How the productivity of Canada’s health care stacks up to the U.S.

The debate over Obamacare in the United States saw the Canadian health-care system maligned as an inefficient socialistic enterprise.

But using Canada as a cautionary example to steer U.S. reform ignores the facts offered by a simple comparative analysis.

Canadians pay much less per capita on health care than do Americans, while ranking higher among the most common measures of human health.

Against the United States, Canada’s productivity gap in the business sector is perpetually upheld as a source of national shame. Last week’s release of the OECD’s latest report card on Canadian productivity revealed Canada’s productivity remains low among industrialized nations — an outcome of poor practices in taxation, post-secondary education, R&D funding and competition policy. Yet, health care may be the one area in which Canada has an advantage over its southern neighbour. Can it be said that Canada’s health-care system is more productive? Possibly. But the answer would first require the economic value of health care to be measured.

Accurate measures of health-care output and productivity are essential
It remains a mystery why there is “no serious attempt” to measure the economic contribution of health care, William Nordhaus, a Yale University economics professor said in a 2003 paper.

“The techniques used to measure the price and quantity of health care are highly defective, and there are no attempts to account for improvements in the length of life into current measures of living standards,” Mr. Nordhaus said.

The obvious proposal would be to simply include health care output in productivity measures, through an accounting of expenditures, which is easy enough. By simply measuring health care’s portion of national GDP against the size of the sector’s labour force, productivity in health care and social assistance declined in Canada by 0.7% between 1987 and 2006.

Little should be taken from the apparent productivity loss, said Andrew Sharpe, executive director of the CSLS. Using expenditures, or inputs, as a measure of health care’s output is misleading.

“You can spend all sorts of money needlessly,” Mr. Sharpe said. “If you raise salaries, you might be spending more, but you wouldn’t be getting any more output. Or you could be spending on procedures with no value at all,” he said.

As various studies demonstrate, this approach tends to underestimate the value of health care to an economy.

Over the same 20-year time span that health-care productivity declined marginally, life expectancy in Canada rose from 77 years to 80.4 years, while infant mortality declined from 7.3 deaths per 1,000 live births to 5, according to OECD figures.

Yet, nothing in the national productivity estimates reflects the economic utility of those improvements to the health of Canadians.

Productivity improvements can also be directly observed in the delivery of health care, Mr. Sharpe said.



“Look at laser surgery for eyes. It used to take hours, now it takes 15 minutes. You can do many more cataract surgery operations in a given amount of time. That’s definitely a productivity gain. But if we just look in terms of labour, that wouldn’t show up.”

It makes more sense to measure health-care output not through expenditures but rather something like number of procedures, he said.

But the true economic contribution from a successful surgery must be greater than that of a failed surgery. “The issue there is whether you adjust for outcomes or not. Procedures aren’t really productivity,” Mr. Sharpe said.

There is simply no easy way to monetize the most common measures of health outcomes, like life expectancy and infant mortality. Still, getting a gauge on the sector’s performance is crucial, given the rising importance of health care to the Canadian economy, a trend that is not set to change given demographic pressures.

Between 1975 and 2011, total expenditures on health care rose to 12% of GDP from 7%, according to the Canadian Institute for Health Information. Adjusted for inflation, health-care spending increased to $4,100 from $1,700 for each Canadian over that time frame.

Is that a lot? Is the money being used well? Is the sector relatively productive? Is productivity improving?
Canada’s major health outcomes measure at about the OECD average, while our spending tends to be substantially higher than average.

However, in both categories, Canada largely outperforms the United States. In at least one sense, then, it can be said the U.S. healthcare system is much less efficient than Canada’s.

“Overall, the U.S. is hopelessly more inefficient than us, mostly because of their administrative costs, which are just massive,” Mr. Sharpe said.

But again, the problem of output measurement precludes sweeping conclusions about U.S. health care.

“If you’re talking about delivering high-quality health care, they exceed Canada and everybody else,” said Dale Orr, an independent economist who has long studied Canadian productivity. “If you’ve got serious problems, you go off to the Mayo Clinic, or the Houston Heart Institute. They deliver very high quality,” Mr. Orr said.

The “biggest problem” in the U.S. system is that “15% of its people have no meaningful coverage,” he explained.

Likewise, the case for the superiority of Canada’s system is undermined by problems many have in finding a family doctor, and in relatively long wait times, among other considerations.

“People might wait in emergency rooms for six or seven hours,” Mr. Orr said. “Then there’s those people who need a hip replacement; they’re told to wait for three or four months. In the U.S. it would be three or four days.”

If there is to be an aggregate economic measure of national healthcare sector, surely all of these factors must be considered.

That statistical challenge has largely kept national accountants from including any measure of health in living standards.

The building pressures on health-care spending alone, however, demand a better accounting of the sector’s economic effects, the CSLS report said.

“To achieve efficient allocation of resources in the health-care sector, accurate measures of health-care output and productivity are essential.”

Posted in: Executive, Productive Conversations


TIM SHUFELT
tshufelt@nationalpost.com

In depth: How the OECD says Canada can fix its ‘key long-term challenge’

Dan Ovsey

There’s been much buzz in the media this morning about the findings of the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) with respect to Canada’s state of macro-economic affairs.

