Feds have new plan to fill worker shortages

By Meagan Fitzpatrick, CBC News 

Posted: Jul 6, 2011 2:30 PM ET 

Last Updated: Jul 7, 2011 8:24 AM ET 

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Human Resources and Skills Development Minister Diane Finley announced a new initiative to address shortages of workers on Wednesday. (Sean Kilpatrick/Canadian Press)

The federal government plans to launch a new online tool to connect job seekers and employers as part of an effort to deal with a "skills crisis."

Human Resources and Skills Development Minister Diane Finley said at a news conference Wednesday in Ottawa that there are already major shortages of workers in health care, information technology and skilled trades. Where shortages don't currently exist, employers and other stakeholders are warning they are coming, she said.

"This is becoming a skills crisis. We want to avert that so we're trying something new," she said in announcing the government's intention to provide more information on its existing Working in Canada website.

She acknowledged that past efforts by the government to address unemployment and worker shortages haven't always been successful or efficient. During the recent recession, for example, there were challenges in getting workers to the places they were needed, Finley said.

With this latest initiative, the government will work much closer with the private sector to collect information about their needs and to provide it to post-secondary education institutions so they can prepare to train people in the areas where there will be shortages, and, to Canadians looking for jobs.

"Better information will help Canadians find jobs and make the right learning and career choices," Finley said.

The information about what sectors need workers now, and are going to need them in the years ahead, and in what parts of the country, will be featured on the website.

"It's a really collaborative approach for a change," said Finley.

She said her department is moving quickly on the project but couldn't provide a timeline for when it will be up and running.

The minister said Canada's economy is improving but that productivity and labour force growth are sluggish, and that addressing the skills shortage will help on that front.

"Skills shortages are costly. They mean reduced productivity and lower growth," she said. "We need to work smarter if we are to see the kind of prosperity and growth that an expanding labour force guaranteed in the past," said Finley.

Improving the matching of employee skills with market demands will help drive the country's economic recovery, she said.

The minister was joined at her press conference by Perrin Beatty, president and CEO of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, who said any effort made by the government to predict labour shortages is helpful.

Beatty said members of his organization are worried about the impending work shortages that will partly be caused as older Canadians retire.

"We have a skills problem in Canada, on its way to becoming a skills crisis unless we can successfully match the skills in this country with the needs that are going to be in the workforce," he said.

The enhanced federal government website is one of many measures that can be taken to help ward off further worker shortages, said Beatty. His organization would also like to see more action on other solutions, including expediting foreign credential recognition and attracting more international students to Canadian schools and enticing them to stay once they graduate.

"Canada's efforts will fail if they are not guided by the best possible intelligence and this is not a battle that any of us can afford to lose," he said.

New Website to Help Jobseekers and Students

Canada’s unemployment has been slow to go down after the recession, but what is surprising, or perhaps not surprising, is that many employers say they are struggling without qualified personnel.

So, the Canadian government has come up with a new website. Running under workingincanada.gc.ca, the website is a treasure trove for those seeking jobs and for employers.

The main search function can be used by Job Title, Skills Set possessed or Qualification.

Perhaps one of the most important segments of the new website is the Jobs Outlook segment. It is not yet complete, but once it is, the segment will yield sectors for which there will be demand, or not, in the coming years.

The federal government says one key reason for this website is resolve what it, and some of the major employers of Canada, calls a skills crisis.

It says that there is already a shortage of experienced people in the health care, information technology and skilled trades. For example, some reports say there will be a shortage of as many as 60,000 nurses throughout the country in ten years time.

What is interesting is that while unemployment remains high in many developed countries, policy makers in these countries also say there is a shortage of skilled personnel, and this will get only worse in the coming years.

Language Proficiency Rule to be Changed

OCTOBER 15, 2011

The Canadian government wants to change the way language proficiency is tested for those who apply to become citizens.

In a gazette Notice of Intent issued, Citizenship and Immigration Canada – the federal department in charge of immigration issues – says that in future it would like applicants to prove their proficiency in either of the two official languages – English and French – when they submit their citizenship application.

