People in coastal regions often live in small, remote communities and already have high levels of unemployment coupled with generally low levels of educational achievement. These people and these communities will be hardest hit. There has to be special assistance to enable provincial governments to provide educational opportunities in order to break the cycle of high unemployment and low incomes. Otherwise, historic problems will be exacerbated. W e should not tolerate the myth that people who are chronically unemployed need little education.
Fewer jobs are open today to the unskilled.
Using the fishery once more as the employer of last resort will just accelerate this futile, vicious cycle of unemployment and low incomes. We are surely beyond the stage of believing that those who live in remote communities somehow need less than urban dwellers. W e must develop a different attitude to the value of education. If people are out of work, if they have low skills, low education values, they will see little point in upgrading skills in the absence of alternative employment. However, globally, the economic history of the past half century has shown that those economies which do best are those that invest in their people, and regard them as their most valuable resource.