June 11, 2012
OPENING SESSION & KEYNOTE SPEAKER
Dr. David Foot
"The World of Demographics and the Demographics of the World"
Governments and businesses do a terrible job of seeing what is perfectly obvious. They consistently fail to heed the lessons of history and usually make a bad situation worse by implementing counterproductive public policy initiatives.
In many countries, populations are on the decline, a result of Baby Boomers and subsequent generations failing to reproduce in adequate numbers. The result will be succession planning issues for companies and nations. If you have lots of young people coming into the workplace and you don't give them jobs, I think you can see what the results of that are when you look at what is happening in the Middle East right now.
Old people vote at the ballot box. Young people vote in the streets.
The liberation and education of girls and women are the key to a country's future success. Iran, Vietnam, Turkey and Brazil, and other countries with large populations have recognized this. Countries currently in decline include Japan, Russia, Germany, Italy and Spain.
"Give young people jobs. Otherwise they will leave your country or tear it apart."
Boom refers to the so-called Baby Boom, those who were born post-World War Two up into the mid-60s. "The front-end Boomers are madly trying to save for retirement. This is what keeps bringing the stock market back. The tail-end Boomers still have teens and early 20s kids living at home or in university. They don't have any money to save for their retirement."
Bust refers to the impact of the birth control pill. Not enough babies being born to replace their parents. Now, the boomers are senior management and lamenting that there are not enough people in their 20s who are qualified to be hired but they seem to forget that they forgot to hire the people who are now in their 30s. This has caused real succession planning issues.
Echo refers to the impact of the Boomer's kids. They entered the workforce over the past decade. Because of this, there was never going to be a labour shortage. Raising immigration levels to make new immigrants compete with the children of the boomers was illogical.
Boomers, Busters and Echoers are the main three groups in the workplace today and they are all generationally different from each other. The 20-somethings have never had anything in common with the 50-somethings. Senior executive Boomers look at the Echoers and call them disloyal, willing to move every couple of years. They're hypocrites. They did the same thing and still do. There is nothing going on in the workplace today that hasn't been going on for the last 60 years.
When you are in your 20s, the way to get more income and experience is to move jobs, just like previous generations did.
Boomers want quality and service and are able to afford it. Echoers don't care about quality and service. They can't afford it.
Demographics are about people. They tell you about people and future trends.
In 1971 in Canada, the Census showed far fewer one year olds than 10 year olds in 1971, a direct impact of the birth control pill introduced in Canada in 1960. If births go down in the 1960s, school enrolments will go down in successive decades.
The peak of the Boomers are about 51 or 52 and won't be retiring for at least 15 years. The media gets the idea that they are all retiring en masse. They aren't. They will trickle out of the workforce over the next 20-25 years.
You tend to use about half of your lifetime demands of healthcare in the last year of your life. For the last decade, the 1920s generation has been moving through their prime healthcare using years. Of course the healthcare system has been under tremendous strain. We have about 5 to 10 years to restructure the healthcare system and get it right before the massive Baby Boom generation hits their prime healthcare using ages. Aging societies consume more resources.
