Project connects immigrants with small businesses


The Globe and Mail

After a two-year job hunt, Richie Sanasy finally found a business looking to hire newcomers to Canada like him.
Despite a business management degree and accounting experience, Mr. Sanasy had been unable to find relevant work since arriving in Kitchener, Ont., from the tiny island of Mauritius.
Then, last year, he met Prakash Venkataraman, president and chief executive officer of Brantford, Ont.-based Redragon Oil and Gas Systems International Inc. The manufacturer of custom utility and recycling engineering was looking specifically for bilingual newcomers with overseas connections to help the business expand internationally.
It’s the kind of fit that far too many small and medium-sized businesses and new immigrants overlook, according to an upcoming report from the Maytree Foundation, a charitable agency.
Many small business owners are in desperate need of skilled workers, but are either unaware of or don’t consider the qualified pool of new immigrants that have already arrived in Canada, says Maytree president Ratna Omidvar.
At the same time, many newcomers want to work at large companies they’ve heard of back home but either do not know of or don’t think about approaching smaller companies that could use their skills, she adds.
Maytree has set up a new project under its Assisting Local Leaders with Immigrant Employment Strategies (ALLIES) that is trying to come up with strategies to connect the two, contending it will bring benefits to both. ALLIES, in partnership with The J.W. McConnell Family Foundation, began the new initiative last October; it will wrap up its consultations with small businesses this fall and use its findings to help formulate pilot projects to be later rolled out.
Canada brings in about 250,000 immigrants each year, according to Maytree. While the largest group is skilled immigrants, only one in four immigrants is able to find employment relevant to their education and experience, Maytree has found.
About 30 per cent of immigrants who have come to major cities including Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Montreal and Halifax in the last decade hold a bachelor’s degree, according to Maytree.
Ms. Omidvar points out that small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) hire 64 per cent of private-sector workers in Canada, so immigrants are overlooking many job possibilities if they don’t consider them as potential employers.
But “part of our challenge is that new immigrants don’t tend to go to SMEs,” she says.
At the same time, smaller companies may lack the human resource expertise and staffing to reach out to and recruit the ready pool of immigrants that are right at their doorstep, she says.
Ms. Omidvar says it may feel daunting for a smaller business, whose owner may be in charge of hiring, to interpret overseas qualifications and check up on foreign references. Costs associated with training or making a wrong hire may make a newcomer applicant seem riskier than someone with extensive Canadian experience and education, she says.
“We understand that mitigating risk is a huge factor for any employer. No employer wants to take a risk but bigger employers may be more likely,” she says.
Existing programs that bring small businesses together with immigrants are spotty throughout the country. One, the Waterloo Region Immigrant Employment Network (WRIEN), funded by the Ontario government, helps employers connect with immigrants by running networking and internship programs.
It was through that network that Redragon’s Mr. Venkataraman met Mr. Sanasy at an event last year. Mr. Venkataraman, who is originally from India, says he understands the employment hurdles newcomers face since he’s an immigrant himself.
Before meeting Mr. Venkataraman, Mr. Sanasy spent two years searching for jobs in his field while working in manual labour jobs and attending college.
“I was ready to hit the ground running but needed this one opportunity to start my life here,” says Mr. Sanasy,. “It was quite hard.”
At the event, the two chatted about business. Mr. Sanasy was offered an interview and later hired for a shipping and receiving job at the company. Within six months, he was promoted to materials manager.
Mr. Venkataraman says initiatives including WRIEN have helped him recruit recent immigrants from India, Australia, the Philippines, Cuba, the Middle East and Sri Lanka. Those international connections and the fact that his 30 employees speak a total of 25 languages have helped Mr. Venkataraman expand his business to hundreds of clients worldwide since opening in 2005, he says.
“It’s the chicken-and-the-egg case,” Mr. Venkataraman says.”You need to give them the opportunity before you can expect Canadian experience.”
Other small-business employers have also seen opportunity in recruiting immigrants that have already arrived in Canada.
Peter Kelk, president of George Kelk Corp., says he relies heavily onLinkedIn to recruit talented newcomers. Being open to international applicants has meant the majority of his hires have been newcomers, he says.
“We’re a high-technology company and the immigrant population tends to be highly educated,” says Mr. Kelk, whose Toronto-based company produces sensors for steel rolling mills.
He says checking international references has become easier with the increasing popularity of the Internet worldwide.
“It’s simply that we’ve been open-minded,” Mr. Kelk says. “It’s not charity on our part; it’s good business.”
Despite academic qualifications, getting an interview with companies other than the likes of Redragon or Kelk may be stymied by lack of Canadian experience, says Anil Verma, a professor at the University of Toronto’s Centre for Industrial Relations and Human Resources and theRotman School of Management.
Employers are looking for professionals like engineers and electricians who already know country-specific standards and regulations, he says.
“These newcomers need some kind of investment in training and opportunity to work, let’s say, as an intern or apprentice,” Prof. Verma says. “Small businesses do not have a surplus of the manpower or the time or cost to give these opportunities to people, so this is what causes the mismatch.”
To help bridge those kinds of gaps, Maytree’s preliminary suggestions include more internship programs throughout the country that could be subject to government wage subsidies.

