Canada heating up as a destination for tech employers

WALLACE IMMEN
The Globe and Mail


Computer engineer Bryan Gislason had his eyes on California as he graduated from the University of Victoria this spring.

“I wanted to work for a company that was innovative, growing and at the cutting edge of technology and I was focusing on Silicon Valley,” said Mr. Gislason, 24.

They were looking for him as well. “A lot of the large companies in the States, including Google and Facebook, are constantly recruiting for Canadian talent at Waterloo, Toronto, and in the West,” he found.


But rather than having to move to Silicon Valley, Kontagent, a San Francisco-based software company, placed him in its new Toronto-based engineering and support division. Kontagent has hired 15 Canadian software specialists for the office in the past year and is looking to bring another nine on board by the end of the year, said Jeff Tseng , Kontagent’s chief executive officer.

To drum up interest, Kontagent launched a worldwide contest in September for potential employees for the Canadian division, with a $10,000 cash prize for the person who does the best data analysis.

“We’ve already seen hundreds of entries from around the globe. In our view Toronto is a growing epicentre of innovative technology development, and this challenge is putting a global focus on Canada’s place in technology innovation,” Mr. Tseng said.

Information technology is among the most competitive fields for talent, according to a market analysis by job site CareerBuilder.com. Job listings for software engineers on the site are up 74 per cent year over year and postings for social media managers are up 48 per cent, according to CareerBuilder CEO Matt Ferguson.

“The world’s dependency on technology, the pervasiveness of social media, and the need to drive sales and expand into new markets are all driving double-digit growth,” Mr. Ferguson said.

The trend is expected to continue, with the U.S. Bureau of Labor projecting that IT jobs are destined to grow much faster than most other fields until at least 2020.

U.S. employers are looking far afield and finding rich veins of talent in Canada, but a countertrend is making Canada an attractor of tech talent, industry advisers say.

“Until recently we were seeing a brain drain, but now there is a growing flow of candidates from the U.S. into Canada as well as applicants from countries facing more financial uncertainty than Canada,” said Mike Winterfield, president of Randstad Technologies, the IT hiring division of recruiter Randstad Professionals in Toronto.

Canadian companies are willing to devote a lot of time and effort sponsoring work visas for immigrants to fill roles that are in high demand, such as people who have governance skills or executive-level advisory experience, in addition to their technical capabilities, he said. Among specialists Randstad has recruited to Canada this year are candidates from New York, England and India who are skilled in Java and also experienced in capital markets.

The demand is not just in Ontario but also Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Quebec, said Joanne Boucher, general manager of recruiter Bagg Technology Resources in Toronto.

“Across all industries, as technology becomes more and more ingrained in all aspects of business and as companies look for production gains and efficiencies, the demand for top IT talent is continuing to rise.”

That creates opportunity for people in other fields who want to retrain for a career with a technology component, said Mary Lynn Manton, co-chair of the school of information and communications technology at Seneca College in Toronto.

Seneca’s two-year diploma and three-year advanced diploma programs have seen a steady increase in demand, with a sharp spike in enrolment from people in business careers who, in the aftermath of the recession, want to retrain in a tech specialty, she said.

Constant career development is a good way to stay on top of the job market by ensuring your skills are constantly in demand, said Robert Howden, an instructor at the Computer Systems Institute in Chicago that specializes in upgrading the technology skills of people who want to change their careers.

There’s strong growth in specialties that analyze social media to spot trends, that provide tech support for data bases and develop corporate websites, he said.

*****

Know what these mean?

Technology titles in growing demand and shortest supply, according to a Randstad Canada survey:

Microsoft SharePoint 2010, .net 4.0 specialists

Java and Core Java developers

Specialists in cloud computing

SAP and Peoplesoft implementation consultants – particularly those willing to travel throughout North America on assignments

Capital markets business system analysts – people who understand products, but can also handle full technical implementations

PHP developers with distributed computing experience

Ruby on Rails developers

Senior quality assurance analysts who are also skilled in automated test tool script development

Source: Randstad

*****

Most in-demand job titles for computer science majors:

1. Software engineer

2. Systems engineer

3. Software developer

4. Java developer

5. Business analyst

6. .NET developer

7. Web developer

8. Systems administrator

9. Project manager

10. Network engineer

Source: Indeed.com

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Alberta Crackdown on Employment Agencies: Could Atlantic Canada Be Next?

Welcome to Bienvenue à Nova Scotia (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

September 21, 2012
Written by Lana MacLellan

Alberta is cracking down on unscrupulous provincial employment agencies with some of the strictest rules to date in Canada.

New regulations under Alberta’s Immigration Act came into effect on September 1st and are primarily designed to protect temporary foreign workers.  However, they also protect any worker who uses and employment agency in Alberta. They build on existing rules that require employment agencies to be licensed, and prohibit them from charging employees a fee to find a job.

Most significantly, the new regulations require employment agencies to:

Keep better records;
Operate under a licensed name;
Register agents; and
Have written contracts with job seekers.
In addition, agencies recruiting internationally will be required to provide the government with a $25,000 security.

