SMART CITIES

On immigration, Canada could learn from world capitals

NICK ROCKEL

Special to Globe and Mail Update

Published Wednesday, Sep. 21, 2011 5:00AM EDT

Last updated Wednesday, Sep. 21, 2011 7:44AM EDT

Ratna Omidvar thinks Canadian cities could be doing more to welcome skilled and entrepreneurial immigrants. As president of Maytree, a Toronto-based foundation that seeks to reduce poverty and inequality, Ms. Omidvar knows how important these newcomers are to urban economies.

Through its DiverseCity project, Maytree is working to propel more members of the Greater Toronto Area’s visible minority population into leadership roles.

But the GTA has some catching up to do, says Ms. Omidvar, who is also co-chair of DiverseCity Community Resource Society. In a 2009 report, Ryerson University’s Diversity Institute in Management & Technology found that visible monitories accounted for just 14 per cent of the region’s leadership positions, even though they made up 49.5 per cent of its population.

Ms. Omidvar’s organization is also looking at ways to make Toronto friendlier to immigrant entrepreneurs by offering programs tailored to them. Barcelona and Vienna both have a full suite of services to help immigrants launch their own businesses, she notes.

Although Canada has a robust immigrant settlement and integration framework, it can learn from these cities, Ms. Omidvar argues. “It’s actually quite mind-boggling how much more creative they are than we are,” she says. “We have not grabbed the opportunity that would-be immigrant entrepreneurs present to us.”

In a global economy, cities that attract and successfully integrate immigrants gain an edge over their rivals. But an ethnically diverse leadership and talent pool is just one part of the equation. Cities must also win their share of the educated and highly mobile young workers who figure prominently in companies’ location choices.

Skilled immigrants make Canada more globally competitive, says Alison Konrad, professor of organizational behaviour at the University of Western Ontario’s Richard Ivey School of Business.

“The deep knowledge of other cultures they can bring to our businesses has a lot of potential,” Dr. Konrad explains. “Where it starts having synergies and is a catalyst for business is when people help us to understand new groups of customers that are relatively not well served.”

International immigration has played a crucial and often overlooked role in the United States’ economic success, says Joe Cortright, president and chief economist of Impresa, a Portland, Ore.-based consulting firm that specializes in metropolitan economies and knowledge-based industries.

No doubt. Between 1995 and 2005, according to a Duke University study, 25.3 per cent of U.S. engineering and technology startups had at least one foreign-born founder.

Meanwhile, U.S. metropolitan areas with the highest levels of educational attainment – a key driver of prosperity – are home to the most immigrants, Mr. Cortright says. “Places like New York, San Francisco and Miami all have very large immigrant populations, and a very high fraction of their well-educated population [was] born abroad.”

Immigrants tend to move to places where members of their community already live, Mr. Cortright adds. Also, some cities are more globally connected than others. For example, Miami and San Francisco have close ties to Latin America and Asia, respectively. “There are a whole set of cultural and institutional factors in those cities that I think make them much more capable of attracting and assimilating immigrants,” Mr. Cortright says.

The right programs can make a big difference, too. Ivey’s Dr. Konrad works with employers through the Toronto Region Immigrant Employment Council (TRIEC), which was co-founded by Maytree and includes members from business, labour and government. On the employer side, TRIEC trains companies to do culturally competent selection and hiring.

One stumbling block for Canadian employers is that they may not recognize topnotch educational credentials from countries such as China and India, Dr. Konrad explains. “Our selection systems, on the objective as well as the more subjective side, are really skewed for people in our own culture,” she says. “We miss a lot of talent that way.”

At the industry-led Edmonton Region Immigrant Employment Council, a mentorship program helps skilled immigrants move toward jobs that match their educational and professional backgrounds. “They sometimes need a little bit of an insider’s guide to what it’s like to work in the Canadian workplace,” says executive director Doug Piquette.

Many of them weren’t born overseas, but talented young workers also play a vital role in cities’ economic development. Impresa’s Mr. Cortright spends much of his time tracking the movements of well-educated young people throughout the U.S. As he points out, they’re the most mobile demographic in American society.

