Immigration in Canada: renewal of Labour Market Opinion essential to preservation of status

Recent reports from the Canadian business community reflect a growing concern that foreign workers awaiting approval of their Labor Market Opinions (LMO) are in danger of having their work permit renewal applications rejected, requiring them to depart Canada while in mid-assignment. Canadian companies are reminded to apply to obtain a new LMO six months in advance of the expiration of a current LMO in order to allow timely processing by Service Canada. 

Canadian immigration law requires that Canadian companies sponsoring foreign workers who do not qualify for either a work permit exemption or LMO-exempt work permit category must apply for an LMO to confirm that the position on offer is genuine and that employment of a foreign worker will have a neutral or positive economic effect on the Canadian labor market. LMO applications are filed with Service Canada and require a positive opinion prior to filing an initial or renewal work permit application with the Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC).

In recent months, there has been an increasing backlog of LMO applications adjudicated by Service Canada due to a combination of factors. As Service Canada officers have moved from emphasizing facilitation of hiring of foreign workers to more monitoring of employer compliance.

Canadian companies filing an LMO-exempt work permit renewal application can expect CIC processing times of between 15-20 days. However, for renewals requiring LMO re-certification, companies should bear in mind that the CIC will only hold open a work permit renewal application for 60 days from date of receipt by CIC. Therefore, it is imperative that companies file a new LMO application with the appropriate Service Canada center at least six months in advance of filing the work permit renewal application with the CIC.

Failure to file a timely LMO application can jeopardize a foreign worker's "implied status" (where the worker can continue working legally if their renewal application has been filed) should the CIC not receive a positive LMO within 60 days of filing the renewal application.

Service Canada is advising Canadian sponsors that there are longer wait times for some regions where there is a larger volume of LMO applications, and other delays are caused by incomplete applications and a more "rigorous LMO assessment process." The department is, however, trying to create a more simplified online application process to cut delays.

Barring a sudden clearing of backlogged applications, foreign workers nearing six months of expiration of status should review with their Canadian sponsors if a new LMO is required to renew status. If so, company HR should work with their Canadian immigration providers to confirm the worker remains qualified to receive a positive LMO and to determine the appropriate time to file in order to avoid rejection of the work permit renewal application by the CIC.

Information provided by Pro-Link GLOBAL, in coordination with Canadian KGNM- Rekai LLP

Canadian Construction Association Strongly Supports the Government of Canada’s Direction Regarding Immigration Reform

Ottawa, Canada, March 05, 2012 --(PR.com)-- The Canadian Construction Association (CCA) was very pleased to learn of the proposed reforms to Canada’s immigration system, as outlined by the Honourable Jason Kenney, Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, in his keynote address to the National Metropolis Conference on Thursday.

“Canada’s current immigration system does not adequately address the needs of the Canadian construction industry or the projected growth of the Canadian economy,” said Michael Atkinson, president of the Canadian Construction Association. “On the surface, the reforms outlined sound like they would go a long way to addressing the challenges that employers currently face to bring in skilled workers, which would ultimately contribute to a more competitive Canadian economy.”

With the projected growth in the Canadian economy, particularly in resource-oriented sectors, the need for an efficient construction industry will remain paramount in order to sustain Canadian competitiveness. This also includes building and maintaining the critical core infrastructure required to support those sectors.

According to the Construction Sector Council, projections currently indicate that the Canadian construction industry will experience a shortfall of 325,000 workers by 2019. At the same time, demand for construction services in Canada is expected to continue increasing throughout the decade, elevating Canada’s construction market to fifth-largest in the world.

While domestic efforts to increase skilled worker training in Canada is equally important, Canada’s domestic population growth will not be able to singularly address industry needs. Because of this, immigration will remain a critical component of Canada’s overall economic competitiveness for years to come.

The Canadian Construction Association looks forward to working with the Government of Canada to help make the Canadian immigration system more efficient, and help maintain Canada’s economic competitiveness.

