Canadian radio journalist Jacques Poitras did a three part series on Indian outsourcing last month: "My reasoning was simple," he writes on the CBC News website. "In the 1990s, the government of New Brunswick attracted many call centers to New Brunswick, to both create jobs and to try to lay the foundation for our own information-technology sector. Now India appeared to represent a growing competitive threat to those efforts."

Poitras went to Bangalore for a week to learn about New Brunswick's competition in the global outsourcing trade. Can a Canadian province, now in the "mature" phase of its call center growth compete with a country that boasts high education and English skills with rock-bottom wages?

Part three of the series focuses on near-shoring in Canada. Unfortunately for New Brunswick's call centers, "Part of Canada's near-shore appeal is as a trial run," says Poitras, "for clients who want to get the hang of outsourcing before they move their work totally off shore." However, near-shoring is predicted to triple before 2010, he says.

Where do you stand on off-shoring vs. near-shoring? Should North America try to compete with the Indian outsourcing juggernaut? Tell us what you think.

All three of Poitras' radio segments (which average seven minutes each) can be heard on the CBC Web site.