Since 2000, Impresa reports, the number of college-educated 25- to 34-year-olds living in or near the cores of the 51 largest U.S. metropolitan areas has grown by 26 per cent. That’s double the increase outside of close-in metropolitan neighbourhoods.

Because this age group is smaller than it was in the 1990s and the oldest baby boomers have started to retire, talent is scarcer, Mr. Cortright says. “Increasingly, employers are making location decisions based on what’s a place where there are lots of talented people already and to which it’s relatively easy to attract more if [they] need them.”

To become one of those places, a city must offer amenities such as interesting neighbourhoods and good public transit, Mr. Cortright advises. It also needs a distinct identity – for Portland, it’s beer, bikes and Birkenstocks. “Figure out what your niche is, what groups you appeal to, and focus on that,” Mr. Cortright says. “No city can be the best place for everybody.”

City moves

Maytree, the Toronto-based foundation, showcases global cities’ efforts to integrate immigrants on its Cities of Migration website. Here are five examples from the world of work:

HAMBURG, GERMANY:
In 2006, Hamburg kicked off a marketing campaign to recruit more civil servants from immigrant backgrounds. It has generated results: Last year this group accounted for 15 per cent of trainees for mid-level positions, compared with 5 per cent when the campaign began.
BARCELONA, SPAIN:
In a city where immigrants made up almost 20 per cent of the population in 2009, economic development agency Barcelona Activa has adapted its well-established entrepreneurship programs to serve them.
COPENHAGEN, DENMARK:
The Danish Centre for Information on Gender, Equality and Ethnicity runs a mentoring program that matches immigrant and refugee women with counterparts from the work force.
NEW YORK CITY:
Besides helping immigrant professionals adapt to and succeed in the job market, the non-profit organization Upwardly Global operates an employer network.
AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND:
In 2008, local civic and business leaders launched Opportunities for Migrant Employment in Greater Auckland. They modelled it on the Toronto Region Immigrant Employment Council.

Immigration a labour solution

BY BRUCE JOHNSTONE, LEADER-POST SEPTEMBER 21, 2011

Linda West, president of Actyl Group Inc., a Regina-based immigration consulting firm, and Marc Capistrano, of Staffhouse International Resources, a Philippines-based human resources company, spoke on international recruitment on Tuesday.

Photograph by: Troy Fleece, Leader-Post, Leader-Post

Saskatchewan's economic boom is coinciding with the retiring baby boom, creating a ticking timebomb that could stall the province's economic and population growth in the decades ahead, a local business group was told Tuesday.

One solution to the coming labour crunch is immigrant workers, particularly from the Philippines, where half the workers are fluent in English, most are welleducated, hard-working and reliable, according to Linda West, president of Actyl Group Inc., a Regina-based immigration consulting firm, and Marc Capistrano of Staffhouse International Resources, a Philippinesbased human resources company.

West and Capistrano, who spoke at a luncheon meeting of the Regina & District Chamber of Commerce, are partners in the growing business of providing skilled and semi-skilled labour for Saskatchewan employers, who are having difficulty finding and retaining Canadian-born employees.

West, who has a PhD in health management and an MBA, said demographic patterns are changing due to the retirement of the baby boom generation and the relatively small generation of working age people replacing them.

In addition, many Canadian young people are shying away from jobs in the service sector, leaving employers scrambling to fill jobs in the restaurant industry, for example.

Another area of rapid job growth is construction, followed by manufacturing. Skilled trades, such as pipefitters, sheet metal workers, welders and other 'red seal' trades, will continue to be in high demand as the economy ramps up.

Signs of the coming labour market squeeze are: wage inflation, project delays or cancellations and lower economic growth, West said.

"Our GDP is expected to get damped down by our workforce very substantively between 2015 and 2020-25 just because there will not be enough of a workforce. We're just seeing the beginning of the crisis, unfortunately. It's getting worse."

That's where the Philippines comes into the picture.

