Essential resources for immigrating to Canada


Globe and Mail Update

This list of resources represents only a small collection of websites, groups and organizations dealing with immigration in Canada. Add to this list by submitting your suggestions at the bottom of this page.
National
  • Citizenship and Immigration Canada: The Government of Canada's online immigration portal with information on moving to Canada, applying for citizenship and multiculturalism.
  • The Maytree foundation: A Canadian charity focused on reducing poverty in Canada by offering training, networking and other resources.
  • Metropolis Canada: An international research and public policy network focused on immigrant integration in Canada with several provincial divisions.
  • International Experience Canada (IEC): A partnership program with many countries allowing youth to travel to Canada to work, study and explore. French citizens between 18 and 35 can see this program. - Suggested by Davor Miskulin and Rob Vineberg, members of the Globe and Mail Advisory Panel on Immigration
  • Canadian Council for Refugees: A non-profit umbrella organization focused on the protection and settlement of refugees in Canada.Suggested by Lori Wilkinson, a member of the Globe and Mail Advisory Panel on Immigration
  • Institute for Canadian Citizenship: A national, non-profit organization focused on helping new citizens by connecting them with established citizens and promoting Canadian experiences.Suggested by Globe reader Jess Duerden.
  • Immigration Business Network (ib2ib): A Canada-wide interactive website for business immigrants settling in Canada. Located in Quebec. Suggested by Globe reader Patricia Rimok.
Ontario
Alberta
  • Government of Alberta immigration: The main resource page for living and working in Alberta.
  • Alberta Immigrant Nominee Program: Designed to attract skilled immigrants to the province, these nominee programs work with the federal government, which makes final decisions about applicants.
  • Calgary Region Immigrant Employment Council: Works with employers and immigrants in Calgary to help new Canadians find work commensurate with their skills and experience.
  • Catholic Social Services: An agency based in Alberta offering settlement, educational, language, employment and outreach services for free in more than 35 languages. Suggested by Rob Vineberg, a member of the Globe and Mail Advisory Panel on Immigration
British Columbia
  • British Columbia immigration: The main resource page for immigrating to B.C., including information about living, working and studying in the province.
  • Settlement services map: An interactive map containing resources and services for new immigrants in the province.
  • S.U.C.C.E.S.S.: A large social service agency in B.C. providing settlement services, ESL training, employment counseling and community development services to new immigrants.
  • Metropolis British Columbia: A research centre focused on immigration and diversity in B.C.
  • Immigrant Employment Council of B.C. (IEC-BC): Works with businesses to promote the benefits of integrating immigrants into the province's labour market. Helps businesses attract, hire and retain skilled immigrants. Suggested by Globe reader Roley Chiu.
Saskatchewan
Manitoba
  • Immigrate to Manitoba: The Government of Manitoba's official web portal for information about immigrating and settling in the province
  • Manitoba Provincial Nominee Program: A partnership with the Government of Canada intended to recruit skilled workers to the province.
  • Immigrant Centre: A resource and training centre in Winnipeg focused on helping new immigrants integrate within the province.
  • Business Council of Manitoba: A group of professionals in Manitoba focused on the province's economic and community growth, including immigration policy. Suggested by Rob Vineberg, a member of the Globe and Mail Advisory panel on Immigration
Quebec
Prince Edward Island
Newfoundland and Labrador
Nova Scotia
Yukon
Northwest Territories
  • NWT Nominee Program: A program allowing qualified individuals, business owners and self-employed immigrants to obtain permanent residency in a shorter time than the usual process.

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Why some Chinese immigrants feel they can’t make money in Canada

The Globe
The Globe (Photo credit: Christine ™)

