Human Resources committee  The trends are no different, maybe less alarming in the Sudbury environment, but we still have the challenges in the professions we're trying to recruit there: mining engineers, geologists, and tradespeople. It's the same challenge in that regard. We just recently concluded an a

Human Resources committee  It's complex. Forgive me. It's hard to say that it's just one particular issue. As a general comment on trying to get greater participation from the aboriginal perspective, I would say that one of the challenges is the skill level needed. It's considerably more challenging to s

Human Resources committee  I'm not sure about an incentive perspective. I know we make significant investments from a scholarship perspective, as an example, to entice school-aged children to choose fields in the mining sector. As Ryan indicated earlier as well, we heavily invest in specific programs in

Human Resources committee  Yes. I have a couple of points. Is building community capacity business capacity? Absolutely. Voisey's Bay is an example. It's a critical part of the business model that we create business opportunities for aboriginals. That's done mainly through joint ventures. We've had tremen

Human Resources committee  No, not a specific amount—

Human Resources committee  —because again, it's what capacity is brought to the table. We still have to ensure that the business is able to operate effectively, efficiently, and so on. But we look for those opportunities. As a matter of fact, we look for opportunities to broker partnerships, to bring an

Human Resources committee  Sure. Thank you. It absolutely makes business sense. One point of clarification, though, before the full committee believes that our Thompson operations have a 50% turnover every couple of years. Just for clarity, the 50% turnover is new hires. So in the first two years of empl

Human Resources committee  I don't think we raised any regulatory issues within the presentation. The primary ones within our skills area are probably provincially based. I know that trades certification across provincial jurisdictions creates some challenges. There's nothing at the moment that I could rai

Human Resources committee  That's a key question. There should be better integration and cooperation across all provincial jurisdictions, and maybe even standardization of some of the certification processes. Many provinces have different requirements, so something as simple as that could go a long way.

Human Resources committee  It's more what I refer to as the specialty trades, such as electricians, heavy-duty mechanics, some of our millwrights, and mine engineers.

Human Resources committee  Absolutely. You can also put in better supports—family support and mentoring. I know Thompson is engaged in an effort in that particular regard as well to ensure success of the training program. Most definitely.

Human Resources committee  It's across all operations, both underground and surface plants.

Human Resources committee  Yes, absolutely. It's no doubt a challenge, the decision to close the smelter and refinery—the lack of feed, a few other factors. A significant proportion of our workforce can be eligible to retire in future years. Through our workforce planning analysis we're expecting no net lo

Human Resources committee  I might need to look to Ryan to help me a little bit with that. There is a feed that comes to Thompson from Newfoundland. That's one of the feed challenges that we have. By previous agreements, that feed will actually revert from the Voisey's Bay environment to the refinery that

Human Resources committee  I'll give you a couple of examples. I'll use one from our Voisey's environment. We're taking some of that learning into Thompson and what Thompson has actually done. One of the things that we found out very early on in the development phase of the Voisey's project is when we to