Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you for your testimony, Mr. Bates. I also want to thank you for being with us today.
I would like you to tell us about how we can match workers' skills to companies' needs.
Quebec is the only province in Canada that is responsible for its workforce policy. Quebec has put a workforce ecosystem in place that includes the ministère du Travail, de l'Emploi et de la Solidarité sociale, the ministère de l'Éducation, the Conseil du patronat du Québec, Manufacturiers et Exportateurs du Québec, the Fédération des chambres de commerce du Québec, and other organizations.
All these entities work together to analyze labour market needs and organize the implementation of policies. Sectoral committees of the Quebec government and sectoral associations of enterprises meet to identify present and future workforce needs and determine how they are going to fill them. In Quebec, our ecosystem produces all the studies needed for determining workforce needs. As a result, it's my opinion that the labour market impact assessment, or LMIA, is a pointless duplication.
Would Quebec's ecosystem be even more complete if the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, the TFWP, were repatriated? That is actually a question that relates more to labour policy than to immigration policy.
On what grounds can you justify producing an LMIA in Quebec?