New approach proposed for immigrant recruiting


The Globe and Mail

When George Kelk Corp. is looking to recruit new employees, it sets its sights on Canada’s immigrant community first.
“Eighty per cent of our staff of 160 was born outside of Canada,” said Peter Kelk, president of the Toronto company, which makes instruments for mining and metal forming. “Since we export 98 per cent of our production, their understanding of how business is done in their home areas helps us enormously.”
The approach stands in stark contrast to the immigrant hiring practices of most small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), according to a report released by Maytree on Tuesday.
Canada annually receives about 250,000 immigrants – many of whom have advanced degrees and skills that are in demand – but only a small fraction of them manage to land jobs at SMBs, which represent 64 per cent of new private-sector positions. The issue is two-fold, the report concludes: Smaller employers are often unaware of the skills immigrants bring to the table or how to reach out to them, while newcomers tend to focus their job hunts on well-known corporations.
“This represents a huge opportunity,” said Ratna Omidvar, president of study sponsor Maytree, a non-profit foundation that develops programs to integrate immigrants into the work force. The consultations for Global Talent for SMEs: Building Bridges and Making Connections, conducted by a division of Maytree, included 300 small-business owners in five focus groups across Canada, and individual interviews with entrepreneurs.
“They said they’re just as open to hiring foreign trained talent as anyone else. Their problem is they don’t have the connections to find immigrants with the skills they need,” Ms. Omidvar said. “They tend to hire just in time: it’s ‘who do you know and who’s in front of me?’”
The researchers also found that immigrant advocate groups have tended to focus only on big employers “because they are the ones who can come to the table during discussions and have the capacity in their HR departments to recruit and vet immigrant candidates,” Ms. Omidvar added.
A primary recommendation of the report is for a single point of SMB access to recruiting and hiring support for immigrants.
Small-scale programs of this nature already exist locally. Pat d'Entremont, partner with technology services company Nicom IT Solutions, said his 85-employee company has recently found immigrants for hard-to-fill positions through the Greater Halifax Partnership’s Connector Program, which helps immigrants expand their personal networks to connect with business people. The Nova Scotia government has also set up programs to encourage immigrant hiring, Mr. D’Entremont pointed out, including a job board for skilled immigrants and – in some cases – financial assistance.
The focus groups agreed SMBs would do better if there was an online data base of screened immigrant candidates. “They said they need something that is sector-wide and they would benefit from an HR advisory or consulting site that they could use when they’re looking for talent,” Ms. Omidvar said.
Lionel Carriere, president of mobile software company XEA Services in Edmonton, said he’d have immediate use for such a data base. “We’re a growing company facing challenges in finding people with the skills we need. But as a small enterprise, we don’t have access to tools and resources that would allow us to recruit foreign trained workers. Our only (hiring) option is for them to find us.”
In consultations with Maytree, Mr. Carriere recommended the agency that runs the data base also provide pre-screening of equivalency of international experience and reference checks, as well as assistance in supporting any new employee’s adaptation to Canadian culture.
Another recommendation in the report is for governments to provide wage and orientation subsidies as incentives for small employers, which can’t offer compensation at the same level as larger employers. These might include bonuses payable when an SMB hires an eligible skilled immigrant for at least 12 months, or a tax credit similar to the federal subsidy on Employment Insurance payments for small business hiring that was extended in the recent federal budget.
“Given the austere times, financial assistance programs, like first-job subsidies, are probably not going to be as likely to be available as an option, but we should keep it on the books for better times,” Ms. Omidvar conceded.
Most immediately, the report recommended targeting SMBs with information campaigns. “We want to use trusted intermediaries – services and institutions that SMEs use – to promote the programs and the advantages of tapping into the pool of skilled immigrants,” Ms. Omidvar said.
Most specifically, “the consultations found employers trust their accountants. We want to work with accounting organizations to provide information about services that are available and explain the advantages of hiring talented immigrants, particularly for a company that wants to develop a global market,” Ms. Omidvar said.
Maytree plans to do a pilot program with these ideas later this year, she said. They will look for partners in local communities, including governments, advocacy groups and colleges and universities, as well as leading employers.
“We don’t want to tell them what to do. Local employers know their particular sector and the needs of local employers. We want more SMEs to come out and tell us what will work.”