MARK MACKINNON

SHANGHAI— From Saturday's Globe and Mail


This is part of The Immigrant Answer –The Globe's series on the future of immigration in Canada. Read the original story here.
For young and well-educated Chinese like Emily Gao, the lure of immigrating to Canada is obvious: Clean air, public health care and a strong education system are all draws compared with living in a country that lacks them. Add the large Chinese communities that already exist in places such as Vancouver and Toronto, plus relatively cheap real estate (compared with prices in some Chinese cities), and you have something close to a dream destination.
What’s not so clear is that skilled young workers like her would be better off economically if they make the leap.
“In Canada, you have a good standard of living, but you can’t make big money,” says the 29-year-old Ms. Gao, who has a finance degree from the University of Toronto and owns a home in Richmond Hill, Ont., but is back in Shanghai, where she and her new husband have both found well-paid jobs.
Ms. Gao’s decision to move back home highlights the new realities Canada faces in attracting skilled immigrants. Ironically, she now works to match Chinese buyers with property in Canada, and staffed a booth at this month’s Shanghai World Real Estate Expo where Vancouver-based realtor Westbank Corp. offered everything from condominiums in Vancouver to luxury apartments in Toronto and farmland in Quebec.
Like her, many of the prospective buyers said they admire the social system in Canada but are not sure that they would be better off there.
Another common complaint is that Canada’s shifting immigration policies now favour those with money to invest over the skilled workers they used to emphasize (although changes to the Federal Skilled Worker Program proposed by Immigration Minister Jason Kenney seek to address that).
Once seen as a great place to live and work, Canada is increasingly considered by many Chinese more as a great place to retire.
“My son studied and then worked in Canada, but he’s back in Shanghai because the opportunities are better here now,” said a retired civil servant touring the real-estate show who would only give his family name, Zhou.
Nonetheless, Mr. Zhou was looking at properties in Canada because his son, an investment banker who graduated from the University of British Columbia, has permanent-resident status and would consider returning to B.C. if the whole family could make the move. However, “they want only investors,” he said of Immigration Canada. “You have to have money.”
Wang Huiyao, vice-chair of the Western Returned Scholars Association, an umbrella agency for foreign-educated Chinese academics, says that, rather than trying to attract and keep immigrants, Canada should focus on making it easier for top talent to go back and forth from their birth country.
Talented people should be treated like other resources, and the path cleared for them to move freely, in the same way governments already facilitate the flow of goods and capital, says Dr. Wang, a former graduate student at the University of Windsor and the University of Western Ontario.
“A lot of people live in Canada for a few months, and then China for a few months. ... Our policies don’t really address this new phenomenon,” he says, referring to immigration rules in both Canada and China.
“Right now, there’s competition for talent, a talent war, going on. That’s not healthy. Instead, there should be better planning. Both sides should be facilitating the movement of talent – if Canada lacks nurses and China has [extra] nurses, then China should facilitate nurses going to Canada.”
The sales pitch to top talent should focus on the same natural advantages that had Chinese looking to buy property in Toronto and Vancouver, Dr. Wang says. “Canada’s competitive advantage is not wheat or IT or Northern Telecom any more. The new power of Canada is soft power – the ability to attract people with its education system and health care.”

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    How immigrants affect the economy: Weighing the benefits and costs


