Thank you to the member from Brantford–Brant for his great presentation, which I really enjoyed listening to. I’m very excited about how we’re building the skilled trades in the province and making those jobs that are great alternatives for young people of all kinds. We’re getting women and men into the skilled trades which is so exciting. They’re exciting careers with six-figure incomes. They’re jobs for life. They’re purpose-driven and in demand.

The member from Brantford–Brant mentioned his son who is becoming an electrician. I’ve met a lot of young people who maybe aren’t really excited by what they can learn at university, but they are excited by being able to make things, to fix things, to do things, and they have a special gift. I just wondered if you could share a little bit about how the skilled trades option is being developed and how we’re reaching a whole bunch of young people to give them meaning and purpose in their lives through those skilled trades.

I listened intently to the speech from the member opposite. As he was talking about some of the stuff in the skilled trades, it made me think back to just last week. I had a presentation from some university students who actually said that we should stop investing in skilled trades and invest more money in the humanities, because we are going to see all of those skilled trades replaced by artificial intelligence. I was a little bit confused by their comments at first, but I understand that usually university students think in terms of what they’re taking for courses.

I’d like the member from Essex to expand a little bit on how the skilled trades are actually integral to our Critical Minerals Strategy and how as we develop more of these mines we’re actually going to need those construction workers, those skilled trades workers to build those mines and build the roads to it.

I thank the member for that question, and I thank the member for recognizing the awesome career development that will take place as a result of the progress made by the Minister of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development towards getting young people into the skilled trades at an early age. Getting them into the trades at an early age is going to benefit them, because it’s going to increase their earning potential massively, and it’s going to get those people into the skilled trades so that we can use their talents to build this province into a greater and better province. And of course, we have a robust WSIB system that’s already in place, and people who are injured can have access to that system. That’s what it’s there for.

With respect to his question, skilled trades—I talked about Essex county, but it could apply to the mining industry. We have a mine in my area. It’s called the Windsor Salt mine, and just about everybody in that salt mine has a skilled trade. Think about it: You would need maintenance workers, heavy equipment operators, people who know how to operate a drill, people who know how to read the instruments. So I thank the member for that question, and it was right on point.

Those people have access to proper language services not only in Ontario but also through the consulate situated in Leamington.

Back in the 1950s and 1960s, we had a huge wave of migrants entering Canada and they went into the construction industries—many of them were Italian—and those skills were needed desperately. The way this bill assists in our era is it will recognize skills training that people from outside of Canada have received. They’ve brought those skills here, and now those skills are going to be properly recognized or given credit here in Ontario so they can get right into the industry and do the skilled jobs that they’re supposed to do so that we can use those skills to build Ontario, just like they did in the 1950s and 1960s with infrastructure and highways and schools and other great things.

Report continues in volume B.