Capistrano said the Philippines' 400-year history of Spanish rule, followed by the U.S. occupation in 1898 has created an Asian country that is 90-per-cent Roman Catholic and 50-percent English speaking. And because Filipinos are generally hard-working, highly educated and reliable, they are employed in 190 different countries around the world as everything from labourers and technicians to highly skilled professionals.

But employers need to allow six to eight months minimum to get Filipino employees into the country due to Philippine immigration rules and restrictions imposed by federal immigration officials, as well as provincial programs, like the Saskatchewan Immigrant Nominee Program (SINP).

"There's a ton of paperwork, both here in Canada and in the Philippines,'' West said. "So we encourage you to get involved very early - six, eight, 10, 15 months out ... So the (immigrant workers) are ready to come, they already have their visas and you're just picking up the phone when you need them.''

If the workers are needed in less than six months, the applicants will have to be "multi-tracked. It will make your head spin. We'll be doing your paperwork ... and we'll be needing a lot of your attention very intensely at the beginning.''

West estimated Actyl has brought about 450 immigrants into the province in the last three years, but the demand in the years ahead will be in the thousands.

"The projection from the Saskatchewan Construction Association is 7,000 workers in the next two years."

Added Capistrano: "The numbers are staggering. One client of mine said they would need 6,000 workers in the next two years.'' bjohnstone@leaderpost.com

Canada’s immigration minister in the hot seat

By QMI AGENCY

Posted 22 hours ago

Laurie Callsen

Camrose Canadian
CAMROSE — Canada's head of immigration and employment was put in the hot seat during a recent stop.
At a Sept. 14 meeting hosted by the Chamber of Commerce, federal citizenship, immigration and multiculturalism minister Jason Kenny spoke about how Canada's immigration and employment sector has adapted since the recession and plans down the road to streamline the immigration process.
"Canada can be very proud of how blessed we are as a country, how we got through (the recession) stronger than pretty much any other major economy in the world.
And we're the only major economy that has replaced all the jobs that were lost in that period of time.
Now we have the strongest growth, the soundest financial institutions, the best fiscal position and the best job creation record," Kenny said.
"This is where immigration comes in. ... For a couple of generations, Canadians have been deciding to have fewer kids than we need to grow or maintain our population, which means ultimately fewer workers and fewer tax payers to pay for benefits, health care and pensions for our growing number of retired folk."
Kenny said the Canadian immigration program is needed to help Canada's economy, because foreign workers are qualified and can help fill the gaps in the labour market. The Temporary Foreign Worker program looks at bringing in qualified individuals to Canada to work jobs that Canadians aren't applying for. The process is initiated by the employer, who has to prove that no Canadian has applied for the position before looking outside Canada's borders for employees.
"We have to move Canadians who are unemployed or underemployed into getting jobs. It doesn't make any sense to me, but we all know it's true, that there are parts of this country with double-digit unemployment and yet here in Alberta and in Saskatchewan, we have ... virtual full employment," he said.
Russians working in Atlantic Canada

"Believe it or not, I'm actually bringing in temporary foreign workers from Russia to work in fish processing plants in parts of Atlantic Canada with double-digit unemployment. Tell me how that makes any sense. Why would somebody want to be sitting at home collecting an EI cheque when there's decent work down the road?"

