Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to our large panel here. I'm going to try to touch on one topic, because I think that's all the time I'll have.
I was reading ESA's temporary foreign worker document. I noticed that your workforce is a big topic. What I keep hearing is that we'd like to hire Canadians, but the talent doesn't exist yet. That seems to be about a lot of the technical people, if I'm correct. The talent doesn't exist yet at the senior levels to create that core team. We heard this last time, as well, from witnesses.
What I've learned from your temporary foreign worker document is that if the talent doesn't exist right now, we need to speed up the process for visa approval, because if we don't invest in the industry and get those leaders for the industry to grow, we can't risk losing this industry and losing that third place standing. We've seen changes to HRSDC and CIC policies that are making it harder. I also hear from Ms. Parker that we need to be making sure that we're hiring Canadians.
My question is for everyone and I would remind everybody that we probably have 30 seconds to 45 seconds each.
What should we be doing to make it easier for companies to hire Canadians? If that Canadian is not available right away, what training or what else can be done to get Canadian workers up to speed quickly? If we don't, then I'd say we should make sure that we're allowing the visa process to go faster so that we can get that good talent into the country.