While early headlines were quick to pick up on the report’s broad-based message that Canada’s economy was on the right track and set to see growth, they also noted there were “key long-term challenges” to which our leaders should take heed. Most notably, as an economy, we must be more attentive to our ballooning household debt and our perpetual lack of productivity.

“Tax breaks to manufacturing and natural resources penalize services, which are a critical emerging area for the knowledge economy.”
The latter point should be of key interest for business leaders and policy makers alike. Canada is an innovation and productivity laggard relative to its OECD counterparts. The report notes several factors that contribute to this stagnancy.

Taxation

To the chagrin of anti-corporate activists, the OECD points out that while Canada has made some progress with respect to reducing Corporate Income Tax (CIT) — one of the lowest in the G7 — more progress is still needed if we are to foster an attractive environment for our blooming knowledge economy.

“Tax breaks to manufacturing and natural resources (abstracting from oil and gas royalties) penalise services, which are a critical emerging area for the knowledge economy.”

The report appropriately notes that while the current tax structure for small business is effective, the scaled tax rate discourages businesses from growing by penalizing them with progressively higher taxes as they do so.

“The reduction in the general federal CIT [corporate income tax) rate will serve to reduce the disparity in treatment of large and small firms, and to that extent should encourage small innovative firms to expand sales,  enter foreign markets and attain the scale needed for successful innovation, competitiveness and high MFP growth.”

Funding R&D

As any business that has attempted to fund research and development via public funding knows, the traditional system of allocating these resources through tax credits was inherently flawed. Big business used tax consultants to help them acquire public funds for R&D projects they were doing anyway while small businesses were getting the short end of the stick.

When the federal Conservatives revealed the 2012 budget in late March, it revamped the funding model in response to recommendations from the Jenkins Panel (led by OpenText head Tom Jenkins).The OECD lauded the government’s changes — namely the reduction of the Scientific Research and Development (SR&ED) tax-credit pool in exchang for a $400-million Venture Capital (VC) fund and more money for the grant-based Industrial Research Assistance Program (IRAP) — but cautioned it against “picking winners”.

Funding innovation through financial markets

It’s little secret that VC funding in Canada has been desolate since the bursting of the Dot Com bubble, but the dearth in VC capital is as much related to the way VC funds are allocated as it is to their accessibility. As the report notes:

“Indeed, some 50% of the VC market is publicly funded, compared with less than 5% in the United States. However, a large portion of this investment is directed to regional development rather than small firm growth. Canadian enterprises supported by private, as opposed to public, VC appear to have superior performance in terms of value creation and innovation intensity overall. More worrying is evidence of crowding out of private projects by public VC (Brander et al., 2008).”

The report goes on to state that if Canada is to generate R&D that leads to innovation, and, in turn, higher productivity levels, a co-funded system of public-private VC investment — in which the private partner makes the investment decisions — must come to fruition. While the $400-million VC fund is seen as a bright spot, it still relegates VC funding to the public sector, which has been traditionally poor at identifying companies that will raise the innovation bar.

Opening closed competition

As Jeremy Leonard noted recently in his Financial Post commentary, the key to higher productivity (and wages) is the removal of barriers to competition that artificially insulate Canadian business and stunt competition. While recent legislation (namely in the telecom sector) has undoubtedly made progress in this arena, the OECD report notes that more work needs to be done, specifically referencing the government’s controversial blocking of foreign investment and ownership in Canadian potash.



“Barriers to FDI are mainly in the form of ownership restrictions or regulatory discretion over mergers and acquisitions in specific sectors. The more general “net benefit test” has long been thought to have insignificant disincentive effects. However, its recent first-time use by the government to deny proposed investments in certain sectors (aerospace and potash) and subject others to questionable scrutiny (Target), relatively low thresholds for review in sheltered sectors (culture), and a lack of transparency in the review process, could have a dissuasive effect on future FDI and on openness to Canadian companies abroad (Bergevin and Schwanen, 2011). The federal government recently announced that targeted improvements to the administration of the Investment Canada Act will be introduced to enhance transparency while preserving investor confidentiality.”

Indeed, there’s little incentive for the massive companies associated with these industries to find efficiencies and become more productive if they can rest easy knowing that the government will prevent foreign competitors from invading their turf.

Bridging the commercialization gap

While Canada maintains an impressive track record of research, little of that research actually contributes to products, services and technology that benefit society. We have a commercialization gap. Part of the gap, as noted in the OECD report, can be attributed to Canada’s conservative business culture, which is highly risk averse because barriers to competition have ensured Canadian businesses are rarely exposed to risk.

“The best way to stimulate willingness to take risk may be to boost competitive pressures and openness”
“More generally, an apparently high degree of risk aversion in doing business, rooted in a fear of failure is one characterisation of Canadian social attitudes toward commerce. These attitudes are partly confirmed by surveys, which also point to a greater dependence on government help than on market opportunities for commercial success (Deloitte Research, 2011). The best way to stimulate willingness to take risk may be to boost competitive pressures and openness, as discussed above, and to complement this by enhanced attention to management training and diversity at all educational levels.”

Education

The report notes an interesting phenomenon in education as it relates to innovation and productivity. To enhance productivity, we need more people coming up with ideas that will streamline processes and generate efficiencies. Unfortunately, we don’t have the right people and enough people to do this in the industries that need it most. The solution?

