Our contractors are small, medium, and large industrial contractors building the resource sector in western Canada. These are companies with workforces in the thousands. We don't search for just one welder; we search for 50 or 100 welders at a time, or for 200 welders in some cases.
When a project ramps up, we go to every extent possible to first look in the immediate area. If we're talking about the Fort McMurray area, for example, we'll look in the Fort McMurray area. We'll then look in Calgary and Edmonton. Then we'll look in B.C. and ultimately out east as well. The reality is that to ramp up for some of these projects, there just aren't enough welders at the scale we're talking about, in terms of the demand on contractors, to address those needs in the timeframe we have.
We support all the government's work and investment in developing apprenticeships, but we have an immediate problem. If we want to continue to keep these projects moving at a prosperous and efficient rate, we have to get more people in here, and that's what the temporary foreign worker program actually helps us address.