The new regulations also make it illegal to mislead temporary foreign workers about their chances of becoming permanent residents or Canadian citizens. Agencies cannot mislead workers about their rights, intimidate or threaten them, ask for a performance bond, or pressure them to lie to Canadian officials.

Under the Fair Trading Act, companies that break the rules can expect to be fined up to $100,000, repay up to three times the profits earned in an offense, and/or forfeit the $25,000 security.

So why should employers in Atlantic Canada pay attention to what is happening in Alberta? Because it may very well be an indication of new rules and regulations that could be headed our way.

More and more Canadian provinces are implementing new rules for employment agencies and employers recruiting overseas that aim to protect temporary foreign workers. Manitoba was the first province to enact this type of legislation in April 2009 with the introduction of the Worker Recruitment and Protection Act (WRPA). Under WRPA, all Manitoba employers wanting to recruit temporary foreign workers are first required to register with the province and anyone engaged in foreign worker recruitment, including agencies, is required to obtain a license from the province. Recruiters must provide an irrevocable letter of credit in the amount of $10,000 and employers and recruiters are prohibited from charging fees from foreign workers to find them work. Fines for breaching obligations under WRPA are as high as $25,000 to $50,000.

Variations on the Manitoba model have been implemented by British Columbia and Alberta, and will soon be implemented in Nova Scotia though Bill 53, which makes a series of amendments to the Labour Standards Code. The details of the Nova Scotia regime have yet to finalized, however, they will likely be based on the Manitoba model.

We anticipate draft regulations will go to Cabinet sometime this fall, and be proclaimed shortly after. It appears the new regulations will require every employer who recruits foreign workers to register with the province. The registration process is designed to be as facilitative as possible for employers, and will likely be done online without a fee. In addition, recruiters will be required to have a license to recruit Nova Scotian employers, whether the recruiter is based in Nova Scotia, elsewhere in Canada, or overseas. A nominal fee will be charged for the license and a security will be required. Again, the details of this process will not be known until the regulations are before Cabinet later this fall.  However it seems the license fee will be approximately $100 and the security will be roughly $5000. After the registration and licensing regimes are introduced, there will be a transition period before each becomes a requirement for employers and recruiters.

These new regulations in Nova Scotia will create additional immigration hurdles for prospective and current employers of foreign workers. Employers that recruit and hire foreign workers must ensure they are registered and that they only work with licensed recruiters. Employers must comply with provincial laws to remain eligible to hire foreign workers and avoid fines.

Although Nova Scotia is currently the only Atlantic province with this type of legislation in the works, employers in other provinces may want to turn their attention to the new changes. Given the rate at which provinces across Canada are implementing similar rules, it may be just a matter of time before New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland and Labrador develop their own provincial regimes.

 Source: http://www.stewartmckelveyblogs.com/HRLaw/alberta-crackdown-on-employment-agencies-could-atlantic-canada-be-next/

Average Canadian family paying more than $11,000 per year for public health care insurance

English: Canadian per capita health care spending by age group in 2007. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

CALGARY, AB—An average Canadian family of two adults and two children will pay about $11,400 in taxes for Canada’s so-called “free” health care in 2012, calculates a new report from the Fraser Institute, Canada's leading public policy think-tank.

The report, The Price of Public Health Care Insurance: 2012 Edition, calculates the amount of taxes an average family pays to all levels of government in a year and the percentage of the total tax bill that goes towards public health care insurance.

By estimating the average income for six types of Canadian families, the report breaks down how much money each will contribute to public health care insurance in 2012:

A family of two parents with an average income of $106,808 and one child will pay $10,623.
A family of two parents with an average income of $113,226 and two children will pay $11,401.
A family of one parent with an average income of $46,134 and one child will pay $3,418.
A family of one parent with an average income of $50,964 and two children will pay $3,429.
A family of two adults with an average income of $96,458 and no children living at home will pay $11,358.
Unattached individuals earning an average income of $37,812 will pay approximately $3,707 for public health insurance.
"There’s a widespread belief that health care is free in Canada. It’s not; our tax dollars cover the cost of it. But the way we pay for health care disguises exactly how much public health care insurance costs Canadian families and how that cost is increasing over time," said Nadeem Esmail, Fraser Institute senior fellow and co-author of the report.

The report notes that since 2002, the cost of health care insurance for the average Canadian family increased by 59.8 per cent before inflation. By way of comparison, the cost of public health care increased more than twice as fast as the cost of shelter, roughly four times as fast as the cost of food, and more than five times as fast as the cost of clothing.

"We also found that the cost of public health care insurance grew 1.6 times faster than the average income over the decade," Esmail said.

In addition, the report calculates that the 10 per cent of Canadian families with the lowest incomes (less than $12,500) will pay an average of about $487 for public health care insurance in 2012. The 10 per cent of families earning an average income of $55,271 will pay $5,285, while families among the top 10 per cent of income earners will pay $32,628 towards public health care insurance this year.

"With a more precise estimate of what they really pay for health care on a personal level, Canadians will be in a better position to judge whether they are getting a good return on the money they spend on health care," Esmail said.

Source: http://www.fraserinstitute.org/research-news/news/display.aspx?id=18859

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