Immigration, of course, is one, but more importantly, a new emphasis needs to be placed on “tertiary education” and primarily that found in community-colleges that can offer a streamlined path to certification in skills that will be in increasingly desperate need throughout the country.

“Colleges differ from universities in that their programmes tend to be shorter in length and emphasise practical, technical and occupational training for the labour market. While colleges typically grant diplomas and certificates rather than degrees, a small but growing subset of “polytechnic” institutes has emerged that grants baccalaureate degrees and differentiates itself by its focus on applied research for industry.”

Unfortunately, due to a lack of consensus among these different post-secondary institutions, the transferability of students from one type of educational institution to another is at best challenging and at worst prohibitive.

Meanwhile, universities will need to do a better job of focusing their research programs on challenges currently being faced in the private sector (rather than things that make academics go hmmm…)

“Academics should be provided with stronger incentives to produce research relevant to business needs”
“Academics should be provided with stronger incentives to produce research relevant to business needs, starting with the peer-review granting process, then sharing their IP with business through collaborative efforts and finally having some form of ownership rights over their patented inventions.”

The long and short of it

In reviewing the OECD’s recommendations, it’s fairly clear the Paris-based organization is encouraging a general movement toward small government and greater free enterprise. Indeed, lower corporate taxes, private-sector guidance in public VC allocation, the removal of barriers to foreign ownership and competition, shifting educational models to meet market demands, and basing academic research and private-sector needs are all recommendations likely to cause advocates of big government to get hot under the collar.

The report and its recommendations point to a troubling trend in the way Canada’s government, private sector, and workforce operate — a trend of which all parties should be wary and one they should work toward combating — regardless of where they may sit on the political spectrum.

Long-term immigration approach needed to maximize newcomers’ employability

Benjamin Tal, Special to Financial Post  Jul 24, 2012 – 3:19 PM ET | Last Updated: Jul 24, 2012 3:21 PM ET


Textbook economics suggests immigration should lift productivity. After all, new immigrants open up trade opportunities; they diversify the engines of economic growth; they offer new and different perspectives on business; and they inherently take risks in hope of greater gains — a key ingredient of innovation.

Yet the results have been quite different. A recent study by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) found immigration has no impact on overall productivity. In Canada, it appears immigration is, in fact, working to reduce productivity given the chronic underemployment of immigrants in the country. According to some estimates, 20% of the increase in the U.S.-Canada productivity gap over the past decade can be attributed to immigration.

A male immigrant who arrived in Canada in the 1970s made about 80¢ on the dollar relative to a Canadian-born worker, and he was able to narrow the gap at a rate of roughly 1¢ per year. Today, despite the fact two-thirds of newcomers have post-secondary education, their earnings have dropped to close to 60¢ on the dollar and the gap is narrowing at a much slower pace. Nearly half of the individuals who immigrated to Canada between 2001 and 2006 are overqualified for the jobs they occupy.

This disparity is not without a price. I estimate that the current employment and wage gaps between new immigrants and native-born Canadians, cost the economy slightly more than $20-billion in forgone earnings. And more than 20% of working-age male immigrants leave the country within a year of arrival.

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In depth: How the OECD says Canada can fix its ‘key long-term challenge’
Addressing productivity is becoming increasingly crucial for the Canadian economy. An aging population means that just to stabilize the ratio of working-age to non-work in gage population would require tripling the annual number of new arrivals for decades — something not being contemplated. So without a significant increase in immigration-based productivity, the aging profile of the Canadian population will work to reduce the standard of living of all Canadians.



Many recent changes in Canada are modeled on Australia, which maintains a 50% smaller earnings gap between its native-born and non-native-born workers than Canada. The key here is the recent move by the Canadian government toward an increased use of temporary, employer-driven, lower-skilled workers, while still making it easier for successful temporary workers to gain permanent status through the Canadian Experience Class program.

However, the program should not grow much larger than its current size. Immigration policy should not be based on short-term job market considerations. Too heavy a reliance on short-term, unskilled foreign workers might improve job market flexibility in the near term but will reduce its growth potential in the long term due to the comparatively limited ability of low-skilled workers to adjust to changing labour market conditions.

Even the Federal Skilled Workers program, which is supposed to take a long-term approach, is not immune to short-term bias.

Out of the 29 preferred occupations in the FSW program, no less than one-third of preferred occupations are directly linked to the construction industry. It is not a stretch to imagine many of these immigrants will find it difficult to find or maintain employment in a slower housing market.

The FSW should direct its attention to the job market of tomorrow by developing an information infrastructure system designed to identify emerging trends in labour-market activity. That should be supplemented by a much simpler and efficient credential-recognition process. While difficult to achieve, the ideal situation would be to establish a single regulator assessing credentials for each occupation.

The bar on language proficiency should also be raised.

The move in Australia toward mandatory pre-immigration English-language testing in the late 1990s is probably the most important distinguishing factor explaining the performance advantage of Australian immigrants relative to the Canadian experience. In Canada, language skills have also proven critical to success. Those in the FSW program who are proficient in either national language are 50% more likely to find a job and earn close to 40% more than FSWs who are minimally proficient in either language.