About CCA

The Canadian Construction Association is the voice of the national non-residential construction industry. It represents over 17,000 members in an integrated structure of some 70 local and provincial construction associations. Construction has become a cornerstone of the Canadian economy. The sector employs 1.26 million Canadians or approximately 7 per cent of Canada’s total workforce. Annually, construction is responsible for nearly $90 billion in economic activity or 6 per cent of Canada’s overall Gross Domestic Product.

Olive: Skills shortage highlights faulty thinking on immigration

By David OliveBusiness Columnist

In most parts of the world, the voices sound alike. And that’s not ideal. Canada’s traditional open-door immigration policy is arguably the greatest factor in Canada’s consistently high ranking among the U.N.’s best places to live.One of the reasons I don’t have an iPod is that I like to hear ambient sounds, especially the voices around me. I try to guess Chinese dialects, and from which part of Texas that woman hails from. That man with the turban and the laptop chatting with the woman next to him on the subway, is he a scientist or an entrepreneur?

New arrivals built and build this world’s most nearly-perfect country, from the one Chinese worker who died for every mile of the CPR that was built, to the Jews so prominent in the GTA’s philanthropic network.

Like the Italian émigrés who moved on and up after building our houses and highways, Korean families are now giving way to Iranians and Iraqis in the convenience-store trade.

That Canada’s prudent Big Five banks came through the global financial meltdown with flying colours owes much to their Scottish roots.

We cannot ever properly atone for the head tax we imposed on Chinese in Canada, for incarcerating Japanese-Canadians during the Second World War, for failing to rescue Jews from Nazi extermination. That is our original sin, bound up with chronic mistreatment of our aboriginal population.

The economic blessings of immigration cannot be exaggerated, though the current federal government seems unmindful of that.

Canada has emerged from economic recovery to pre-recession growth rates faster than any of its industrialized peers. But our greater prosperity is held back by shortages of skilled workers in practically every region and vocation. Yet Ottawa has cut the inflow of immigrants from an annual 250,000 to 225,000, trapped by a recession-era mindset that is obsolete.

Yes, we have an intolerably high number of unemployed Canadians.

More than 1.4 million of us are out of work. In the main, these fellow Canadians do not yet have the skills required of a 21st century economy driven by brains rather than brawn. That can be remedied by ensuring that specialized vocational education is accessible (read affordable) to all Canadians who want to be contributors.

The scourge of the credentialed Pakistani heart surgeon relegated to driving cab remains plainly evident on GTA streets. Yet Ottawa has slashed its funding of immigrant settlement services for Ontario by $70 million.

And both Ottawa and Queen’s Park haven’t even tried to break the retrograde guild-like practices of professional credentialing groups that function to keep supply low and incomes high by disqualifying the qualified from practice.

Instead, Ottawa is “cracking down” (a favoured pastime of the Harper government) on immigrant marriages of convenience. While marriage fraud certainly exists, tackling it with the gusto of Stephen Harper’s government misses the big picture.

The big picture is that the industrialized world will soon begin to shrink in population. It is an iron law of demographics, in all societies, that procreation declines as affluence rises.

Already Japan’s population has begun to shrink. Russia’s population is in steep decline. The trend will sweep across Western Europe, where populations in Britain, France, Germany and so on will soon plateau, then begin to fall. The prosperity and influence of those regions will drop accordingly.

Only America, where high fertility rates among the 25 per cent of Americans who are black or Hispanic, will see continued population growth. And it will be significant growth – a projected 40 per cent jump by mid-century. At which point Americans of non-European heritage will for the first time be in the majority.

As a matter of competitive necessity, Canada cannot afford to be left on the sidelines in that stunning U.S. success story of population growth and the greater cultural and intellectual diversity that comes with it.

Our own population is projected to increase, a demographic blessing we share only with the U.S. among mature economies. But it will increase by a modest annual 2 per cent or so over the next decade. We need more new arrivals, and the work ethic, innovative and entrepreneurial instincts, and patriotism for their adopted homelands that they bring.

Given the Ontario Liberal government’s near-panic over its current 30-year-low in share of new immigrants to Canada, and the task force it called into action last Friday to deal with the crisis, one could too easily conclude that the Liberals are traditionally pro-immigration and the Tories less so.

