Human Resources committee  One of the issues we're observing is that a lot of the downturn in the manufacturing sector is again impacting a sector that has been, I would say, first in and last out, so a lot of the people who are losing their jobs in the manufacturing sector are not looking for other work.

Human Resources committee  Thank you.

Human Resources committee  As someone who's on a Freedom 99 plan, I'd be very interested in seeing what your guaranteed income supplement and everything is. I'm already eligible for some of these things but have decided not to take them because I'm having too much fun at work. So one of the issues is putting a work environment in place where those of us who are mature workers can continue to contribute without being penalized.

Human Resources committee  From the high-tech side of it, our affinity group with ACCC involves 110 colleges across Canada. Our last meeting in May also included the NACC representatives of the private colleges that are also delivering IT-oriented training. We looked at five different issues at that meeting.

Human Resources committee  Industry Canada has a program called First Nations SchoolNet, to connect through broadband all the aboriginal communities. That is one way we can get the education, curriculum, and everything to these remote communities. It's an excellent program and it should be continued.

Human Resources committee  One of the challenges our sector faces of course is a global economy. For us, if we can't find the people, then the Internet allows us to transfer work almost anywhere in the world on one minute's notice. Part of the challenge is how we participate and what partnerships we can form as part of the social development of our community.

Human Resources committee  I have just a quick comment on that one. I have a staff member in Lisbon today at the world meeting about internationally educated professionals and their transfer, and about how people are recognized and their credentials are recognized. So we have some work going on right now to see which of the countries--and I understand 160 countries out of the 188 countries in the world--are trying to figure out what to do as either suppliers or receivers of IEPs.

Human Resources committee  The interesting thing is that as long as I've been a member of the industry, we've had things like Braille printers. We have the capacity to work with people who are 80% blind. When I talk to Microsoft, RIM, or IBM, every one of the large employers has always had a disabilities capacity in the system.

Human Resources committee  Applying, right.

Human Resources committee  If I may, I'll drop down to an example for this one. Both our community colleges and our training funding partners out there across the country focus on the community, which they should. There's no question about that. But we've attempted to get some students into post-secondary, continuing education, re-skilling courses and have been told that there's no need for them in our community and therefore no funding is available.

Human Resources committee  Yes, we have created a partnership in Quebec with TECHNOCompetence, which is a sector council funded by Emploi-Québec. We have a partnership agreement with them, and they are our arm in Quebec for the things we do nationally. So we've worked with the associations and the different groups, and we've done quite a bit of work at that level to try to make it visible.

Human Resources committee  There are three different things we're already involved in. First, we have created a set of learning outcomes for grades 11 and 12 . We have been working with six provinces at this time to give them the knowledge and experience of what the IT sector is all about through changing the curriculum that is delivered by the provincial ministry of education.

Human Resources committee  Yes, our sector probably spends three to five times the national average on re-skilling and skills upgrading of our people. You will find that a lot of the people from the high-tech sector have gone back to community colleges to take skills upgrading, even though they're university graduates.

Human Resources committee  I have observed exactly the same thing.

Human Resources committee  Let me just touch on a couple of things. First of all, Canada's birth rate is around 337,000 people a year, growing at about 3% to 4%. We're looking at 330,000 to 350,000 young people coming through the system. We need the ability to be able to impact on those people and make sure they understand what the options are as they come through, because decisions are being made in grades 7 and 8 that prevent them from going to post-secondary education in a lot of cases.