Immigration is critical to Canada’s economy but it is clear some inherent barriers exist that prevent us from reaping the full economic benefits new Canadians have to offer. We need to address these to continue to improve productivity and sustain our standard of living.

Benjamin Tal is deputy chief economist at Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce

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Canadian strip clubs set to recruit from high schools due to visa ban

Toronto Skyline (Photo credit: Bobolink)

TORONTO - Recruiters of teenage strippers may soon be scouring Toronto high schools in search of female students who can be groomed into disrobing part-time as exotic dancers to earn college tuition.

A flyer praising the benefits of the burlesque trade has been produced to target students in high schools, colleges and universities in the Toronto area, says a group representing dancers and club owners.

The brochure claims working as a dancer pays well, offers flexible hours and makes a "great part-time job to raise college tuition."

A scramble is underway by the Adult Entertainment Association of Canada to fill a demand for dancers after the federal government this month stopped issuing visas or extensions for foreign strippers to work here. There are up to 800 foreign strippers in Canada and most vow to go underground and work in the sex trade if they can't dance legally.

The foreign dancers, many of whom are from Eastern Europe and South America, represent about 5% of the 38,000 strippers working in clubs across Canada. Most of them dance in Toronto, Windsor, Ont., London, Ont., Montreal, Ottawa, Winnipeg and Calgary.

Caroline, 28, and Nicola, 25, have been dancing in a downtown Toronto club for more than a year and have tasted the good life, and now don't want to return to their native Hungary.


"We are not happy that visas are no longer being issued to us," Caroline said. "I am very disappointed and afraid of what may happen to me in the future."

The women say they work long hours and send most of their earnings back home to their families.

"We did not do anything wrong in Canada," she said. "They should not be sending us back home."

Nicola said she's stressed out and hasn't been able to eat since hearing news of the visa revocation.

"My visa is almost expired and I am very scared," she said. "I am very shattered that I may no longer be able to work and help my family back home."


Dancers Caroline (left) and Nicola. Dave Thomas/QMI AGENCY

The association said the visa ban that began July 14 means more Canadian women have to be hired to meet the demand. The new rules will prevent strip clubs, escort services and massage parlours from having access to foreign women.

"They're destroying the industry by creating a labour shortage," association director Tim Lambrinos said. "The word 'exotic' means foreign and that's what people want to see."

The association has created a "six-point action plan" to help keep the dancers in Canada. That includes more recruitment of women in high schools and colleges, lobbying the government for changes and if all else fails, the strippers plan to file refugee claims or marry Canadian citizens to sponsor them.

Lambrinos said girls 18 and older can work as dancers in Ontario, according to advice from their lawyers.

He said recruiters from strip clubs will try to attract students by attending job fairs at high schools, colleges and universities in Toronto and surrounding areas.

"We are already doing some outreach work in some areas," Lambrinos said. "We will be taking a strippers' dance pole with us to the schools."

He said overcrowded Toronto high schools can become a prime recruiting ground for potential dancers.

QMI Agency has obtained a draft copy of the flyer to be circulated to high school students. It advises them that they can earn tuition fees while working as an "exotic dance entertainer" and that no sex with customers is permitted.

"If you are visually appealing and comfortable with your naked body and are comfortable about taking all your clothes off," the flyer states. "You can be working right now as an exotic dancer and earn your tuition fees for university or college."

Students are told they must be "comfortable ... onstage at a club and disrobing," and are guaranteed that "no actual sex or sex acts (will) occur."

It warns them that they will have to provide private dances, or table dances, in dark lounge areas and part-time, full-time or seasonal jobs are available.

Officials of the Toronto District School Board did not return phone calls or e-mails about the proposal despite repeated attempts by QMI Agency. Several high school students said they did not like the idea of strippers being recruited from among their peers.

Foreign dancers said they're willing to get married to a Canadian citizen or file refugee claims to stay here.

Plans are in place to seek Canadian men to marry some of the strippers whose visas are about to expiry, which could force them to go underground and into the hands of organized crime to work in the sex trade.

Lambrinos said photographs and descriptions of some the dancers will be posted on the Internet and newspaper ads with text seeking Canadian husbands. Potential hubbies will have to be citizens and not have a criminal record.

"This is very urgent for some of the dancers whose visas are nearing expiry," Lambrinos said. "Every potential sponsor will be looked at and the girls will make a decision on who they want to marry."

There will be a phone number and e-mails for the potential husbands to contact their potential brides.

Officials of the Canada Border Services Agency said the scheme can be considered a marriage of convenience, since there is no history of courtship between the couple. If approved, the sponsor will be responsible for his wife for about 10 years in Canada.

"We're trying to do all we can to keep the dancers here," Lambrinos said. "The girls themselves have said they are not going back home."

He said another plan will have the strippers file claims for refugee status and there is no guarantee that they will be accepted.

Immigration officials said filing a claim will allow the women to remain here for more than a year as they challenge the case, but eventuality they will have to leave.

The controversial "stripper visa" dates back to 1998 and allowed hundreds of foreign dancers into the country each year. In 2001, for example, 660 foreign dancers, mostly from eastern Europe, were admitted.

All they had to do was provide a Canadian job offer from a strip club and prove they were qualified to "dance."