Canada designs new visa for immigrant entrepreneurs


Reuters

Canada plans to create a new class of visa it hopes will attract high-tech and other entrepreneurs to immigrate to the country to start new companies, officials said Tuesday.
It has put a moratorium on issuing its existing entrepreneur visa, which only required an immigrant to hire one person for one year, and intends to initiate a visa that would be issued to people identified by venture capital funds as candidates to create startup firms in Canada. The venture funds would be required to invest in the startups.

Canada Nets Thousands in Immigration Crackdown

English: Oath of citizenship ceremony
English: Oath of citizenship ceremony (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

By Nirmala Menon

The Canadian government will revoke the citizenship of 3,100 people it says obtained  the status fraudulently, and is investigating thousands more who may have lied to obtain citizenship or maintain permanent-resident status in Canada.


Reuters
Canadian Immigration Minister Jason Kenney.
Though the process of revoking citizenship is “very cumbersome,” many targeted individuals aren’t challenging the action because the government has “absolutely compelling evidence” about the fraud, Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney said Monday.

“Canadian citizenship is not for sale,” he declared while providing an update on the crackdown on immigration fraud, launched last year.

Permanent residents must live in Canada for three of the four years prior to applying for Canadian citizenship, and have to be physically present in the country for two out of five years in order to maintain permanent resident status. Canada’s investigation takes aim at people who live overseas and pay upwards of 25,000 Canadian dollars (US$25,557) to immigration consultants to establish fake proof of residency.

“There is a global industry of unscrupulous, unethical immigration and citizenship agents posing as bona fide consultants who will sell people advice on how to scam the Canadian system,” Mr. Kenney said.

He said those who use the services of these agents typically live in tax havens. “This is an economic calculation for many of them,” Mr. Kenney said, pointing out that a Canadian passport comes with “huge advantages,” such as high-quality healthcare and subsidized post-secondary education.

Enhanced by Zemanta

Jason Kenney expected to announce 2,900 being stripped of citizenship for fraud


Stewart Bell | Sep 9, 2012 9:24 PM ET
More from Stewart Bell


A widening federal crackdown has identified a record number of people suspected of acquiring their Canadian citizenship and immigration status through fraud, according to a government source.

The number of newcomers under investigation for misrepresenting themselves in their dealings with Citizenship and Immigration Canada has ballooned to an historic 11,000 as a result of nation-wide enforcement.

The figure is almost double the 6,500 identified by federal officials less than a year ago, suggesting that Canada’s citizenship and immigration fraud problems may be more widespread than previously thought.


Often facilitated by immigration consultants, this type of fraud has allowed foreigners to sponsor relatives and qualify for Canadian passports, benefits and the right to vote — all without ever having lived in Canada for any significant period.

Jason Kenney, the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, was expected to brief reporters on the new figures on Monday. A source said he would announce that officials were stripping 2,900 Canadians of their citizenship for fraud.

