That really is the secret sauce to determining how much labour we need for projects that aren't strictly defined. Many projects that would appear on a pipeline of projects await final investment decisions. One of the challenges that we have in the construction industry is providing enough skilled trades workers for the jobs that are actually going to happen.
I would say that in Canada, and I've said this previously, we lack a sophisticated labour market demand tool for construction. There are groups out there who do work around this, but the challenge really is in the methodology to determine how you plan to provide workers for projects that may or may not happen.
I would also say to you that the building trades have been around since 1908 and before that we've been around for hundreds of years, the guilds of Europe, etc. We've always found a way to train young people and bring apprentices into the industry to meet the labour force requirements of the future. Right now the current situation is that in Canada we bring in approximately 100,000 apprentices a year, union and non-union. That is enough to keep pace with our retirements. We have an aging demographic, so we're bringing enough in. We're marketing and bringing apprentices in and putting them to work enough to keep pace with the retirement.
When you overlay that with these future work opportunities, which still remain uncertain, we'll have a challenge. There are a lot of different ways in which we can address that challenge and I think the investment tax credits are a big part of that with mandatory apprenticeship requirements. I think we need to look at ways that we can leverage the immigration system to bring in more skilled trades workers into Canada, as well.