At present, language proficiency is tested during the citizenship application process. It is tested through the 20 multiple choice questions. If the applicant fails the test, then he or she has to appear before a citizenship judge to answer questions.

How to Prove Proficiency

But under the new proposals, applicants will have to prove, upfront, their fluency through one of the following three methods:

• The results of a third party test
• Evidence of completion of secondary or post-secondary education in English or French, or
• Evidence of achieving the Canadian Language Benchmark (CLB) or Niveaux de compétence linguistique canadiens level 4 (both these organizations set Canadian standards for language proficiency).

The CIC says that this is not an increase in the level of language proficiency, but rather change the way language proficiency for applicants between the ages of 18 to 54 is assessed.

The change has not become a rule, and the CIC wants public input. Those interested in expressing their views can do so within the next 30 days by accessing the contact information through this site.

The CIC has already made proficiency proof through written exams mandatory for those wanting to apply to immigrate to Canada.

What’s in a name? A job, maybe

TAVIA GRANT

Globe and Mail Blog

Posted on Friday, October 14, 2011 10:49AM EDT

Job seekers with common anglophone names such as Greg Brown on their résumés get more responses from employers in Canada’s three largest cities than applicants with foreign-sounding names – regardless of work experience, education or language proficiency, new research shows.

According to University of Toronto researchers Philip Oreopoulos and Diane Dechief, applications submitted by people with English-sounding names are 47 per cent more likely to receive callbacks than those with Indian or Chinese ones in Toronto, 39 per cent more likely in Montreal, and 20 per cent more likely in Vancouver.

The findings to be released Friday are consistent with Mr. Oreopoulos’s 2009 research, which focused strictly on employers in the Toronto area.

His follow-up research explores why employers seem to discriminate against job applicants with foreign-sounding names. The researchers sent out close to 8,000 randomly created résumés for various job postings in the three cities between February and September of last year. The jobs required at least a bachelor’s degree and four to six years of work experience. Some of the CVs had anglophone names such as Jill Smith, while others had Greek, Indian or Chinese names such as Lukas Minsopoulos, and Yong Zhang.

The researchers found that people with Greek, Chinese and Indian names are less likely to hear back from employers. “Even for applicants with Canadian education and Canadian experience ... the result is concerning that there this a difference that’s generated from a name,” Mr. Oreopoulos said.

The second part of the research asked HR professionals why they think people with foreign-sounding names are less likely to be contacted for an interview. The HR people typically cited concern over language or social skills – a response that contradicts the fact that many résumés clearly cited Canadian experience and fluency in English and French.

“Subconscious” discrimination may explain why immigrants with foreign-sounding names get lower callback rates, Mr. Oreopoulos said.

The study comes amid a persistent gap between immigrant and Canadian-born employment rates and wages. The jobless rate for Canadian-born workers was 5.4 per cent last month, compared to 8.3 per cent for all immigrants and 13.4 per cent for recent immigrants, according to the Toronto Immigrant Employment Data Initiative. Wages of recent immigrants are about 49 per cent lower than native-born workers, census data show – even though immigrants typically have higher rates of education.

The authors cite several solutions to the problem. One is to train recruiters to be more aware of possible bias, and to consider better ways of discerning foreign-language ability.

The project was co-funded by Metropolis British Columbia and Human Resources and Skills Development Canada.

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Canada-US border deal sparks worry in north

Canadians fought off the US once. But are the Americans making incursions again?

Sandro ContentaOctober 12, 2011 23:29

TORONTO, Canada — The Canadian government will spend $28 million to remind Canadians that their national identity was forged in a largely forgotten war against the United States.

“Without the War of 1812, Canada as we know it would not exist,” Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore said Tuesday, while announcing a three-year-long commemoration of the conflict.

“Not enough Canadians know about the importance of the War of 1812. It was the fight for Canada,” Moore told reporters.

