Immigration Canada

Canada is the Third Best Place to Start a Business in the World

...according to the World Bank's Ease of Doing Business Index.

Canada also ranked third in the closing a business category and ranked fifth for protecting investors.

The World Bank's Doing Business project provides objective measures of business regulations for local firms in 183 economies and selected cities at the subnational level.

According to the detailed data on starting a business, starting a business in Canada requires only one procedure, it takes on average five days to register a firm, and the cost, as calculated in percentage of income per capita, is 0.4 percent.

Compare these figures to a country such as Greece, where starting a business requires 15 procedures, it takes 19 days to start a business, and costs 20.7 percent of income per capita, and we look really good.

The worst place to start a business in terms of jumping through hoops is Equatorial Guinea where an astounding 20 procedures are necessary to start a business. And if you have any thought of starting a business in Suriname, you better get started; it takes 694 days, just short of two years, to get one started there. The Democratic Republic of Congo is the most expensive country to start a business; it costs 735.1 percent of income per capita to set one up.

And where is it easier to start a business than in Canada? New Zealand ranked number one, followed by Australia.

Overall, Canada came in seventh for ease of doing business, following Singapore, Hong Kong, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, the United States and Denmark - perhaps because of our low scores on enforcing contracts and trading across borders.

By Susan Ward, about.com guide

Each immigrant costs Canada $450 per year: report

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By: Jon Woodward, ctvbc.ca

Date: Tuesday Jul. 26, 2011 9:49 AM PT

A team of B.C. economists has cut a conservative think-tank's estimate of the cost of immigration down to size.

Two months after the Fraser Institute estimated that each immigrant on average costs the Canadian government $6,051 per year – a total cost of as much as $23 billion – Mohsen Javdani and Krishna Pendakur of Metropolis British Columbiatook another look at their numbers.

Using a wider sample size of immigrants, correcting calculation errors, and using data where it was available rather than estimates, the pair found a far lower annual cost of about $450 per immigrant, or about $2 billion per year.

"We find that there's a significant fiscal effect of immigration," Javdani said. "But we do not conclude that immigrants are a burden to the Canadian economy."

Javdani added Canada needs to find programs that benefit new arrivals to improve immigrants' labour market potential and performance, which would inject money into the Canadian economy.

The authors are both economists at Simon Fraser University.

Taxes vs. benefits

Both studies attempted to figure out whether immigrants fully pay for in taxes the public services that they use, like health care or education.

The Fraser Institute's study was an attempt to gauge whether our system should move to select for would-be immigrants who already have job offers, according to co-author Patrick Grady.

"Canada has to develop a much better system of assessing immigrants coming in," Grady told CTV News in a phone interview. "They can't seem to tell if a person is going to be able to find a job at a good salary or if they'll find employment at their profession and skill."

The Fraser Institute study looked at immigrants arriving after 1987 – about 4 million people – and compared them to average Canadians in the same time frame. The result was a report sharply critical of immigration.

It recommended that Canada only allow immigrants with employment lined up, and keep citizenship only if the immigrants hang onto their jobs.

The Metropolis study, which was given to CTV News before it is to be publicly released, at first set out to correct calculation errors in the Fraser Institute report, which it said were "apparently typographic in origin." Corrected calculations reduced the difference to $5,473.

Where the Fraser Institute estimated property taxes paid by immigrants – 72 per cent of the Canadian average -- the Metropolis team dug up data on immigrant households to find they actually pay about 96 per cent of the Canadian average.

"We prefer data to guesses," the report noted dryly.

The pair also widened their sample size, going back to 1970, which would capture more immigrants in their prime earning years.

"If you look at the longer term, these immigrants are going to contribute through earning higher incomes and paying higher taxes," said author Javdani.

That change reduced the estimated cost to $2,470 per immigrant, the report said.

Instead of comparing the immigrants to the average Canadian – which would include immigrants as well – the Metropolis study compared the immigrants to the Canadian-born, and found immigrants took $554 less in benefits.

They also ignored "public good" government expenditures that are less directly related to the size of the population, such as national defence – a difference of $,1692 per immigrant.

The end result was a much lower annual total cost of $450 per immigrant – about seven per cent of the Fraser Institute figure, and a very different conclusion, said Javdani.

Immigrants tend to be poorer

Javdani said the lesson is that immigrants tend to be poorer than Canadians, and that means we need programs that can help them succeed.

Kanako Heinrichs runs Queensberry Flower Company located in Granville SkyTrain Station. She said when she came from Japan in 2007 with her new Canadian husband, it was difficult to get a job.

