Industry committee  However, it's not teaching aviation programs.

Industry committee  Thank you for the question. Of the two programs the government has run in the past through ESDC, one's ongoing, the student work placement program. Those have been hugely beneficial for the industry. CCAA alone has put over 1,000 students into the workforce, and a high number of them continue to be employed after they graduate.

Industry committee  Absolutely. Again, CCAA has a high school program that is just extraordinary. High schools don't have the resources. There are only 30 high schools in Canada that are using it; there should be 300. Why aren't we doing it? High schools don't have the resources, but it's something that we definitely need to be doing more of.

Industry committee  Transport Canada has said numerous times that they're going to do this, that they recognize the deficiencies, but they don't have the resources. Six months ago they told a group of us, including me and Colleges and Institutes Canada, that they were going to get something out in the fall, and they haven't done it.

Industry committee  Yes, it is true, Mr. Poilievre. It's because Transport Canada doesn't recognize the academic training that the individual took, regardless of their competency. If Transport Canada funded the development of a competency-based assessment system, that problem would go away.

Industry committee  Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Thank you to the committee for inviting me back. Some of you may recall that in my appearance in March, I spoke about the critical shortage of skilled workers and the lack of training capacity in Canada to produce the graduates we need. I've been asked today to expand on my comments about competency-based training and accreditation, and what the government can do in the aerospace sector to increase competitiveness and reduce the regulatory burden and eliminate red tape.

Industry committee  Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Yes. Unfortunately for the licensed trades in Canada—pilots, aviation maintenance engineers—we do not use PLAR. We don't care about competence. As I alluded to earlier, an AME working in Germany for Lufthansa for 20 years on an Air Canada aircraft, a 737, comes here to work on exactly that same aircraft and is not granted a licence because she didn't study exactly the same thing in Berlin that Transport Canada requires Canadian colleges to teach.

Industry committee  My pleasure. Thank you.

Industry committee  Thank you, Mr. Garrison. I believe you had Mike Mueller from AIAC before you last week. He would have gone through the hundreds of thousands of jobs and the $90 billion contributed to GDP—the vast majority exported. That's not really what we focus on. It's the labour force, so I'll let Tracy speak to that.

Industry committee  Absolutely. You can have an engineer from Lufthansa who's been working there for 20 years on an Air Canada aircraft come to Canada and his credentials aren't recognized by Transport Canada because they can't validate what he studied—not his competency, but what he studied 20 years ago in Berlin.

Industry committee  Thank you, Mr. Jowhari. I'll digress for just a second. As I alluded to a little bit earlier, I think the most useful thing that the government could do right now is to lay out a road map with industry. This isn't for public consumption, but it's sitting down with the airlines, the MROs, the manufacturers, and laying out a road map for the reopening of our industry.

Industry committee  As I said, I apologize for the digression. I just wanted to make that point. In terms of increasing capacity, I think what we have to move to is more workplace-integrated learning, continuous workplace-integrated learning using new tools, virtual reality, online and blended, so that industry can put in place its own training programs that aren't dependent on Transport Canada-approved colleges.

Industry committee  That's correct—and moving to competency-based learning instead of hours-based learning. If a student finishes a three-hour project in class in an hour, that student has to sit there for two hours doing nothing because the teacher has to recognize the three hours. We need competency-based new rules.

Industry committee  I apologize.

Industry committee  Hopefully, industry will come on board. We have a number of companies, including KF, that have come on board to say that, yes, they're willing to work on developing continuous workplace learning training. Hopefully, if we can get a good pilot project going, industry picks up on it and Transport Canada approves it, we will increase our capacity without increasing the spend by government.