Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the witnesses also. The witnesses have been very informative today. I learned about knowledge workers and service workers.
Mr. McCracken, I will start with you because I myself am an immigrant to this country, and I had my studies from Punjab, India.
You touched on both things. You talked about immigration. You talked about reducing the backlog in high-demand areas as well as.... As a matter of fact, just so that everybody's aware of it, our ministry is actually focused in that direction. Minister Kenney has said a couple of weeks ago, I believe, that he's going to fast-track some immigration applications that are in high-demand occupations.
Coming back to immigration, I'd like to hear your comments. I'm a very firm believer that immigration and the foreign qualifications both can be huge contributors to labour shortage issues. Based on your analysis, I want to know how many new workers you estimate will be gained through immigration within, say, five or ten years or so. Of course, I'll follow my colleague's line on foreign qualification recognition because that's my passion. I have lived through that.
Would you agree that the timely recognition of foreign qualifications, whether it be of an immigrant or a Canadian who has gotten the qualification abroad, would be helpful to alleviate skills shortages and/or to address the issue of labour shortages? I'd like to hear about that.