The announcement comes nine months after Mr. Kenney said his department was working with the Canada Border Services Agency and RCMP to combat the problem, and vowed to prosecute those involved and strip them of their Canadian status.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that a percentage of applicants from the Middle East obtain permanent resident status, then Canadian citizenship, with the goal of acquiring a second passport as insurance
Since then, dozens of charges have been laid, mostly against immigration consultants accused of helping clients defraud the government. Mr. Kenney has said consultants were collecting “upwards of $25,000” per family for this service, making it a multi-million dollar racket.

At least 5,000 of the 11,000 now under investigation are permanent residents suspected of committing residence fraud, which occurs when an immigrant claims to have moved to Canada but actually continues to live abroad.

Immigrants are required to actually live in Canada to maintain their status. But officials have been documenting a growing number who only come to Canada long enough to get their immigration papers stamped.

They then return to their home countries. Nonetheless, they pretend to be living in Canada so they can sponsor relatives and qualify for Canadian citizenship after three years. In some cases, those committing residence fraud have set up elaborate paper trails to give the appearance they are living in Canada.

Many of those involved in the scam are from the Middle East, particularly Lebanon. While they do not wish to actually move to Canada, they want an escape hatch in the event their home countries become unstable, according to internal documents.

“Anecdotal evidence suggests that a percentage of applicants from the Middle East obtain permanent resident status, then Canadian citizenship, with the goal of acquiring a second passport as insurance in case of instability in their country of first residence,” reads a federal study.

[M]any permanent resident applicants are reluctant to leave the Gulf to settle in Canada permanently but want to obtain PR [Permanent Resident] status and citizenship for reasons of security
The study, released under the Access to Information Act to Vancouver lawyer Richard Kurland, found a significant level of fraud among permanent residents applying to sponsor family members in Lebanon.

Only residents of Canada can sponsor a relative to immigrate. But the study said up to a third of Lebanese sponsorship cases were suspect. In other words, the sponsors did not really reside in Canada but were pretending to in order to help their relatives acquire immigrant status.

The problem is also said to be acute in the Persian Gulf, with its high-paying jobs and business opportunities.

“As a result,” reads another government report released to Mr. Kurland, “many permanent resident applicants are reluctant to leave the Gulf to settle in Canada permanently but want to obtain PR [Permanent Resident] status and citizenship for reasons of security, the future of their children and a potential doubling of their salary by virtue of holding a Canadian passport.” It said a “significant” number of sponsorships were fraudulent.

A common scenario involves immigrant families. While the spouse and children do live full-time in Canada, the breadwinner continues to work abroad but lies about it to immigration authorities to maintain Canadian status. Investigators have been identifying such cases partly through a recently-established telephone tip line.

A source said the spike in the fraud numbers was also the result of a new case management system that alerts enforcement officials when a large number of immigrants give the same address as their home in Canada — which can be an indicator of residence fraud.

Revoking permanent resident status from fraudsters is fairly straight forward, but a Cabinet order is required to strip citizenship from a Canadian. Some are expected to fight the decision through the courts.

Source:
National Post
sbell@nationalpost.com


Immigrant children excel in school

English: Students at the Frankland School, Tor...
English: Students at the Frankland School, Toronto, Canada. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It turns out there is some truth to the notion that Canada is a land of opportunity. Children of the second generation – the offspring of immigrants – outperform other Canadian-born children in school. And the first generation does just as well as the native-born.

Both of those accomplishments are pretty rare in the world. But because it is unseemly to gush about ourselves, we’ll let the OECD study known as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which tests 15-year-olds in mostly affluent countries, do it for us.

“For comparison’s sake, in the 2006 PISA assessment of reading, Canadian first-generation immigrants scored an average of 520 points, as opposed to less than 490 in the United States and less than 430 in France,” says a 2010 report called Strong Performers and Successful Reformers in Education: Lessons from PISA for the United States. The gap between Canada and the U.S. is the equivalent of about a full year of schooling. There’s been no suggestion things have changed since that report.