Yet the first, relentless appeal to potential immigrants was made by John A. Macdonald. Real Tories are pro-immigration. Purported converts from the nativist Reform Party, not so much. And it shows.

Foreign workers need link to Sask. jobs

BY WILL CHABUN, LEADER-POST MARCH 5, 2012

 

 

When one HR manager in Sudbury, Ont., heard that Louise Van Winkle would be in Toronto, the exec grabbed a colleague, jumped on a plane and flew to see her the same day.

The attraction? Trying to find skilled workers - machinists, in this case - for northern Ontario's burgeoning mining industry.

Van Winkle, a senior manager in the immigration section of the Canadian embassy in Paris, told that story to illustrate the need some Canadian employers have for trained and experienced workers - and how the federal government program for which she works can help them.

As a Saskatchewan delegation went to Ireland last week to search for workers, "we're the mirror image of that, in a way," Van Winkle said. "We're telling employers how they can post their jobs and recruit at a distance."

Employers can recruit workers from Tunisia, for example. Tunisia, the small north African country between Libya and Algeria was much in the news one year ago because of the political revolution that started there, toppled a government, then spread to other Arab countries.

Now Tunisia is quiet, but has fallen on hard economic times. Its government is amenable to emigration of trained workers in the belief this will lower unemployment - and that these workers might someday return home if things look up. It's what Van Winkle calls "circular mobility."

Van Winkle and colleague Marie Pouliot from the Canadian embassy in Tunis were here to tell employers and provincial government agencies about a 10-year-old program that facilitates the migration of workers and, not incidentally, helps minority-language communities.

As they, and Muriel Pagnoni of France's Pole Emploi employment agency, explain, it's a win-win situation for all involved. People get jobs, employers get skilled workers and small linguistic communities - like the francophone one in Saskatchewan - get immigrants to join their community, fill schools and perhaps become entrepreneurs and lifelong members.

They say Tunisia, which has already sent some immigrants to Saskatchewan, is particularly interesting because its trades training program is highly sophisticated and many graduates have the equivalent of a master's degree.

Linguistically, Arabic is the most common language there, but French is in second place and English is widely learned and spoken.

There's enough interest in this program that a delegation of employers from New Brunswick and Ontario went to Paris last autumn and another is scheduled to visit this spring.

Van Winkel said if interested, Saskatchewan's employers should contact Darron Taylor, director of employment and immigration at the Assemblee communautaire fransaskoise in Regina, via direction. ei.acf@sasktel.net.

Pagnoni said there's also interest in immigration to Canada from metropolitan France, where youth unemployment is high and people are reading glowing reviews of Canada's healthy economy.

To that end, Van Winkle said the Canadian embassy in Paris last year issued 14,000 temporary work permits and 6,000 permanent resident visas, adding, "It would be greater if the jobs were more visible."

wchabun@leaderpost.com

© Copyright (c) The Regina Leader-Post

Read more:http://www.leaderpost.com/business/Foreign+workers+need+link+Sask+jobs/6250048/story.html#ixzz1oFV74gzs

Business leaders cite skilled-labour shortage as priority

RICHARD BLACKWELL

From Monday's Globe and Mail

As Canada drags itself through a slow-motion recovery, one of the most pressing issues facing executives across the country is an acute shortage of skilled labour.

The most recent C-Suite survey of Canadian corporate executives shows that despite the high level of unemployment, companies just can’t get all the people they need to fill the skilled positions that are available.

wo-thirds of executives say they are having difficulty finding qualified employees, and one-third say the labour shortage is so severe it is preventing their company from growing as quickly as it could.

With a federal budget coming this month, the executives say they want Ottawa to temper spending cuts with some new investments in skills training, and to open up immigration laws to allow more foreign workers to fill empty jobs.

The problem extends far beyond the oil patch. Executive from the Maritimes to Ontario’s high-tech heartland to Western Canada share similar difficulties in matching employee skills to job openings.

“It is a national problem,” said Francis McGuire, chief executive officer of Moncton, N.B.-based Major Drilling Group International Inc. “It exists everywhere.”

