More money helps, but I would advise the federal government to be very clear about the outcomes that you want. If you want tools for assessment in the regulatory bodies, then I'd be specific that you want all of them to participate and you want them to agree on one tool and implement it. If you're not specific, you will get 23 bodies together and they will have 23 different tools.
I would say, on the money part again, that one of the reasons bridge training programs exist.... And in our programs in Ontario, mentorship and internship can be part of that program, that whole continuum of service. They exist because short-term, flexible, intensive training of adults is not what post-secondary education was designed to do. That's why some of the programs aren't eligible for the loans either. So you could have an adaptation of the part-time Canada student loan to make it apply to short-term, intensive, flexible, adult, work-oriented training. And you might help more than just internationally trained individuals: you might help some other people who are facing career shifts.
I thought the idea of a graduated internship was interesting, and the challenge that poses is language. The message to our skilled newcomers has to be that language and communication are so fundamental. So let's encourage people to take the language courses, and let's come up with some innovations for a slightly lower level language qualification like level 5 and 6, and bring those together with our employment services and some work orientation and with meeting employers. That might lead to your graduated internship, which could be an initiative that you could encourage and which could provide other opportunities for the alternative careers we talked about for those who need that option. That's really what we're talking about—language.
The federal government could fund the tools overseas to do a little web test: where is my language if I want to be a nurse? The language might be fine for meeting your neighbours, but it might not be fine in the operating room. So that specialized language and assessment overseas is an information component that I think will be very helpful and might be a role for the federal government to take.