Roughly 100 of the visas have been renewed each year since 2006.

Support for the program has plummeted ever since MP Judy Sgro, a former Liberal immigration minister, resigned in 2000 after facing accusations that she fast-tracked a stripper who worked on her campaign -- a scandal dubbed "Strippergate."

Students already stripping to pay tuition: Club owner

One popular Toronto strip club owner says his stable of exotic dancers include more than a dozen college or university students.

The well-known Toronto businessman, who did not want to be publicly identified, said two of his dancers are studying to become doctors; four are attending law school and six are taking classes to become chartered accountants.

"They just do their job and go home," the owner said. "They are very intelligent and always show up on time and don't perform extras."

Club owners have created a six-point plan of action to recruit strippers as foreign dancers are becoming scarce as their visas can't be renewed under a new federal law.

They plan on organizing the dancers; stepping up recruitment in high schools, colleges and universities; seeking Canadian husbands to marry those whose visas are expiring; filing refugee claims, lobbying the federal government and working with civil servants.



 

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Lycamobile wants to shake up Canada's mobile market

lycamobile (Photo credit: osde8info)

By Rita Trichur, The Globe and Mail
Monday 23 July 2012
U.K.-based low-cost international calls specialist in talks with a number of potential Canadian network operator partners.
European telecommunications provider Lycamobile is planning to shake up Canada's C$18-billion wireless market with a new service aimed at immigrants and other ethnic consumers who regularly talk and text with family and friends living overseas.

Headquartered in London, Lycamobile sells low-cost international mobile calls. It has roughly 20 million customers in 16 countries, including Britain, France, Germany and Australia. The company was established in 2006 with an eye to serving expatriate communities--a multilingual niche market that numbers at least 250 million people around the world.

Lycamobile's goal is to be in 25 countries by the end of 2013, and Canada is a market in which so-called ethnic consumers wield increasing spending power.

Immigrants are expected to comprise more than 22% of Canada's population by 2017, with visible minorities, such as Chinese and South Asians, making up more than 50% of the population in cities like Vancouver and Toronto by that year. As a result, companies ranging from banks to retailers are tailoring products and services to court ethnic consumers.

Lycamobile Group CEO Milind Kangle said there is pent-up demand for more affordable services that allow consumers to make high-quality and frequent international calls and texts from their mobile phones. Immigrants often keep in daily contact with loved ones around the world, he said, but resent the inconvenience of being tethered to their land lines and webcams, or having to fumble for international calling cards that sometimes provide spotty connections.

"This is a lifeline service. We believe that our customers should get the same quality connection as any other customer would get in any other part of the world," Mr. Kangle said. "And we believe that the communication should be affordable--as in they should be able to make daily calls without having to feel the pinch in their wallet."

As a "mobile virtual network operator," or MVNO, Lycamobile does not own spectrum or cellphone towers. Instead, its business model is based on agreements that allow it to lease space on an existing carrier's network. Retailers such as Loblaw Cos Ltd. and Petro-Canada offer wireless services under MVNO deals.

Lycamobile is currently in talks with a number of Canadian carriers. Mr. Kangle declined to provide specifics due to confidentiality agreements, but the company is looking for a Canadian partner that uses GSM network technology.

Rogers Communications Inc. is Canada's biggest GSM-based carrier and is also considered an industry leader with respect to MVNO partnerships. The Toronto-based carrier has signed just less than 20 of those MVNO deals and operates a national wireless network.

BCE Inc. and Telus Corp. also support MVNO partnerships. Both could potentially partner with Lycamobile, but their newer shared network may have trouble supporting older GSM-based handsets.

Lycamobile, which recently opened an office in Toronto, is aiming for a Canadian launch this year. Although it plans to provide a national service, it will initially focus on major urban centres like Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal, offering unlimited and pay-as-you-go plans.

"We will target, of course, the bigger communities--the Asian communities, the Chinese communities, the Indian communities and what have you. But typically Lyca's approach is not to exclude any particular community," Mr. Kangle said.

To use Lycamobile's service, a consumer needs an unlocked GSM handset. She would then insert a Lycamobile SIM card and power up her device. Although the company does not sell handsets, Mr. Kangle says most consumers have at least one old handset lying around at home, adding availability of devices has never been an issue.

Zunaira Anderson, a 28-year-old resident of Woodbridge, Ont., knows firsthand the high cost of using mobile phones to keep in touch with her family and friends in Pakistan. She calls her mother every day. Although she uses free Web-based services like Skype, she also spends hundreds of dollars each month to call overseas on her Internet-based land line and her cellphone.

"I make the calls and he gets the shock," she says of her husband, Chris Rayan Anderson, who manages the bills.

"You feel empty if you don't talk to your parents. It's like our ties are so strong. We're so strongly in touch with each other," she said."I have to be in touch with them all the time. You know, when your parents are older, you are kind of more scared and you want to stay in touch more."

Winnipeg resident Hemant Shah is also hunting for cheaper alternatives for international calls. As an international marketing consultant, he frequently calls India, Saudi Arabia, Russia and a variety of West Asian countries from his mobile phone.

"It is not only keeping in touch with the family, but it is a business purpose also," he said of his smartphone. Although he often hunts for Wi-Fi hot spots when travelling, that approach is not always convenient.

