The advantages are potentially huge. Let me be clear: it's a dramatic change. It has required several phases of legislative change. There will be more policies and regulations, and perhaps even more legislation we need to change before we have the ground fully set for EOI, but the main advantage that I see is that it really allows employers to benefit from direct involvement in our flagship economic immigration programs.
When we had a backlog of six, seven, going on nine or ten years for the federal skilled worker program, it was basically irrelevant to the needs of Canadian employers. They could see someone abroad they needed, but they weren't going to turn to the federal skilled worker program because what employer is willing to wait five or ten years for someone to come through the program? Even now, with a one-year wait time, it's not ideal. Most employers aren't willing to wait that long.
Under the expression of interest system, which will govern the federal skilled worker program and other programs, the time will be down to six months, and we hope to be able to go even lower in due course. That means employers will be able to look not only to temporary foreign workers, not only to the provincial nominee program, which has actually been#quite nimble and quite fast in some provinces on behalf of employers, but to our flagship economic programs.
Why would we not want employers, using their industry associations, using all the fora we have for exchanging information with them, to help us recruit not only the best and the brightest, but the people with the skills we need? It's an objective fact that there are not enough welders in Canada. We have all heard it. The welders associations of Canada are quite happy to help us recruit abroad because they know that even with their best efforts to train more young men and women in Canada, they won't have enough to meet the needs of the national shipbuilding program, the energy sector, the mining sector, and so forth.
These reforms to EOI, especially as they relate to the federal skilled worker program, will put these programs much more at their service, at the service of the Canadian economy, not only large employers but potentially medium and small ones as well.