Mr. Ellis, as you likely know, this is a shared portfolio, so it really does involve a number of ministries coming together to open the pathway to allow a temporary worker to come to Canada. One is at my department, IRCC, where we issue the visa, the travel document, but it also requires in the vast majority of instances a work permit, which is issued as a result of a labour market impact assessment issued by my colleague, Minister Qualtrough, and her department.
The reason we have both of these two departments collaborating is to ensure that we're allying the skills and experience from abroad with those parts of the economy where it's proven to be difficult to recruit domestic labour. The flexibility that we've introduced very recently is really a reflection of the need to find ways to fill those gaps even more effectively during COVID-19, and of our not necessarily having the luxury of waiting for the usual timelines to expire before somebody can start that new job.
This again is the product of a lot of consultation and a lot of feedback we've gotten from provinces, farmers and other leaders in the industry.