"We are hooked up with the cellular phone today. Part of life has become a BlackBerry or iPhone. It has become a necessity of life."

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Newcomers need to learn intricacies of Canadian life: Research

Citizenship Ceremony @ MaRS 2011 (Photo credit: mars_discovery_district)

Immigrants need help learning not just Canada's two official languages, but also the "secret rules" of Canadian life in order to fit into their new home, according to the authors of a report released Thursday.

The ability to speak and read English or French is viewed as key to the economic success of newcomers, and the federal government is implementing mandatory language testing for immigrants in their country of origin and increasing the level of proficiency required. But in their report for the Institute for Research on Public Policy, Tracey Derwing and Erin Waugh looked at the role of language and cultural practices in how immigrants develop friendships, join social organizations and build networks within the mainstream.

The study, Language Skills and the Social Integration of Canada's Adult Immigrants, reviewed the federal Language Instruction for Newcomers (LINC) program, which is available to all permanent immigration classes until they become Canadian citizens. It also reviewed existing literature, including a Citizenship and Immigration study of language proficiency levels and a longitudinal study Derwin co-authored that has followed Mandarin and Slavic-language speakers since their arrival in Canada, assessing their accents and fluency as part of overall comprehensibility.

Courtesy: CanadianImmigrant.ca

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Employment, language barrier, key concerns of immigrants

Province of Ontario in Canada (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Employment, followed by language skills is the biggest concern for immigrants and refugees in their settlement process, according to a new study.

The study, "Making Ontario Home," by Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants (OCASI) is based on research carried out over a period of two years, on newcomers' experience with use of immigrant services in the province.

"This study shows that investment in settlement and integration services is making a real difference in the lives of immigrants," said Debbie Douglas, executive director of OCASI, launching the report on July 18. "Investing in services at the front-end as soon as immigrants arrive, will have significant long-term benefits for immigrants and their families as well as Canadian society and the economy."

Nearly two-thirds of the 2,530 respondents identified employment as their highest concern, and immigrant and refugee-serving agencies were the main access point for employment service. Skills upgrading programs and the provincially funded bridge training for non-regulated professions, created to remove barriers faced by foreign trained professionals, were among the highest rated employment services, according to the report.

"Putting the skills of newcomers to work and improving their social and economic integration is key to Ontario's economic prosperity," said Charles Sousa, Ontario's minister of Citizenship and Immigration. "Ontario is committed to supporting these important immigrant services, which this study confirms remain a priority for newcomers." Sousa told Canadian Immigrant that he would be asking the federal government to reverse the cuts made in funding to the province's settlement services. "I'm going to reiterate and reinforce that we need to have consultations — federal-provincial meetings."

Sousa also noted that such a meeting has been postponed several times and that he would call for at least a meeting with his counterparts in other provinces and territories.

The study, funded by the provincial government, is said to be one of the largest surveys of immigrants and refugees ever undertaken in Canada outside of government.

Courtesy: CanadianImmigrant.ca

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Commentary: Why Canada is working and the U.S. isn’t

By Stephen Marche

On July 1, Canada Day, Canadians awoke to a startling, if pleasant, piece of news: For the first time in recent history, according to Environics Analytics WealthScapes, the average Canadian is richer than the average American.

A few days later, Canada and the United States released the latest job figures. Canada’s unemployment rate fell, again, to 7.2 percent, and America’s was a stagnant 8.2 percent. The difference grows starker by the month: The Canadian system is working; the American system is not. And it’s not just Canadians who are noticing. As Iceland considers switching its currency, its leaders’ primary focus of interest is the loonie — the Canadian dollar.

As a study in the New York University Law Review pointed out, national constitutions based on the American model are disappearing. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in an interview on Egyptian television, admitted, “I would not look to the United States Constitution if I were drafting a constitution in the year 2012.” The natural replacement? The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, just turning 30.

Good politics do not account entirely for recent economic triumphs. Luck has played a major part. The Alberta tar sands — an environmental catastrophe in waiting — are the third-largest oil reserves in the world, and if America is too squeamish to buy Canada’s filthy energy, there’s always China. Policy, though, has played a significant part.

Liberals and conservatives in the U.S. have tried to use the Canadian example to promote their arguments. The left says Canada shows the rewards of financial regulation and socialism, while the right touts the brutal cuts made to Canadian social programs in the 1990s, which set the stage for economic recovery. Both sides are right.

Since the 1990s, Canada has pursued a hardheaded, even ruthless fiscally conservative form of socialism. Its originator was Paul Martin, who was finance minister for most of the ‘90s and prime minister from 2003 to 2006. Alone among finance ministers in the Group of Eight nations, he “resisted the siren call of deregulation,” in his words, and insisted that banks tighten their loan-loss and reserve requirements. He also made a courageous decision not to allow Canadian banks to merge, even though their CEOs claimed they would never be globally competitive unless they did. The stability of Canadian banks and the concomitant stability in the housing market provide the clearest explanation for why Canadians are richer than Americans.

Martin also slashed funding to social programs. He foresaw that crippling deficits imperiled Canada’s education and health- care systems, which even his Conservative predecessor, Brian Mulroney, described as a “sacred trust.” He cut corporate taxes, too. Social programs and robust capitalism are not inherently opposed propositions. Both are required for meaningful national prosperity.

