I'll try my best, and I would like to actually split my answer with my colleague from HRSDC, because I think the statistic that you referenced was a project that has been funded from HRSDC's foreign credential recognition program, funding to the Medical Council of Canada.
You mentioned China, and I'm glad you did, because the foreign credentials referral office is, as I said in my opening statement, going to be taking over the overseas component of a pilot that HRSDC has currently in place. The Association of Canadian Community Colleges is being funded to actually have offices in three countries around the world--three of our top source countries, actually. They have offices in the Philippines, in Manila; in China, in Guangzhou; and in India, in New Delhi. They also are currently offering itinerant services. So from the Guangzhou office, we have itinerant service in Beijing as well as in Shanghai. And in India, there is itinerant service in Chandigarh as well as Ahmadabad.
What is offered overseas is information, pathfinding, and referral, to try to get ahead of this issue I raised earlier about immigrants coming to this country and just only then beginning their employment search, their pathway to credential assessment and recognition. So individuals are offered up to a two-day session where they are getting information on employment in the Canadian provinces and territories. They've decided where they would like to land, and they can focus their queries on that particular province and the cities within that province. They're getting information on the process of credential assessment and recognition and the fact that if they are a physician, if they're going to land in Toronto, they're going to have to see a different regulatory body than if they would like to land in Vancouver.
They are actually completing an action plan in that two-day session, where they are learning about social insurance numbers. They can have access to a website that is actually an HRSDC product called “The Working in Canada Tool”, which has up-to-date information not only on all of the regulatory bodies and the national associations, but also on live employment opportunities coming off the job bank. So they can actually connect with a potential employer while they are in their home country.
There have been some really successful cases where individuals are connecting with employers overseas, landing at the airport and starting work the next day. That really is the vision. That is the strategy to really speed up this process: beginning to do as much of the credential assessment, as much of the job search, as much of the language assessment, all overseas, while they're still in their home country, waiting in the various times they are given to complete their medical checks, security checks, etc., using that window of opportunity in the immigration process to do as much there as possible.