Thank you very much.
Mr. Griffith, I'm rather new to this committee, but to lead from a comment made earlier, I find it rather notable that there's such a need for engineers. Coming from Edmonton myself, to hear that 1,500 engineers could be hired tomorrow strikes me as being rather dramatic. I would think of your earlier comment that there are some 60,000 engineering students in school at present. Have there been efforts made to ramp this up to let people in Canada know?
I'm thinking of my own children, who took a B.A. in history and couldn't get a job. Many other people are taking poli-sci courses, and where are they? In other words, if there's such a requirement for engineers, I would think that would be information that my children and other people's families and children would want to know about as a priority to look towards if they have an interest in getting employment after they finish university. That's one part to it.
The other part to it would be more in regard to the question of entertaining international credentials. Are you able to accept them at face value, or is there such a thing as degrees of acceptability of foreign credentials? The little I know about the engineering field is that many engineers have to certify plans, projects, and whatever, so you would certainly want somebody who has the full acceptability of credentials. So when you're looking at engineers...understandably, many engineering firms have minor areas of employment. It used to be that they would be the draftsperson on the table or whatever. Yes, they have an engineering degree, but they're not given the high-priority job or the job with a high level of expertise.
Are you entertaining them on degrees of acceptability or at face value on the certification from the foreign institution itself?