It does raise a question, though: Why, in this land of opportunity, don’t the Canadian-born keep up? Any number of answers suggest themselves. Some studies have found that, because immigrant parents experience a loss of social status – taking lower-paying jobs than back home – their children feel driven to succeed. The Canadian-born do have the social networks to help them along that immigrant children may lack. Maybe that promotes a more relaxed attitude to school.

Apparently the word about Canadian schools is getting out. Anecdotally, immigrants are drawn by the strong public school system in Canada. Though it is not only the schools that deserve the credit. Part of Canada’s strength is the points system of immigrant selection. Immigrants chosen under this system are more educated than the Canadian average. And their children “attend schools that by all measures are relatively equal,” the PISA report says. Further, “philosophically, they are welcomed as part of Canada’s commitment to multiculturalism.”

It’s a virtuous circle. Canada needs immigrants to grow and thrive. It draws immigrants with a deep belief in education; it provides opportunity for their children, and the success of those children reinforces the welcome given to immigrants.

If Canada is looking to brand itself among the world’s best and brightest, it might not find a better one than that.

Source: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/commentary/immigrant-children-excel-in-school/article4528033/?cmpid=rss1

Enhanced by Zemanta

5 Reasons to Found a Startup in Canada

Image representing Research In Motion as depic...
Image via CrunchBase

Andrew D’Souza is chief revenue officer at Top Hat Monocle, a web based classroom response system. Follow him at @andrewdsouza.

When RIM co-founder and former University of Waterloo Chancellor Mike Lazaridis handed me my degree four years ago, the world was a very different place. BlackBerry was the world leader in smartphones, its stock was at a record high, and the company was clearly seated as the crown jewel of Canada’s tech ecosystem. It was undeniable proof that the country could build a world-class tech company.

Today, well, things have changed. Canadian Business published RIM’s obituary, and according to University of Toronto Business Professor Joseph D’Cruz, Canadian entrepreneurs “should not dance with the giants” of Silicon Valley.

But that rather broad response may have been a bit premature. In fact, a wave of recent exits to high profile U.S. buyers has put Canada back on the radar of investors. It’s hard to go to a startup or VC event these days without feeling an iron ring on the other side of a handshake. But then that’s part of a growing trend of big money coming Canada’s way. Not convinced? Then here are five other reasons why entrepreneurs should consider setting up shop in Canada.

1. Talent

Canadian universities consistently graduate some of the world’s top technical talent, but the competition to attract them is much less intense. You don’t have Google and Facebook offering astronomical starting salaries for engineers right out of school. You’re not always looking over your shoulder at Wall Street, worrying that they’ll take your best data analysts once the markets pick up.

RIM’s success was driven by brilliant technologists and marketers, while its demise was due to hubris and poor decisions by key executives. The talent responsible for the company’s growth doesn’t just vanish because the company falls apart. They are freed to do bigger and better things. Kik’s Ted Livingston is a prime example of this (although RIM did try suing him in the early days). Former RIM exec, Dennis Kavelman, has also joined high-growth education company Desire2Learn.

2. Investor Interest

Too much money chasing too few good ideas and teams in Silicon Valley has led savvy investors to look elsewhere for promising investment opportunities. As a result, many high-profile Silicon Valley and East Coast investors have recently placed big bets on Canadian companies.

The historical funding environment in Canada has forced founders to do more with less and avoid the bad habits of many of their better-funded counterparts. In general, any Canadian startup that has been around for more than a year probably has a pretty sound business model and decent traction. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be able to keep the lights on. These characteristics are becoming more appealing to investors, as many of them have been burned by high growth consumer web flame outs.

3. Immigration

Canada’s economic growth has been built through immigration and its immigration policy reflects that. Canada doesn’t arbitrarily limit the number of qualified people allowed into the country to 65,000 per year. Canadians understand that immigration is a major driver of economic growth, and the country actively solicits immigrants. Canada’s government is also improving its immigration policy to make it easier for highly skilled and younger immigrants to enter the country, including piloting a startup visa. This means that it is far easier to bring technical talent into the country and build your team in Canada, and it will continue to getting easier.

That said, Canada still has an accreditation issue in many fields (and still have doctors driving taxis), but it will take as many IT engineers who want to help build its startups as it can get.

