Diversity lags in provincial and territorial legislatures but is improving

2023/01/19 Leave a comment

My latest analysis:

How does diversity in the provincial and territorial legislatures compare with diversity in the federal Parliament? Federal Parliament diversity has been tracked systematically since 1993 by Jerome Black, but little comparative analysis has taken place at the level of the legislatures. This analysis aims to fill that gap by contrasting the most recent elections with the previous ones for all provinces and territories, looking at the percentage of women, visible minorities and Indigenous Peoples elected among the total of 772 provincial and territorial legislature members.

Just as diversity in the federal Parliament has increased over time, the last two provincial/territorial election cycles have shown an increase in diversity in most legislatures.

For a benchmark, the percentage of visible-minority citizens from the 2021 census is used rather than the percentage of visible-minority residents. This narrow approach reflects the fact that only citizens can become members of legislatures, whereas the population approach recognizes that non-residents also participate in supporting candidates and political parties. For Canada, visible minority citizens make up 21.4 per cent of the total population, compared to 26.5 per cent for all visible minorities, but there is considerable variation among provinces.

Table 1 compares overall representation to citizens. Underrepresentation of women ranges from almost 30 per cent in Newfoundland and Labrador to only four per cent in Quebec. Underrepresentation of visible minorities ranges from nine per cent in British Columbia to around five per cent or less for other provinces. Nova Scotia is the only province with greater representation of visible minorities (seven per cent) than their share of the population, in part because of a significant African Nova Scotian population. Underrepresentation of Indigenous Peoples ranges from a high of 14 per cent in Saskatchewan to two per cent in Ontario, Quebec and Prince Edward Island, with only Nunavut, not surprisingly, having representation reflecting the population.

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Table 2 contrasts representation at both the member and cabinet levels, highlighting overall representation of women, visible minorities and Indigenous members. Given that governments often factor diversity into cabinet formation, the third set of columns assesses the degree that provincial and territorial governments have compensated for underrepresentation of their caucus. It is clearly the case with Alberta for both visible minorities and Indigenous members, and for Ontario in the case of visible minorities. It is striking that Saskatchewan and Manitoba cabinets have not done so for both visible minorities and Indigenous Peoples, whereas it is less surprising that Quebec has not done so for visible minorities.

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Table 3 contrasts the most recent provincial and territorial elections with the previous election. Representation of women increased in all provinces save Alberta, Ontario, and Newfoundland and Labrador. Similarly, representation of visible minorities remained stable or increased in all provinces save Newfoundland and Labrador. However, Indigenous Peoples’ representation decreased or remained stable in all provinces save Manitoba, Newfoundland and Labrador, and The Northwest Territories.

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Table 4 examines the intersectionality between gender and visible minorities. Visible minority women members made up a larger share of the total number of visible minority members than their respective non-visible minority counterparts, and by 9.5 per cent overall. Notable exceptions are Alberta, Saskatchewan and Yukon. (Provinces with no visible minority members are excluded.) In short, visible minority women were more likely to contribute to greater gender diversity in most provinces.

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While there is no clear political alignment between parties at the provincial/territorial levels, table 5 attempts an approximate ideological lens between left-leaning, centrist and right-leaning parties. Left-leaning parties have the strongest representation of women, visible minorities and Indigenous Peoples followed by centrist parties for women and visible minorities. Right-leaning parties have lower representation for all groups save men.

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Provincial and territorial legislatures, like the federal Parliament, have considerable underrepresentation of women, visible minorities and Indigenous Peoples with the exceptions noted above. In general, greater diversity can be found in parties leaning left compared to parties leaning right. However, compared with the previous election, representation is improving for women and visible minorities in most provinces and territories, with a more mixed record for Indigenous Peoples.

For the four largest provinces, Quebec has the least underrepresentation of visible minorities and Indigenous Peoples while British Columbia has greatest underrepresentation of visible minorities and Alberta has the greatest underrepresentation of Indigenous Peoples.

The 2021 census has highlighted an ongoing increase in immigrants and visible minorities. Parties at the provincial level, like their federal counterparts, are clearly taking this into account in their candidate selection and campaign strategies. The increase in representation, while uneven and partially dependent on which party wins an election, indicates the degree to which this is so.

Methodology

Women, visible minorities and Indigenous Peoples are identified through name, photo and biographical analysis. MLA lists come from provincial and territorial election organizations and legislatures. 

For the ideological lens, we classified parties as follows, recognizing that there is considerable variation among the provinces:

Left-leaning: NDP, Québec solidaire, Parti québécois, Green

Centrist: Liberal, Independent Liberal, Independent

Right-leaning: Conservative, CAQ, UCP, Saskatchewan Party, B.C. Liberal (now B.C. United), People’s Alliance

Source: Diversity lags in provincial and territorial legislatures but is improving

Filed under Aboriginal, Multiculturalism, Politics Tagged with , ,

Ottawa prepared to use ‘aggressive measures’ to clear immigration backlog, memo reveals

2023/01/18 Leave a comment

Hard to know where to start on this ridiculous proposal. Sign of desperation, but the impact of waiving visitor visa eligibility requirements would result in more visa overstays, increased number of asylum claims and perhaps most significantly, weakened public confidence in the integrity of Canada’s immigration programs.

Unfortunate demonstration of poor policy development and overall poor operational management, likely driven by short-term political considerations given that the policy memo correctly signalled the issues of such an approach. Sigh…:

The federal government is considering extraordinary measures to reduce its backlog of immigration applications, including waiving eligibility requirements for nearly half a million visitor visas, according to a policy memo reviewed by The Globe and Mail.

A draft document from December reveals that Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) is trying to significantly reduce or eliminate its inventory of visitor visa applications by February and is willing to use “aggressive measures” to do so. There were more than 700,000 temporary resident visa (TRV) applications in the system as of early December, a portion of the overall sum.

In total, there were more than two million immigration applications to be processed as of late last year, including from those seeking work and study permits, along with those who applied for permanent residence. IRCC is concerned that the stockpile is “eroding the public’s trust” in the department, the memo reads.

To reduce the number of visitor visa applications, IRCC was deliberating on two options, according to the memo. In the first, the department would process an estimated 195,000 applications in bulk. This could include a large number of tourists from countries that require a visa to visit Canada.

Under the second option, Immigration Minister Sean Fraser would waive certain eligibility requirements for roughly 450,000 applications. Because other efforts are under way to reduce the TRV backlog, this decision would apply to all remaining applications.

By waiving eligibility rules, foreign nationals would not need to establish that they will leave Canada when their visa expires.

Visitors would still be subjected to admissibility checks. This ensures, for example, that applicants are not a known threat to national security.

Two sources within IRCC said the government has chosen the second option and that an announcement could be made within days. The Globe and Mail is not identifying the sources because they are not allowed to discuss departmental policies publicly.

This would be a temporary measure to reduce inventories, and the final version of the policy could differ from what’s proposed in the document.

As a result of the change, one of the sources said, immigration officers would not assess whether visitors have sufficient funds for their stays in Canada.

In a statement, Mr. Fraser did not address questions related to the policy memo or the changes under consideration.

“Canada is now processing visitor visa applications faster than it did even prior to the pandemic,” he said. More than 260,000 visitor visas were processed in November, he said, compared with a monthly average of about 180,000 in 2019.