"Most immigrants can relate to that," she said, adding that the hardest part was bouncing around through low-paying, dead-end jobs. "It's tough."

She contacted immigrant services agency SUCCESS, and they helped her develop an idea of bringing a Tokyo-style flower shop into a subway station. The project has been a huge success, to the point that she is opening another shop in the Yaletown subway station, which will employ more people.

"Everybody has a different background. In my case, I brought what I know very well over here," she said. "That's what immigrants can do. Brand new ideas, brand new products, new concepts that make the city more exciting."

Javdani said her story is a good example of how difficult it is to filter immigrants. "If you limit settlement in Canada to the people who have a job offer, you limit opportunities that immigration may bring," he said.

SUCCESS CEO Thomas Tam said the $450 per immigrant is an investment that pays off in the connections that immigrants make with the world, and the ideas and opportunities they bring Canada.

"We see thousands of immigrants, they settle down, they find a job, some create jobs for other people," he said.

Grady of the Fraser Institute said the institute stands by its report, with some corrections that he said don't dramatically change the final cost.

He rejected the Metropolis team's choice to go farther back than 1987, because immigrants from before that time largely came from developed countries. Since then, a court decision has required the government to accept applications from all over the world.

"Canadian taxpayers are going to be subsidizing future generations of immigrants if they keep coming at the rate they're coming. It's going to exacerbate the problems that we're going to get with respect to the aging of the population, and it's not going to solve the problem," Grady said.

Immigrants' health woes focus of new guide

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Image via WikipediaCanadian doctors now have their largest, most comprehensive reference guide yet to use in treating immigrants and refugees.
Compiled from global data, the 100-page report published Monday by the Canadian Medical Association Journal is the first of its kind and synthesizes results from 150 investigators.
The guidebook highlights medical problems that are common among immigrants and refugees but can easily get overlooked because they're not typical in the wider Canadian population.

Dr. Kevin Pottie of the University of Ottawa, and founding director of the Immigrant Health Clinic of Ottawa, co-authored the report that recommends migrants visit a doctor more than once a year. (CBC) "Immigrants are coming from 150 countries," notes Dr. Kevin Pottie of the University of Ottawa, who co-authored the guidelines. "Some of them come as refugees, some under family class. So, there's a large diversity of needs and potential preventable and treatable illnesses [that] the average family doctor just isn't thinking about."
Pottie hopes to develop an international set of guidelines in terms of treating migrants.
"We need to see health as a human right, and small interventions are all that's needed for all immigrants," Pottie said in an interview with CBC News.
The guide, titled Evidence-based Clinical Guidelines for Immigrants and Refugees, instructs physicians on how to deal with the kind of health risks faced by the 357,000 annual migrants to Canada, including refugees, international students and migrant workers.
It says the post-arrival "healthy immigrant effect" is declining and recommends that doctors get their migrant patients to visit them more than once a year.
Specifically, certain immigrant groups suffer from higher incidences of some diseases compared with people born in Canada: Southeast Asians from stroke, Caribbeans from diabetes and all immigrant men from liver cancer.
Also, the report says many immigrants are susceptible to diseases that are often preventable through vaccines:

30 to 50 per cent are susceptible to tetanus.
32 to 54 per cent are susceptible to measles, mumps or rubella.
A significant number come from countries with chronic hepatitis B infections.

The guidelines recommend that:

All adults without immunization records be vaccinated against measles, mumps, rubella, diphtheria, whooping cough, tetanus and polio.
Adults and children from countries with chronic hepatitis B be screened and vaccinated.
Adolescents and adults from places where HIV is prevalent (i.e. greater than one per cent of the population) should be screened, with informed consent.
All immigrants greater than 35 years of age from areas of the world at high risk, which includes South Asia, Latin America and Africa, be screened for for Type 2 diabetes
All women of reproductive age and children aged one to four should be screened for iron-deficiency anemia.
All migrants should be checked for dental pain.

A time-saver for treatment

Pottie said the guidebook can be an effective tool for time-saving and inexpensive treatment. He cites the presence of intestinal parasites in some migrants. He said most doctors would probably find, on average, 12 parasites, and most doctors wouldn't know which ones to treat.
"We've discovered, through a detailed look at evidence, that virtually all these parasites will go away except for two: strongyloides and schistosoma, which are particular to Asia and Africa. So we're able to refine it to a simple blood test."
Dr. Meb Rashid runs a clinic inside a refugee centre in downtown Toronto, A family physician for 17 years, Rashid has worked mostly with refugees and immigrants for the past eight years. He applauds the guidebook, which will help doctors intervene faster when it comes to possible illnesses in their migrant patients.
"There are physicians in rural Canada who may be just starting to see some of these diseases, and I think these guidelines will be immensely helpful to those people," Rashid told CBC News. "It's well-organized and easy to reference."