June 11, 2012
10/10 TALKS
Moderator: Andre Picard, Health Reporter, Globe & Mail
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MB: |
Canadian attitudes and law are trending toward the recognition that employers bear a great deal of responsibility for having a psychologically safe work place. This doesn't mean that employers have to be nice all the time. What it does mean is that you need to identify the workplace hazards to psychological safety and take steps to control risk. Baynton, along with Dr. Ian M.F. Arnold and Dr. Martin Shain, began a discussion which identified the need for a mental health in the workplace standard. They gathered labour leaders, government, policy makers and other thought leaders together to discuss the potential benefit to organizations of such a standard. After unanimous consensus of the gathered group, the Mental Health Commission of Canada approached CSA Group and BNQ to develop a standard. 33 people were part of the technical committee. The annex to the standard is thicker than the standard itself because the committee wanted to provide a comprehensive listing of credible and publicly available resources for those who chose to implement the standard. |
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RB: |
The stigma of mental illness is best eliminated through contact with mentally ill people. It removes barriers when you can see someone who suffers from mental illness is a person, not a problem. Cutting support in organizations is not helping, only hurting. Contact avoids stigma. Use civility and respect as a baseline for interactions. |
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AP: |
Employers are a bit scared of standards (because) it is an invisible thing. People will wonder, what about fakers, what about fraud? How do you respond to that? |
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MB: |
The standard is about raising the mental health of all employees rather than just those who may be experiencing a mental illness. The duty to accommodate is already covered by human rights legislation. The Standard is focused on the well-being of all workers. |
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Topic: |
What Does the Future Hold for Health Care? |
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Participants: |
Dr. John Haggie, President, Canadian Medical Association |
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JH: |
At the moment the healthcare system in Canada doesn't really work the way it is supposed to. Currently, the approach to patient care is not patient-centred but episodic, designed to move them back to taxpayer status as soon as possible. Eighty per cent of healthcare demand is for chronic disease management. Because of that, we need to get the best value for the money being spent. In 2009, we developed a set of principles nationally based on 14 systems. Canadians told us there were huge gaps in the system. Things like chronic care, home care, long-term care, pharmacare were all left out of Medicare 1.0 when it was designed and implemented in the '60s and '70s, designed on models from the 1940s. They recognized the system was inefficient. They want electronics to replace paper. They want national equity irrespective of where they live in Canada. The six principles we developed are: patient-centred care; quality care; prevention; equitable; accountable; and sustainable. In Canada, we spend too much time measuring process but not the end result. We need to transform our healthcare system. Over successive administrations, the federal government has reduced its involvement in healthcare funding. The federal government is the fifth largest supplier of healthcare in Canada, to organizations like the Canadian Forces and the Department of National Defence, the RCMP and First Nations. They are now devolving this responsibility down to the provinces. Health outcomes are more than just healthcare. Healthcare accounts for about 20 per cent of a population's overall healthcare costs. Housing, economics, employment and education figure far more into having you live to a ripe old age. |
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Topic: |
Whistleblowing and the Public Trust – Download Presentation (PowerPoint) » |
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Participants: |
David Hutton, Executive Director, FAIR (Federal Accountability Initiative for Reform) Joanna Gualtieri, LLB, founder of FAIR, former Realty Strategist, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Government of Canada |
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DH: |
Whistleblowers are people with something going awry in their organization and do something about it, to protect the public interest and protect us. Unfortunately, what can happen is that organizations can have people who work there who are incompetent, dishonest or in some cases criminal. We need to empower whistleblowers to speak up and do so safely, free from retaliation or recrimination when they see things going wrong. Without that, then the whole purpose of the standard is undermined. Every time you buy some food, take water, consume pharmaceuticals or get on a plane to go somewhere, you are trusting that other people are doing a good job. Every time you invest your funds with an organization, you hope they are going to do a good job and not steal it. |
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JG: |
