By Killeen Kelly
The skills of foreign-trained professionals recruited to come to this country are being squandered and it’s costing the Canadian economy an estimated $5.9 billion annually, a report by the United Way/Centraide Ottawa says.
The Internationally Trained Workers Project says labour shortages make the integration of newcomers key to the future economic health of the city.
Foreign-trained immigrants score well on the point system used by Citizenship and Immigration Canada and settle in communities like Centretown. But it’s the role of the province to license them, upgrade their skills and get them working.
And disputes over which level of government should pay for initiatives such as language training and licensing handicaps the process.
While professional bodies overseeing engineers, nurses and doctors scramble to integrate newcomers to into the workforce, many immigrants take jobs that make little use of their professional training or face unemployment.
Mary Anne Chambers, Ontario’s minister of training, colleges and universities, says Ontario is the only province that doesn’t have an immigration agreement with the federal government. Lack of coordination between the two governments is a major obstacle to the integration of immigrant workers.
Chambers says both governments are currently in negotiations but she would “like it to move more briskly and we’d like it to address the significant needs of Ontario where 60 per cent of new immigrants to Canada reside.”
At the federal level, Conservative immigration critic Diane Ablonczy characterizes the relationship between the federal and provincial governments as “adversarial.”
Despite the apparent shortage of skilled workers in Canada, Ablonczy says we’re sending the signal to internationally trained workers that we don’t need them.
“If you’re a trained professional and you’re alert and on top of your game, you’re going to ask around because there’s a number of countries competing for these skilled people and you’re going to find out that Canada doesn’t have its act together when it comes to
recognizing credentials and validating foreign or international training and experience,” Ablonczy says.
Embattled Citizenship and Immigration Minister Judy Sgro recently told a parliamentary committee meeting she wants to revamp legislation to create an “immigration and refugee program for the 21st Century.” Such efforts, however, may be hampered by allegations of misconduct in her office.
Sgro said she would be getting together with the provinces, cities and professional associations in June to address the
problem of integrating foreign-trained professionals.
“How do we make sure people have successful integration because it’s a huge loss,” Sgro said. “I think it’s a disservice to people when we say, ‘Come to Canada because you have a talent that we want,’ and then you get here and you can’t use that talent because we’re not prepared to open the doors for you.”
Sgro signaled a shift in strategy by emphasizing the role of cities. The report by United Way/Centraide calls for a city “Leadership Council” that will match immigrant skills with labour market needs, champion their skills to employers in Ottawa and raise public awareness about labour shortages and the untapped talent in the immigrant community.
Ablonczy says the report is an example of the grassroots level having to “pick up the ball” for a government that has been talking about immigrant credential recognition for more than a decade.
“The federal government will have to use a combination of carrots and sticks to make this all happen,” Ablonczy says.
“I think what the government has done now is . . . softened the perceptions of the difficulties that skilled people are going to face because they don’t want to be lost as the destination of choice.”