Refugees at higher risk

The guidelines say it's important to distinguish whether a person came to Canada through voluntary or forced migration, as those who have been displaced against their will face the most significant health risks.
They say refugees have experienced "past exposure to harmful living conditions, violence and trauma," and note that many experience a rapid decline in health after arriving in Canada and need more care and attention to their medical needs.

New guidelines say it's important to find out whether a migrant to Canada has been forced to leave their homeland. Refugees suffer from more health problems. (CBC) Refugees, of which Canada takes in 28,000 a year, are especially vulnerable to depression and other anxiety disorders, the guidelines say. The report recommends physicians use "culture brokers," and not anyone related to the refugee, to help with treatment and to monitor progress and address the social causes of the depression. It proposes "empathy, reassurance and advocacy" and cautions against pushing for "disclosure of traumatic events," which causes more harm than good.
The guidelines include a section on AIDS. It warns that while many HIV-positive migrants may already be aware of their status, they may not be knowledgeable about treatments.
The report warns that migrants may come from countries where there is a strong stigma against HIV-positive people. It counsels health professionals to inform patients of the "risks and benefits of treatment in a culturally and linguistically appropriate manner."

Tread carefully on condom issue: guidelines

On women's health, the guidelines say "culturally sensitive" contraceptive counselling should be offered to women who are or could be sexually active, and they should be given a choice as to what method they want to use. The guidebook underlines that condoms are often taboo in some cultures and seen as an indication of promiscuity, infidelity or having a sexually transmitted infection, so there needs to be careful explanation about their use.
As well, it says that females between ages nine and 26 years should be vaccinated against the human papillomavirus, or HPV.
Migrant and refugee women are also at greater of risk of violence from their husbands and complications connected to their pregnancies, including sexually transmitted infections, chronic pelvic infections, reproductive tract trauma and psychological trauma, the guide says.
It says doctors should be aware the women may be reluctant to talk about their health problems and also unaware of their rights and of the medical services available to them.

Project connects immigrants with small businesses

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carys mills

Globe and Mail Update

Published Monday, Jul. 25, 2011 8:00AM EDT

Last updated Monday, Jul. 25, 2011 1:07PM EDT

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.

Watchlist goes mobile

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 on LinkedIn 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 the Rotman 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.

Safety first: Foreign investors bond with Canada

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DAVID PARKINSON | Columnist profile | E-mail

From Saturday's Globe and Mail

Published Friday, Jul. 22, 2011 5:20PM EDT

Last updated Friday, Jul. 22, 2011 5:44PM EDT

Canadian investors have long been accused of being homers. As the rest of the world has been telling us lately, that might not be such a bad thing.

Despite the elimination of foreign-content restrictions on registered retirement savings plans six years ago, most Canadians still keep the vast bulk of their investments in domestic securities. A recent study showed that even the country’s wealthiest investors – those with more than $250,000 to invest – average only 15 per cent of their portfolios in overseas holdings.

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But while investing experts have been telling us for years that we should be looking beyond Canada, data this week from Statistics Canada highlighted that foreign investors have increasingly been flocking to Canada. Foreign buyers snapped up a net $15.4-billion of Canadian securities in May, adding to a year that is shaping up as another big one for foreign buying of Canada’s stock and bond markets.

Seeing as most of us – for better or worse – have most of our money in the Canadian market anyway, it might be worthwhile taking a closer look at what those investing tourists in our country have been buying.

Destination of choice

Warren Lovely, head of macro strategy at CIBC World Markets, broke down Statscan’s data in a report this week to get a better sense of where the foreign money has been flowing.

While equity purchases are up significantly for the year to date, bonds have increasingly replaced equities as the destination of choice for foreign buyers – punctuated by a big surge in bond buying in May, particularly in federal government and federal Crown corporation bonds.

The impetus may be the deterioration of the government debt situation in Europe and the United States, which has fuelled a flight to safe, high-quality bond markets such as Canada. At the same time, it has convinced investors to step back from so-called “risk assets,” such as equities. Canada is being perceived as a low-risk market in risky times, and government bonds are the lowest-risk option for investors.

Crowning your portfolio

One particularly interesting trend has been the sharp gains in buying of bonds issued by federal Crown corporations. Mr. Lovely said that as big foreign buyers such as central banks have become more comfortable with Canada, they have begun to move past the federal government debt to buy high-quality Crown issues such as Canada Mortgage Bonds – which carry the same top-notch credit rating but offer higher interest rates.

