• Promote worker qualification by boosting cooperation between educational and labour market organizations, notably in order to bring labour market in line with training opportunities
• Promote worker qualification via sector-based labour force committee action and the ongoing development of the Workforce skills development and recognition framework
• Promote relations with the federal government
• The implementation of the Act to promote workforce skills development and recognition.
• Contribute to strategies and policies that affect the labour market: government policies on adult and continuing education, government employment plan, integration of immigrants into the job market, strategy targeting workers 45 and over and sustainable development policies. ^{Footnote 26}

1.3.4 The Ministère de l'Éducation, du Loisir et du Sport

The Ministère de l'Éducation, du Loisir et du Sport ["MELS"; Ministry of Education, Recreation and Sport] plays several roles in work related education and training in Quebec:

• first, through basic general education given in 200 adult education centres run by the school boards, the continuing education services of CEGEPs and the business services of secondary school/college networks;
• second, through not only initial professional education but also continuing professional education in the vocational education centres ^{Footnote 27} of the school boards
• third, through initial training via college technical education and through the ALT provided by the continuing education services of Quebec's 48 CEGEPs.

The MELS acts as one of the two main departments involved in the 2002 Government Policy on adult education and continuing education and training, which is currently being revised with a view to adoption of a new Action Plan for 2008-13 in June 2008. This revision of the policy centres on four themes: basic education, work-related adult learning and training, recognition of prior learning and skills, and shared responsibility for funding ALT.

MELS is also a member of the CPMT. As a key partner in this context, it encourages its own institutions to develop continuing education and training services.

One of the six thrusts of the MELS Strategic Plan 2005-2008 is to strengthen adult education and training, primarily in order to "develop a culture of continuous training (...) in Quebec" (transl.). The question raised by this approach is the recognition and validation in Quebec society of education and training "that meets the various needs (...) of adults and is geared to the realities of the current and future labour market" (MELS, 2005, p.16, transl.).

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