Even when you delve into those studies, including the Drummond one, TD Economics, etc., they're not completely mutually exclusive. They're saying that for certain sectors and for certain regions of the country there is a problem. They're generally saying overall they don't see one. I guess if you have your feet in the oven and your head in the freezer, overall you're not doing too bad. But from a particular perspective that we have, projecting forward, I say we have a perfect storm.
The other thing that we didn't talk about was the fact that one of the other trends we're seeing, as the other witnesses said, is that many of the projects we have now are in very remote areas of Canada and people do not necessarily want to go to remote areas.
In fact, we helped fund a study by the Canadian Employee Relocation Council to look into what makes Canadians mobile, or what will make Canadians mobile. It was interesting. Only 34% of Canadians surveyed would actually consider moving if the incentives were right, including wages, and 55% of Canadians surveyed said they would not move under any circumstances. Unfortunately, if we have a large mining project from a construction perspective in northern Alberta, northern B.C., or a large hydroelectric project in Labrador, we can't move it to downtown Vancouver. We need the people to be where the work is.
Part of our challenge is not with respect to how many bodies there are, but do they have the skills? We have lots of apprentices coming in, but our apprenticeship system demands that they be mentored by fully qualified journeypersons, and it's the journeypersons we're losing through retirement. That creates a situation in which the need, yes, is in certain regions and for certain projects, but the need is complicated by the remoteness, the size of the project, and very often the need to mobilize people rather quickly.