“Despite the progress we’ve seen, there is still much more to do in order to achieve prepandemic processing timelines,” Mr. Fraser added.

The memo raised the possibility of keeping these measures a secret, saying that neither would need to be communicated to the public.

However, immigration consultants would likely notice “large volumes of high approval rates,” while the measures would wind up being disclosed in access-to-information requests.

IRCC is under considerable pressure to reduce the inventory of applications. As of Nov. 30, there were roughly 2.1 million applications in the system, more than half of which were in backlog – meaning, they had been there longer than service standards for processing.

There has been improvement of late: Two months earlier than that, there were 2.6 million applications in the system.

Prospective visitors and immigrants have been extremely frustrated by the processing delays. This has led to reputational damage for IRCC and a flurry of legal cases against it. Some PR applicants have waited years for a decision, for example, while others are nearing the end of their work permits, but have yet to hear whether they can stay in the country and continue their employment.

IRCC says it has invested millions of dollars in its processing capacity and hired hundreds of new employees to speed up decision-making.

“We’re actually moving cases out of our system faster than they’re coming in, which gives me faith that we’re getting back on track,” Mr. Fraser said at a news conference in December.

Even so, the inventories are significantly larger than before the pandemic, and with the federal government pursuing record levels of immigration, a hefty volume of applications continue to flow in.

Mr. Fraser could use his authority under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to waive eligibility requirements. This was recently done to expedite processing of visas for attendees of the United Nations Biodiversity Conference (COP15) in Montreal.

The memo outlines various pros and cons to this approach. On the plus side, it would help to reduce the inventory of applications, resulting in better processing times for incoming files.

However, the document says that not all applicants would be “genuine visitors.” This could lead to an estimated 8,600 asylum claims, otherwise known as refugee claims. The memo notes that India and Nigeria are the two largest sources of TRV applications, and both countries rank in the top 10 for asylum claimants in Canada.

The uptick in claims would subsequently put more pressure on all aspects of the refugee system, according to the document.

In addition, IRCC would be approving eligibility for people with past refusals and “derogatory information,” the memo said.

The two sources in the Immigration department characterized this as a rash decision that will lead to less scrutiny of applications. They said many employees in the department were dismayed with the approach.

The sources also questioned how effective this method will be in quickly reducing the backlog, given that immigration officers would still have to perform admissibility checks on the applications.

Source: Ottawa prepared to use ‘aggressive measures’ to reduce …

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , , , ,

Singal: Diversity Trainings Try to Change Hearts and Minds. That’s a Mistake.

2023/01/18 Leave a comment

Yet another analysis questioning the value of some diversity training and a reminder to focus on actions and behaviours, not “hearts and minds”:

Diversity trainings have been around for decades, long before the country’s latest round of racial reckoning. But after George Floyd’s murder — as companies faced pressure to demonstrate a commitment to racial justice — interest in the diversity, equity and inclusion (D.E.I.) industry exploded. The American market reached an estimated $3.4 billion in 2020.

D.E.I. trainings are designed to help organizations become more welcoming to members of traditionally marginalized groups. Advocates make bold promises: Diversity workshops can foster better intergroup relations, improve the retention of minority employees, close recruitment gaps and so on. The only problem? There’s little evidence that many of these initiatives work. And the specific type of diversity training that is currently in vogue — mandatory trainings that blame dominant groups for D.E.I. problems — may well have a net-negative effect on the outcomes managers claim to care about.

Over the years, social scientists who have conducted careful reviews of the evidence base for diversity trainings have frequently come to discouraging conclusions. Though diversity trainings have been around in one form or another since at least the 1960s, few of them are ever subjected to rigorous evaluation, and those that are mostly appear to have little or no positive long-term effects. The lack of evidence is “disappointing,” wrote Elizabeth Levy Paluck of Princeton and her co-authors in a 2021 Annual Review of Psychology article, “considering the frequency with which calls for diversity training emerge in the wake of widely publicized instances of discriminatory conduct.”

Dr. Paluck’s team found just two large experimental studies in the previous decade that attempted to evaluate the effects of diversity trainings and met basic quality benchmarks. Other researchers have been similarly unimpressed. “We have been speaking to employers about this research for more than a decade,” wrote the sociologists Frank Dobbin and Alexandra Kalev in 2018, “with the message that diversity training is likely the most expensive, and least effective, diversity program around.” (To be fair, not all of these critiques apply as sharply to voluntary diversity trainings.)

If diversity trainings have no impact whatsoever, that would mean that perhaps billions of dollars are being wasted annually in the United States on these efforts. But there’s a darker possibility: Some diversity initiatives might actually worsen the D.E.I. climates of the organizations that pay for them.

That’s partly because any psychological intervention may turn out to do more harm than good. The late psychologist Scott Lilienfeld made this point in an influential 2007 article where he argued that certain interventions — including ones geared at fighting youth substance use, youth delinquency and PTSD — likely fell into that category. In the case of D.E.I., Dr. Dobbin and Dr. Kalev warn that diversity trainings that are mandatory, or that threaten dominant groups’ sense of belonging or make them feel blamed, may elicit negative backlash or exacerbate pre-existing biases.

Many popular contemporary D.E.I. approaches meet these criteria. They often seem geared more toward sparking a revolutionary re-understanding of race relations than solving organizations’ specific problems. And they often blame white people — or their culture — for harming people of color. For example, the activist Tema Okun’s work cites concepts like “objectivity” and “worship of the written word” as characteristics of “white supremacy culture.” Robin DiAngelo’s “white fragility” trainings are intentionally designed to make white participants uncomfortable. And microaggression trainings are based on an area of academic literature that claims, without quality evidence, that common utterances like “America is a melting pot” harm the mental health of people of color. Many of these trainings run counter to the views of most Americans — of any color — on race and equality. And they’re generating exactly the sort of backlash that research predicts.

Just ask employees at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, which had to issue an apology after it posted an Okunesque graphic that presented rational thought, hard work and “emphasis on scientific method” as attributes of “white culture.”

Then there are the lawsuits. As The New York Times Magazine noted in 2020, at least half a dozen people who had been employed by the New York City Department of Education filed lawsuits or won settlements in cases relating to mandatory D.E.I. trainings. Racial affinity groups, a popular intervention in which participants are temporarily separated by race so they can talk about, well, race, have perhaps proved even more problematic. They’ve sparked complaints in places like Jacksonville, Fla. (where a principal was temporarily reassigned after she attempted to separate white students from students of color to discuss “cultural issues”), and Wellesley, Mass. (where the creation of racial affinity groups for students provoked a now-settled lawsuit from a conservative group).

Not every complaint is valid, not every lawsuit has merit and backlash to conversations about racial justice is nothing new. Martin Luther King Jr. had an unfavorable rating of 63 percent before his assassination. If common diversity trainings definitively made institutions fairer or more inclusive in measurable ways, then one could argue they are worth it, backlash and mounting legal fees notwithstanding. But there’s little evidence that they do.

So what does work? Robert Livingston, a lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School who works as both a bias researcher and a diversity consultant, has a simple proposal: “Focus on actions and behaviors rather than hearts and minds.”