American historian Alan Taylor described the war as Canada’s David-versus-Goliath victory in repelling a U.S. invasion. The battle has instilled a lasting suspicion of American intentions toward Canada’s sovereignty.

Flag-waving events begin the year of the war’s 200th anniversary, including battle re-enactments, films, concerts and the building of a permanent memorial in Ottawa to the War of 1812.

But some see this planned outpouring of Canadian patriotism with suspicion.

More from GlobalPost: IRS pursues Americans up north

News of the war’s commemoration broke at about the time that Canada and the U.S. were poised to announce a deal on security and trade along the 49th parallel.

That focused concerns that had been building during the past year, as both countries negotiated the border deal in secret.

Wayne Easter, international trade critic for the opposition Liberal Party, accused the government last week of wanting Canadians to “buy a pig in a poke.”“Canadians need to know how much is our personal privacy going to be affected by this perimeter security proposal, and is there going to be any impact on Canadian sovereignty,” Easter asked the government during a sitting of the House of Commons.The United States’ primary objective in the talks is to tighten security along a border that many American politicians, since the 9/11 attacks, consider too porous. Canadians see some of that concern as uninformed paranoia.

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The most astounding examples came in 2009, when both Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Senator John McCain wrongly claimed the 9/11 hijackers entered the U.S. through Canada.

Canadians have already seen a “thickening” of the border: Passports, instead of drivers’ licences, are now needed to cross, inspections of people and cargo have increased, and communities bissected by the border — like Derby Line, Vermont, and Stanstead, Quebec — have seen generations of interaction impeded by the growing apparatus of security. 

The Canadian government’s priority is to ease trade congestion along the almost 4,000 mile boundary. An estimated $1.6 billion worth of trade crosses the perimeter each day, a flow crucial to keeping Canada’s economy humming.

In exchange for smoother trade flow, critics fear Prime Minister Stephen Harper will allow the U.S. to impose security standards on Canada, and give U.S. authorities access to the private information of Canadian travellers.

Their nightmare scenario has the U.S. gaining some control over Canadian immigration and refugee policy by getting a say in who enters Canada.

Recent American actions haven’t helped ease anxieties. Some Canadian politicians reacted angrily earlier this month to news of a draft report by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency, proposing the use of “fencing and other barriers” along the Canadian border to manage “trouble spots where passage of cross-border violators is difficult to control.”

More troubling is U.S. President Barack Obama’s proposed job creation plan, which contains a protectionist “Buy American” clause that would prevent Canadian companies from bidding on $100 billion worth of U.S. infrastructure contracts.

Bob Rae, leader of the Liberal Party, urged the government to walk away from talks on a border deal until Obama dropped that clause.

“All I’m saying is it’s completely nuts to sign a deal when we’re getting hit every day of the week from the other side,” Rae said.

Harper has repeatedly insisted that Canada’s sovereignty isn’t up for grabs.

But as he and Obama prepare for a joint announcement on the border deal, there are fears that the patriotic breast-beating about the War of 1812 is camouflage for the U.S. getting through talks what it once couldn’t get with guns.

Increasingly lower rates of admission for parent and grandparent sponsorships

• Canada
• October 11 2011
• 

Author page »

During a recent parliamentary session opposition MPs expressed dismay that Canada is has barely reached the low end of its target admission rate for sponsored parents and grandparents last year. At this time, there is a backlog of 150,000 applications.      

In 2010, the department’s immigration levels plan had a target admission rate of 15,000 -18,000 in the parental sponsorship category, with Canada eventually accepting 15,324 applicants. By the end of 2010, 150,965 applications were waiting to be processed in parental sponsorship category. That backlog was 165,000 by March 2011. In 2011, the government lowered the bar for admission to 13,000 – 17,500. The progressively lower admission rates coupled with longer processing times suggest that the ministry is seriously considering either placing a moratorium on the parental sponsorship program or halting it altogether. A similar progress of lengthening processing times and low admission rates was seen in the Immigrant Entrepreneur program before the ministry announced that the program would be halted indefinitely – that announcement was made early this year. It remains to be seen whether this is the beginning of the end for the parent and grandparent sponsorship program.

