Certainly, over the last year the government has announced a lot of changes to the temporary foreign worker program, most specifically on the labour market opinion process. We have amongst other things introduced a processing fee for labour market opinions to ensure that taxpayers aren't subsidizing the process. We have put in new compliance tools to ensure that employers actually live up to the commitments they've made in the labour market opinion. We have removed some wage flexibility to ensure that temporary foreign workers are paid at the prevailing wage rates.
We have certainly made more efforts to ensure that Canadians know that there are jobs out there in terms of increasing the recruitment requirements. We've asked employers to advertise more widely and more broadly to ensure Canadians know where jobs are and have an opportunity to apply. We have also announced and will implement relatively soon something we call transition plans, so when employers apply for temporary foreign workers, they present with their application a plan for how they're going to transition to a Canadian workforce over time. The purpose of the transition plan is to make sure that companies are taking their human resource responsibility seriously and that temporary foreign workers are indeed used as a temporary bridge when Canadians aren't available.
I've spoken with the entertainment and gaming sector and they have certainly impressed upon me that for the positions they need to fill and the critical need for specialized talent at the top of the skill continuum, there are times when Canadians just aren't available or don't have the skill set they need. But one of the things that really impressed me about their work was the investments they've been making in training schools and in universities to actually develop the next generation of Canadian talent. I think their view is that over time they can reduce their reliance on temporary foreign workers and transition to—I don't want to say “complete”—a higher proportion of Canadian workers.
I was also struck, when I looked behind the scenes, by the numbers of temporary foreign workers they bring in. They are almost exclusively at the top of the skill continuum. I think their feeling was that as the industry gets older and people have a chance to naturally come up the talent continuum, that they'll have more opportunity to hire Canadians at that level, but there will always be some really specific needs for foreign workers. So I really think one of the points of the transition plans for companies is to be able to explain to us the investments and efforts they're making to hire and train Canadians so that they can reduce their reliance on temporary foreign workers over time.