“It’s yield enhancement without erosion in credit quality,” he said – adding that this same logic makes sense for smaller retail investors, too.

“There is a very strong argument that this could be a diversification tool for investors of all stripes.”

A reflection on immigration policy: two years after Adjusting the Balance.

Source: Maytree Conversations.

By Naomi Alboim, Maytree Senior Fellow and Adjunct Professor, School of Policy Studies, Queen’s University

When I wrote Adjusting the Balance: Fixing Canada’s Economic Immigration Program, published by Maytree, I argued that the federal government was making incremental changes to immigration policy, which together represented a radical negative shift in immigration policy, without debate, without consultation and without the benefit of a national framework.

Two years later – things are worse, not better.

When we wrote the paper in 2009, the federal government had limited the Federal Skilled Worker (FSW) Program to applicants with experience in 38 occupations or a job offer. We argued that Canada’s dynamic, knowledge-based economy needs a much broader range of occupations and skills. The federal government’s own evaluation of the FSW Program in 2010 (PDF) found that, historically, those immigrants chosen for their human capital have higher incomes than those selected because of their occupation.

Yet, this month the government announced that it would continue to limit applicants to those with job offers or on a list of occupations (now a shorter list of 29). A maximum of 10,000 applications will be considered for processing until July 2012. Within this 10,000 cap, each of the 29 occupations is also capped at 500 applications.

Instead of increasing the number of FSWs, the government has continued to give priority processing to Provincial Nominees and Temporary Foreign Workers, at the expense of the Federal Skilled Worker Program.

In other words, they are continuing to place limits on those selected under the FSW Program despite the fact that they have the highest incomes and best long-term job prospects of all immigrants to Canada.

To its credit, the federal government is reviewing the current point system for Principal Applicants within the FSW Program. They appear to be taking into account the findings of their evaluation, to improve labour market outcomes for these immigrants even further. This could include allotting more points for demonstrated language capacity, youth and experience in the skilled trades, as we recommended in 2009. However, these changes will be for naught if the numbers and proportion of new applicants continue to be reduced and restricted to 29 specific occupations.

As well, there are ongoing concerns with a system that continues to prioritize temporary foreign worker applications.

Most temporary foreign workers arriving to Canada are highly skilled. But, among other concerns, our 2009 report highlighted the problematic growth in the Pilot Project for Occupations Requiring Lower Levels of Formal Training, suggesting that it should be abolished. These workers are filling jobs that aren’t necessarily “temporary” but rather harder to fill, for example in meat packing plants and in hotel janitorial services. Rather than improving the wages and working conditions for these jobs, reaching out to unemployed and under-represented groups already in Canada, or bringing in more family class members and refugees to fill those jobs on a permanent basis, the government has chosen to continue bringing in significant numbers of temporary foreign workers under this “pilot” program.

While they have the right to most of the same protections as other Canadians and permanent residents under provincial employment legislation, temporary foreign workers filling low or unskilled jobs are more vulnerable to abuse because of language barriers, lack of knowledge about their rights, limited access to agencies that can help them (especially when they are working in remote parts of Canada), and inadequate enforcement of employment legislation. Further, temporary foreign workers are not eligible for federally funded settlement services.

Regulatory changes effective April 2011 introduced penalties for employers who exploit temporary foreign workers but they still do not address the root problems of this program. Instead, they rely on vulnerable workers themselves to initiate complaints who are unaware of their rights and fear loss of employment or deportation. The four-year time limit for temporary foreign workers to legally remain in Canada serves to penalize them further. It also serves to keep them in limbo for a long period of time, with no access to services or permanent residency, and the additional rights and protections that come with that status.

A dramatic sea change in Canada’s immigration system, policies and priorities is under way, including:

a significant reduction in the number of sponsored parents and grandparents to be admitted to Canada;
a delay in the awarding of permanent resident status to sponsored spouses with a concomitant withholding of rights and access to services, resulting in increased vulnerability;
recently re-tabled legislation proposing that refugee claimants be placed in detention for one year if they arrive by “irregular” methods to Canada;
the legislation also proposes the draconian treatment of claimants who are determined to be bona fide refugees despite their “irregular” arrival (including delayed access to travel documents, permanent residence status, and family reunification); and
a reduction in federal funding for settlement programming.

All of this suggests there is a need for real public debate about what kind of country we want to be and what kind of immigration policy best leads us there.

Will Canadian Retirees Be Supported By Future Immigrants?

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In a report released by Schroder Investment Management North America Inc on Thursday, July 21, two authors revealed that Canada will be facing a “baby bust” as its aging population goes into retirement.