That we are vulnerable is a fact and that we choose not to allow it to enter our stream of consciousness is also a fact, often until it is too late. We've been struck by tragedy or we have the occasion to know a whistleblower who has been utterly devastated by the experience. Consider how things could have been different had we listened to the whistleblowers who tried to blow the whistle on the Challenger that exploded and incinerated seven astronauts in mid-air. Had we listen to the whistleblowers who were raising flags about Enron and WorldCom scandals in the States. Think of the devastation that would have been spared to millions of pensioners who had a right to look forward to a well-funded retirement. In Canada, if there had been whistleblowers to warn about the tainted blood that was allowed to flow into the veins of 60,000 Canadians and consign them to a difficult life and an even more difficult death. Or think about the fact that the federal government spends about a billion dollars of your money every day. It would be utterly naïve to think that there isn't wrongdoing that goes on. Some of it is innocent, some of it is ineptitude but a large portion of it is ulterior motives. It sounds gloomy but it doesn't need be. People go to work each day with a right to do their job. We have a social contract with workers and believe they have a right to speak out when there is wrongdoing. It seems so intuitive. But the journey for a whistleblower is very difficult and very ruinous. |
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DH: |
Why are whistleblowers important? They are the single most effective way of disclosing wrongdoing. When everything else has failed, they are the last line of defense. When Joanna worked at DFAIT, she discovered massive waste and the ignoring of protocols. When she brought it to the attention of her bosses, it was ignored. She was treated poorly, harassed through the legal system over 18 years, all for doing her job. As taxpayers, we paid for government lawyers to harass Joanna for doing her job. The government's legal file boxes measured 50 feet high. |
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Topic: |
The Scourge of Counterfeiting – Download Presentation (PowerPoint) » |
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Participants: |
Lorne Lipkus, Partner, Kestenberg Seigal Lipkus LLP |
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LL: |
Counterfeiters will counterfeit anything and everything. If it has a value, it is being counterfeited. A few years ago, more than 2,500 Russians died as a result of drinking counterfeit vodka. We know about counterfeit apparel and accessories but when we think about counterfeits, most people think about money, passports, credit cards, they think of Gucci purses, they think of apparel. But there are other things like automotive. Automotive parts have been found to be counterfeit. Batteries are another frequently counterfeited item. The assistant commissioner of the RCMP used to keep counterfeit batteries in his desk drawer to show guests that anything can be counterfeited. One day, there was a loud boom from his office. People hit the floor thinking a gun had gone off. As it turned out, the batteries exploded in his desk. As a result, he sent a memo around to every detachment across Canada warning them to destroy these batteries and not to keep them for demo purposes. We know about counterfeit buckles and cell phones but how many people here would want to put a counterfeit BlueTooth headset next to their brain? It has never been tested. No one has ever looked at it to see what kind of wiring is inside it. Food and beverages: if we're counterfeiting pickles, we're counterfeiting anything and everything. How about MAC makeup? Last year in Toronto, a lady bought some MAC makeup because it is hypoallergenic, puts it on and then was having trouble breathing. Her esophagus is closing up and she is rushed to the hospital where it is determined that she has had an allergic reaction to counterfeit MAC makeup. A few years ago we took three-quarters of a million counterfeit toothbrushes off the market. Electrician's boots, software with malware, sunglasses, Krazy Glue, condoms that are not even made of latex. In Ontario, at the LCBO, the largest purchaser of wine, spirits and beer in the world, counterfeit wine was discovered. The number one counterfeited category of items confiscated at Chicago's O'Hare Airport? Electronics. Are there ties to organized crime? Yes, with ties to terrorist financing. And when it comes to organized crime and counterfeiting, the penalties are low, the risks are low, why take the chance on drugs? CSA Group, along with other stakeholders, works with peers and governments around the world to combat counterfeiting. |
June 11, 2012
LAW OF THE LAND... FOR CONSUMER PRODUCT SAFETY
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Moderator: |
Andre Picard, Health Reporter, Globe & Mail |
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Participants: |
Helen Ryan, Director of Risk Assessment, Health Canada – Download Presentation (PowerPoint) » Andy Dabydeen, Canadian Tire Corporation – Download Presentation (PowerPoint) » Pamela Fuselli, Executive Director, Safe Kids Canada – Download Presentation (PowerPoint) » |
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HR: |
The CCPSA has been in place for almost a year ago. It's a post market-regime in Canada, meaning things are goods are not approved before they hit the marketplace. If you can purchase it as a consumer, with very few exceptions, it is considered to be a consumer product. Exclusions include explosives, cosmetics, drugs, food, medical devices, ammunition and natural health products. The CCPSA gives the government the ability to order recalls and corrective measures. There are requirements for record keeping for traceability. There is mandatory incident reporting. Retailers are required to maintain documents with respect to where goods were acquired. Everyone else, primarily manufacturers and importers, have frontward and backward reporting obligations. Documents must be kept for six years. Paper documents must be kept in Canada. Electronic documents must be reasonably accessible from Canadian computers. Incident reporting: identifies emerging risks and hazards. For every incident that is reported, there is not an equal and opposite reaction on the part of government. In most cases, industry has indentified corrective actions and they won't hear from us at all. In high risk areas, you may hear from us directly, looking for reports. But generally speaking, we're using the information to help us monitor the situation, intervening when appropriate and warranted, but it's a risk-based approach we take. What is a reportable incident?
