National foreign credential ministry long overdue
Everyone has heard stories about under-employed Canadian immigrants, like the Pakistani doctor driving a taxicab or the Chinese engineer working at a convenience store.
These common anecdotes have become less shocking with time; an unfortunate, but accepted fact of Canadian life.
The stripping of credentials and subsequent underemployment of foreign trained immigrants is unacceptable. Not only does Canada portray a false image of providing professional opportunities to immigrants, we’re also failing to take advantage of skills and expertise our cities and regions desperately need.
Besides the tax-cut talk and daycare debacle, Stephen Harper made a logical campaign promise in January. While in Toronto, he stood before a group of foreign-born Canadians and pledged to create a national agency to assess and recognize foreign credentials.
Harper’s promise makes sense. Canada needs to change the way it certifies foreign credentials, and it needs to do it now.
Over the last 10 years, Canada has accepted an average of 225,000 immigrants a year.
The Conference Board of Canada, a non-profit business research association, says more than half of these people are educated-skilled professionals.
The board also reports that on average, immigrants have higher levels of education than Canadian-born citizens. Eighty per cent of skilled immigrants and 20 per cent of family-class immigrants had a university degree in 2001. Only 15 per cent of Canadians did.
Canada’s workforce is also getting older. Baby-boomers are retiring and there simply aren’t enough young Canadians to meet these labour demands. At the same time, the country’s relying on skilled labour more than ever before. From 1991 to 2001, the national labour force increased by 15 million people. Half of this growth took place in skilled jobs that require a university degree.
For all these reasons the government should be doing everything possible to certify skilled immigrants, but this isn’t happening.
There are 15 regulated professions in Canada, but more than 400 regulatory boards. Each profession has a different recognition process in every province and territory. So a dietician certified in Nova Scotia, isn’t necessarily certified in Alberta.
This confusing and complex system has left thousands of immigrants waiting years in a bureaucratic backlog to have their credentials certified. Skilled immigrants are left flipping burgers while Canadians are short on doctors and engineers.
For example, Ontario is currently facing a doctor shortage, yet there are 4,000 internationally trained doctors living in the province that aren’t allowed to practice medicine.
A single ministry dealing specifically with foreign credentials is long overdue.
Provincial regulatory boards should coordinate to establish national standards. The requirements to practice any skilled profession should not be different from one province to another.
If created, a national ministry could speed up the bureaucratic process, eliminate the fragmented system and get skilled immigrants working in their chosen professions.
Provincial and federal politicians have admitted there are major problems with the way Canada treats its foreign professionals for years now. Stephen Harper and his conservatives have a logical plan to fix the problem, and Canadians and new immigrants shouldn’t have to wait any longer.