Absolutely.
It's been a principal preoccupation of the Electricity Association for seven or eight years; that's when we began doing some significant studies on this. With the assistance of the federal government, we established the human resources sector council for electricity a number of years ago.
The changes are not insignificant, and they're coming from two sides.
On one side there's the issue that you referenced, which is an aging workforce where a significant number of our key people are going to be retiring. Already that's taking place. We're seeing a generational change. So there is a gap, which generally companies are dealing with at this stage.
The other side of it is that the skill sets are absolutely going to change. We're already seeing that today. In jurisdictions where you have smart meters, you don't have meter readers anymore, but you will always have, for example, power-line technicians. Certain traditional areas of utility operations will remain, and remain unchanged.
But yes, with the increase of technology and the smart grid—I think I've mentioned this previously to the committee—we're concerned that 10 years from now, when we'll want the best and the brightest on the IT side.....
Today we compete with other people who are trying to build infrastructure. As we move into smart grid, we'll be competing with the Ciscos and the Googles of the world for the best and the brightest, because so much of our operations will be in the smart electron business and not the old world of the dumb electron business.