If you are a seller and you have a reportable incident, you have two days to report it to Health Canada but you must also report it to the person from whom you bought the item in question. You notify Health Canada and you notify up the supply chain. |
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AD: |
The CCPSA didn't make product safety more important but it leveled the playing field for industry. Product safety has always been important. For a retailer, for anyone in industry, for manufacturers, product safety has always been important. Retailers view themselves as ambassadors for consumers. There is a lot of complexity in dealing with a wide variety of products. The cost of managing product safety is high. Compliance is expensive but worth it. The risk and opportunity goes directly to our brand and to our reputation. CCPSA did not pose a big risk for Canadian Tire Corporation, which already had had processes in place, including formalized and documented processes to mitigate against risk. Having a formalized process means that you can consistently execute the same process over and over again. Consistency is important for retailers dealing with an extended supply chain. CTC conducted education sessions on the importance of product safety up and down the supply chain. CTC has governance processes in place to monitor and measure. Product safety is about meeting consumer expectations. At a minimum, we should all ensure we meet the regulations within our jurisdictions and ensure the products meet the applicable standards. We do not sell product safety because that is our baseline. Internally, we want to ensure that we are not putting our own brand at risk. Investment in product safety is expensive, so our bosses insist we spend the money wisely. If makes far more sense to push the risk assessment as far back in the manufacturing process as possible. To do it later becomes very expensive. Our goal is not to sell unsafe products. If we discover we do, our obligation is to either fix it or get it out of the marketplace and do so with a high degree of transparency. The big challenge is the complexity of the global supply chain: raw materials - components - manufacturer - retailer. |
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PF: |
Injuries in Canada are the leading cause of death for Canadians. At a minimum, it costs Canadians about $20 billion in total economic costs annually. This translates to about $4 billion for children annually. For youth (1-19 years old) in 2005, 720 young Canadians died of their injuries, representing a reduction of about 40 per cent, mostly due to a decrease in motor vehicle accident deaths. In 2007, those under 14 years represented about 300 deaths per year. In 2005-2006, there were just over 29,000 hospitalizations but injuries still represent the leading cause of deaths. With respect to product-related injuries, from 1990 to 2007, there were 1.6 million injuries were treated in the ERs of the 16 children's hospitals in Canada. Almost half of those ER visits were due to injuries sustained from consumer products (toys, magnets, furniture, etc...). The three most frequent product direct causes of injuries in children under 5 are:
Between 1990 and 2007, more than 5,400 injuries due to bunk beds. From 1993 to 2007 there were 328 children under the age of 13 sustained injuries related to magnets. Just over half involved the ingestion of magnets. More recently there have been increased incidents of the ingestion of button-style magnets. Baby walkers were banned in Canada in 2002 but for 10 years prior, there was a voluntary ban enacted by most major retailers but each year Health Canada confiscates banned baby walkers consumers try to bring into the country. More recently, we have seen a significant increase in recalls. Parents assumed that if they were purchasing a product in Canada, that it had been tested and was safe to use. We have to educate consumers that if they run into a problem, they need to report it back to us. Prior to the CCPSA, the feeling was that Canada could become a haven for unsafe products. We are hopeful that the CCPSA will have a positive impact on the health and wellbeing of Canadian children but we will still have to wait a while to measure the impact. |
June 12, 2012
KEYNOTE SPEAKER
Wendy Mesley
"Making a Difference... A Matter of Trust"
"Who or what are you going to trust?"
My world is tough, but I sure don't envy yours. Not only must you keep us safe and negotiate a thousand layers of red tape. These days you must also deal with the complexities of globalization, protect valuable brands in a brand crazy world, and save the planet while you are at it!