Sweden’s big immigration idea: the ‘Canada model’Post title

DOUG SAUNDERS

London— Globe and Mail Update

Published Thursday, Oct. 13, 2011 2:36PM EDT

Last updated Thursday, Oct. 13, 2011 3:19PM EDT

For decades, Canadians have looked to the Swedes for inspiration. There was Ottawa’s campaign to get lumpy 30-year-old Canadians to be as fit as “the 60-year-old Swede.” There are frequent calls to imitate Stockholm’s environmental policies. And, of course, there’s hockey.

But in recent months, the tables have turned. Policy circles in Stockholm have been dominated with talk of adopting “the Canada model.” That, in fact, is the title of a widely discussed new Swedish book titledKanadamodellen – “The Canada Model,” which urges Sweden’s governments to start making things look more like their Nordic fellow on the other side of the Atlantic.

“We looked at Canada, and we saw that it worked – even though Canadians don’t always say this, from a Swedish perspective we felt that Canada is a model that should be followed,” said Martin Adahl, one of the book’s editors and a fellow with the Stockholm think tank FORES, as he visited London to discuss his ideas with a bemused group of British and Canadian scholars.

Specifically, the book’s editors are part of a growing group of Swedes that wants its government to adopt Canada’s immigration system – including its high numbers, its points-based recruitment scheme and its ethnic networks of support in major cities that help new immigrants find employment.

Its subtitle is, tellingly, “How immigration leads to work,” which explains the obsession with Canada: In Sweden, immigrants – the largest group of whom are refugees – are typically unemployed, marginalized and far poorer than the native-born population. This has led to alarming political tensions over immigration in this formerly very placid nation.

In Canada, by contrast, the employment rate among the foreign-born (about 70 per cent) is higher than that among native-born Canadians, most immigrants are economic (refugees make up a negligibly small slice of Canadian immigration), and the majority of Canadians say they aresatisfied both with the ethnic mix and the levels of immigration.

So from the shores of the Baltic, the Great White North looks like an immigration paradise. Mr. Adahl and his colleague Petter Hojem drew upon leading Canadian academics to produce studies and essays for their book – and here, they ran into difficulties.

“It was hard to convince Canadian academics to write about their own country as a positive example,” Mr. Adahl said. “They’re used to writing critically of it, and thinking of its failings, but I had to persuade them to write about Canada as a positive example – it wasn’t easy.”

Canada, Mr. Adahl says, does a couple things that European countries don’t do. First, it grants immediate access to employment, home and business ownership to new immigrants and refugee claimants. Second, it has a network of charities and non-governmental organizations that help settle and employ new arrivals. And third, it has a relatively open labour market, in which employers can easily hire and fire people, which makes it easier for immigrants to enter the work force.

In much of Europe, including Sweden, many full-time jobs are guaranteed for life, which creates a closed, privileged white-skinned elite and an excluded brown-skinned minority who are stuck in informal jobs and unemployment.

Canadian visa post located in the US are second last in the world in processing skilled worker applications

• Canada
• October 11 2011
• 

Author page »

Its glory days they are not: the rankings of the Buffalo-NY visa post responsible for processing Canadian immigration applications have plummeted from being near the top  -in terms of processing times globally - to near last. The Canadian Consulate General in Buffalo-NY, the main office responsible for the processing of Canadian Permanent Residence and temporary visa applications for persons in the USA intending to immigrate to Canada, was known as one of the fastest, most reliable processing centers for Canadian immigration applications globally – until recently. Only the visa posts in Trinidad & Tobago and Pakistan process applications slower than the Buffalo visa post at the moment. This cannot be good news for the many American nationals and persons living in the US who are considering immigrating permanently to Canada. With the highest rate of American immigration into Canada in the past 30 years, it may be the backlog, it may be the management, but something is certainly slowing down the processing of applications at this visa post. Applicants who submitted their documents when the Buffalo visa post had published processing standards of 6-12 months in past years, are dismayed to find out that processing times have grown to 21 months. For Federal Skilled Worker applicants, this delay is compounded by the fact that these applications must first pass a preliminary assessment stage at the Case Processing Centre, which itself takes an additional 5 months at this time. In all, waiting for 26 months may not be such an attractive deal to many highly qualified nationals. The solution? May applicants are instructing their Canadian immigration lawyers to submit their applications at the visa post responsible for their country of nationality. With processing times like 18 months in Damascus-Syria, 15 months for New Delhi – India, and 15 months for Mexico City – Mexico, many applicants, even those who may be working or living in the US, are asking their Canadian immigration lawyers to file their applications at the visa offices responsible for their home countries.    