Dr. Livingston suggests that it’s more important to accurately diagnose an organization’s specific problems with D.E.I. and to come up with concrete strategies for solving them than it is to attempt to change the attitudes of individual employees. And D.E.I. challenges vary widely from organization to organization: Sometimes the problem has to do with the relationship between white and nonwhite employees, sometimes it has to do with the recruitment or retention of new employees and sometimes it has to do with disparate treatment of customers (think of Black patients prescribed less pain medication than white ones).

The legwork it takes to actually understand and solve these problems isn’t necessarily glamorous. If you want more Black and Latino people in management roles at your large company, that might require gathering data on what percentage of applicants come from these groups, interviewing current Black and Latino managers on whether there are climate issues that could be contributing to the problem and possibly beefing up recruitment efforts at, say, business schools with high percentages of Black and Latino graduates. Even solving this one problem — and it’s a fairly common one — could take hundreds of hours of labor.

The truth, as Dr. Livingston pointed out, is that not every organization is up to this sort of task. Ticking a box and moving on can be the more attractive option. “Some organizations want to do window dressing,” he said. “And if so, then, OK, bring in a white fragility workshop and know you’ve accomplished your goal.”

The history of diversity trainings is, in a sense, a history of fads. Maybe the current crop will wither over time, new ones will sprout that are stunted by the same lack of evidence, and a decade from now someone else will write a version of this article. But it’s also possible that organizations will grow tired of throwing time and money at trainings where the upside is mostly theoretical and the potential downsides include unhappy employees, public embarrassment and even lawsuits. It’s possible they will realize that a true commitment to D.E.I. does not lend itself to easy solutions.

Source: Diversity Trainings Try to Change Hearts and Minds. That’s a Mistake.

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , , , ,

A family’s death trying to cross the U.S. border hasn’t deterred others — and more are taking the risk

2023/01/18 Leave a comment

Interesting flow in the other direction, as well as the details revealed in court documents:

Almost a year after a family from India froze to death near the international border in southern Manitoba, similar cases of people walking over to the U.S. are on the rise — but they involve people from a different country.

Since the tragic deaths of the Patel family in January 2022, monthly incidents on the other side of Manitoba’s international border have risen from eight to 30 in November, the most recent month for which complete data is available from U.S. Customs and Border Protection. That’s similar to the number seen before the COVID-19 pandemic.

The deaths of three-year-old Dharmik Patel; his 11-year-old sister, Vihangi Patel; and their parents, 37-year-old Vaishali Patel and 39-year-old Jagdish Patel put a spotlight on human smuggling operations involving Indian migrants using Canada as a stopover before illegally crossing south. 

But a growing proportion of people caught walking over the border are now coming from Mexico. In November, Mexicans made up almost three-quarters of incidents in the Grand Forks sector.

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The number of Mexicans crossing into Canada to seek asylum has also spiked recently, as many flee their homes in search of jobs and safety. But statistics show most applicants from that country are rejected.

While flying to Canada just to walk back down into the U.S. is a long trip, some say it’s becoming more common for several reasons.

And in two recent cases involving Mexican migrants walking into North Dakota, authorities discovered the alleged smugglers before their trips were complete. Court documents revealed how those journeys mirrored the Patels’ — and the ways they turned out differently.

Fewer hurdles, more desperation

One advocate said the increase in Mexicans crossing the northern border of the U.S. may be partly due to increased security measures along the country’s southern boundary and a harsher detention system for those caught trying to cross in recent years.

“The Mexican border with the U.S. has been militarized for decades now…. I’m not surprised that people will try other ways to arrive [in] the U.S.,” said Maru Mora Villalpando, a community organizer and founder of La Resistencia, a grassroots organization that works with detained migrants in Washington state.

Those changes made it harder to cross certain parts of the southern border, she said, forcing people to instead travel through dangerous parts of the desert — or try their luck up north.

The increase in northern crossings may also be partly due to Canada lifting a visa requirementfor Mexican travellers in 2016, said Kathryn Siemer, acting patrol agent in charge of Pembina Border Patrol station in North Dakota.

“I think we’re still seeing some of the repercussions of that, where it’s easier to fly into Canada and then cross into the United States as opposed to trying to come north through the Mexico border,” Siemer said.

Matthew Dearth, a Grand Forks lawyer representing an alleged smuggler charged in connection with one of the most recent cases in North Dakota, said more people are getting desperate enough — as the U.S. government fails to act on immigration reform — to risk potentially severe criminal penalties for their vision of a better future.

“They’re going to do whatever they can do to try to get into the United States. Because they have family members here. They have opportunity here. It’s safe,” said Dearth, who’s originally from Winnipeg.

A call for help

Dearth’s client is charged in connection with a suspected smuggling trip that met its end after the man’s van got stuck in the snow in Cavalier, a North Dakota city just south of the international border, on the way to pick up a group of migrants, a U.S. court document filed in mid-November alleged.

Dearth’s client and the other man charged in the case then walked about a half hour in the early morning of Nov. 17, 2022, before they met up with the migrants, according to the affidavit filed on Nov. 18, 2022, in the United States District Court in North Dakota.

Much like when the Patel family tried to cross the border, freezing temperatures, snow and wind made it a difficult journey.

There were also two young children — in this case aged four and nine — among the group, according to the affidavit written by a Border Patrol officer involved in the case. But this time, someone decided to call for help.

In this remote part of the country, that’s not always possible, said Border Patrol agent Siemer. Cell phone towers are few and far between, and tall snow drifts can make it easy to get lost in the dark.

“If you’re out here for more than 20 minutes, and whoever you thought might be coming to pick you up isn’t there because they got stuck or didn’t show up, you are on your own and it’s very dangerous,” she said.

Following that call for help in November, a deputy arrived and found nine people dressed in heavy winter clothing. They asked officers to bring them to a hotel — which raised suspicions around smuggling. The group later admitted they were in the country illegally, the affidavit alleged.

None of the allegations against Dearth’s client, who is a U.S. citizen, or his co-accused have been proven in court. The Georgia man pleaded not guilty to conspiring to smuggle people across the border, which carries a maximum penalty of a decade in prison.

Financial woes

Dearth said there’s a general misconception that border smuggling is only carried out by organized crime groups looking to rake in cash.

Sometimes it’s done by people who made the crossing themselves and are trying to help friends or family make a better life. Other times, people are “down on their luck” and need the money, he said.

The affidavit claims Dearth’s client told authorities he worked in construction with his co-accused, and that’s how he first got the offer to make extra money smuggling people into the U.S. 

While he first turned it down, the affidavit alleged he changed his mind after a divorce and financial struggles.

The affidavit also claims the man said he and his co-accused smuggled four other groups over the same border in September and October and dropped them off at pre-arranged spots along the interstate highway. 

He said he typically made between $500 and $1,000 per person, and his co-accused was the one who made the arrangements, the affidavit alleged.

A cemetery meeting

In a case last month, two smugglers pleaded guilty after one of them hid in a ditch when Border Patrol agents pulled over their pickup truck full of migrants around a cemetery near Neche, another North Dakota community by the international border.

The Park Center Cemetery is surrounded by pine trees and visible for miles when the weather co-operates. It had recently been the site of other “illegal entry activity” when agents saw a truck approach the U.S. side of the border under cover of darkness early on Dec. 2, 2022, according to an affidavit filed Dec. 5, 2022, in the United States District Court in North Dakota.

The desolate site is miles away from any farms or houses on the U.S. side, and nearby creeks — some frozen, some still running — wind through farmers’ fields.