But some present at the meeting pointed out the flaws in the program. One man who drove from Peace River because he knew the minister would be in Camrose, said the red tape and bureaucracy he has to go through to bring in temporary foreign workers is enormous, but without the program he would have to live on welfare.
"In 2009 when we had the recession, because unemployment was going up and a significant number of Canadian were being laid off, the government wanted to be sure that we weren't extending foreign workers into an economy where Canadians were going to need those jobs.
"That's why they tightened up to the one-year Labour Market Option (LMO). Now that things are moving and now that unemployment is going down and the labour market is getting tighter, we recognize that there's a need to relax these rules," Kenny said, adding that he was working with the Human Resources ministry to streamline the application process.
Another problem one employer was having was his foreign employees wouldn't honour the contract. He has had several foreign workers skip town on him to get higher-paying jobs in Edmonton, he told Kenny.
Kenny said that the ministry is looking to streamline its application process for all immigration departments, so files are electronic and accessible to all ministry employees, so when someone calls to get an update on their file, they can actually get results instead of being handed off from desk to desk. Currently, there are one million applications in the system, with hundreds more trying to apply for immigration.
"We don't get any more money to deal with all that volume. We have to deal with the same budget that we had years and years ago. We're trying to fix this. It doesn't happen overnight. We're bringing in technology to move it all to an electronic system.
Fixing communication problem
"Secondly, we're going to contract out our telephone information line. We're going to make it much more efficient so people actually get someone on the line, we give them information but were going to charge them a couple of bucks to make the call so we can actually pay to hire more people," he said.
"We're also putting limits on the new applications coming in so the wait times aren't as long.
"These are some of the things we're trying to do to fix these huge bureaucratic problems that we have. I want my ministry to operate more like a businesses. You want to go faster? Fine. You pay us more, so we can connect the revenue that we get with the service we provide," Kenny said, pointing to Passport Canada's policy of processing passport applications faster for an extra fee.
Kenny was on a tour of Alberta to speak about immigration and employment issues, with additional stops in Red Deer, Stettler and Edmonton.

Canada announces Banting Fellowships

July 14, 2010
Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada, has announced the establishment of Banting Postdoctoral Fellowships, a prestigious new program by the Government of Canada to attract and develop world's best and brightest postdoctoral researchers in Canada.

“To remain at the forefront of the global economy, we must invest in the people and ideas that will produce tomorrow's breakthroughs," said Prime Minister Harper. “The Banting Postdoctoral Fellowships will give scholars in research institutions across the country the support they need to explore and develop their ideas to their fullest potential.”

The Banting Postdoctoral Fellowships are the latest initiative under the Government of Canada's comprehensive, long-term National Science and Technology Strategy. The new program will establish Canada as a global leader in higher learning, research and science and technology development. Under the program, 70 new fellowships will be awarded each year, with funding provided through the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

Additional information:

Banting Postdoctoral Fellowships are designed to attract to Canada the best researchers in the world. The program will award 70 new fellowships a year valued at $70,000 annually for two years, totalling $45 million over five years. The value of these awards is competitive internationally and represents the same international calibre and prestige offered by the Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarships ($50,000 annually for three years).
Banting Fellowships will be open to both Canadian and international applicants to support universities and research institutions in attracting and retaining top talent from within Canada and around the world. Up to 25 per cent of Canadian awardees will be eligible to go to a foreign research institution for their postdoctoral placements, helping them establish worldwide networks, and raising awareness of Canadian research excellence.
The new postdoctoral fellowships will help to build an economic and competitive advantage for Canada by attracting and training highly qualified, innovative people. This new program is part of a full suite of Canadian funding programs to support top-tier researchers at every stage of their careers. The new program will help establish Canada as a global leader in higher learning, research, and science and technology development. Canada's universities and all Canadians will benefit from greater international partnerships, and Canadian university students will be given enhanced learning opportunities.
The fellowships will be known as the Banting Postdoctoral Fellowships, in memory of Sir Frederick Banting, the Canadian physician, researcher, Nobel laureate and war hero who, together with his assistant Dr. Charles Best, is credited with the discovery of insulin.
The deadline for applying this year is 3 November 2010. Applicants who are not Canadian citizens or permanent residents of Canada may only hold their Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship at a Canadian institution.

For further information on Banting Postdoctoral Fellowships please visit:

For media enquiries, please contact archana.mirajkar@international.gc.ca orsmriti.saxena@international.gc.ca

Roll out the red carpet for foreign students

BY ARVIND GUPTA, VANCOUVER SUN SEPTEMBER 20, 2011

Declining fertility coupled with longer retirements presents us with a demographic challenge. We face a predicted national shortage of over one million qualified workers by 2025. Our ability to address this looming crisis will define our society for decades to come.