Mr. Martin’s balanced policies emerged out of Canadian culture, which is fair-minded and rule-following to a fault. The Canadian obsession with order can make for strange politics. Of all the world’s societies, Canada’s is one of the most open to immigrants. Yet Canada also imposes a mandatory one-year prison sentence on illegal immigrants, and the majority of Canadians favor deportation. Canadians insist that their compassion be orderly, too.

This immigration policy is neither “liberal” nor “conservative” in the American political sense. It just works. You could say the same thing about Canada’s economic policies.

Two hundred years ago last month, the War of 1812 began. Thomas Jefferson declared, “The acquisition of Canada, this year, as far as the neighborhood of Quebec, will be a mere matter of marching.” The U.S. had almost 8 million people, compared with Canada’s 300,000. The Canadians nonetheless turned back the assault.

Through good luck, excellent policy and even some heroism, Canada survived the war. But it has taken 200 years for Canada to become winners.

Stephen Marche is a columnist for Esquire magazine. He wrote this for Bloomberg News.

Foreign worker hiring fast-tracked

English: The National Institute for Nanotechnology on the north campus of the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

BY SHEILA PRATT, EDMONTON JOURNAL JULY 17, 2012

 

 

The door is open much wider for temporary foreign workers in six construction jobs, and tradesmen from the U.S. can now pick up work permits at the airport, the federal immigration minister announced Monday.

But organized labour is worried Canadians may be left out if companies are no longer required to consider them first in six job categories.

At Alberta's request, the federal government has agreed to eliminate the requirement that an employer must prove that Canadians were not available (called a labour market opinion) in six job categories - welder, ironworker, carpenter, estimator, millwright and heavy duty equipment mechanic. Pipefitters have been coming for a year without a requirement for the LMO.

These are high-demand occupations and employers need to be able to recruit workers much faster to meet growing demand in the oilsands and in Edmonton, where the unemployment rate is 4.4 per cent, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney said.

Once inside the province, temporary workers will now be able to take jobs with other employers when their first contracts are over, Kenney said. Previously, foreign workers could not change employers.

Kenney said he had no concerns about eliminating the requirement for the LMO, a document outlining evidence of a shortage in a particular category of worker and proof the employer had advertised in Canada for workers but got no response.

Kenney stressed he would rely on the provincial government to keep an eye on trends in construction employment to determine if the shortage turns into an oversupply of labour in those categories.

Kenney said he doesn't think the federal government will be "so keen" to open the doors that wide in other areas, including for unskilled temporary foreign workers.

Temporary foreign workers must have job offers and documents to prove they are qualified in a trade before getting work permits.

The new rules will help companies recruit in the U.S., where many construction workers remain unemployed, Kenney said. U.S. workers can work for three weeks and spend a week back home - a pattern common for many Canadians working in the oilsands.

But Gil McGowan, head of the Alberta Federation of Labour, said it's a mistake to eliminate the LMO, the one check in the system that protected Canadian access to such jobs.

Alberta's non-union contractors gain a big advantage under the new system, he said. Along with elimination of the LMO, Prime Minister Stephen Harper three months ago announced foreign workers can be paid up to 15 per cent less than the going Canadian wage.

But union employers must abide by the collective agreement, said McGowan.

"This will help make foreign workers the first choice, not the last resort," said McGowan.

"This is not about a labour shortage, it's a low-wage strategy. This is mostly designed to give companies access to a big pool of construction labour in the U.S. that is desperate for jobs."

McGowan noted that half the companies looking for construction workers do not have apprenticeship training programs, and said those companies should not be allowed to bring in temporary workers.

"They don't want long-term solutions, they want quick fixes, and that's what Harper will give them."

Stephen Khan, Alberta's minister for enterprise and advanced education, said he's pleased with the new rules, which will create a fast track for six occupations by eliminating paperwork and weeks of waiting involved to obtain the LMO.

"We are engaging industry" to take a bigger role in recruiting labour, he said.

In a meeting Monday with the Journal editorial board, Kenney noted there is high unemployment among aboriginal youth and up to 14 per cent of immigrants are jobless or chronically underemployed. "I think employers have to do a lot more about skill training."

spratt@edmontonjournal.com

© Copyright (c) The Edmonton Journal

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Immigrants Say Settlement and Integration Services Are Working-New Report

Top 25 Canadian Immigrants Award (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

TORONTO, ONTARIO--(Marketwire - July 16, 2012) - OCASI - Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants is launching 'Making Ontario Home', a new report based on extensive research carried out over a period of two years, on newcomers' experience with use of services in Ontario.

"Putting the skills of newcomers to work and improving their social and economic integration is key to Ontario's economic prosperity," said Charles Sousa, Ontario's Minister of Citizenship and Immigration. "Ontario is committed to supporting these important immigrant services, which this study confirms remain a priority for newcomers."

The majority of survey respondents reported a high degree of satisfaction with services, including employment, language training and general settlement services. Services provided by immigrant and refugee-serving organizations were rated highly, particularly on elements such as the welcoming environment and quality and speed of service.