Agents said in the affidavit on that night, they watched another vehicle pull up on the Canadian side, and a group got out and walked toward the cemetery, then got into the truck.

When agents pulled the truck over, one of the people inside — Juan Pablo Huerta-Ramos, later charged as a smuggler — got out and ran. He was later found hiding in a nearby ditch filled with grass and snow, the affidavit said.

All nine people in the truck, including smugglers Huerta-Ramos and Martin Loyo-Estrada, later admitted to being Mexican citizens illegally in the U.S.

A broken leg, a family in Winnipeg

In an interview after his arrest, Loyo-Estrada said he’d lived in California for about nine years and had been a landscaper until a broken leg left him unable to work. A friend from Mexico then connected him with someone who offered him work smuggling people over the border.

Loyo-Estrada said that unknown person called him several times to give him directions during his trip from Los Angeles to Cavalier, which also included using Uber rides and hotels as he made stops in Minneapolis and Grand Forks. 

The few details investigators revealed about the Patels’ journey after arriving in Canada include similar elements — staying in several hotels and using a ride-sharing service to get around the Greater Toronto Area.

Loyo-Estrada said he was supposed to get paid $1,000 for each group of migrants he worked with and be reimbursed for his travel costs.

Huerta-Ramos told agents he was also living in California and had travelled from Los Angeles to North Dakota to smuggle over his wife and daughter, who were supposed to be in Winnipeg. He said his wife gave him a phone number for someone named Antonio, who he agreed to pay $2,000 to help get his family across.

He said he met two of Antonio’s associates in front of the Fargo airport and went with them to a Mexican restaurant, where he got a call from Antonio telling him his family was already in California — and asking if he’d help smuggle a different group across the border anyway. 

Both men pleaded guilty to conspiring to transport illegal aliens and re-entering the U.S. without permission after previously being deported.

A year later, questions remain

While a year has passed since the deaths of Dharmik, Vihangi, Vaishali and Jagdish Patel, many details about their journey are still unknown.

Investigators haven’t publicly released details about who they believe sheltered and shuttled the Patels around the Greater Toronto Area before they travelled to Manitoba to cross the border.

And it’s still unclear, even to police, what happened after Jan. 15, 2022, when the family left their Toronto-area hotel, up until their bodies were discovered four days later.

It is clear, however, that they were sent on a dangerous journey — and it’s the kind of story migrant advocate Mora Villalpando hears too often, as many who can’t wait for changes in the U.S. immigration system are forced to take risks to get there.

“What it tells us is that the U.S. is just increasing the danger for people that are trying to come,” she said.

“When you intentionally for decades created a funnel to a dangerous path through the desert, it means you don’t care about human beings.”

Source: A family’s death trying to cross the U.S. border hasn’t deterred others — and more are taking the risk

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

Stéphanie Chouinard and Andrew Parkin: The CPC needs to get back to bilingualism

2023/01/18 Leave a comment

Of note:

Over the last 20 years, only two of the past seven federal elections have produced majority governments. Governing and opposition parties alike have struggled to grow their popularity with Canadians. It is now Conservative Party of Canada leader Pierre Poilievre’s turn to try to break the logjam. 

To break through, the new leader needs to play both offence and defence. The attack comes more naturally for Poilievre, and concerns with the rising costs of living provides an ideal focus. Poilievre’s stinging criticisms align with the public mood: over the past year, inflation has surpassed COVID-19 as the top issue on Canadians’ minds. 

To win the next election, however, criticizing the Liberals’ handling of the economy won’t be enough. Poilievre should also address his own party’s weaknesses. Chief among these is the prolonged hangover from the 2015 election, when Conservatives engaged in what many saw as anti-immigrant dog-whistling. This undermined the party’s previous outreach to new Canadians and hampered its efforts to pick up seats in the country’s diverse — and seat-rich — cities and suburbs.

Poilievre now seems set to change course. His rhetoric calling for greater opportunities for Canadians regardless of their ethnicity is reminiscent of Diefenbaker’s push for a bill of rights. His disdain for gatekeepers is aimed partly at the roadblocks faced by immigrants seeking to settle in Canada. And his own family story — featuring his wife Anaida, an immigrant herself — cements his credentials as a leader who genuinely appreciates newcomers’ contributions to the country.

On immigration, CPC supporters are at least trying to meet him halfway. It is true that Conservative voters, on average, are less favourable to immigration than Liberal or NDP supporters. But this difference shouldn’t be misinterpreted. A slight majority of Conservatives currently disagree with the claim that there is too much immigration to Canada, and agree that we should be taking in more refugees fleeing conflicts. Three in four think immigration has a positive impact on our economy. Poilievre’s championing of struggling entrepreneurial newcomers is hardly going to tear his party apart.

Making progress on this front, however, should go hand in hand with rebuilding the party’s reputation on another key issue: official bilingualism. Much has been made of how well Poilievre himself speaks French — something that places him well ahead of his recent predecessors. But to make real gains in French-speaking areas of the country (both inside and outside of Quebec), it is the party’s personality that will count, not just the leader’s.

When it comes to language policy, this personality has been shaped by the CPC’s provincial counterparts. In 2018, Doug Ford announced he was shutting down the Ontario French-language commissioner’s office and cancelling funding for the Université de l’Ontario français — a decision that was met with public demonstrations the likes of which had not been seen since the Mike Harris era. In Alberta, both Jason Kenney’s budget cuts to Campus St-Jean and Danielle Smith’s failure to appoint a minister responsible for Francophone Affairs have cemented the UCP’s reputation as a government unfriendly to Franco-Albertans.

But without a doubt, the Conservative brand has been damaged most by New Brunswick’s premier, Blaine Higgs, a former member of the overtly francophobic Confederation of Regions (CoR) party. Since his re-election in 2020, his actions on official bilingualism have gone from dismissive to destructive, from his appointment of the former leader of the People’s Alliance (a party largely seen as the CoR’s heir) to the committee in charge of the review of the province’s Official Languages Act, to the cancelling of French immersion. In the country’s only officially bilingual province, these decisions are more than ill-advised; they are divisive. 

Poilievre thus has his work cut out for him if he is to re-brand his party as a safe choice for Francophone voters. He has already lost the CPC’s biggest asset: former official languages critic Alain Rayes left the party after the last leadership race. But the party’s base poses a bigger problem: fewer than three in ten CPC supporters think that bilingualism is a very important part of the Canadian identity. This is the lowest proportion since Environics first polled on this almost 40 years ago. While on multiculturalism, the party has decidedly become more supportive, on bilingualism, it has become less.

It is thus perhaps unsurprising that the proportion of Quebecers who sense that their language is under threat has never been higher. Canadians from the ROC tend to blame the province’s nationalist premier for fuelling Quebecers’ angst around language and culture. But as provincial governments outside Quebec erode rather than expand French-language services, and as commitment to bilingualism fades within the federal official opposition’s membership, a little less finger-pointing on the subject might be in order.

A leader’s ability to speak French is essential in Canadian politics, but it offers no short-cut to victory. To again form a majority government, CPC supporters, from coast to coast to coast, need to take a hard look at their vision of Canada and articulate a serious recommitment to official bilingualism as a modern value of Canadian society.

Stéphanie Chouinard is an associate professor in the Department of PoliticalScience at Royal Military College and at Queen’s University in Kingston. Andrew Parkin is the executive director of the Environics Institute for Survey Research. Find them on Twitter at @DrSChouinardand and @parkinac.