While many of the tough-to-fill jobs are in technical, engineering or information technology positions, Mr. McGuire said, it goes far beyond that. In his company, which conducts intense outdoor work on drilling rigs, “it is very difficult to attract people,” he said. “Salaries are very good … but [people say] they don’t want to be out with the black flies and the snow and the cold and sleeping in camp and being away from home for 21 days at a time.”

Across the country, at trucking firm Trimac Transportation Ltd. in Calgary, chief financial officer Scott Calver said it is becoming increasingly difficult to find professional truck drivers. “It is a problem and it is getting worse,” he said, because many young people are not interested in the long hours required for the job, despite relatively high pay rates.

In Saskatchewan, mining company Golden Band Resources Inc. is having trouble finding geology and mining professionals, CFO Mark Thiel said. The province’s mining boom is creating a sellers’ market for skills, he noted, and the competition for qualified workers is fierce.

And in Waterloo, Ont., Brian Doody, chief executive officer of electronics firm Teledyne Dalsa Inc., said his company would like to expand into some new markets, “but the reality is we can’t get people locally to fill the ranks of our engineering and R&D teams to the level that we need to address those opportunities.”

Despite the fact that the Waterloo region is a centre of high-tech education, “the lack of young people pursuing further education in engineering, science and technology, is definitely a strain on our ability to grow,” Mr. Doody said.

Executives responding to the C-Suite survey clearly put the government on notice that it must deal with this issue. Eighty-nine per cent said increased spending in skills training and apprenticeships should be a high or modest budget priority, more than the 84 per cent who considered spending cuts a high or modest priority.

To deal with the skills shortage, many companies are bringing in employees from outside the country to fill jobs. Almost 50 per cent of the executives surveyed said they are looking at this option as a way to fill specific positions.

It would help if Ottawa streamlined regulations to make it easier to bring in foreign workers, said Jan Hein Bax, president of Toronto-based recruitment firm Randstad Canada. Right now there are restrictions that make this difficult, he said, adding: “I’d like to see the government helping industries to get talent from abroad.” Some executives say the federal government should even help pay for skilled immigrants to obtain Canadian qualifications.

When it comes to budget cuts, the vast majority of C-suite executives aren’t looking for Ottawa to slash spending across the board. More than 50 per cent said it would be wise to keep spending at current levels or make cuts of roughly 5 per cent. Thirty per cent called for a 10-per-cent reduction, and about 8 per cent felt Ottawa should cut more than 10 per cent.

Mr. Doody, of Teledyne Dalsa, said he thinks it would be a mistake for Ottawa to make across-the-board spending cuts in the budget. “I’d be happier to see targeted reduction in areas that are not as helpful to our economy and economic growth,” he said. It is crucial, for example, that the government maintain its commitment to research and development funding, he said. “I’d hate to see that scaled back.”

Mr. McGuire, of Major Drilling, said he recognizes the need for cuts to be made now, but he also feels low-income seniors have to be protected, and there should be significant amounts of money spent to train young people. “We have to absolutely avoid the phenomenon we’ve seen in Greece and Spain where you have 50-per-cent youth unemployment,” he said. “That would be a terrible burden for the country.”

Federal politicians should focus specifically on educating youth in information technology and related fields, he said, as that sector is crucial to the country’s future and will be a huge source of jobs. “If I was policy maker I would throw the whole bucket at it,” said Mr. McGuire, who was once New Brunswick’s deputy minister of economic development.

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Methodology

The quarterly C-Suite survey was conducted for Report on Business and Business News Network by Gandalf Group and sponsored by KPMG.

The survey interviewed 151 executives between Feb. 10 and Feb. 27, 2012. Respondents represent ROB 1,000 companies from across Canada in the manufacturing, service and resource sectors. The margin of error is 7.3 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

Each quarter, a $1,000 charitable contribution is made on behalf of a survey participant. For the December survey, a donation was made to KidSport Calgary on behalf of Laura Cillis, chief financial officer of Calfrac Well Services Ltd.

Want to know more about what Canada’s business leaders think? Watch for coverage throughout Monday on BNN, and go online to ReportonBusiness.com for the full report.