if I can, to try to give you an idea of some of the barriers that we see they're facing. We really see that as one of the first steps in trying to address the skills gap and skills shortage. Unfortunately, I think we're still battling negative perceptions of skilled trades. Mothers and fathers, and even peers to a certain extent, still hold the view that there are not valuable careers available in the skilled trades and technology areas.
Just to provide you with a little background on our organization, we are a national organization with offices in all 10 provinces and three territories. We're governed by a voluntary board of directors. Our mission is to encourage and support a coordinated Canadian approach to promoting skilled trades and technologies to youth. What we're really about are interactive sensory experiences providing youth not just the opportunity to take away a piece of paper telling them about specific careers, but they actually get to try them.
We do that through a number of different activities, including skills clubs and camps, cardboard boat races at the junior high and elementary level, young women's conferences, and activities focused on some of those underrepresented groups. But the activity that we're most well-known for is competitions, where we bring youth from across the country together to participate in regional, provincial, national, and international competitions. It gives those young people a real perspective on what's involved in skilled trades and technology careers.
We believe that what we need to do is to reach students at a young age. We need to provide information and an activity so that they can really understand what's involved in skilled trades and technology careers. In our competitions each year, we have more than 100,000 students participate, starting at the school level. We have about 600 competitors at the national level.
The more important piece, along with those students who are participating as competitors, is that we also have try-a-trade and technology competitions. Visitors to those competitions, which are set up in a convention centre style, find these very conducive to media and public participation. I just flew back last night from Edmonton, where we were hosting the national competition at the EXPO Centre. We had over 200,000 square feet of floor space in the centre, offering more than 40 different trades room for participation. We also had visiting schools from around Edmonton and province there. Students had the opportunity to try a trade or a technology. They could try to build a brick wall or wire a circuit board, or colour someone's hair to give them that sensory experience so they have a better understanding of what's involved in those occupations. We think that is crucial.
You've heard already a little bit about the challenge, the aging demographic that we're battling against, and also an economy that is rich in natural resources and that will definitely have a demand for skilled trades and technology workers in mining, energy, and the construction industries.
You've heard some comments earlier. Some of our recommendations include, obviously, continued emphasis on worker mobility through the Red Seal program. We think that is key. It is a national standard.
We would also like to see some expansion of that into apprenticeship recognition, which is happening on a bilateral basis from province to province. Again, that's extremely positive. If people are starting training and have gathered experience and have the hours, they are now moving to the jobs to try to meet that economic demand. We want to see things in place that can really support that progress. That's obviously important.
We need to clearly communicate the business case to employers about why they should train apprentices. Again, you heard earlier about the return on training investment that the Canadian Apprenticeship Forum completed a number of years ago. On average, for every dollar invested in the more than 16 trade areas they studied, $1.37 came back in return to those companies.
We need to continue to deliver that message about training, and we need to develop some better career pathways for young people so they understand that if they enter into a specific trade area, become certified, get their journeyperson status, and want to progress to different elements in that industry, there are opportunities to do that. If they start as a carpenter they can become a foreman, a project manager, or an estimator. We need to clearly identify that to those young people.
We also recommend some stronger alignment between all the systems of education and training. It was mentioned earlier that we need to get to youth at a younger age, and we definitely support that. We need to provide opportunity and information to young people at a young age so they realize they can progress through the system of education to do something they want to do.
When we talk about youth we are obviously talking about under-represented groups. We feel it is important to have specific programming focused on women and aboriginals. We think that is key. It is probably key in keeping those people in communities, especially when we're looking at rural communities, trying to provide, if not training, at least information to people in those communities so they understand what some of the opportunities available to them are with some of these projects. Many of them are in remote locations.
We need to have a system with a real connection between education and what industry is looking for. Most importantly, we need young people to understand that parents believe skilled trades are valuable careers.
We participated in a joint study with the Canadian Apprenticeship Forum back in 2006, and we asked an interesting question. We asked parents if they felt they had provided positive messages to their children about skilled trades. About 68% felt they had provided positive messages about careers in skilled trades. When we polled the parents' children, only 24% said they had received positive messages from their parents. So there's obviously a disconnect somewhere between the messages parents are sending out and what their sons and daughters are receiving. We think it's important to try to build on that.
I will close my comments there.