Colombia FTA gives Canadian firms a big boost

The Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement came into force on August 15, 2011—a key boost for Canadian companies in five important sectors: agriculture, information and communications technologies, mining, oil and gas, and services.

The agreement gives Canadians access to new markets, customers and partnerships, creating stronger supply and production chains. The FTA will:

• Improve market access
• Remove or reduce trade barriers
• Make Canadian goods more competitive
• Reduce or eliminate tariffs on Canadian exports
• Allow free transfer of investment capital
• Provide investor protection and assurances
• Protect against unlawful expropriation
• Assure access to binding international arbitration

A separate double taxation agreement will also ensure people or businesses from one country are not double-taxed for doing business in the other.
The Canadian pork industry, for instance, will likely see its exports double to around $12 million within the next three years, starting immediately, says Jacques Pomerleau, President of Canada Pork International, the industry association that represents Canada’s pork producers.
“We really needed to level the playing field,” says Pomerleau. According to Pomerleau, Canadian pork exporters had to contend with difficult market conditions before this FTA was negotiated. “It used to be very difficult to calculate import tariffs,” he says. “Tariffs would vary constantly. One day we would pay a 25% tariff, the next it would be 5% and you never really knew why. Now, we have transparent and stable access to a very important market and that is great news for Canadian companies.”
Canada’s interest in Colombia is growing strongly, and the market is attracting Canadian businesses—oil and gas, mining and manufacturing in particular. The country has undergone important economic and legal reforms, spurring democracy and global direct investment. The business climate is now stable and predictable, making Colombia a secure business partner and a solid investment destination. Colombia also offers attractive investment incentives. There are more than 40 free trade zones where the corporate tax rate is 15 percent. Also, imported materials are exempt from customs duties and VAT.
For more information, visit The Canadian Trade Commissioner Service.

Opportunities in Colombia
Agriculture

• Exports: Reduced tariffs will offer greater opportunities for Canadian agricultural and food producers. Consumer demand for processed foods and high-value food products is rising steadily.
• Investment: Colombia has 34.5 million hectares available for agricultural land development and a climate that supports efficient production.

Information and communications technologies

• Exports: Colombia needs computer hardware and software, along with networking solutions and telecommunications equipment from foreign sources. The government procurement market is well worth exploring. Specialized software and e-services solutions are also in demand.
• Investment: Opportunities exist for mobile telecommunications, broadband and Internet service providers.

Mining

• Exports: Demand for transportation, early prospecting and drilling equipment is strong. Exploration companies also need geophysical, land surveying, mapping, engineering and environmental planning services.
• Investment: Investors are needed to expand coal and nickel mining production. International firms are also securing rights to explore Colombia’s gold and copper deposits.

Oil and gas

• Exports: Colombia needs equipment and services for all stages of oil and gas production.
• Investment: Opportunities to build and expand petrochemical production and ethanol-producing plants are promising.

Services

• Exports: Transportation infrastructure is needed, including urban transit, roads, ports and airports. Engineering and construction firms stand to benefit from opportunities in the power generation and transmission sector. Environmental services are also in high demand. The government is investing in waste management and water treatment services.
• Opportunities: There are excellent prospects in engineering, forestry, mining, oil and gas financial services, and education.