Source: Stéphanie Chouinard and Andrew Parkin: The CPC needs to get back to bilingualism

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Poilievre veut miser sur l’immigration pour renflouer le système de santé

2023/01/18 Leave a comment

Of note, the general messaging (Chantal Hébert has a good analysis of CPC prospects Pierre Poilievre is unpopular in Canada’s second-largest province — and so are his policies):

Un gouvernement conservateur sous Pierre Poilievre reconnaîtrait les compétences des travailleurs étrangers en santé dans un délai de 60 jours, et ce, afin de désengorger le système de santé.

C’est ce qu’a affirmé le chef du Parti conservateur du Canada, lundi après-midi, dans le cadre d’un point de presse tenu à l’occasion d’une mini-tournée québécoise, où il a rencontré plus tôt dans la journée des familles dont un membre est touché par un trouble du spectre de l’autisme et des représentants de la Fédération des chambres de commerce du Québec.

Ces déclarations font écho à un engagement précédent formulé par M. Poilievre, qui souhaitait faciliter et accélérer la reconnaissance des compétences des travailleurs immigrants.

« Seulement 43 % des médecins immigrants et 37 % des infirmières immigrantes ont le droit de pratiquer leur métier, a déploré M. Poilievre. Pour ces candidats, les coûts de formation n’entrent même pas dans l’équation. Il suffirait d’attester de leurs compétences sur la foi de ce qu’ils sont en mesure d’accomplir, le tout dans 60 jours, plutôt que de se fier sur leur pays d’origine. »

Le député de Carleton, en Ontario, souhaiterait également que le programme de reconnaissance des acquis soit accessible aux candidats avant même leur arrivée au Canada, afin de raccourcir le processus le plus possible. Son gouvernement s’engagerait par ailleurs à soutenir 34 000 prêts pour tout autant d’immigrants établis au pays afin qu’ils puissent reprendre leurs études pour se mettre aux normes canadiennes.

Pour soulager le système de santé, le chef conservateur propose aussi de réduire les listes d’attente et d’accélérer l’approbation canadienne de traitements d’avant-garde éprouvés dans d’autres pays industrialisés.

Moins d’inflation et de paperasse

M. Poilievre a profité de sa brève allocution pour rappeler trois promesses que son parti s’engage à respecter s’il est porté au pouvoir.

Il propose d’abord une « loi du 1 $ pour 1 $», où son gouvernement retrancherait toute somme nouvellement investie d’un autre programme afin d’éviter d’endetter davantage les Canadiens, ce qu’il reproche à son homologue libéral.

« Les Canadiens sont en train de souffrir, nous sommes face à un taux d’inflation parmi les plus élevés des quarante dernières années », a déclaré M. Poilievre, qui plaide pour un meilleur contrôle des dépenses. « L’augmentation des coûts du gouvernement Trudeau, avec ses 500 millions de dollars de déficit inflationniste, a entraîné une augmentation du coût de la vie », a-t-il ajouté.

Le chef conservateur a par ailleurs promis de « rendre le travail payant » plutôt que de le punir, notamment en allégeant la fiscalité et les différents programmes gouvernementaux, le tout afin de remettre davantage d’argent dans les poches des travailleurs.

Enfin, le chef de l’opposition officielle à Ottawa s’est engagé à réduire la bureaucratie et la « paperasserie » imposées aux entreprises afin de les rendre plus productives, notamment dans les secteurs minier et hydroélectrique, pour planifier la transition écologique.

M. Poilievre sera de passage à Trois-Rivières et à Québec plus tard cette semaine pour « entendre le gros bon sens des Québécois et des Québécoises » dans l’optique de préparer le programme conservateur en vue de la rentrée parlementaire, plus tard ce mois-ci.

Source: Poilievre veut miser sur l’immigration pour renflouer le système de santé

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Klassen: Canada, a superpower? Here’s how the country might one day fit the bill

2023/01/17 Leave a comment

I am always sceptical of such long-term forecasts, given that none of us will be around to see how accurate, or likely how inaccurate, they will prove to be, 100 years from now, let alone Klassen’s 200 years.

In comparison, Century Initiative’s goals of a large increase in population, are modest and more realistic (even if I have fundamental disagreements).

For the foreseeable future, the United States will probably remain the world’s most powerful nation. Yet, like any champion, it must watch for challengers and head them off. At present, China’s rise on the global stage troubles Washington. A few decades ago, it was the Soviet Union.

But will future contenders for superpower status be much closer — specifically, north of the U.S. border? The British Empire ended in the mid-20th century when it was outmanoeuvred not by one of its longtime rivals, France or Germany, but rather by its ally, the U.S. Could Canada do the same?

Canada’s population is just a fraction of its southern neighbour’s, but Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government has announced an ambitious plan to bring in 500,000 immigrants each year by 2025.

The vast majority will be young and selected via merit-based criteria that give priority to education and workplace skills. Canada’s population in relation to the U.S. has also been slowly increasing for decades and is growing at a faster pace.

Canada and the U.S. are roughly the same size, both accounting for 6.1 per cent of the world’s land mass. Much of Canada’s land at present is cold, barren and largely uninhabitable. But climate change has made Canada’s landscape more temperate and suitable for agriculture and other activities, a trend expected to continue in the decades to come.

Economic powerhouse

In some ways Canada is already a superpower. Its economic output is the eighth largest in the world. The seven countries with larger economies have bigger populations than Canada. Even with a short growing season and relatively small area devoted to agriculture, Canada is the fifth largest exporter of agri-food and seafood products.

But economic strength is only one measure of a global power. Another is having the resources that others need. In that regard, Canada is extraordinarily rich in natural resources, including clean water. Regardless of future economic, environmental and technological trends, the country will be an energy and natural resources superpower.

Two other elements are needed for superpower status: a political system that provides strong governance and a national culture that’s appealing to its own citizens and to people around the world.

Canadian politics prizes stability and moderation, both hallmarks of a superpower. Social change occurs with few ideological battles. For example, becoming the first developed country to legalize the use and sale of recreational cannabis happened with scant controversy or social division.

Even on expanding the scope of medical assistance in dying legislation, Canadians have remained civil, with all stakeholders willing to listen to each other.

Providing inspiration

Superpowers are not only countries that dominate in various spheres, but also countries that command the aspiration of — and provide inspiration for — people around the globe. For two centuries, the U.S. has made its national dream one that others around the world sought to attain. American-style democracy was the gold standard.

This is now less and less the case. The “city on a hill” acting as a beacon of hope for others has morphed in recent decades into a selfish “America-first” environment.

American citizens have grown disillusioned by their polarized politics, while outsiders question the excesses that drive U.S. capitalism. Donald Trump’s years in the White House have left many dismayed about the future of their country and widened the divisions between Republicans and Democrats.

As neighbours, Canadians shake their heads in wonder at the inequities, lack of public health care, lax gun control and debates over abortion and immigration that dominate and divide American politics.

Canadian culture, shaped by the country’s history of being a fragment of both the British and French empires, has aspired to promote equality, both between individuals and groups, although it’s failed in its abysmal treatment of Indigenous Peoples.

Nonetheless, in an age of globalization and demand for greater personal freedoms, Canada’s multicultural policies are a beacon of hope in a world often scarred by religious, ethnic and tribal battles.

