Thank you.
Members, I want to take a few minutes and ask some final questions and perhaps drill down into some of the specific recommendations. I'm glad Mr. Simard mentioned that, because that was one of the things I was going to ask.
We did recommend a tax credit in the manufacturing report—for manufacturers, obviously. We could look at it beyond that, but the answer some of us get back is that it's difficult in the way you actually measure that, particularly when people move from company to company or industry to industry. It's difficult to measure how much a company actually invests in training, in terms of measuring it from a government point of view, and then how to credit that. You don't have to answer that now, but any information you can provide on that would be very helpful to us.
I do appreciate very much, as a western Canadian and as an Albertan, the fact that you've highlighted the labour shortage issue. It's something we try to tell our fellow members of Parliament. You can walk into a restaurant that's one-tenth full and the manager comes to you and says, “I'm sorry, we can't serve you. I don't have enough people today. You'll have to go somewhere else.” That happens daily in Edmonton. It's a message we try to pass along to our colleagues.
Along those lines, then, I did want to make sure we have the specific recommendations.
Ms. Reynolds, in your presentation you talk about revising the point system for citizenship and immigration to better match labour market needs, the CIC criteria. Then you talk about temporary foreign worker programs and bridging, so that if someone comes here on a two-year program and works for two years and perhaps their employer says they are a very good worker, they can then stay within Canada and apply for permanent residency from within Canada as they're finishing that program. Is that what you're recommending?
Also, in terms of the temporary foreign worker program, that's the biggest issue I am approached on by businesses out west. The number of applications has gone up dramatically. So do you have any specific recommendations in terms of how to streamline that—labour market opinions, perhaps?