"This study shows that investment in settlement and integration services is making a real difference in the lives of immigrants," said Debbie Douglas, Executive Director of the Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants. "The work done by OCASI member agencies, the organizations in the immigrant and refugee-serving sector, is solid. It is a wise investment of our resources. Investing in services at the front-end as soon as immigrants arrive, will have significant long-term benefits for immigrants and their families as well as Canadian society and the economy," she added.

Nearly two-thirds of the respondents identified employment as their highest concern. Immigrant and refugee-serving agencies were the main access point for employment service. Skills upgrading programs and Bridge Training for unregulated professions, which are designed to remove barriers to high-skills employment, were among the highest rated employment services.

Banking Professional Aaftab Lakdawala participated in Bridge Training for those with a financial sector background. He said, "The help I received from ACCES Employment is why I am now employed in my field in the financial sector. I am very happy with the quality of service I received and would strongly recommend the program to other immigrants."

This Ontario-wide study is one of the largest surveys of immigrants and refugees ever undertaken in Canada outside of government, and includes a depth of detail ordinarily collected only through the now-cancelled long-form census. It will serve to some extent to address the information gap thus created.

Mehrunnisa Ali, Co-Director of CERIS - The Ontario Metropolis Centre and Ryerson Professor noted that the study is based on a province-wide survey of over 2,500 immigrants, supplemented by qualitative data from selected groups of immigrants. As one of the academic leads from the research consortium that carried out the study, she said, "The type of detailed information thus collected is exactly what we need to better understand immigrants' settlement trajectories. It should inform public policies and institutional practices across Ontario."

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Alberta opening door to foreign workers

English: Alberta Province within Canada. Español: Provincia de Alberta en Canadá. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

BY KELLY CRYDERMAN, CALGARY HERALD JULY 17, 2012

 

 

An Alberta-based pilot program that allows skilled tradespeople to move from employer to employer while on a temporary Canadian work permit is expanding - a change that could bring hundreds or even thousands of new workers to the province, says Immigration Minister Jason Kenney.

The program also makes it easier for certain foreign workers to get a job in Alberta's oilsands or on construction sites, especially from countries with no Canadian visa restrictions, such as the U.S.

Kenney said it will help address what he calls a nearcrisis in a number of fields where there aren't enough Canadian tradespeople available.

"This collapses what used to be a six-month, complicated, bureaucratic process into a one-step process where they can get a work permit in 30 minutes at the airport," Kenney said in an interview on Monday.

"This will make it massively faster for employers to proactively recruit skilled tradespeople - for example, from the United States."

For the past year, foreign steamfitters and pipefitters in the pilot project have been able to move freely between Alberta employers instead of being tied to one boss for the duration of the work permit - the usual rule in Canada's temporary foreign worker program.

Now, other in-demand tradespeople, including welders, heavy duty equipment mechanics, ironworkers, millwrights and industrial mechanics, carpenters and estimators will also be able to join the program.

The pilot program also allows these types of workers to be issued a work permit without a special authorization from Ottawa, called a Labour Market Opinion.

The Alberta government estimates the province could be short almost 1,500 welders, 1,376 carpenters, 775 heavy duty mechanics and 77 ironworkers in less than a decade.

"The good news coming out of this is Alberta is still the economic engine of Canada," Alberta Enterprise and Advanced Education Minister Stephen Kahn said Monday.

"We need these workers." A number of Alberta groups have made recent trips south to recruit U.S. workers, who don't need to learn a new language and often have similar training and qualifications.

But Kenney said the U.S. has been unwilling to expand a North American Free Trade Agreement visa program. The move to allow tradespeople into Alberta more easily through the TFW program, Kenney said, is "a bit of a work around."

"There are thousands of unfilled positions. And major construction projects are being held back because of this," the minister said, adding he estimates the program could bring thousands of workers in "once it picks up steam."

The news was welcomed in many quarters as a benefit to both the temporary workers, who will have more job options, and employers without enough employees.

However, a group representing small and medium-sized businesses said the expanded mobility of the workers means staff at small firms might be subject to "poaching" by larger companies.

"The small employer goes through all the cost and hassle of hiring a temporary worker, only to have them lured away by a big company with the promise of higher wages," said Richard Truscott of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business.

Martyn Piper, executive secretary Treasurer of the Alberta Regional Council of Carpenters and Allied Workers, acknowledged there's a shortage of carpenters and other trades. However, he's worried the new additions to the TFW program will lessen the impetus to train young workers, women and First Nations people, so they can become full participants in the labour market.

Piper also said the government needs to make sure only those foreign workers with the proper training and qualifications are allowed into the province.

"I would urge caution," Piper said.

This is just one in a long list of continual adjustments being made to Canada's TFW program. In April, Ottawa announced that foreign workers can be paid wages up to 15 per cent below the average pay rate, so long as it can be clearly demonstrated the same wages are being paid to Canadian workers.

At the same time, the government announced companies with an unblemished two-year history of hiring temporary workers from abroad will be allowed to apply for fast-tracked hiring permission.

Some unions have said the new provisions make it more difficult for Canadians to find meaningful work.

KCRYDERMAN@GALGARYHERALD.COM

© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald

Read more:http://www.calgaryherald.com/business/Alberta+opening+door+foreign+workers/6944408/story.html#ixzz20wFuBRyY

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