Like journalists you have to be experts in everything. Unlike journalists, you actually have to have training!
We do have standards (beyond seeking good ratings!) Standards like: Don't lie to get a story. Unless of course the person is a confirmed mobster and then you can use whatever white lies required to try and hold them accountable.. just don't lie to the viewers.
Then of course, there's the standard about never overstating your case, unless of course it's for the headlines!
I covered politics in Quebec and Ottawa for more than a decade, was the host of Undercurrents a show that exposed bad corporate behaviour and some of their enablers in the media, and was the host of Marketplace, a consumer watchdog show.
In other words, I've spent decades trying to get straight answers from people who sometimes have no interest in telling it.
It's a tricky world we live in, and before any of us can make any big decisions about how to keep our families safe, our jobs secure, and our products top notch, we usually need to start with a pretty basic notion.
Who or what, are you going to trust?
I've watched parties turn on their own leaders, once an attempted mutiny on the Liberal leader in the middle of an election campaign! It's part of Canadian history now. But when the cameras showed up the morning after we reported that on the National, I remember the MPs who said what they had to say in somewhat lame denials, and the ones who looked me in the eye in great feigned sincerity and asked me to "trust" them, they had never been part of it. I never trusted them again.
I finally got tired of covering politics, waiting for hours outside of a cabinet room for the prime minister to say no comment! I moved to Toronto to try and do some investigative reporting on the corporate world. And learned more lessons about trust.
At Marketplace we received an email from a Calgary man whose father was dying of cancer. His landlady told him about the miracle elixir of Goji Juice. It was hope in a bottle. If you have cancer, you're supposed to drink a lot of it, about $500 per month.
We discovered there was a huge American company behind Goji Juice, selling about $2 million per month worth of Goji in Canada, and six of the top 10 sellers, making about $1.7 million per year, were Canadian.
It was claimed that Goji could positively impact 34 different ailments, and a Sloan-Kettering study that suggests 75 per cent of all breast cancers could be prevented by drinking Goji Juice was referenced. We checked with the scientist who authored the study. He was appalled that he was being used this way.
It turns out that what makes people want to believe these claims was the company spokesperson, Earl Mandell, the author of the Vitamin Bible who has been interviewed extensively.
When we went to California to interview Mandell. His defense was that it must be true because he had read it on the Internet! He ended up chasing us off his property.
When you think about trust, it seems that the more value something has in our lives, the more predisposed we are to trust it. Doctors. Police. Something that claims to cure your cancer? We'll trust that, too.
We have great trust in our groceries, in the food we eat every day.
We became curious about the Made in Canada label that appears on your food. We recruited five moms who live in rural areas of Canada, they were concerned about the quality of their food and environmentalism and made a point to ensure the food they were purchasing for their families was made or grown locally by checking the Made in Canada label.
It turned out that Made in Canada meant very little at all.
In Canada, we have lots of fish. Pacific salmon, haddock and shrimp. Surely these must come from Canadian waters! We went to Lunenburg, Nova Scotia to see where it all comes from. On the packaging Highliner, it not only said Product of Canada but it is also marked, "Lunenburg, Nova Scotia" so who could blame people for thinking it came from Canada.
What we saw was shocking: row after row of abandoned docks. A couple of guys told us that until six or seven years ago, the fishing boats would pull right up to those docks. Not anymore. The piers were deserted and there wasn't a single fishing boat in sight. So where does the fish come from?, we asked. They told us that almost all of the fish arrives by the truck load and mostly processed.
We discovered that with fish, all you have to do to win that Product of Canada stamp is for "the last substantial transformation" to have taken place in Canada. So you season it, turn it into fish sticks and add some sauce and you can call it a product of Canada.
Eventually we discover the fish is from fish farms in Vietnam and Indonesia, the shrimp is from fish farms in China and Vietnam, Canadian fish icons like haddock and salmon are caught in Russian waters.