How will we deal with this? While ramping up domestic training is crucial, immigration must play a central role. Already, 75 per cent of Canada's workforce growth is attributable to immigration, growing to 100 per cent in the next decade. As Immigration Minister Jason Kenney noted: "Canada's post-recession economy demands a high level of economic immigration to keep our economy strong."

Other nations face similar challenges, so we must be ever more strategic in meeting our workforce needs. Skilled immigrants face well-characterized challenges to success. International students, on the other hand, largely surmount these challenges: During their studies, they earn Canadian credentials, gain proficiency in an official language, and establish professional and personal networks in Canada. With roughly 50 per cent of international students planning to stay and work in Canada, ramping up international student recruitment is an effective strategy for economic immigration. And the 50 per cent who plan to leave? They often land in leading positions with business or government in their home countries, increasing Canada's economic and diplomatic connections.

There are additional immediate compelling arguments in favour of international education. Today 3.7 million post-secondary students study internationally, growing to an expected seven million by 2025. Canada hosted more than 218,000 international students at all levels last year. They injected $6.5 billion into the Canadian economy, more than exports of either coniferous lumber or coal. Over $300 million annually in government revenue and 83,000 Canadian jobs are directly attributable to international education, which is now Canada's No. 1 export to China, No. 2 export to South Korea and No. 4 to India.

Canada has demonstrated significant growth in international education, doubling the number of students during the last decade, yet we trail the major players - the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France and Australia. But Canada has distinct advantages: We boast a deserved reputation for being open and safe; are home to large immigrant communities; our universities rank among the world's best; and we have well-established economic and cultural links to Asia-Pacific countries, a rapidly growing source of international students.

It is time for a national, coordinated strategy for international student recruitment.

British Columbia provides a model for Canadian success. With 13 per cent of Canada's population, it attracts 28 per cent of Canada's international students, with recruitment growing at a rate four times the national average. International education is a top-five export sector, generating $1.8 billion annually in economic activity and supporting 21,000 full-time jobs. It is the single biggest trade sector with India, Saudi Arabia and Mexico, and in the top three with Brazil, Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan and China. Premier Christy Clark should build on this success during her upcoming trip to India and China.

The real challenge, however, is to place Canada foremost in the minds of students, their professors and their families. Traditional recruitment strategies, such as education fairs, do a good job of targeting a broad base of students. We also need to reach out to the exceptional students who are the basis for the knowledge workforce. Vanier and Banting scholarships, while limited in number, can be showcased to students in target countries. Proactive recruitment and marketing programs like Mitacs Globalink, which target the best international students for summer research internships at Canadian universities, are showing excellent outcomes both for recruitment and for raising our profile abroad.

We must support students' efforts to establish themselves, helping them transition into successful Canadian economic immigrants.

A national strategy on international education will help solve the looming labour shortage while producing immediate economic advantages. B.C. is in a strong position to take leadership. The short-term and long-term benefits to the economy and our ability to solve our demographic challenges make it in our best interest to get it right.

Dr. Arvind Gupta is CEO and scientific director of Mitacs, a national research network focused on connecting university-based math researchers with companies to solve real-world challenges. He is also a professor of computer science at UBC.

MARPAC opens doors to immigrants

Ben Green, Staff writer

Canada is renowned for its diversity.

Each year, thousands of immigrants arrive on Canadian soil via land, sea, and air in search of a new start and a better life.

Starting this month, Maritime Forces Pacific (MARPAC) is providing valuable Canadian work experience as a stepping-stone in the right direction.

MARPAC is participating in the Federal Internship for Newcomers program. The program, which Citizenship Immigration Canada (CIC) ran last year internally, takes qualified, pre-screened newcomers and matches them with federal managers, who will benefit from having a skilled employee for a three-month casual employment. The new immigrant gains federal work experience, interviewing skills and networking possibilities.

"It's a strategy that allows us access to newcomer communities and offers them something they need. It provides us with people in those communities to build awareness of federal employment," says David Lau, acting MARPAC diversity and workforce renewal desk officer. This is the FIN program's first year and is limited to administrative and computer support, casual positions.

