Human Resources committee  It's the Canadian mining certification program, built by—

Human Resources committee  No, but we have other jurisdictions coming to us looking to implement it in South Africa, South America, and most recently Australia.

Human Resources committee  If I can just add, the skill set is changing in the industry. The use of technology may be creating some barriers to attracting or recruiting people, but it's also opening up potential new sources of labour. When I graduated from high school, you needed to bench-press 180 pounds for the mining industry to give you a job.

Human Resources committee  They would give you conditional letters of offer. You would have to go to a gym and you would have to demonstrate that you could lift that amount of weight before they would even look at you. That has changed. The industry now is being more open to women, people with disabilities, and other segments of the population that would allow for other sources of labour.

Human Resources committee  It's about 25% today.

Human Resources committee  Yes.

Human Resources committee  There's certainly some of that, but it's mostly steelworkers, and communications, energy, and paperworkers, and CAW—Canadian Auto Workers. Then there are some very specific trade unions in Quebec as well.

Human Resources committee  They're the three big ones.

Human Resources committee  No, that still happens. What we're trying to do is create a national recognition program for miners. Up until very recently there was none of that, nothing existed. There was no recognition whatsoever. If your employer or the mine closed, you left with nothing—no ticket, no paper.

Human Resources committee  Part of it is housing. Part of it is also willingness to leave a large urban centre and move to a northern city in Canada that does not have the same infrastructure, the same support systems you would see in some of the more urban centres. So it's a challenge. If we were building mines in close proximity to cities, we would probably have a much easier time recruiting people.

Human Resources committee  It's the type of work. We're not trying to sell the mining industry as being for everyone. The industry does offer a number of different occupations. Some of those occupations involve work underground, and that work is not for everyone. Not many people grew up saying “When I grow up, I want to be a miner.”

Human Resources committee  I couldn't tell you specifically what skilled trade was more in demand at this point.

Human Resources committee  I couldn't speak to one in particular, but the mining industry employs a number of them--welders, industrial millwrights, equipment mechanics.... They're competing with a number of other sectors, mainly construction, and we've heard there are a number of shortages in those areas.

Human Resources committee  Yes. We've done a number of focus groups with youth across the country, gauging their perception of the mining industry. I would suggest that their perception is still quite dated in their views. They still view the industry as being a dark, dirty, dangerous sector. I don't think they have an accurate picture of what the modern mining industry is today.

Human Resources committee  As we say in English, “there is no silver bullet”. I don't believe in creating a system where every industry anticipates its labour needs and then we limit workers' mobility so that we can manage human resources more effectively. If compensation is what motivates them, workers will go wherever the highest-paying jobs are.