I mentioned our engineering road map for coming into Canada, so it's certainly vastly improved from the days when you may have gone through that process. You can go there and click on the online educational assessment tool, and if you have a certain type of degree, it will give you a pretty good indication of how quickly that degree will be recognized. We're members of a number of international ones since we have mutual recognition agreements with a number of countries.
We're also one of the founding members of the Washington Accord. The Washington Accord now has 17 signatory countries that recognize each other's accreditation system. A Canadian grad would be treated equally in Australia or New Zealand. India just came into the Washington Accord with their accreditation system this past year.
I would say it's a global pool. We're trying to say that we know that engineers are very mobile and they're going to work around the world, so how do we do a better job of recognizing those credentials? We're very much tapped into it.
With Engineers Canada we have a database and there are thousands of different engineering programs from around the world. We try to build that bridge information so when the provincial bodies do the assessment it's a decision tool for them. They can dig out and find the information about those various different engineering programs and compare where they stack up and how they stack up to a Canadian program.
The long story around the educational credential assessment.... The doctors and the pharmacists are already designated professions under ECA, so if somebody is coming in under two NOC codes for doctors and one of the NOC codes for pharmacists, they are directed to those two professions. With engineering there are 14 different NOC codes that require professional engineers, so they would come in and they would be directed to us and we would then have that filter to have a look at it to see if they are actually eligible to apply, where their education stacks in terms of Canadian education.
What we think is very important is providing that bridge information, so if it doesn't work for them or they may have bigger gaps in their programs, they can take additional courses or write additional exams. All those things will let them understand how they can become part of that engineering team while they're increasing those.... So provide those bridges and ladders so they can actually become fully licensed to work in the Canadian environment.