Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It's an honour to be here before your committee today. I'm John Stewart, and I'm representing the Canadian Nuclear Association, which is a national association of well over 100 organizations. We're involved in bringing the benefits of nuclear technology to Canadians.
The Canadian nuclear industry employs 71,000 people in sectors that are directly or indirectly related to all aspects of nuclear technology, including uranium exploration and extraction, electricity production, advances in nuclear medicine, technological development and advanced research, the creation of highly-skilled jobs and the export of products and services internationally.
Our members all work in very close partnership with our host communities. We need them and they need us. The uranium extraction industry is a major employer of Aboriginal people in northern communities. We provide well-paying jobs, especially in industrial sectors where the majority require highly-developed skills and qualifications, to about 2,000 people in remote communities, almost half of whom, 900 of them today, are Aboriginal.
Mr. Chair, just one of our members, AREVA Canada, anticipates growing its workforce by over 60% over the next three years. Half of those new hires will be aboriginal.
Another of our members, Aurora Energy Limited, is working on a large-scale uranium project in Labrador. If the regulatory hurdles are cleared, Aurora anticipates needing up to 700 construction workers to build the facilities for the mine mill complex. After that, it should employ about 400 workers on an ongoing basis. Many of these jobs could be filled by employees from the surrounding communities, which are small, widely separated, and primarily Inuit, with very low rates of other employment.
Aurora's project will be a tremendous opportunity for people of the Labrador coast to find long-term, meaningful employment near home. Government training funds and assistance will enhance this opportunity. The several years before the Michelin project starts in earnest should be used to provide secondary school upgrading, which will make it easier for potential workers to be involved in the higher-level operator skills training opportunities the project is going to bring.
This project is only an example. The quality of the uranium resource in Canada is excellent. The government has been working with us and has made real progress in opening major new markets for uranium in China and elsewhere. Many more jobs are expected if the regulatory environment permits them to be realized. Companies like Cameco Corp., AREVA Canada, Aurora Resources, and Denison Mines also buy products and services from aboriginal-owned businesses and locally owned businesses to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars per year.
This amplifies the economic benefits in each of these towns and helps aboriginal people make a move from employee to owner, which is a crucial step in sustained economic development. If you look at Cameco's website, on the community investment page you'll see details of 11 scholarship programs Cameco supports. One example is the northern scholarship program, which is open to young people who have lived in Saskatchewan's north for 10 years, or at least half their lives if they are under 20. There are also scholarships in business, geological sciences, and engineering. In addition to post-secondary scholarships, our member companies offer direct training to employees and even to their suppliers.
But the starting point has to be sound primary and secondary education. While obviously it's not our company's mandate to provide that, we certainly do want to align and partner with the people who do provide it, so that these young people face as few barriers as possible. Mr. Chair, we strongly urge governments to collaborate with communities and businesses to pull down those barriers and make optimum use of available investment dollars for education in these places.
In such small communities there is very limited infrastructure and local capacity. Projects face a lot of challenges. We all need to wear several hats. We all need to be both students and teachers. We all need to join each other's committees and go to each other's fundraisers, sponsor each other's events. So the partnership I'm talking about is really on a person-to-person level.
My final point, Mr. Chairman, is that motivation matters. Allowing young people to see the link from school to work and letting them taste some of the rewards of working can be powerfully influential in their choices. They can see the employer not so much as a corporate entity but as a group of people. Internships and similar programs let young people get a first-hand look at the career opportunities and benefits of education and perhaps let them earn a little money while they're in school. This can inspire them to work and succeed.
That's it for my comments today, Mr. Chairman, and I will be pleased to answer questions.