Where will Canada be in 2223?

Much like when the U.S. steadily assumed the role of unchallenged superpower from Great Britain during the first half of the 20th century, it might be that Canada gradually becomes a great power this century — perhaps first as a partner to the United States, but then increasingly supplanting its neighbour.

For many around the world, such a transition would be preferable to other scenarios, such as China or Russia assuming more dominant roles in global affairs.

A shift in global power relations would occur at a leisurely pace and with minimal disruption.

In 1776, with a population of 2.5 million, few imagined that within two centuries, the U.S. would become the dominant superpower. It’s not inconceivable that Canada could perform the same feat by 2223.

Source: Canada, a superpower? Here’s how the country might one day fit the bill

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Safe Third Country Agreement is ‘working’ despite surge in irregular crossings: minister

2023/01/17 Leave a comment

Of note (not sure its perceived as working by the public):

Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino says the Canada-U.S. Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA) is “working,” despite the massive increase in migrants using unofficial border crossings last year compared to previous years.

Mendicino told CTV’s Question Period host Vassy Kapelos, in an interview airing Sunday, Canadian officials and their American counterparts continue to work together to modernize the agreement. Still, he insists the system is functioning.

“To be clear, that agreement remains in place and it is working,” he said. “The RCMP are doing the job of intercepting those who are coming into the country, which obviously underscores the integrity of our borders and the investments, which are backstopped by the federal government.”

The STCA was first signed 20 years ago, and there have been talks of modernizing it since 2018, with some changes made in 2019. Under the STCA, people seeking refugee status in either Canada or the U.S. must make their claim in the first country they enter.

The loophole that the agreement applies only to official land border crossings means asylum seekers who manage to enter a country via an unofficial crossing — such as Roxham Road along the Quebec-New York border — are not returned.

According to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, the number of RCMP interceptions and asylum claims at unofficial border crossings between Canada and the U.S. hit a six-year high in 2022. There was a drastic drop in the numbers as of spring 2020 and throughout 2021 because of the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on the border.

“I’m cautiously optimistic that we’re going to be able to land it,” he said. “In the meantime, we’ll continue to make historic investments and work with provincial and territorial partners, so that asylum seekers who have a basis on which to make those claims in Canada are able to do so, but do so in a safe and orderly way.”

“It’s important that we recognize that we have an immigration system that works, and that fosters safe and orderly flow both when it comes to asylum seekers, as well as economic immigrants,” he also said.

Conservative Leader Poilievre Poilievre said this week that the Liberal government should renegotiate the agreement “in order to close Roxham Road,” adding he understands why people try to use it, because the Canadian immigration system is “now so slow and so broken.” He blamed the Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada application backlog, and said the prime minister should “renegotiate the deal with the Americans, and speed up the processing of immigration generally.”

Source: Safe Third Country Agreement is ‘working’ despite surge in irregular crossings: minister

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Haitian migrant’s death reignites debate over Quebec’s Roxham Road border crossing

2023/01/17 Leave a comment

The death of a Haitian migrant near Quebec’s Roxham Road has reignited a debate in the province about how to respond to an increase in asylum seekers entering the country through the irregular border crossing.

The body of Fritznel Richard, 44, was found on Jan. 5 in a wooded area near the popular unofficial entry point, about an hour’s drive south of Montreal. Provincial police said he was trying to reach family in the United States, and that he likely died of hypothermia after becoming lost.

A migrant’s advocacy group that is helping the family said Mr. Richard was originally from Haiti, had entered Canada through Roxham Road at an unknown time, and had been struggling to obtain a work permit. “Unfortunately, he was in a precarious situation and was not able to make ends meet,” said Hady Anne, a spokesperson for Solidarity Across Borders.

Hélène Gravel, who lives next to the U.S. border on Roxham Road, said that in the past few months, she and her neighbours have seen more people crossing through the forest near her house to get to the U.S., including families.

“Even if there aren’t many of them, we’re not going to wait for them to die in the forest to do something,” she said.

Mr. Richard’s death has placed a renewed spotlight on Roxham Road’s unofficial border crossing, at which tens of thousands of migrants have entered Canada in recent years, largely because of the Safe Third Country Agreement between Canada and the U.S. The long-standing pact means that border agents from each country must turn away asylum seekers from the other if they present themselves at official land border crossings.

The unassuming cul-de-sac near the St-Bernard-de-Lacolle, Que., customs has become an “official nonofficial point of entry” as a result, said Christina Clark-Kazak, associate professor at the University of Ottawa’s graduate school of public and international affairs.

Concrete blocks and rocks block roads on both sides of the border in the sparsely populated area. A narrow gravel path and signs with information about the asylum-seeking process lead migrants from the U.S. into RCMP installations.

The RCMP intercepted 34,478 asylum seekers who did not use official ports of entry to enter Quebec between January and November of 2022, according to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada data, compared to just 316 in the rest of the country.

Federal opposition parties have repeatedly called for a review of the Safe Third Country Agreement, but anxiety about the situation has been sharpest in Quebec.

“The federal government must renegotiate the Safe Third Country Agreement with the United States as soon as possible,” said Ewan Sauves, spokesperson for Premier François Legault.

“There is an urgent need to act on Roxham Road,” said Mr. Sauves, adding that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau “must ensure that the other provinces take charge of the proportion of asylum seekers that is theirs. It is not fair that it is only Quebec that has to manage this.”

Quebec is “concerned” about the increase in asylum applications since 2017 and its “ability to welcome these people with dignity and provide them with adequate services,” said Quebec Ministry of Immigration spokesperson Arianne Méthot.

The Safe Third Country Agreement is “an important tool,” said Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada spokesperson Jeffrey MacDonald, adding that modernizing the agreement “has been a priority for the government for several years.” He did not provide details “due to the sensitive nature of our bilateral discussions with the U.S.”

Mr. MacDonald also pointed out that, in 2021-22, Quebec received over $697-million in compensation from the federal government to “provide settlement and integration services in the province.”

Frédéric Bastien, a prominent nationalist author and former Parti Québécois leadership candidate, filed a private prosecution against the Prime Minister on Jan. 12 accusing Mr. Trudeau of violating Canadian law by encouraging “illegal” border crossings.

In his court filing, Mr. Bastien cites a tweet by Mr. Trudeau from 2017 welcoming refugees to Canada, which read, “To those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith.” The Prime Minister issued the message shortly after then-U.S. president Donald Trump banned travel to the U.S. from several majority-Muslim countries.

In an interview, Mr. Bastien also noted that the Trudeau government has erected facilities at Roxham Road that include instructions on how to apply for asylum.

“If this is not encouraging migrants to enter through Roxham Road I don’t know what is,” he said.

Public opinion appears to be on his side. Justice for Quebec, an organization led by Mr. Bastien, commissioned a poll late last year showing that 68 per cent of Quebeckers wanted to “close” the border crossing. A survey last spring by the respected polling firm Leger – commissioned by the Legault government and obtained by the Journal de Montréal newspaper – put the figure at 60 per cent.

But “stricter border enforcement policies correlate with increases in riskier crossings to evade authorities, and increases in tragic deaths” along borders globally, said Alison Mountz, professor at Wilfrid Laurier University and Canada Research Chair in Global Migration.

