Citizenship and Immigration committee  I'll make a couple of comments in response to Mr. Batters' and Mr. Komarnicki's comments. One is about the general stream in Manitoba. We have a somewhat comparable stream in our skilled worker stream that's based on points. The difference here in Saskatchewan is that we do require a job, and the Manitoba general stream does not require the individual to have a job here.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, and our long-haul trucker category is an example of where we've looked below the NOC codes A, B, and 0 and said there's a particular need we must respond to, and we created an avenue that uses the foreign temporary worker program to address that. We recognize there is pressure to look at other low-skill occupations--I shouldn't say low-skill, but semi-skill occupations--and see if there's a way we can use these two programs to address them appropriately.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Let me offer a couple of thoughts on it. First, because our economic boom is a fairly recent phenomenon, this province hasn't used the temporary foreign worker program to the extent it has been used in Alberta. In 2006, I think we had 1,400 temporary workers, and a large portion of them would have been quite highly skilled workers.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  That would lead me to the point that part of the solution has to be just more workers in Canada, and that means foreign workers, and hence our view that we should find mechanisms to get people here more efficiently and increase employer access to them.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Actually, we've considered some options similar to that in Saskatchewan. We haven't pursued them perhaps to the degree that we might have. But we did have discussions a couple of years ago with our federal counterparts around using our nominee program in a similar fashion, where we would identify a certain occupation that was in shortage in Saskatchewan and have arrangements in place that a regional kind of visa could be offered to that individual.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I was simply going to reiterate your point. We did export people for a generation or two, which is why we got this peculiar demographic structure where the working-age population is unusually low. It's kind of big at the top, hollowed out in the middle, and then big at the bottom.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you. I think you're raising a valid issue. It's one that in Saskatchewan I don't think we've seen yet. Saskatchewan's economic boom is a fairly recent phenomenon. When we look to our neighbours to the west who have been experiencing the kinds of labour shortages that we're seeing now for a longer period of time and have used the temporary foreign worker program in a much more significant way than has occurred here, we see there is significant evidence that there have been serious problems.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  On behalf of the Government of Saskatchewan, thank you for the opportunity to meet with the standing committee this morning. I'm going to be making some comments from a provincial perspective on the temporary foreign worker program, as it's functioning in Saskatchewan. Particularly, I'd like to stress the importance we see of that program to the economy in Saskatchewan, and there are a couple of points I want to make around that.