When CIC piloted the program last year, they partnered with local immigrant support agencies to find people for the positions. MARPAC has teamed up with the Victoria Immigrant and Refugee Centre. Counsellors refer clients to CIC, who in turn screen them for proper qualifications. If they pass screening they are offered an interview for one of the job openings.

"This initiative is win-win. It gives MARPAC the opportunity to develop closer relationships with local newcomer communities and encourages career development at DND. The Internship strategy directly addresses the rapidly changing regional demographics and will help reduce barriers to our future job competitions giving MARPAC a wider range of qualified applicants for future job competitions. The benefit for the Interns is that get a fantastic resume-boosting opportunity to apply their skills in the federal workplace while building their future here in Canada,"

Source: http://www.lookoutnewspaper.com/top-stories.php?id=541

Ottawa to streamline foreign worker plan

Kenney vows changes to ease labour shortages

By Rebecca Penty, Calgary Herald September 17, 2011

Federal Immigration Minister Jason Kenney promised Friday to improve a program that allows companies to bring in foreign workers, amid labour shortages in some Alberta industries.

Kenney, speaking at a Calgary Chamber of Commerce lunch, vowed to meet with leaders next month across several sectors to address their challenges in hiring using the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, following more general meetings about immigration held in Alberta through the summer that made it evident the program is a priority for businesses.

"It's our intention to hammer out a process that is more efficient, that eliminates unnecessary and redundant bureaucracy, or red tape, so that the Temporary Foreign Worker Program works, on time, for the Alberta economy," Kenney said.
In October the Calgary Southeast MP will join Diane Finley, Human Resources and Skills Development minister, in meetings with employers from the oil and gas, construction, agriculture and hospitality sectors and labour representatives to talk about the program, which the government attempted to improve last April 1 by adopting new rules against mistreatment of foreign workers.

The latest figures from Statistics Canada for Alberta, from August, show unemployment in the province at 5.6 per cent - third lowest after Saskatchewan (4.5 per cent) and Manitoba (5.4 per cent).

Human Resources and Skills Development Canada numbers show 42,885 temporary foreign workers were employed in Alberta in 2010.
The program, which Kenney described as "much maligned" but misunderstood by those labour groups who feel foreigners are taking Canadian jobs, has had a limited effect on a tight labour situation in the oil and gas sector, according to Cheryl Knight of the Petroleum Human Resources Council of Canada.

"There is a strong disconnect with the Government of Canada's program prioritizing so-called skilled workers, where skill is associated with education. For our industry, skill is something different," said Knight, the executive director and CEO of the Calgary-based organization, who noted there are shortages in field workers in oil and gas, well services and drilling workers and supervisors.
"Because those jobs do not require formal post-secondary education, they're not seen as skilled workers."

When questioned, Kenney was aware of Knight's concern and remembered a July meeting with her group. "I think what they're telling us is there are people who in actual fact, have very high levels of skill, but not on paper. They may not have a high school education, they may not have a diploma, they may not have trade certification, but they're able to run a sophisticated $10-million gas fracking (hydraulic fracturing) operation," he said.
"We are sensitive to that concern and we are looking at it."

The federal minister also suggested another solution to the energy industry labour issues could be bringing in unemployed U.S. workers, a practice currently limited through a North American Free Trade Agreement visa program to about 5,000 people per year.

Kenney said the government must also try to match unemployed Canadians with jobs in parts of the country facing labour shortages, noting 80 per cent of Canadians surveyed by Ottawa feel immigration levels are already too high.

penty@calgaryherald.com

Immigration Canada

SMART CITIES

On immigration, Canada could learn from world capitals

NICK ROCKEL

Special to Globe and Mail Update

Published Wednesday, Sep. 21, 2011 5:00AM EDT

Last updated Wednesday, Sep. 21, 2011 7:44AM EDT

HAMBURG, GERMANY:

BARCELONA, SPAIN:

COPENHAGEN, DENMARK:

NEW YORK CITY:

AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND: