Thank you.
Yes, we have a similar view to yours. This declining workforce worries us, because, again, it's happening so quickly. My personal view is that for Japan it's too late; they've gone beyond the curve. The amount of immigration they would require to do it would be too significant to be practical in the time frame, so I think there's an urgency to it.
The way we looked at it, just quickly, one thing was to facilitate entry for top talent. That goes to your point about delays with the LMIA exemptions, and how you go through it. It just takes too long. In the round tables and discussions we had around the country, we saw countless examples of Canadian companies that ended up putting a key part of their business in New York because they couldn't bring that capability into Canada. Doing that was just too arduous. We did want to expand the exemptions for some of the senior executive roles. We wanted to have a two-week process. We said let's put a time frame on it; it takes too long.
Also then, relax some of the restrictions once the permit's in place, because there is also quite significant retention. So there's a top talent piece that we felt was important, and we think it actually leads to fewer jobs being created in Canada because that occurs so slowly today.
The second was around the students. To your point about not qualifying, we have a lot of superb international students who come in and who we think would be terrific entrepreneurs and people who would create jobs and build businesses, but the point system makes it very difficult for them to stay. That's quite different from how it typically would be in the U.S. Obviously, the U.S. is a lot worse right now than it has been, but that's a very big source for Canada.
Australia's third-largest export is education, foreign students coming in, and we think that's something. Then there's this 300,000 to 450,000 target we're trying to hit, but flanging it in 15,000 people at a time to move it.
The last thing is the accreditation standards, because we also need to make sure that when people come in they actually can get a job. The number of people who are electrical engineers or medical doctors and who are driving taxis because the accreditation service doesn't work is a problem, so we have tried to make some recommendations around that.