Thank you very much for your question.
Maybe looking back a little bit, a couple of months ago when we established a list of 14 priority occupations, nine of which were in the health sector, we had those target groups divided into two groups. The first group of eight targeted occupations was scheduled to be streamlined by December 2010. The work is done, and all those occupations meet the one-year time service standard.
Now we have another group of six priority occupations scheduled for December 2012. We're right in the midst of working with those occupations. We are meeting with them, doing national consultations, and through those national consultations we are trying to identify and really understand in-depth their certification processes. And we're working with the provinces in doing that.
The reason we do this is fairly simple. It is because we don't know it all, and we need to have a really firm understanding about how the certification process is working, because from one profession to the next, it's never the same thing.
Once we've completed the national consultation, we draft action plans with each of those occupations. Through those national action plans, we try to identify for each occupation--because they are not all at the same stage of development--what their top three priorities are in terms of investment by government. We get a really in-depth understanding of where they want us to invest.
Come December 2012 we will have this group of priority occupations that will be streamlined—and I certainly expect the next six are going to meet the standards of the framework. I think I was fairly specific in my remarks, and I cannot insist enough, how important the work is that we are doing right now. I think we have the right approach.
That approach has worked for the first group of eight. It's going to work for the next group of six. We need to renew and extend the mandate, because this issue is not something.... There are so many players. I have named 500 regulatory bodies, and we have credential-assessment agencies. There are a lot of players. There are four different types of departments in each of the provinces. We want everybody to keep pushing in the same direction.
I have to say that this approach of taking priority occupations is working. You see the three of us at the table: Human Resources, Health, and Immigration are all working in the same direction. It's very important that we keep the momentum going, and I really insist on that. So come 2012 I'm really hoping that we're going to be able to extend our mandate beyond that period for another period of five years to identify other occupations that are as important. And I would even go as far as to say that it will be very important that we identify appropriately the occupations that should be part of the next list of priority occupations.