This is a very major undertaking. A lot of efforts have been put forward so far by a number of groups, including previous governments, the Council of Ministers of Education for Canada. It's a huge project. I'm looking at it as a multi-year thing. We're going to tackle it in stages because we want to address the most critical areas first.
In this country we have a lot of skills shortages. We also have a lot of people applying to us from abroad. People want to move here because we're a great country. That's the way they see us. But we want to make sure, for their sake and for ours, that we're matching the skills that are coming in where the jobs are needed. That's best for everybody. It fills the jobs here, it makes us more productive, more competitive, but it also means that immigrants will be able to be productive, will be self-supporting much sooner.
So we're going to be doing up a step-by-step process and working very closely with the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration on this. We're still developing the work plan as we scope out the possibilities because there are a lot of different ways we could go. What we want to do is make sure we do this in stages and that at each stage we're getting something productive, something very useful and practical.
In terms of actual definitions, we're going to be moving forward very soon with our work plan, and then going after the first stage, but we haven't set those timings yet. We believe it's important to do this just as quickly as possible. That's why we've been consulting with some of our international partners to see what they've done.