Mr. Speaker, the member is the chair of HUMA. When I started my speech, I indicated that by and large the New Democrats did agree with the report that came out of the Standing Committee on Human Resources and Skills Development, but we had some suggestions on how to improve that.
One of them was around continuing to financially support the bridging programs. These bridging programs are very important in helping people make that adjustment to the way a profession is practised in Canada. Some of those bridging programs are very successful. However, we heard from some of the witnesses that the funding was not regularized. Projects would be up and running, they would be successful and then they would end. That consistency in funding is very important with regard to bridging.
We also said that the pre-qualifying internationally trained individuals for certain occupations needed to continue and that the federal government needed to approach provincial and territorial regulatory authorities to discuss this possibility and to expand it in certain occupations. I believe there are now 16, but there are many other occupations that should be included in that pre-qualification. We encourage the federal government to act as a model employer and include more internships.
Finally, the funding for the pan-Canadian framework for the assessments needs to be at least maintained at its previous levels.