From the Bering Sea in Russia, the salmon is shipped off for processing in China, then back across the Pacific through the Panama Canal and up the eastern seaboard to Boston or Halifax. From there, it is trucked for final processing to Lunenburg. It qualifies for the Product of Canada stamp after a voyage of 25,000 km.
We went back to our original five shoppers and filled them in on our discoveries. They were mad. They felt duped. Their trust had been violated.
And so it's gone on for 30 wildly entertaining years. But not everyone I've covered has been a lying sack of stuff! We should be able to trust our politicians, the food we eat, maybe even the banks!
We may not trust "politicians", but we do trust the local guy who comes to our BBQ. We may not always trust the police, but we love the officer who brings our kid home safe. We may not trust salespeople, but we do trust the lady downtown who tells us "no your ass does not look fat in those pants!"
We all want in our hearts to return to the good old days when there was more trust. We may have lost trust in some of the institutions, but we still trust many of the individuals within.
Standards are about trust. It is a foundation to build on.
June 12
ACADEMIC CHALLENGE
Engaging Youth in New Frontiers for Standards
Behind the Challenge
Like a good education, CSA Group's National Academic Challenge puts learning on a two-way street. It helps CSA connect with youth and learn how standards can be relevant to their interests, needs and issues. It also exposes students to the world of standards and helps them understand the value of their application.
Introduced as a pilot at the 2012 Annual Conference and Committee Week, the Academic Challenge was a great success, exceeding expectations. Delegates heard a fresh take on standards from the students… and students had the opportunity to present to and network with people of influence in Canadian business, industry and government. What's more, a focus group that was held with members of the academic community yielded important insights for carrying the program forward.
The 2012 Contenders and Results
Three teams comprising eight students from the University of Guelph, Department of Marketing and Consumer Studies, presented at CSA Group's first National Academic Challenge in Quebec City in June 2012. The three projects were selected by a panel of five judges from the university, including Dr. Anne Wilcock, a member of the CSA Group Standards Policy Board and several committees, and the professor who helped spearhead the Challenge.
Craig Shorey, Laura Lester and Patricia Filip presented the winning entry, "The Desirability of a Quality of Education Standard to Improve the Performance of Teaching Assistants (TAs)." Their research found that undergraduate students and TAs felt that TAs should achieve a minimum standard of teaching competence before being allowed to teach. They suggested that such a standard be met on an ongoing basis through a compulsory seminar course for all graduate students.
The other presentations covered students' perceptions of distance education versus the classroom experience (Stefan Kovacevic) and recommendations for applied learning in the university setting (Caitlyn Phirbny, Jaclyn Quinn, Nick Gascon and Victoria Thornton).
Delegates to the CSA Annual Conference evaluated the presentations against four criteria: topic relevance, presentation effectiveness and clarity, validity of recommendations, and evidence of the value of standardization.
While only one team could come out on top, "everyone was a winner," says Anne. "The positive feedback from the conference delegates about the enthusiasm and professionalism of the Guelph students was overwhelming!"
"The students gave very polished presentations, but what impressed me most was their networking skills," says Rob Rashotte, Director of the Learning Institute at CSA Group. "Conference delegates were eager to pick their brains and there was a great sense of collaboration and camaraderie."
Next Up
Right now, CSA is working with members of the academic community as well as other stakeholders to help design and develop the program on an ongoing basis, and to serve on an Academic Challenge advisory committee and judging panel. "We envision this as an annual national competition for student projects from any discipline on topics related to the social, economic, and environmental advantages of standardization," explains Rob. "Each year a new challenge will be issued to the academic community and we intend to recognize those who successfully meet the challenge at an awards ceremony held in conjunction with our annual conference."
Next year, the Academic Challenge will be expanded to several universities and colleges. Those that wish to participate will provide a faculty champion who can work with CSA and provide support to interested students. Ideally, Academic Challenge projects will become integrated into course teaching, acting as a valuable real-world practicum component. Meanwhile, CSA will begin building a support program of materials and resources.
"As this program gains traction, we hope to extend it across the country and engage more students in the world of standards," adds Rob.