4. A Launchpad for the World

Largely a function of Canada’s immigration policy, the demographics of Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal are about as heterogeneous as they come. This means that your early customers often have a variety of biases, so consumer products which do well in Canada often don’t need to change very much to do well around the world.

Canadian startups also don’t face the “valley effect” where ideas that seem to be growing like mad between San Jose and San Francisco quickly lose steam as they land in front of the more skeptical parts of the world.

One look at Quora for opinions on the hottest Canadian startups yields many strong B2B players: Shopify, HootSuite, Wave Accounting, FreshBooks, Desire2Learn, and VidYard are a few. Even the B2C companies like Kik either have healthy revenues or massive traction.

If your product works well in a major Canadian metro, there’s a good chance it scales well to most of North America, and large parts of the world.

5. Government Support

Canada’s government does more to support innovation than any other developed country. From rebates for R&D investment to very favorable tax treatment for capital gains for private company shareholders, Canada has shown a commitment to supporting startups.

And that commitment appears to be gaining steam. The government has allocated $400 million to bolster the VC ecosystem in Canada. While this may seem like a drop in the bucket (the equivalent of one mid-sized Silicon Valley fund), if allocated wisely, it could have a tremendous impact and effectively signal to the world that Canada is open for business.

Enhanced by Zemanta

Visa Office Cuts Blamed For Foreign Student Delays

International Students HAN University part 4 o...
International Students HAN University part 4 of 4 on Vimeo (Photo credit: Hans on Experience)

Universities are noticing more international students than usual are facing delays getting visas, and some are blaming the government cutbacks to visa offices abroad.

Zhaohui Wong, manager of enrolment at the University of Prince Edward Island, works with a growing number of international students. Last year one in every 10 students on campus came from overseas. Wong said a certain number of delayed arrivals is normal.

"For different reasons they come late, some visas, some airfare things," said Wong.

"This year I notice we have quite a few more visa delays."

Wong isn't sure yet how many international students will be late, but UPEI isn't the only university with visa problems. He's heard about similar problems in Nova Scotia, British Columbia and Ontario. At UBC at least 100 students will not be able to start school until January, and the university is blaming the closure of visa services in Germany, Japan, Iran, Malaysia and Bangladesh.

UPEI nursing student Chisom Ukasanya made it to Charlottetown on time, but she waited three months for her visa. It came just the day before she was supposed to leave Nigeria.

All the while she worried about missing the school year, and having to start over.


"It's just really long and it's frustrating, and you're just home doing nothing every day," said Ukasanya.

UPEI is coming up with contingency plans, contacting professors and setting up tutors so students can get caught up and hopefully not miss a semester whenever they finally arrive.

Citizenship and Immigration Canada said while it has closed some offices, it's exceeding target times for processing student visas.



