Thank you for the question, Monsieur Lauzon.
In British Columbia, the curriculum in public and private institutions that train health care aides is certified by the provincial government, so there is a standard of quality which is important. I think putting health care aides into a professional college will increase the ability for continuing education and also, of course, addressing any issues of neglect or abuse.
The Conference Board of Canada says that we need up to 200,000 new long-term care beds in the next couple of decades. With that, of course, we are going to require far more health care aides or personal support workers, more LPNs and more RNs. The domestic supply in Canada will not be sufficient to meet this demand, which is why we have been hopefully optimistic with the developments on the national occupational classification code changes that will allow people with less than a degree to be considered trained and skilled workers and have an easier path to permanent residency in Canada.
Those changes will be implemented probably not until a year after the changes occur. We really hope they will be implemented much, much sooner, so that we can bring people into Canada who will be trained and ready to step into the workforce to care for our elders here. We simply need far more of them than are available today, not only to deal with the growing population of baby boomers who will be coming into the system, but because we need to increase the number of hours of care per day to increase the level of care that our elders deserve.