Let me offer a couple of thoughts on it.
First, because our economic boom is a fairly recent phenomenon, this province hasn't used the temporary foreign worker program to the extent it has been used in Alberta. In 2006, I think we had 1,400 temporary workers, and a large portion of them would have been quite highly skilled workers. Last year we had 3,000 approvals under the temporary foreign worker program. So it's growing fairly significantly, but it hasn't been used as expansively as it has in Alberta.
A second factor is that to a greater degree than in Alberta, Saskatchewan's goal has been to not simply bring people in on a temporary basis; we see the temporary program as an avenue to landed immigrant status. Over the last several years we have used the temporary foreign worker program as a stepping stone toward permanent immigration through the nominee program.
I don't have statistics to back this up, but part of the situation in Saskatchewan may be that people are on temporary foreign worker status for a shorter length of time because they're progressing on to the nominee program.
