Absolutely. When we bring a collection of people around the table, it is all those different players talking about talent. It's not about where we are with steady state. It's where we're going to make sure we can identify that pipeline, so it is working with the post-secondaries. It's critical.
You have to do that in line with respect to what the industry is looking for. What you have is this balance between quantitative and qualitative, and somewhere in the middle gives you the sense of where the real challenge exists.
Fundamentally, if you take a look at the province of Manitoba, we grow through immigration, as I indicated before. How do you ensure that the skill sets that are coming in are reflective of what's required by the industry? When I talk about information, evidence-based information allows companies and it allows jurisdictions to make good decisions in how they can perpetuate the need for skilled labour in the key sectors that act as the underpinning of our economy.
This is an ongoing conversation with the post-secondaries at the provincial level and at the federal level because of the oversight they have with immigration and being able to ensure that there is good dialogue taking place with the individuals who are consistently on the ground working with companies to say, “You know what, I don't know if I can make another $30-million investment because I don't think you have the skilled pool here over the next 10 years.”
Steady state is where you start, but it's really about what the pipeline looks like. It includes a variety of different constituents, including provincial and federal governments.
I don't know what the answer is. It's a challenge, but you need to be able to understand what that challenge looks like from both quantitative and qualitative...you blend it together. Then you can start to identify how you best move forward.