Ms. Gravel, who sees countless migrant buses and RCMP vehicles go by her property every day on Roxham Road, said that the flow is currently “very well-managed.” The RCMP “takes care of it,” she said.

And closing the passage “is not a solution,” said Mr. Anne, of Solidarity Across Borders. “Do you think that [the closing of] Roxham Road will stop migrants?” The group advocates for open borders and the termination of the Safe Third Country Agreement so that asylum seekers could go through regular customs to cross both ways.

He blames the agreement and the long wait for a work permit for Mr. Richard’s death, adding that he knows of several other people in the same situation. “Migrants are not looking for help, they want to work,” he said.

Source: Haitian migrant’s death reignites debate over Quebec’s Roxham Road border crossing

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Why Canada’s plan to bring in 1.45 million permanent residents won’t fix the labour shortage

2023/01/16 Leave a comment

Of note, pretty hard hitting:

With a master’s degree in nursing and six years of experience teaching nursing students in the Philippines, Rodolfo Lastimosa Jr. figured he’d quickly get a licence to work as a registered nurse in Canada.

In September, he passed his RN exam in Ontario — 11 years after arriving in this country.

Upon coming here, his overseas credentials had been “downgraded.” He found he had to work as a live-in caregiver while qualifying to become a practical nurse (RPN), then return to school for yet another bachelor’s degree in nursing.

“There was just no other way for me but to go back to school,” says Lastimosa, a 43-year-old living in Toronto, who cared for a man with dementia and later worked for a home-care health agency while juggling his studies, costly upgrading courses and qualifying exams.

At one point, Lastimosa, living paycheque to paycheque while also financially supporting his family back home, didn’t have the money for transit fare. But he says his drive pushed him through all the necessary hoops to return to his practice.

“It was tough and I had to be strong,” says Lastimosa. “My goal was always to be an RN in Canada to help others. It took me a while, but I’m proud of myself.”

Lastimosa’s story may be extreme, but many newcomers in Canada today still struggle to get equivalent work in their fields of expertise, often due to credential-recognition issues.

That’s despite the fact that the country is facing a major shortage of workers.

The latest Statistics Canada data showed 991,000 Canadian jobs remained unfilled in the third quarter of 2022; workers were particularly lacking in construction, manufacturing, and accommodation and food services.

Of those vacancies, 177,780 were in managerial positions and professions that must have a university education; 288,750 in occupations that needed a college diploma or apprenticeship training; 319,350 in jobs that required a high-school education and job-specific training; and 202,456 were in jobs considered low-skill.

One of the solutions the federal government has put forward to deal with the shortage is to raise the immigration level. Over the next three years, Canada plans to make 1.45 million people new permanent residents of this country — on top of bringing in an unchecked number of temporary foreign workers.

But is simply increasing our intake going to do the job? What future awaits these new permanent residents? Will those arriving find meaningful work to let them succeed in their new lives? And is this country bringing in the people its labour market truly needs?

The answers to such questions are elusive, and wrapped in an at-times confusing immigration system that critics say is in serious need of an overhaul.

A smart, overqualified workforce

Canada has the most educated workforce in the G7, largely thanks to highly educated permanent residents.

In 2021, immigrants accounted for more than half of the working-age population with a doctorate and master’s degree, or a degree in medicine, dentistry, veterinary medicine or optometry, as well as 39.1 per cent of those with a bachelor’s degree.

Yet one in four immigrants with a university degree worked at a job that typically requires a high school education or less. That’s 2.5 times more than the “overqualification rate” of Canadian-born degree holders.

“How do we actually admit these people and ensure that not just they, but also the people who’ve come over the last 10 years, don’t completely become an underclass?” asks Toronto Metropolitan University professor Rupa Banerjee, Canada Research Chair of economic inclusion, employment and entrepreneurship of Canada’s immigrants. 

“That’s what I worry about.”

Over the past 20 years, Canadian governments have invested in credential assessments, career-bridge training and other programs to help skilled permanent residents integrate into the workforce.

Yet between 2001 and 2016, the percentage of university-educated immigrants in highly skilled jobs in Canada fell from 46 per cent to 38 per cent, statistics show.

“So where are we after 20 years? We used to say ‘Doctors are driving cabs,’ but now we say, sometimes jokingly, ‘Doctors are driving Ubers,’” says Shamira Madhany, a former assistant deputy minister in Ontario with extensive experience working with licensing bodies, settlement agencies and higher education sectors.

“You have a million jobs to fill and you need immigrants, but if their prior skills and experience is not recognized, you’re going to end up in the same situation.”

There are those for whom deskilling hasn’t been as much of an issue. Former international graduates of Canadian institutions and temporary foreign workers already have Canadian education and work experiences when they obtain permanent residence. Among the permanent residents who came for economic reasons who landed in 2020, about 67 per cent had worked in Canada before immigration, an increase from 12 per cent in 2000 and 33 per cent in 2010. 

Their prior Canadian experience helps boost first-year earnings of permanent residents, when and if they successfully transition from their status as temporary foreign workers. First-year earnings of permanent residents in the economic class have risen by 39 per cent.

The two halves of Canada’s immigration system

When it comes to selecting skilled immigrants, Canada relies on a points system based on age, language proficiency, education levels and work experience. Applicants must have a background in listed qualifying occupations to enter the talent pool. 

It’s a system that excludes those in lower-skilled and lower-wage jobs; that’s led to another part of the problem. Canada’s immigration system is divided, observers say — there are two halves that need to be aligned.

When employers want those low-skilled workers, the system turns messy.

“The federal economic immigration programs ignore anything below medium- and high-skill jobs,” says Naomi Alboim, a senior policy fellow at TMU, who served senior roles in both federal and Ontario governments for 25 years specializing in immigration and labour.

Some hire foreign workers through the temporary worker program. When it comes to permanent positions, some provinces and employers have used their limited authority to bypass federal rules and sponsor workers such as butchers, truck drivers and servers to become permanent residents.

Increasingly, employers are turning to temporary migrants already in Canada with an open work permit. In doing so, businesses avoid going through what’s known as a labour-market assessment, a measure that’s meant to ensure no Canadian is available to do the job. Those in Canada on open-work permits include youth in a working-holiday program and hundreds of thousands of international students.

While Ottawa sets an annual target for permanent residents, there’s no cap on migrant workers and international students. 

That makes for a Wild West of temporary workers in Canada, where policymakers in this country don’t have great data about who is working in this country, what credentials they have and if their skills are what we need.

“We are way too dependent on temporary entrants,” says Alboim. “We are not providing them with the support that they need, the information that they need, the pathways that they need to transition successfully to permanent residence. We have no plan for the number of temporary entrants that we receive.”

It sets the stage for exploitation, critics say.

If Canada is to keep counting on temporary foreign workers and transitioning them to be permanent residents, it needs to have a better handle of the skill sets of these temporary residents, experts say. Ottawa must set targets for foreign workers and international students — and figure out how they fit into the puzzle.

“If we are going to continue to have a two-stage immigration system, we cannot plan only for the second stage (permanent residence). We have to plan for the first, but we do no planning for the first. That’s the big issue. That’s the elephant in the room,” says Alboim.

Last year, Immigration Minister Sean Fraser relaxed the rules for employers in order to bring in more temporary foreign workers and made 16 new lower-skilled occupations in health care, construction and transportation eligible for the permanent residence talent pool. Fraser now also has the power to do targeted draws to hand-pick permanent residents with skills in demand in Canada.