Enhanced by Zemanta

Scotiabank announces Partnership with Bank of Xi'an

English: Scotia Plaza
English: Scotia Plaza (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Canada Newswire
Helping newcomers start the financial transition to Canada while still in China
TORONTO, Sept. 7, 2012 /CNW/ - Scotiabank, Canada's most international bank, has reached an agreement with the Bank of Xi'an, a leading financial institution in China, to help ease the financial transition of immigrants, international students and foreign workers to Canada before they leave China.
"We are in more than 55 countries around the world and have been proud to work in China for over 20 years," said Winnie Leong, Vice-President of Multicultural Banking, Scotiabank. "Based on our international experience we have a strong understanding of what a complicated and important decision it is to move to a new country. When newcomers arrive in Canada, one of their top priorities is finding a financial institution. Through our new partnership with Bank of Xi'an, we are able to give immigrants, foreign workers and students peace of mind by helping them establish a Canadian banking relationship before they emigrate to Canada."
Scotiabank currently owns a minority stake in the Bank of Xi'an. Under this co-operation agreement with the Bank of Xi'an, Chinese immigrants, international students and foreign workers planning to move to Canada are able to open an account with Scotiabank through 10 participating Bank of Xi'an locations in Xi'an, China. Once in Canada, customers can visit their local Scotiabank branch to activate their accounts, apply for a credit card and take advantage of additional benefits included in the Scotiabank StartRight Program, Scotiabank's banking package designed for newcomers to Canada.
"This new partnership is a natural extension to our eight year relationship with Scotiabank," said Zhishun Liu, Vice-President, Bank of Xi'an. "We look forward to offering our guidance and assistance to a wide range of customers here in China that are looking to begin the financial part of their lives in Canada."
Scotiabank's business in China also includes a partnership with China Everbright Bank (CEB), which began in 2009. Through this partnership, immigrants and international students moving to Canada can open an account with Scotiabank through any participating CEB branches in 33 cities across China.
The Scotiabank StartRight international account opening program is also available in select Scotiabank branches in Mexico and India, and through India's Kotak Mahindra Bank.
To learn more about the Scotiabank StartRight Program, please visit www.scotiabank.com/startright or call             1-866-800-5159       (from North America) or 008 800 8800 5159 (from Mainland China).
About the Scotiabank StartRight Program for Newcomers Launched in 2008, the Scotiabank StartRight Program for Newcomers was created for Canadian Landed Immigrants from 0-3 years in Canada, International Students and Foreign Workers.  The Scotiabank StartRight Program provides the right advice and financial solutions to help newcomers plan their future in Canada.  For more details on the Scotiabank StartRight Program, please visit www.scotiabank.com/startright.
About Scotiabank Scotiabank is one of North America's premier financial institutions and Canada's most international bank. With more than 81,000 employees, Scotiabank and its affiliates serve some 19 million customers in more than 55 countries around the world. Scotiabank offers a broad range of products and services including personal, commercial, corporate and investment banking. With assets of $670 billion (as at July 31, 2012), Scotiabank trades on the Toronto (BNS) and New York Exchanges (BNS). For more information please visit www.scotiabank.com.
About Bank of Xi'an Bank of Xi'an Co., Ltd., a joint-equity commercial bank, was founded in May 1997, whose shareholders include Xi'an Municipal Finance Bureau, the Bank of Nova Scotia, China Cinda Asset Management Co., Ltd., domestic large and medium-sized enterprises, and individual investors. As a leading regional commercial bank, the Bank has one branch and 113 sub-branches and owns two rural banks, providing full financial services in Chinese western area. It has 2300 employees, CNY102.3bn total assets, CNY76.3bn deposits, and CNY44.6bn loans at the end of 2011. The featured services and products of the Bank include "Golden Silk Road", "Profit Power", " Global Golden Line of Credit", and "E-credit line." In 2012, the Bank was ranked No. 632 by the Banker magazine on its "Top 1000 World Banks."




Enhanced by Zemanta

Program Trains Recent Canadian Immigrants for Oil and Gas Jobs



Canada’s shortage of workers with the skills needed to service its oil and gas industry and the higher than average unemployment rate of recent immigrants are both being addressed by a new Alberta program that provides oil drilling training for recent immigrants to help them get jobs in the province’s oil-patch.

The Oil and Gas Training Program (OGTP) was created by the Calgary Catholic Immigration Society which administers it jointly with Enform, a Western Canadian oil and gas safety association created by major upstream oil and gas companies.

The latest class of 16 trainees graduated last week after completion of the 15-week training program. The skills they acquired will enable them to get entry-level positions in Alberta’s oil and gas industry, which has a pressing need for workers to expand oil sands projects in northeastern Alberta.

Data emerging over the last several years showing a growing income gap between recent immigrants and the general population since the 1970s has prompted non-governmental immigrant serving organizations and governments at different levels to look to find ways to improve the employment prospects of immigrants.

This entry was posted in Canadian economy, canadian immigration, Canadian job market, Federal Skilled Trades Program, Federal Skilled Trades Worker, jobs and tagged Alberta jobs, Athabasca oil sands, Calgary Catholic Immigration Society, Enform, Fort McMurray, Oil and Gas Training Program (OGTP) by CICS News Team. Bookmark the permalink.

Enhanced by Zemanta

Leave us a message

Check our online courses now

Check our online courses now
Click Here now!!!!

Subscribe to our newsletter

Vcita