    JOE FRIESEN


    This is part of The Immigrant Answer –The Globe's series on the future of immigration in Canada. Read the original story here.
    A few months after arriving in Canada in 2005, Edwin Sonsona was working 20 hours a day at six different jobs. He began each morning at 3 a.m., delivering the local newspaper.
    By the time the sun was up he would don a uniform to flip hamburgers at McDonald's for $7.25 an hour. He rushed packages around town as a courier and set up store displays for Coca-Cola. Then he would go to a warehouse where he supervised the unloading of clothing destined for Winners stores. In the evenings he delivered Kentucky Fried Chicken until 11 p.m.
    He kept up that pace for a year, sleeping four hours a night and taking one day a week to dedicate to his church. It was exhausting, but everyone told him he needed to gain Canadian experience.
    “I said to myself, ‘I'm starting from scratch. Nobody's going to help you,' “ Mr. Sonsona said. “Moving from your native land, if you're not motivated, you're not going to be successful – you're going to be a sour-grapes man.”
    Mr. Sonsona's experience illustrates many of the hardships faced by immigrants over the last 30 years: Although he has an engineering degree and had been a mid-level employee at a multinational company in the Philippines, Canadian employers gave Mr. Sonsona entry-level, low-skill jobs. Even when working six of them, Mr. Sonsona was still earning less than $30,000 per year, substantially below the Canadian average, meaning he was contributing a relatively small amount in taxes.
    Today Mr. Sonsona, now 41, has left the bustle of Winnipeg for small-town life in the immigration hotbed of Steinbach, Man. He is employed full time as a genetic technician at a hog-production company. He also takes shifts as a personal-support worker and works as a dance DJ on weekends. He runs a remittance business from his house that transferred $300,000 back to the Philippines last year (he got about $10 per transaction). And he plans to open an Asian food store later this year. His income is up to about $50,000.
    In the long term, he wants to open a hog concern in the Philippines, a mirror image of his Canadian employer: When the Manitoba operation needs more workers, he'll be able to send trained people who already understand how things are done.
    Sitting with his young son and daughter, Mr. Sonsona wears a T-shirt that says: “All things are possible.” He is very happy with his life in Canada. A political party even asked him to be their candidate in the last provincial election, but he turned it down – he already wonders where he gets the energy.
    Someone once asked him how he could stand to work in the smelly atmosphere of a hog barn. He said he replied, “Every morning when I sweep [up after] the pig, I tell myself it's one more dollar in my pocket.”
    For Mr. Sonsona, that's a measurement that counts.
    COSTS
    Settlement
    When an immigrant comes to Canada there are some costs associated with getting them settled. They may need English or French lessons or help navigating the Canadian system, finding schools for their children and beginning a job search. The federal government spends $883-million per year on those services, and each province contributes its own, smaller share.
    If immigration (even in the economic-immigrant category) were to rise substantially, those costs would, too – partly as an investment in reducing the potential strain on public services.
    Services
    As new permanent residents, immigrants become consumers of Canadian public services, such as health care, education, welfare and infrastructure. They contribute to those services through their taxes. A recent Fraser Institute study by Herbert Grubel and Patrick Grady argues immigrants impose a burden of about $6,000 each by consuming more in services than they pay in taxes. But economists Krishna Pendakur and Mohsen Javdani argue the amount is closer to $450. (Each side disputes the other's methods.)
    What's clear, though, is that immigrants recently have tended to earn less than the general population.
    Unemployment
    In the late 1970s, immigrants earned about 85 to 90 per cent of what the Canadian-born earned. By 2006 that figure had fallen closer to 60 per cent, according to a recent study from the Institute for Research on Public Policy. Although employment rates tend to catch up within five to 10 years, it's taking longer and longer for wages to match.
    To change those ratios would require, at minimum, greater upfront spending on matching immigration to the country's needs, and in settlement assistance. Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney's current reforms have yet to call for additional investment in selection or settlement.
    Remittances
    Many immigrants also send money to family in their native country, removing a portion of their income and spending power from the Canadian economy. A Statistics Canada study found that about 30 per cent of immigrants sent money home in the first two to four years after their arrival in Canada, at an average of about $1,450 per year.
    BENEFITS
    The size of the pie
    “Does [immigration] have a positive impact? The answer is probably yes,” said University of Toronto economist Peter Dungan. “The benefits have clearly declined over time, though, because people are not earning to the extent that their equivalent criteria or credentials should allow them.”
    If Mr. Sonsona and immigrants like him bring complementary talents to Canadian skills and capital, then all Canadians should benefit. The economic pie gets bigger and so does everyone’s share of that pie, as measured by gross domestic product per capita.
    In Prof. Dungan’s forecasting model, devised with two co-authors, an increase of 100,000 immigrants to Canada (chosen under the current selection model) would result in a 2.3-per-cent increase in real GDP over 10 years. But since the population would increase by 2.6 per cent over that period, GDP per capita could actually decline slightly.
    However, if Canada were to double the number of economic-class migrants only, as The Globe and Mail has proposed, average entry wages for all immigrants would rise by between 5 and 6 per cent, according to a model devised by Queen’s University economist Charles Beach.
    Innovation
    Studies show that immigration can also foster innovation. A Conference Board of Canada study found immigrants make up 35 per cent of university research chairs in Canada, much higher than their 20 per cent share of the population.
    Trade
    The same study argued that immigration has a significant impact on Canadian trade links. It proposed that a 1-per-cent increase in immigration from a specific country would lead to a 0.1-per-cent increase in the value of Canadian exports, largely as a result of the international networks that immigrants bring with them. They also bring with them a desire for goods from their home markets, which would contribute to a 0.2-per-cent rise in the value of imports, and a more interesting and varied market for all consumers.
    Quality of life
    A diverse population is also believed to make a community more attractive to creative, talented people. As a paper written for the Martin Prosperity Institute argues, cities such as Toronto have benefited from attracting people from around the world, particularly as the collision of their skills, abilities and perspectives can lead to improvements in productivity.
    To find out what immigration looks like in your community, see an interactive look at solutions to Canada's immigration problem and share your own story click here.


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