“These changes will support Canadians in need of these services, and they will support employers by providing them with a more robust workforce who we can depend on to drive our economy,” Fraser said.

Connecting the public and private sectors

Meanwhile, some jurisdictions are making strides to help high-skill workers find success in Canada. Such success, where it’s been achieved, has seen collaboration with the private sector.

Several years ago, the Immigrant Employment Council of British Columbia developed the Facilitating Access to Skilled Talent (FAST) program. It brought together employers and industry groups to develop online tools to assess the competency of permanent residents in skilled trades in construction — newcomers are evaluated and steered to further training or get credentials certified by authorities. Through an online platform, employers are matched with job-ready immigrants.

The program has since expanded to biotechnology, life sciences, information technology and long-term care. Funded by the federal Future Skills Centre, FAST is now delivered through some 50 settlement service agencies across Canada.

“It’s really important that we play our part, that businesses play their part and the post-secondary institutions play their part,” says Patrick MacKenzie, the council’s CEO. “We have to own that responsibility.”

He says 67 per cent of the FAST clients find jobs in their field within four weeks of arrival and the rate goes up to 85 per cent in eight weeks.

Femi Ogunjji, an IT professional from Nigeria, enrolled in the FAST program when he was granted permanent residence in 2017 while still in Lagos.

He attended pre-arrival online workshops and orientation about resumé writing, Canadian workplace culture and the IT job market. He also participated in e-mentoring and learned to use the keywords in his CV to get past AI pre-screening to land interviews.

A week after settling in Vancouver, a headhunter offered him a six-week contract job that turned into a full-time job as a business systems and database co-ordinator.

FAST’s soft-skill training and labour-market orientation regarding his profession was particularly helpful, says Ogunji.

“I already had all the IT certifications,” says the 41-year-old father of two. “That’s the advantage of being in technology. You don’t need any recertification.”

Where’s Fort McMurray?

Egyptian engineer Ahmed Abdallah was cautioned by his friends to lower his expectations about getting a commensurate job in health and safety management when he came to Canada.

Before arriving in July 2020, one of them recommended he enrol in a program offered by ACCES Employment in Toronto to learn about the Canadian job market in his field, work on his resumé and build professional contacts.

Through networking, Abdallah got a job offer as a health and safety environment adviser from an oilsands company in Fort McMurray — a place he’d never heard of. 

Although he initially had to take several courses on Canadian laws, rules and regulations while on the job, he says he’s happy with his choice.

“In Canada, employers care a lot about soft skills and it’s fine if you have medium technical skills. They believe if you have the soft skills, they can teach you the technical skills. What immigration does is they just make sure immigrants coming in have strong technical skills,” says the 32-year-old.

“You need employers who are open-minded, like mine, who will take a chance on new immigrants.”

ACCES Employment CEO Allison Pond says employers have been involved in her agency’s programming by supporting newcomers with onboarding.

“Our sector needs to be very comfortable working with the business world. We have a corporate engagement team that has 15 people. These are individuals who are very comfortable in the business world and yet they’re working in a non-profit charity,” says Pond.

“Our funding is provincial. Our funding is federal. We’ve got private and regional funding. Governments need to recognize and support the settlement sector … We’re a great place for that collaboration.”

More regulations — and higher stakes

When it comes to newcomers looking to enter regulated professions — such as nursing and legal counselling — things are still trickier and more complicated. The stakes in these professions are often higher, given the need to protect the public.

Part of the problem is that newcomers find themselves having to navigate different licensing rules and regulations across federal and provincial jurisdictions. In contrast, Britain and Australia both have an overarching health regulator to oversee licensing processes, making it easier for newcomers to manoeuvre through the systems, says Wilfrid Laurier University professor Margaret Walton-Roberts, whose current research focuses on the global migration of nurses.

Foreign-trained nurses and doctors coming to Canada in recent years are getting better information beforehand, starting their credential clearance and receiving the counselling about their licensing pathways sooner, she says.

However, barriers have continued because assessments and bridge programs meant to fill knowledge and skills gaps require extensive government funding and resources.

The CARE Centre for Internationally Educated Nurses, for instance, offers one-on-one case management, exam preparation, mentoring and other supports. In 2021-22, the organization got $282,000 from the federal immigration department and $1.33 million from Ontario’s Ministry of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development.

In the same fiscal year, 113 of its clients passed College of Nurses of Ontario exam to become RNs or RPNs while more than half of its program participants had been in Canada for over five years.

The province has some, limited medical residency spots available for internationally educated doctors to acquire field training experience. But they must compete against Canadians who study in medical schools abroad.

“It has to be almost bespoke, because you are talking about such a complex system and you have to match people who’ve come from a completely different country,” says Walton-Roberts, editor of “Global Migration, Gender, and Health Professional Credentials,” published by University of Toronto Press in 2022.

“You have to support the candidate as they find their way into professional practice. That all costs money.”

‘No one guided me’

The federal government has invested an extra $115 million over five years, with $30 million ongoing, to expand its foreign-credential recognition program with a focus on supporting those in health-care professions.

Ontario also passed a new law to eliminate Canadian work-experience requirements for professional registration and licensing, reduce overlapping language tests and compel regulators to sign up registrants faster in emergencies such as a pandemic. It funds 46 bridge training projects, totalling $68 million over three years, to serve 12,516 newcomers in various professions.

Although these changes help address some past challenges in effectively registering applicants, Ontario’s fairness commissioner says there still isn’t a routine “co-ordinated end-to-end system” for players in immigration, settlement, post-secondary education, regulator and employment to address and resolve licensing gaps.

Another challenge is how to assist qualified internationally trained licensing applicants who, for one reason or another, fail to meet all the registration requirements, says Fairness Commissioner Irwin Glasberg, who oversees licensing practices of 40 regulators.

“I am asking regulators and other stakeholders to find ways to move them across the finish line,” he says. “Our province cannot afford to have skilled immigrants remain on the sidelines when, with appropriate supports, they can apply their skills where they are needed most.”

In the Philippines, Lastimosa was a registered physical therapist before he studied to become a registered nurse and later a nursing instructor while working in hospital emergency. He even got himself a diploma in midwifery.

He says he felt demoralized when he was deemed ineligible to practise in Canada, after waiting a year to get his credential assessed, when competency gaps were identified. 

“Different applicants had different gaps. There’s no uniformity how to fill those gaps,” says Lastimosa, who delayed his studies at York University’s two-year nursing program until 2019, because he needed to save money while supporting his parents and relatives back home. “No one guided me what to do.”

He was a RPN for a private home-care agency and during the pandemic he worked five jobs at vaccination clinics and different hospitals before he passed his RN exam last summer.

Lastimosa says he believes some of the recent initiatives by provinces and regulators to fast-track foreign-trained health professionals into the workforce, through supervised practices and offering temporary conditional licences, certainly make sense and will help.

“It should all start with the immigration application process. If you qualify to migrate here as a nurse, it should only take you a few months or weeks to take the exam and practise, but it’s not the case,” Lastimosa says.

“The process is more streamlined now, but there’s still a lot of room for improvement.” 

Source: Why Canada’s plan to bring in 1.45 million permanent residents won’t fix the labour shortage

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