In the report, co-authored by Virginie Maisonneuve and Katherine Davidson, the two authors describe how the future GDP of Canada will not be able to support the aging population unless significant changes take place in the labor market.

Specifically, the authors point out that the only way Canada will be able to survive the lower GDP growth and surge in retiring baby boomers will be “to increase immigration or raise participation rates, especially of older workers.”

The authors point out that an increase in immigration will not solve all of the Country’s financial problems caused by the effects of an aging population.

In addition to immigration changes, the country will still need to increase productivity in order to support the high costs of having an aging population. The situation threatens Canada’s reputation for “superior health status”.

Canada and the Aging Population

The report also points out that:

–> From 2020 onward, the country’s population growth is going to exclusively come from immigration. The report states that there will be entire segments of the Canadian economy that will be completely dependent upon foreign workers.

–> With such an older population, the financial and healthcare sectors of the economy will encompass a larger share of the country’s GDP. The report predicts that education, manufacturing, construction and retail will all decrease.

Why would an investment firm care about Canada’s aging population? Well, the report was released as a way to gauge what the future will look like in the Canadian marketplace, and where investment opportunities will exist.

Virginie Maisonneuve explains:

Demographic analysis is part of a coherent macroeconomic and thematic road map that serves as a framework to our stock analysis and selection. Many of our current holdings listed in Canada are resource companies. They will need to adapt to the demographic challenges that we have highlighted in this report in order to ensure success and shareholder value.”

The authors also seem to take pleasure in pointing out a comparison between Canada’s elderly pension system vs. that of the United States. The report points out that Canada is fiscally responsible enough to have already started strategically positioning resources and making the necessary changes to meet this future financial challenge.

It also points out that Canada’s pension plan is expected to be solvent by 2050…in direct contrast to the United States Social Security system, which many experts believe will start experiencing financial shortfalls in 2016, and complete insolvency by 2039.

Of the report out of Schroder Investment is at all accurate, then elderly Canadian citizens are likely going to be dependent upon foreign workers to serve their needs. And, if the U.S. social security crisis does really come to fruition, then many of those immigrant workers will probably consist of elderly Americans, trying to survive the collapse of the U.S. Social Security system.

Immigration backlog a major challenge

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BY CATHERINE SOLYOM, THE GAZETTE JULY 23, 2011

MONTREAL - Canada could soon stop accepting applications for immigration in an attempt to clear the backlog of more than a million people currently awaiting processing around the world, Federal Immigration Minister Jason Kenney said Friday.

In Montreal to hold consultations on how many immigrants should be accepted into Canada per year - and just as importantly what kind of immigrants - Kenney told an audience at the Armenian Community Centre that clearing the huge backlog is one of the main challenges faced by his department as it plans for the years ahead.

"There's an unlimited number of people who want to come to Canada," Kenney said, adding that about 254,000 would be accepted this year, down from 281,000 in 2010.

"We used to have hundreds of thousands of applications more than we could process, and it's stupid and unfair to make people wait seven, eight, nine years for their application to be even looked at. That's the rationale for limiting the number of new applications."

Two years ago, Parliament modified immigration laws to give the minister the authority to place a cap on applications, and this year Kenney has so far chosen to limit the number accepted in the Federal Skilled Worker program, for example, to 10,000. He emphasized, however, that Canada would still be accepting 65,000 skilled workers into the country, most of them chosen out of the backlog of applications.

It remains to be seen which other categories may be capped, and at what level.

Stakeholder consultations across the country on the right "mix" or "balance" of immigrants for Canada began two weeks ago, with employers' associations, immigration lawyers, refugee advocates and other interested parties. Friday's session

in Montreal was postponed until October, however. Public consultations will be held online starting in August.

Apart from dealing with the backlog, Kenney said he is looking for solutions on how to deal with an impending labour shortage as the population ages, without overburdening Canada's housing, health care and education systems with too many newcomers.

Janet Dench of the Canadian Council for Refugees worries the minister will place too much emphasis on economic immigrants at the expense of refugees.

More than 35,000 refugees - government-assisted and privately sponsored - are already on the waiting list to come to Canada, and the numbers, especially in Africa, are growing day by day.

Kenney said he has recently added resources to deal with the huge backlog at the Nairobi mission, which serves 18 countries in East Africa, most of them in conflict, and now also struck by famine.

But he also put a cap on the number of privately sponsored refugee applications out of the Nairobi office, Dench said.

csolyom@montrealgazette.com

Immigration Canada

Canada is the Third Best Place to Start a Business in the World

Each immigrant costs Canada $450 per year: report