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.